Page 21 of The Duke and the Darkness

“Wasn’t thirty-one thousand pounds enough?” Even in the shadows, she could see the glint in his eyes that told her he didn’t believe her. Yet she pressed on, not caring if he trusted her to tell the truth or not. “We could return to Barton’s and set up another game, should you decide to give me even more.”

He chuckled softly at her audacity and leaned closer, until she could just feel the brush of his waistcoat against the red silk of her dress.

She should have been panicking that she was trapped there, between the wall and his broad body, but inexplicably, she wasn’t. Her only sign of nervousness was a single hard swallow, which he took as an invitation to trace his fingertip down her throat. His touch quickened her breath, which only increased when his gaze lowered to her breasts. Instead of his fingers following after his gaze, his hand dropped to his side.

An unfathomable pang of disappointment pierced her.

“I think I prefer the opera,” he confessed huskily. “Far less dangerous.”

“Not at all.” She’d meant that to come out as a laugh. Instead, it emerged as a throaty whisper.

“Is that why you’re here tonight, alone in this box?” He lowered his head to bring his lips to her ear. “You wanted me to come after you. Why?”

His warm breath tickled against her ear, and she trembled. Her reaction earned her a smile from him, one she could feel against her cheek.

“Doesn’t every woman want that?” she tossed back. “I hear Dartmoor’s quite the lover.”

“You had better odds with the thirty-one thousand pounds.” He straightened, breaking the faint contact with her, and his frown deepened as he studied her face. “What do you want from me? And I know better now than to believe you want to be taken to my bed.”

She lifted her hand to his chest, to play with the buttons of his waistcoat, and prayed that he didn’t notice the trembling in her fingers.

She was no longer naïve when it came to men. Yet even with all her experience, seducing Dartmoor was proving harder than she’d imagined. She’d believed for years that he was the man who had attempted to rape her, and those feelings couldn’t so easily be pushed aside. Neither could those niggling doubts that perhaps he hadn’t.

The uncertainty threatened to consume her.

She forced a teasing smile. “What makes you think I don’t want that?” With a soft laugh, she brushed her fingers through his thick blond hair. She’d done it to mess up his appearance, yet strangely, her fingertips itched to touch him. “Or that I’d expect a bed?”

“Because you wouldn’t have fled Barton’s like that.” He touched her ruby earbob and slowly stroked it between his fingers. “You would have stayed to enjoy the night with me, then collected your winnings from Patton in the morning. So what do you want with me tonight?”

“Perhaps I’ve changed my mind about being intimate with you.”

He laughed. Then he leaned in and touched his lips to hers.

Peyton inhaled sharply as a burst of electricity pulsed out to her fingers and toes, to the ends of her hair. It wasn’t a kiss so much as a dare, she knew, yet a troubling part of her longed to turn it into so much more.

“No, you haven’t,” he murmured as he shifted away, smiling with self-satisfaction. “I can taste the hesitation in you.”

Anger flared inside her—at him for being so presumptuous…at herself for not wanting to slap him.

In retaliation, she slipped free the top button of his waistcoat. Then a second. She was more determined than ever to punish him exactly as she’d planned tonight, and not spend a single second more in his presence than she had to.

When a third button came undone, his hand darted up to still hers in its downward progress.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

She gave a throaty laugh as she slipped back into her role of seductress. “Really, Dartmoor, if you don’t know…” She finished that with a tsk of her tongue and a shake of her head. “It’s a good thing I didn’t linger at Barton’s after all. I do so hate to be disappointed.”

Instead of rising to that bait, he placed his forearm against the wall just above her shoulder and leaned in, searching her face. “I know you, somehow,” he muttered, searching her face in the shadows. “Who are you?”

A warning pricked in her belly, yet she commented flippantly, “You know a great many women, if the stories are true.”

“They’re not.”

“Pity.” She slipped her fingers away from his and deftly undid another button.

He stopped her again, this time stunning her by lifting her hand to his lips and placing a kiss to her palm. She shivered, and her lips parted in surprise.

“You’re a very beautiful woman.”