Page 130 of Dukes for Dessert

Gigantic. Lie.

“And why not?” he asked, mindful of the fact that many people lied to themselves, most of all. Especially when it came to affairs of the heart.

Or any affairs, really.

Her eyes lifted above his tie, for once, but stalled on his lips. “I know where that mouth has been.” She made a disgusted face.

“As they’ve always been attached to my face,” he teased, “I can vouch for their whereabouts exclusively. I vow they’ve never ventured where they ought not.”

“I know they’ve found their way between the thighs of a common strumpet,” she accused. “They could be diseased.”

“Have they?” He scratched his head, thoroughly enjoying himself. So, the countess was a gossip? What fun—he’d found a delightful flaw they could share. “There are simply too many strumpets to remember them all, though I’m not at all in the habit of paying for anything considered common.”

“How could you forget?” She threw her hands up in the air as if giving up. “You were feasting—nay—fiending on her that day in the ship. I thought you might be in danger of losing your tongue in her—”

“You. Watched?” Every muscle in Sebastian’s body clenched at the very idea. Not with anger or embarrassment, no, with something much more dangerous than that. Suddenly his desire had teeth and claws, ripping his skin and his uncultivated self-discipline to shreds.

Luckily, she was too irked to notice. “I was looking for an escape! I certainly didn’t install that lens between your stateroom and my prison.”

“It was hardly a prison,” he defended. “That bedroom boasted the most comfortable mattress on the entire ship. The crystal alone cost—”

“The door locked from the outside!”

“Only to keep you from doing yourself a mischief. You were threatening to leap into the ocean in the middle of a storm to attempt an impossible swim back to shore.”

“To avoid a fate as offensive as that poor prostitute had to suffer beneath you.”

Sebastian remembered the encounter, because he’d been so inflamed by the woman in the next room, he’d selected a strumpet with similar hair and blazing green eyes. He’d feasted upon her, and then he’d filled her every orifice with the singular enthusiasm he’d felt toward this particular prisoner.

He’d watched the wall that separated him as he’d come, not knowing that she was pressed to the very oculus they used to keep an eye on their captives.

Watching him in return.

He’d be damned if that didn’t send every available drop of blood straight to his cock.

Luckily, he’d spent twenty years learning to layer indifference over any other emotion as he interacted with the world. “As a point of clarification, I wonder just what about my performance offended you so?”

“The entire bloody thing offended me,” she exclaimed. “From start to—to—finish.”

I’ve got you, he thought, unfurling the smile of a Cheshire cat.

“One must wonder, my lady, if you found what you saw as offensive as you claim, then why watch the entire display?”

It was cruel, really, to remain silent while she sputtered and groped for an answer she likely didn’t understand. But the discovery was too delicious not to dine on for a few moments before taking pity on her. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Countess, we’ve all a bit of a voyeur inside of us…some more than others, apparently.”

“I am not—”

“I’ve a point of contention, however.” He held up a finger. “At no time was that woman—or any woman of my intimate acquaintance, for that matter—in a state of suffering. Were you watching closely, you’ll notice I pleasured her to fruition at least twice before allowing my own. That is a personal point of pride for me.”

Wrapping her arms around her middle in a decidedly protective gesture, the Veronica still didn’t cave to his excellent point. “Women like her are paid to stroke the ego of a man. They can manufacture their pleasure as well as any wife.”

He did not miss her inadvertent admission there, but smoothly avoided picking at it. “I’ve paid a woman to stroke many parts of me, madam, but my ego has never been in need.”

“Now that I believe,” she said acerbically. “Though I suppose your overinflated sense of self would not allow you to imagine that a woman might have faked her enjoyment of your attentions.”

“Never happened.”

“So, say you all,” she challenged. “But I know there are ways to manufacture one’s enjoyment to appear like the real thing.”