She shook her head, coughing another pair of times before the bout ended and she was able to pull in several bracing lungfuls of air. Seeing her watering eyes, Nick offered her his handkerchief.
Silently, she accepted and dabbed the moisture away. “How can you drink that?” she gasped in a faint voice. “It’s ghastly.”
“An acquired taste and skill. It’s best when sipped, which you seem to have a penchant for not doing.”
As if determined to prove that she was worthy of the challenge, she raised the glass again and took a cautious sip, then moments later, a second. She shuddered and set the snifter onto a side table. “I do not think you will have to worry about corrupting me with brandy, after all.”
He leaned back against the sofa cushions, enchanted by the burst of color staining her creamy cheeks and ripe mouth. “That comes as a great relief. One less blemish on my record.”
She linked her hands in her lap, her gaze lowering again.
Studying her, he wondered at her sudden reserve.
“I have been thinking, my lord,” she said at length.
“Yes? About what?”
“My boon. Winner’s choice, if you will recall.”
“I do. And what prize have you selected?” Casually, he raised his glass and took a drink.
Slowly her eyes rose to meet his. “Another small bit of corruption. I want you to kiss me.”
Chapter 8
Emma’s heart beat as if a thousand tiny birds were trapped inside her chest, all fighting at once to be free. She swallowed past her still-burning throat, relieved that she’d finally found the nerve to ask Nick the one question she’d been wanting to ask him all evening.
The idea had occurred to her not long after she’d strolled into the drawing room before dinner and found him there alone. The way he’d looked at her with his intense silvery eyes had made her tremble, and for the faintest instant she’d wondered if he was going to kiss her. But then he’d looked away, his expression wiped clean of all but his usual sardonic amusement.
Studying him afterward, she found herself wondering if she might have imagined the entire event.
But whether his intention to kiss her had been real or simply a case of wishfulness on her part, she couldn’t get the idea of kissing him out of her mind. Even while they talked and ate and laughed, a tiny part of her brain had continued to mull over the possibilities. That’s when she’d thought about the wager—and the “winner’s choice” that was her prerogative to decide.
Still, claiming a kiss as a boon was extremely daring. Even Ariadne, who barely understood the meaning of the word fear, would have hesitated over so bold a move.
Do I dare? she’d debated as she and Nick lingered over their desserts.
It wasn’t exactly proper for an unmarried woman to ask a man to kiss her, most especially an unmarried, about-to-be-engaged royal princess. But wasn’t that precisely why she ought to ask? Why she should seize her opportunities while she still had the chance?
As she’d reminded herself when she’d agreed to spend the week here in Nick’s town house, these few days would likely be her only chance to explore a side of life from which she would otherwise be barred. Her only chance to be Emma rather than Her Royal Highness Princess Emmaline. Actually, she couldn’t think of a time when she had been allowed to be herself without all the trappings and expectations that came with being born royal. Even at school, she had been separate, apart. Only Ariadne and Mercedes understood because they were princesses just as she was.
But Nick knew none of that, instead believing her to be a rather ordinary young woman in need of his help. Although ordinary might not be the right term, considering what she’d just asked him to do!
She could have waited a little longer to call in her boon, she supposed. But she knew herself well enough to realize that it was tonight or never. If she couldn’t muster the courage now, she never would again.
For in spite of her hesitation, she knew three things for certain: She wanted to know what it was like to kiss a man who wasn’t some handpicked consort approved by her brother. She longed to embrace someone she genuinely liked, someone who made the breath catch in her lungs and her toes curl inside her shoes with tingling anticipation. And, most of all, she wanted to know what it felt like to kiss Dominic Gregory.
And so she’d drunk a bit too much wine at dinner, then tried—and failed—to drink something even stronger afterward.
Then, before she’d given herself any more time to consider, the words had come tumbling out.
Words that now hung between them.
Words that could never be taken back.
Across from her, Nick stared, an arrested expression on the angular planes of his face. He studied her as if trying to solve some unfathomable puzzle before he tossed back half the brandy in his glass with a swallow that would have scalded holes in her throat.