Page 21 of The Devil in Her Bed

The words dripped from his tongue like honey. “Dark, rhythmic, writhing, slick, and hot.”

Francesca looked up at him sharply. He’d claimed to know her, but had he any true idea, he’d realize she was not so easily seduced by warm, scandalous whispers in her ear.

And he left no doubt that seduction was his aim.

The clenching of low and luscious muscles belied her thoughts, and she decisively ignored them.

Drake interpreted her glare correctly and straightened. “Drum music pervades these traditions,” he explained seriously. “Ye’d find an entire town, the lords and ladies, the peasants and the priest dancing around a bonfire or two. I imagine a woman like ye has never seen the like.”

She loved to dispel the preconceived notions of a man with little imagination. “I have, in fact.”

“Oh?” That spark returned to his eyes. The honest one. “Do tell.”

“In the Carpathian Mountains lives a tribe of nomads who are only half Romani. The other half are picked-up vagabonds and vagrants from every corner of the Continent and beyond. Their drums are vast and varied. Their dances unlike any you’ve seen in this world.” One night, the rhythms of the Romani had taken her away from herself, had woken the woman inside of her.She felt those beats rise within her now. Thrumming a thread of temptation she’d ignored for so long.

Serana had told her to beware a man who could weave such masculine magic. For he was a tiger, and she was a dragon.

The two were opposing forces. They’d destroy each other in the end.

“Is that where you went? The Carpathian Mountains?”

She blinked up at him. “I’m sorry?”

“After ye left England, as a girl,” he prodded. “The ton has been talking of little else but yer return to London. But when they discovered ye alive… alive and far away all those years ago, speculation abounded.”

Something told her to tread carefully here. “I spent some time in boarding school in Lake Geneva, where I met the Duchess of Redmayne and Miss Teague. After that, we studied at the Sorbonne for a time, but I found a scholarly life and I didn’t suit. I wanted to see the world. I lived in Morocco for a while, Algiers, St. Petersburg, and the Far East to name a few.”

“How very strange.”

“Strange?”

“Most women travel to Paris or Rome or Milan. New York, perhaps. Egypt, if they’re feeling adventurous.”

Her chin lifted a notch. “I am not most women.”

“Nay, nay ye’re categorically not.” A shift in his voice made it impossible for her to look up just then. Some strange meaning as rich and thick as Devonshire cream. “What brought you back home, if I may ask?” The question lightened his tone, and she was grateful to follow suit.

“Weddings.”

“Yer own, I heard whispered.”

“Obviously not.” That painted a smirk on her lips. “Never my own.”

“Never?” He raised a brow at that.

“I’m more stallion than broodmare, I’m afraid. I’ll never be saddled with a husband.”

A dimple appeared next to his mouth, softening the hard lines slightly with brackets of levity. “One need not be saddled to ride.”

She bit down on her cheek, fighting the response he so expertly evoked in her. An answering mischief, a womanly wickedness.

“I ride with a firm hand.” She met his eyes with challenge. “I fear you’d have a difficult time keeping up.”

“Some men enjoy a firm hand.” He leaned down, his every muscle tense as he pulled her hips scandalously close to his. She’d branded him a hard man, and now he branded her with his intimate hardness through their unimaginable layers of clothing. “I’ve been told a night with you is incomparable,” he murmured boldly.

She covered the effect he had on her with her razor tongue. “Strange, I’ve never been told anything about you.”

To punish her, or maybe to demonstrate his strength, the Marquess Drake twirled her and led her through a complicated bout of steps that brought them physically even closer together at the finish.