Page 118 of Dukes for Dessert

“You do nothing with or to me, you piratical bastard. Touch me again and I’m going to scream until my breath runs out.”

Bastard? She had no idea.

“Go ahead.” He shrugged. “The first person who comes through that door catches my blade. So, I very much hope it’s no one you’re overly fond of.”

“You pigeon-livered ratbag!”

Reaching out, he caught her hand before it connected with his cheek. “Come now, don’t let’s dwell on the past. Tell me where Weller is, I’ll slit his throat and be out of your hair before dawn.”

She snatched her fingers away cringing toward the bed. “My God, but you’re cold.”

“Trust me, woman, if you knew Arthur Weller’s sins, you’d be sending him to Hell yourself.”

“No, I mean, you’re as frozen as a corpse.”

“Apologies. It is beginning to snow out there, and I had to use my hands to steady myself so as not to fall off the roof.”

A beat of silence passed. Then another. “The roof?” she echoed, as if she’d never before heard the word.

“How else would I attain entry to the car undetected?”

“I—I couldn’t say.” Lifting her hands, she scrubbed them over her face a few times, as if to wipe away stress, or sleep, or the sight of Sebastian, himself. “Why do you want to kill Arthur Weller?”

“For all the reasons you don’t seem surprised, I expect,” he replied darkly, as he realized that a provocative question had yet to be answered. “You never told me what you’re doing in his bed.”

She snorted with derision. “This isn’t his bed, it’s his daughter Penelope’s.”

Sebastian swallowed once. Twice. Momentarily paralyzed by lascivious images of what she and Arthur Weller’s young daughter got up to in bed. “I never took you for a Jack the Lass… Lucky Penelope.”

She instantly crossed her arms. “No, you rank pervert, I’m both her chaperone on this journey to meet her betrothed in Bucharest, and I’m designing the wedding trousseau.”

“Hmmm…” he drew out the speculative sound. “Do you suppose there will still be a wedding once her father is dead? What is the requisite mourning period in Romania?”

She stared at him with her arms crossed over her breasts for an uncomfortably long time. The silence ate at him, as it was wont to do. The stillness swirling with the ghosts of his sins ready to catch him up.

He needed to move. To do something.

And here they were in the dark, with a bed. Him, shivering with the cold, and her, all warm and soft and effectively naked. What rotten fucking luck. The one woman who would likely never permit him to touch her.

The one woman he did his best to forget…if only his dreams would allow it.

“Moncrieff…” She hesitated, and his breath refused to draw at the sound of his name on her lips, spoken with a return of her innate gentility.

My name is Sebastian. He wanted her to say it. Over. And over. And again. He wanted her to sigh it. To moan it.

To scream it.

She ventured a step closer, beguiling him with the whisper of cotton against the bare skin beneath. “I’d say after everything you put me and Lorelai through, you might agree that you owe me a boon—”

“Come now,” he interrupted. “I was properly careful that not one hair on your head was harmed on that ship—”

“Could you kill him tomorrow night, instead?”

2

It took a great deal to stun Sebastian. Most often something cataclysmic. But hearing such a request from her lips did the trick. “Let me make certain I’m comprehending you, my lady.” He held up a hand. “You’re not asking me to spare Arthur Weller’s life. Only to wait to murder him until tomorrow night.”

“You heard correctly.”