Page 58 of The Trick of It

“You mean when I robbed you of your fool’s gold?” he suggested, fingers creeping along the headboard toward her shoulder. “You did ask me to.”

She blinked, her eyes going immediately to the walking fingers in his mutilated gloves, bare against the pilled fabric covering the remainder of his hands. “Aren’t you warm?” she asked, shifting her weight and reaching up to loosen her pelisse. “It is warm in here.”

“I’m always warm,” he reminded her. “I run hot.”

She paused and stared at him—and then swallowed whatever retort had risen in her throat before it could escape.

“Perhaps you aren’t fussed about the thieving,” he mused, watching every flick of her fingers over the buttons of her pelisse as she freed herself from it, “but instead wish to discuss how I overpowered you. You are disturbed, perchance, by my hidden strength?”

“A little,” she confessed, giving a delicate, little grunt as she peeled the pelisse from her shoulders, revealing a matching goldenrod trim along the bust and sleeves of the dress underneath. She was wearing a ribbon in the same color about her throat, with a tiny, glinting fleck of tiger’s eye cradled in the dip between her collarbones. “But no.”

He swallowed with some effort, eyes trailing down the new expanse of exposed skin, still looking luminescent against the dark and heavy autumn fabric of her dress. Her breasts swelled over the neckline, plump and tempting, and his hands flexed with the memory of how they’d felt in his palms.

“No?” he managed, dry and a little desperate. “What, then?”

“Rhys,” she groaned, flopping the removed garment between them like a barricade. “Stop it.”

He pressed his lips together, giving his head enough of a shake that he felt his curls tickle his ears. “Don’t say my name like that if you want me to stop,” he argued. “You smell sweet today. Dates, I think? Something else.”

“Cinnamon,” she confessed, wrapping her arms around herself, a motion he’d seen her perform a thousand times when flustered, though this time, it made the snug neckline of her gown bulge and dip enticingly over her cleavage. “I don’t often wear scent. I just thought … I don’t know.”

“You don’t?” he said, unable to resist stroking very lightly against her shoulder, testing the dyed yellow lace and soft cords of maple brown.

She watched his fingers, watched the tentative caress of the fabric, which was innocent enough, all things considered. Chaste, even, by Rhys’s estimation.

“If you want to talk…” he said softly. Carefully. “We can talk. I will even go over to the other bench if you tell me to.”

“You will?” she asked, breathy and uncertain, blinking those beautiful eyes as they tracked the gentle movement of his fingertips. “You would?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Oh.” She reached a hand out, hesitating just short of reaching across the discarded pelisse to him, her eyes traveling over the length of his outstretched arm and down the line of his torso. “I do want to talk,” she said in barely a whisper.

“All right,” he replied, all but holding his breath as those delicate fingers of hers came closer, resting just over the curve of his knee. “I can talk.”

She nodded, touching softly, almost hesitantly, allowing the backs of her buffed fingernails to stroke along the line of his kneecap. “Go ahead, then,” she breathed, watching her own hand with a kind of wary fascination. “Say something.”

“I …” He paused, giving a little chuckle. “Just say anything that comes to mind?”

“Mhm,” she said, stroking her fingernails a little further, along the line inside his thigh and smiling softly as she heard his breath catch. “Anything.”

He hissed, his legs coming apart, hips giving an involuntary rock forward as her hand slipped higher up the line of his thigh. “I keep thinking,” he told her, gritting his teeth, “that I’m not sure how I was able to walk out of there last night. How did I manage to walk away instead of peeling that dress off you and fucking you against the wall?”

“Hm,” she said, eyes fixed on the boldness of her own hand, a delicate humming noise fluttering in her throat.

She wasn’t touching his cock, but she could certainly see it, straining as it was now against the fabric of his trousers.

This was not how Rhys had intended for their carriage ride to begin. He had imagined pinning her on her back, stroking his hands through her hair, kissing her slowly. He’d wanted to kiss until they were both drunk from it, wringing the absolute maximum potential out of the act before progressing toward anything else.

Instead … well, this was happening.

“If you touch me there,” he warned, “I’m going to lose my mind.”

“Does that mean I shouldn’t?” she wondered, murmuring almost as though privately to herself, “or that I should?”

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “Jesus. Come here.”

That got her attention, her head coming up, eyes meeting his. “I’m already here.”