Page 29 of A Rogue's Rules for Seduction
“Too—late,” she said around violent coughs asthick smoke filled her mouth and lungs. She bent over, trying not to heave up her rather nice dinner and even more delightful dessert of berries all over the rug. Her only consolation was that the other women in the parlor were also coughing, as though they were a choking orchestra filling the air with their hacking symphony.
A large, warm weight settled on her back, and it moved in slow, soothing circles. Dom’s hand. “Easy. I did the same thing first time I had a puff of tobacco. Wound up spewing my ale all over the docks.”
“Not—reassuring.” Yet the spasms lessened as he stroked over her back. It truly was astonishing, the size of his hand, covering most of her lower torso. What started as soothing turned into hot awareness, his touch reaching all the way through her limbs.
She didn’t want her coughing fit to end if it meant he stopped touching her.
Unfortunately, her lungs calmed down, and he pulled away, leaving an ache within her.
“Ready to try again?” he asked. At her nod, he said, “All you’re trying to do right now is get the smoke in your mouth, and then exhale it. Doing that a few times will set you on the path.”
“I’m not very good at following instructions,” she said wryly.
“Not good at it, or don’t want to?” His lips quirked.
“The latter more than the former. But my lesson’s been learned, and I’m clamping down on my immature impulse to do the opposite of what you tell me to do.” She snorted. “What a banner day. Willa Ransome, actually maturing. And you went foraging. We ought to go look for buried fairy treasure, since the day’s full of miracles.”
“Suppose there’s a chance of change in everyone.” He said this with easy humor, but then a shadow passed behind his eyes. “Some more than others.”
Where did he go, when that darkness crept into him? And how could she bring him back?
“Observe how I’ve evolved,” she said brightly, then followed his instructions by taking quick but not deep pulls on the cheroot. “Hardly a cough.”
He nodded his approval, and she liked seeing that admiration on his face—far too much. Yet of all the people she knew, his approval was something worth seeking. It came from a place of experience and knowledge and strength, things that were sorely lacking in her world.
“See, the smoke’s turning white.” He pointed to the cloud that rose up from the lit end of the cheroot. “That’s what you want. All you’re going to need from now on is a puff here and there. No need to look like one of those new steam engines.”
“You could have another career teaching debutantes how to smoke,” she said after drawing onthe cheroot, and then exhaling a cloud. “It would be very shocking to the ton.”
“I ought to give it a go.”
“They’ll run themselves ragged trying to figure out who to complain to.” She glanced at the embroidery loop he still held. “But the evening’s only half-successful. You haven’t started your needlework. Take a seat and show us what you can do.”
He made a scoffing noise, but when she looked at him pointedly, he scowled before stalking to a chair in the corner and throwing himself into it. Curious, Willa followed.
The hoop was tiny in Dom’s hands, and he held it awkwardly. When a servant handed him a box of supplies, he stared at the contents.
“It all looks so small,” he muttered. “Flimsy and delicate. Not like these.” He held up his thick, long fingers and glared at them.
Really—could anyone blame her for staring at his hands and imagining whether or not they presaged the scale ofotherparts of his body? She might have been a virgin, but she wasn’t blind.
“No words of instruction?” he asked, breaking into her salacious thoughts.
She puffed on her cheroot to hide her pink cheeks. “Much as I relish the idea of telling you what to do, with embroidery, I’m almost as inexperienced as you are. So many tried to teach me, and I couldn’t ever get the way of it. Needlework’s an art—granted one that doesn’t get enough creditsince it’swomen’s work—and I haven’t the talent. Or patience.”
He eyed the needle in his fingers as if it had personally insulted his mother. “There’s no chance I can do this.”
“You might surprise yourself.”
His glance up at her was doubtful. But he reached into his jacket and pulled out a pair of spectacles, which he put on before frowning at the sewing implements in his hands.
Staring at him would only make him self-conscious, and yet... the sight of him in spectacles nearly brought her to her knees.Good God.It was criminal that he should be so handsome, the firelight shining off the glass eyepieces as he tried to thread the needle.
It was unfair that this compelling, alluring man should come into her life, and have this massive rift between them, one that could never be breached.
It took him several tries to thread embroidery floss through the needle’s tiny eye.
“Thank Christ,” he muttered when he finally succeeded in his task. He attempted his first stitch and grunted when a bead of bright red blood stained the fabric stretched on the embroidery frame. “Fu—I mean, damn!”
