She caught his playful smile and returned it. “Oh, I know you wouldn’t make it easy.” She stared up into his eyes, quite direct. “In fact, you would probably torment me a little, wouldn’t you? You do enjoy that kind of thing, I’m told.”
“Oh, do I?” he drawled. “And what do you imagine such torment entails?”
She smiled up at him and whispered all sorts of delightful theories in his ear.
Her husband kept her waiting.
Which was fair, since she’d requested torment, but he tarried so long she began to wonder if he’d changed his mind about their little game. Just when she was about to stop pretending to read the diary he’d left on the desk in the parlor of their rooms, he threw open the door, startling her.
He looked furious.
She grinned. Master Damian, it seemed, was committed to his craft.
He was dressed in breeches and a loose white shirt, as though he’d been out riding and caught her unawares. She remembered her part, and dropped the pages in exaggerated alarm, sending them drifting to the floor.
“What are you doing in my rooms, Lady Constance?”
He’d shaved and run water through his hair, and his face and voice were different. He was just as beautiful, but his posture was more arrogant, his tone more withering.
If he spoke to her that way in real life, she would slap him. Instead she made a show of smirking, rather pleased to be caught. “Nothing at all, my lord. I was … searching for a quill. Forgive me, I’m just leaving.”
He strode across the room and caught her hand. Which was, as usual, covered in stray spots of ink.
“I don’t believe you, Lady Constance. For if there is one thing you possess in abundance, it is quills.” He picked up a page from the floor, and slowly raised his eyes to meet hers. “Were you reading my private journal?”
The challenge in his tone sent a thrill of danger down her spine. The thrill of doing what one shouldn’t, and not caring. When he looked at her like that as she stood guiltily beneath his gaze, it made her hot.
“I’m sorry,” she said, meeting his stare slyly. “I was just trying to learn where you might be this afternoon. Where I might find you alone.”
“And why would you wish to do that, when you know it is far from appropriate for young ladies to be alone with older men?” he drawled, running his eyes up and down her body in a crude manner he would no doubt slap any other man for trying.
“I wished to be alone with you,” she said, reaching out and boldly running her thumb over his perfect, sneering lip. “Because, you see, I seem to recall you owing me a kiss.”
Even though the beats of the scene were rehearsed, making the confession still sent a hot pang of desire through her. She peeked up at him, feeling her face turn the color of an August sunset for her boldness.
He cocked up a brow. “Ah. She wants a kiss. I see.” He pretended to consider this. “Did it occur to you that spying is not the way one goes about obtaining favors, Lady Constance?”
She looked down at his lips. “Yes. And since I’ve been so naughty, I suppose you’ll want me to earn your forgiveness first.”
He took her fingers and brought them to his breeches, pressing her hand to his erection, which strained in welcome evidence that this game was having the same effect on him as it was on her.
“I warn you,” he said, rubbing her hand up and down his shaft, “what I ask for will be absolutely wicked.”
Julian had done this many times for lovers he had scarcely known, and a few times with people he’d been vaguely fond of. But he had never done it for anyone for whom he felt such capacious tenderness. In fact, he’d never felt so leveled by emotion at all.
He hoped he was not making a mistake.
Their love affair—not the dramatic passion that had erupted during their faux courtship, but the quieter affection that had blossomed these past weeks in between naps in his stuffy room at the inn and during long walks along the coast with Shrimpy—was still so new. It felt tender and sweet and fragile. He worried that to mix it with his wilder proclivities might extinguish it, or make it tawdry.
But now that they’d started, he realized he’d worried about the wrong thing.
Emotion did not diminish the power of his favorite games. It only raised the stakes.
He spoke to Constance in the voice he had perfected over years of such scenes. A bit amused, a bit arctic, a bit dangerous. “I suspect you’re just corrupt enough to have dreamt of this. You think of me, don’t you? That’s why you wanted to kiss me.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I think of you coming to my room late at night when I’m alone. I imagine that the hands touching me are yours. That you are desperate to make love to me.”
“Oh, I do wish to make love to you, Lady Constance,” he drawled, walking closer. Her eyes followed him in a hungry way. “But since you have been such a very naughty girl, first you must receive your punishment. Stand up.”
She came and stood before him, looking shy and aroused and uncertain and very like the younger version of herself who had once imagined such a scene.
“Give me your hands.”
She closed her eyes as he bound them together with the scarf. He cinched it tighter and she gasped.
He took in her hard nipples, her parted mouth, the pulse point pounding at her throat. “Bend over.”
He sat on the bed and laid her out over his knees, lifting up her skirts. He jutted forth his hips so she would feel the pressure of his erection nudging just below her thighs.
“Look at you, you wicked girl,” he said, running his hand over her lovely rounded arse. He traced the contours of her bum, the cleft of it, letting his hands graze just close enough to her quim to make her squirm.
“Say you’re sorry, Constance,” he instructed. “Or I shall have to spank you.”
“But I’m not sorry,” she whispered. “Not at all.”
He slapped her arse, quick and light, enough for it to smart.
“Perhaps you’re sorry now.”
“No,” she said in a clearer voice. “Not even slightly.”
He spanked her again. Harder. She gasped.
He waited for her to give him the sign she wished to end the game, but she only wriggled on his lap.
“I don’t think you’re very angry, my lord. I think you rather wanted me to read your journals. I think you wanted a chance to kiss me.”
He smiled, grateful she could not see his grin, and spanked her three times, hard and quick. A lovely pink flush blossomed on her pale white arse.
She let out a little moan.
“I think you like this, you wicked girl,” he growled, putting a finger in her quim.
“Yes, I’ve been very bad and I’m not sorry in the slightest,” she said breathily. “I’m not penitent at all.”
She was wet. Very wet. Despicably, immoderately wet.
“Spread your thighs for me,” he growled.
She did, welcoming his fingers deep inside her. First one, then two.
He smacked her arse as he gave her what she wanted.
“You can apologize at any time,” he taunted.
She spread her legs wider, inviting him to plunge deeper as she rocked against him. She was so wet it soaked his breeches. Which was fair as he could feel his cock pulsing in sympathy at the feeling of her wriggling up and down.