Page 117 of Dukes for Dessert

The kind of mouth he often pictured stretched around his cock.

His astonishment gave her time to sit upright, clutching the covers over her pale, high-necked gown.

“Sebastian Moncrieff, what the devil are you doing here?” she hissed in a loud whisper.

“I told you, seducing the wrong woman, apparently.” Or the right one, if fortune favored his cursed soul.

“With that knife you hid up your cuff?”

“Saw that, did you?” Fortune, he remembered, was a fickle bitch.

“One does not forget the feel of steel against one’s throat.”

Sebastian had never before put a blade to her lily-white throat.

Which meant someone else had.

Just as he was about to inquire as to the name of the dead man walking, she said, “Tell me the truth, Moncrieff. What are you doing here?”

“Attempting to kill Arthur Weller,” he answered blithely. “What are you doing his cabin? Wait…” He swallowed a surge of bile as he calculated the possibilities with abject disgust. “Tell me you’re not warming his bed. I’ll slit my wrists right now if you and he—”

“I’d rather warm my innards with a hot poker than the likes of Arthur Weller.” She said the name as if it tasted rotten in her mouth.

Thank Christ. He’d known she had more scruples than to take such a cretin as a lover. Did she have a lover? He wondered. Was she in need of one?

He certainly would apply for the position.

For every position she would allow.

“W-what will you do now?” she asked, a tremulous hint of vulnerability escaping on her voice. He could see her clearer now, the outline of her dark braid, the motions of her lips. Just shapes and shades, and no less alluring for it.

“I’ve hardly made up my mind,” he confessed, wondering what she’d do if he kissed her.

Would she submit to his seduction, yielding that soft body to his skillful caresses?

Or would she knee him in the nads?

With a jerking, almost violent motion, she tossed the bedclothes off and scrambled to her feet, standing before him with her shoulders thrown back in challenge. “I refuse to become a prisoner of yours again, do you hear me, you villainous troll?”

“Technically, you were a prisoner of my captain, the Rook,” he corrected indulgently, placing a hand over his heart to advertise where she’d wounded him.

If he were possessed of a heart.

“And…troll?” he tutted. “I hardly believe that’s an apropos comparison. Trolls are unsightly and unwashed, famously living beneath bridges and such nonsense. Whereas I am fastidiously clean and have been told I’m at least tolerably attractive.” Words like masculine perfection, Adonis, Eros, and even the title handsomest man alive had been bandied about, but manners dictated he remain humble. “Let us find another villainous creature to assign to me.”

“Ogre, then,” was her next suggestion.

“My Lady, I don’t mean to hound a point, but surely you’re aware ogres and trolls are in good company together. Might I suggest—”

She splayed her hands against his chest and pushed with all her adorable strength. He even let her budge him a little, to soothe her ire.

“Whatever fiendish demon you find acceptable, I care not! Either kill me or… Get. Out.”

Sebastian hissed in a breath through his teeth. “I’m in a bit of a conundrum, you see, as I can’t seem to do either. We both know I won’t kill you…

“Oh, do we?”

When he realized she might not be able to read his sardonic look in the dimness, he made an audible sound conveying his impatience. “Secondary, I cannot allow you to alert Weller to my plans…so what to do with you, is the question.” He tapped a thoughtful finger on his chin.

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