He commanded every room he entered. Ballroom or bedroom.
He controlled her responses right now. And just as she had when they waltzed, she longed to surrender.
He arched his eyebrows. "Had a thorough look?"
Thea gulped. "I . . . I've seen better."
"Have you now." He undid the buttons at the top of his shirt and slid it over his head, leaving only his untied cravat.
"Certainly. I've seen statues of . . . warriors." She'd been about to say gods and demigods, but that might make him even more conceited. The man truly had a high opinion of his charms.
Though it was an apt comparison.
He was cast from bronze, towering over the mere mortals who wandered near his feet.
The sound of his laughter rumbled like carriage wheels over gravel. "A rake knows when a woman's thinking about this." He cupped himself through his breeches in a terribly obscene gesture. "Care for a glimpse?"
Thea gasped. He was trying to shock her into ending the game. Admitting he was a rake and she was out of her depth.
"It might be diverting." She tilted her chin higher. "But I've seen such sights before."
His jaw flapped open. "Excuse me?"
Finally shocked him, Thea thought. Two could play this game.
"One cannot be a student of art without viewing the male form," she said primly. "In Caravaggio's painting of Zeus, for example, his . . . manly bits . . . float directly in the viewer's face."
"Float in your face?"
"Well, not literally. I only mean the perspective of the painting is such that it's the first thing the viewer notices."
"I'm sure it's the first thing young ladies notice."
"It's not all that impressive, really. It's floating, you see. Zeus is floating. On a cloud."
"Sounds rather . . . flaccid. I can assure you there'd be no floating here."
"I've seen other examples," she said flippantly. "On the wall of a temple in Rome. An etching of the god Priapus. His attributes were . . . most impressive. Far more impressive than yours, I'm sure."
"Have a care, Thea. Some gentlemen might take that as an invitation to stage a comparison."
"And some ladies might take that challenge."
Young ladies don't take challenges. Or stare at a man's breeches. Or . . .
Break all the rules! Every single one, something in Thea urged.
Could she? Did she dare?
Tentatively, her heart beating rapidly, Thea reached out her fingers . . . and broke a very big rule indeed.
He jumped back as if her touch had scalded him. "Oh no." He shook his head. "Not yet, little lamb. Moving too quickly is against the rake's code of conduct."
He slid his cravat from around his neck, snapping the linen tie between his fists, and muscles bunched and rippled in his arms.
"Hold out your wrists," he commanded.
What was he going to do? Thea widened her eyes as he lifted her wrists and wrapped the cravat around them, tying it in a loose knot.
"Ladies who break the rules must suffer the consequences." He gave one last tug and drew away, leaving her trussed and breathless.
He reached for his whiskey glass and swallowed the rest of the liquid.
He hadn't even touched her yet. Except on her wrists as he tied them.
He'd gripped the chair legs, stroked his own chest as he removed his coat, and now he was caressing his glass like it was one of his dratted widows.
Maddening.
And she couldn't even touch him now because her wrists were tied with his cravat. Why did that make her body heat and her thighs clench?
"Raise your arms over your head," he commanded.
Her arms drifted higher until her knotted wrists hung in the air over her head.
"That's nice," he murmured approvingly. "Very nice." He skimmed his fingertips over the tops of her breasts where they pushed against her bodice. She arched shamelessly into his touch.
His fingers traced a path up her neck and along the inside of her upstretched arm.
He pulled down her sleeve, exposing the inside of her arm.
The uncoiling wasn't only in her spine now. He'd said a woman became wet and now she knew what he'd meant.
Warmth and heat pooled between her thighs. She shifted in her chair, clenching her thighs together in an effort to assuage the need building there.
His thumbs traced the skin of her inner elbow. She was captured, unable to break free, but not because of the cravat tied around her wrists.
Because she wanted more.
He kissed the inside of her elbow and she nearly moaned aloud.
So vulnerable, the inside of an elbow. Such an unexpected place to be kissed.
He repeated the action on the other side, his tongue flicking over the pulse in her inner elbow. The soft touch of his lips reverberated through her entire body and set her pulse hammering and her belly humming.
"When I touch you here"-he brushed his thumbs across the inside of her elbows-"you want me to touch you here." His fingers skimmed lightly over the fabric covering the juncture of her thighs.
That brief contact burned through the layers of cotton, more suggestive and devastating than an actual caress.
Her arms ached from holding them over her head.
"Your arms are trembling. You want to lower them," he said. "You want to wrap them around my neck. Your lips part slightly. You take one breath, a quick one, and you fill your lungs and then exhale."
The man was a practiced seducer, no doubt about it.
She shook her hair back, away from her neck, keeping her arms raised overhead.
What would it take to make him lose control and break his own rules?
"If I do this"-she thrust her breasts forward and bent her head back, exposing her throat-"you want to touch me."
His breathing quickened.
"You want to twine your fingers into my hair." The words flowed from some primal spring in her mind. "More than anything."
He moaned softly and cupped her cheek with his palm.
Promising.
She turned her head and brushed her lips across the inside of his palm. Her tongue darted out to taste him. Salt. Skin.
The unfamiliar taste of a man.
Strong arms strained as he tilted her chair until she tumbled into his arms and he caught her. Lifted her. Settled her legs to either side of him, dangling over the sides of the wooden chair.
He wrapped her arms over his head, still tied, and took her mouth with his lips, kissing her thirstily. She tasted a hint of metallic blood and smelled the clean scent of the birch soap she'd used to wash his wounds.
Sensation uncoiled along her spine, sliding and nudging desire to life. She was a glass jar full of captured fireflies, whirring with sensation and light, wanting to break free and fly.
His fingers nestled into her hair, massaging her scalp and guiding her into his kiss.
Savored, surrounded, treasured, his hands framed her face as he pulled back and kissed the edges of her mouth. The soft grazing of his teeth on her lip made her squirm with pleasure.
This was the legendary Duke of Osborne. Not glimpsed across a crowded ballroom.
Here.
Kissing her hot and deep. Pleasure slithering along her spine.
A melting sensation, like butter meeting the surface of a heated saucepan.
A cry of pleasure torn from her throat and swallowed by his mouth.
Heat settled in the center of her thighs, pooling into wetness.
She moaned into his lips, straining toward him, craving more contact.
She knew he was trying to teach her a lesson about the depraved nature of men, but Thea refused to take heed.
She never wanted the kiss to end.
She wanted to thread her hands through his hair, bring his lips to her breasts, but she couldn't move her hands.
Move your mouth lower, Dalton. Please.
His breath tickled her flesh. She lifted her chest slightly, the tips of her breasts hard and unfamiliar feeling, tingling, begging for his attention, contracted to hard points. "Please . . ."
Finally he cupped her breasts through her shift, lifting them to his lips.
His skillful tongue claimed the tip of one breast through the thin cotton. Sensation shot through her whole body and she arched uncontrollably.
"Oh, that is . . . there are no words," she moaned.
"Thea," Dalton groaned, laying his head against her soft, supple breasts. "What am I going to do with you?"
He could think of fifty utterly debauched things. None of which he could do with a virgin entrusted to his protection. He didn't need whiskey to ease his bruised ribs. When he touched her, his body forgot all about the existence of pain.
He could blame it on the drink, or the lingering effects of those blows in the courtyard, or he could acknowledge the truth. He wanted to touch her satin skin . . . hear her trilling laugh . . . taste the apricot and whiskey on her tongue.
He wanted her with a longing so visceral it was a sixth sense.
Lifting her bound wrists from around his neck, he settled her back into her own chair and dropped to his knees in front of her.
Maybe he could have just a little taste.
"What are you doing?" she gasped as he pushed her skirts and petticoats slowly up her white stocking-clad legs.
Shapely legs with slender ankles.
He knelt to unlace her red leather half boots. Slowly. Drawing out her anticipation. She watched him with half-lidded eyes, the fringe of her lashes casting shadows on her cheeks.
She wore simple cotton drawers with a slit down the middle.
Easy access. He liked that.
No time to untie her drawers. He needed to taste her. Now.
She wiggled, attempting to escape, but he held her immobile.