Page 17 of Duke of Wickedness (Regency Gods #4)

D avid…might have made an error.

He had planned this night down to its last detail.

It was what had occupied the entirety of his afternoon after he had made the impromptu request that Ariadne meet him at midnight.

He had felt that a performance at the Dreary Lane Theater—named not for its location, but for the allusion to the far more famous and far more respectable counterpart—was absolutely perfect.

Ariadne would see things that would shock her.

That part was not in question. But she would see it at a distance, enough distance to provide a sense of safety.

Besides, they would be in something of a public space, not that Ariadne seemed particularly worried about that, given how she’d turned up at his house in the dead of night. Even so.

He wanted to push her boundaries. He didn’t want to scare her off.

But what he had not considered was his boundaries.

And watching Ariadne Lightholder blush and laugh and gasp in delight at The Castle Spectacle —a raunchy take on The Castle Specter , which had taken Society theatergoers by storm when it had debuted some twenty years earlier—was more than he could take; he was learning.

“This is very funny,” she whispered to him for perhaps the twentieth time, sounding shocked at herself for thinking so.

“The actors change it nearly every performance,” he said, because perhaps talking Cheapside theatrical history would distract him from the way the dark neckline of Ariadne’s gown hugged the curve of her breasts.

“It’s been going on and off the stage here for…

hell, decades. It turns out that when most of the show is filthy puns, the appeal endures. ”

“And tits,” Ariadne supplied helpfully, and goddamn him, David was never, ever going to survive hearing Lady Ariadne Lightholder say the word tits . “I imagine that looking at tits is an eternal pleasure.”

It took every single ounce of David’s self-control not to look directly down the front of her bodice. She was sitting right next to him . He was taller than her. She couldn’t have given him a more advantageous view if she had tried.

And then he saw the smirk on her lips, and he realized that she had tried.

Several things rearranged themselves very quickly in David’s mind.

He had come here with the assumption that he had the upper hand in every aspect of this arrangement.

As she had pointed out in the carriage, he was a man in control of his own fate—and she, as a woman, had far less freedom.

Atop that, she had less experience and took on a great deal more risk if discovered in this little bargain of theirs.

Thus, he had all the power and she had none.

Except…

Except he had forgotten about that devilish streak of curiosity in her, which was another strike against him in the foolishness column, for wasn’t that what had gotten them into this situation in the first place?

As he watched her effortlessly wipe away that telltale smirk, another realization crashed in on the heels of the first.

She was doing it on purpose.

Ariadne might be a bad liar…except in the case of this one, practiced lie, the one that said she was nothing more than what you saw on the surface—the docile Society miss.

What a crafty, clever woman.

He, however, was the infamous Duke of Wilds. He would not be outplayed.

He let his arm snake over the back of Ariadne’s chair, his fingers reaching just far enough to drape over her far shoulder.

Reaching just far enough to brush against the upper swell of her breast.

“Tell me, little bird,” he asked, leaning in to whisper directly into her ear. It was a familiar pose, but in this crowd, it came off as downright chaste. “Where did you learn to have such a filthy mouth?”

That same smirk appeared, then vanished.

“Did you know,” she said tartly, though there was the slightest hitch in her voice, “that if you appear to be reading a book of sermons, nobody ever asks any questions about what else you might have hidden inside? They’re too afraid you will start to preach at them to intervene.”

“Genius,” he commended her. “A bit blasphemous, but who am I to judge?”

She shrugged, which had the happy consequence of letting his hand slip just a little bit lower. He traced a fingertip against the edge of her bodice, which made her shiver.

She turned resolutely forward, staring determinedly at the stage.

“Watch the show,” she demanded from out of the corner of her mouth.

This time, it was David’s turn to smirk.

Oh, so the little bird thought she could hand out her little jabs but not take any in return?

He followed her instructions. He watched the show.

And he commented.

“Do you think you will learn any more of that saucy language tonight?” he asked, leaning in close to her ear, trailing his nose down the delicate shell. She shivered again, this time a little harder.

“I’m not sure how I could avoid it,” she said. The words were right, but the breathiness of her voice revealed that she was affected.

Thank Christ. David simply couldn’t bear being the only one, not when he had spent the last half an hour worried that the tightness of his trousers would do permanent damage to some of his favorite parts.

“What a fine point,” he cooed. “Clever, clever little bird.” The hitch in her breath told him that she liked it. He filed that little piece of information away for later.

He pressed a kiss to the curve of her jawbone, right where it met her neck beneath her ear.

“You aren’t watching the performance,” she accused.

“I’m watching the best performance worth seeing,” he countered, darting out his tongue to just touch the soft skin beneath his lips. “In fact, I’m studying .”

She turned to look at him, to say something, but he pressed his face in a little closer, blocking her from turning away from the stage.

“Watch, Ariadne,” he ordered. “Tell me what you see. And then let me tell you how I am going to do those things to you, too.”

Once, when Ariadne had been fifteen, she’d woken in the middle of the night from a nightmare and had been completely unable to get back to bed. On a whim, one driven primarily by adolescent impetuousness, she decided to steal some of her brother’s scotch to see if this helped her get back to sleep.

And it had —eventually.

First, though, she had poured herself two fingers of scotch, just like she’d seen Xander do a hundred times before.

Her brother always sipped his drink, but she had worried that she would lose her nerve, so she’d thrown the whole thing back and had promptly nearly choked herself to death on the smoky taste.

Then, she had spent an incalculable period of time sitting and just giggling at the fire that smoldered in the grate.

She had, of course, woken the next day with a headache that meant that she hadn’t dared touch so much as a sip of wine at dinner for another three years, but she hadn’t quite forgotten that feeling—the floating feeling, like she as only half in her body, and as if everything around her was somehow more entertaining, more delightful—just more .

She hadn’t had a sip to drink tonight, but she still felt that feeling.

And she was reasonably certain that she wouldn’t even wake with a headache come morning.

“Tell me,” the duke crooned into her ear. “What do you see?”

She looked down on the stage, where the heroine was shaking her bosoms—which had long since been revealed by the unbuttoning of her extremely scanty bodice—at the play’s hero.

This precise action had happened several times already during the performance, but this was the first time that the hapless love interest seemed to notice his lady love’s extremely outrageous behavior. He cupped her breasts greedily.

“Tell me,” the duke repeated.

She gulped. “The man…” It was already hard to think; the atmosphere of the theater was at least as intoxicating as that ill- fated gulp of spirits. “He’s touching her breasts,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

The duke’s low chuckle was a ghost across her neck.

“Oh, breasts now, is it?” he teased. “What happened to tits ?”

Drat, he was on to her. He’d known she’d been trying to tease, and now he intended to return the favor.

“He’s touching her tits,” she echoed, because she was not one to back down from a challenge.

She would have been pleased with the way his breath caught in his throat, if not for the fact that he chose that moment to let the arm draped over her shoulders drop even lower, until the fingers rested right atop her own breast. Even through the heavy fabric of her gown, she could feel the heat of his touch.

On stage, the hero dropped his face to the woman’s chest. She writhed in what just had to be exaggerated ecstasy.

“I’m afraid my angle won’t quite allow for that,” the duke said, sounding genuinely regretful. “But please know that when I have the chance, I plan to lick and suck you just like that.”

Ariadne whimpered. She watched as the hero kissed his way down the lady’s stomach.

Accordingly, the duke’s hand slipped to her waist.

“Where do you think he’s headed, little bird?” he asked her, his fingers drawing hypnotic circles against her ribcage. “What do you think he’ll do to her when he gets there?”

Ariadne could only assume that this question was rhetorical; if it wasn’t, he was destined to be disappointed, as she had no hope of wrangling her feelings into words.

“Because,” he went on as Ariadne watched, transfixed, as the heroine began sneaking her skirts higher and higher as her partner kissed lower and lower, “I can think of a few other places that I would like to lick and suck.”

She whimpered. It was all she could manage because that warm touch of his fingers on her waist was somehow spreading, radiating out, the warmth extending far beyond where he was making contact.

“Do you think I could make you writhe like that, little bird?” he asked. His mouth was trailing down her shoulder now, kissing across where the wide neckline of the gown revealed most of her collarbones.