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I pulled the cork of the whiskey out and lifted the neck to my lips. Sweet heather honey and fiery blend of peat and moss. Delicious.

“That’s my whiskey!”

“I'm an advisor of yours,” I said, leaning against the drinks cabinet and glorifying in the way Lady Briar glared at me. “This is part payment.”

“I never agreed to?—”

“Why would you put a drinks cabinet in this room if you didn’t intend your advisors to drink a little?” I pointed out, swigging at the bottle again.

But I didn’t drink any.

No, this was just to rile her. To prove a point. The last thing I needed was to lose my head here. I was already intoxicated by something far deeper in this room.

Lady Briar Weatherford herself.

She was wearing the most elegant gown I’d ever seen on a woman: sharply tailored while her curls were piled high, pinned exquisitely. The spencer jacket was cut so tight around her waist and breasts, I was astonished a single one of her advisors could even think in her presence.

Perhaps that was why they’d sent that godawful report. It was so dry, I was astonished she’d even read it.

I had. Not that she would need to know that. I had an image to protect, after all.

“Stop drinking my whiskey, and stop offending me!” Lady Briar said sharply.

I fake swigged again, just for emphasis. “No. Because you are a little heiress, and you have never worked. You think this sort of place is just handed out on silver platters?”

I swept a hand around the room.

Damn, I’d never seen anything so impressive—and that was even taking into account all the shenanigans I’d partaken in as part of The Gambling Dukes.

Some of the people Kineallen had been courting had to be just as rich as Lady Briar Weatherford—but even they hadn’t created a room so opulent as this.

The floor was parquet, the best that the world could offer. The window panes surrounding three sides were immaculate, and the furniture? I could half believe that Lady Briar had somehow managed to obtain it from the royal collection. The room was a masterpiece.

And here she was, complaining that no one took her seriously.

“Oh wait, of course you think this sort of building is handed out on a silver platter,” I said with a dry laugh. “Because for you, it was!”

There was such a look of shock on her face, I wasn’t sure what Lady Briar was going to do. It was galling, being so direct and yet getting no response in return. What was she thinking? Did she?—

“I wouldn’t have described it that way,” she said curtly. “In fact?—”

“In fact, I would say this sort of ‘work’ as you call it, is beneath me,” I said, leaving the whiskey on the bar and stepping toward her.

“Beneath you?” Lady Briar repeated.

It had been the wrong thing to say. To be sure, I had wanted to rile her up—but only because Lady Briar riled up was far more beautiful than the serene woman she was evidently trying to be.

But this wasn’t riled up. This was outrage.

“I don’t even know why you bothered to bring me here,” I said, walking past her to the other end of the table. It took a great deal of self-control not to reach out for her, but I managed it.

God, did she know how tempting she was?

“I asked you here because I thought you might actually be useful,” said Lady Briar, turning to follow me. “You never know, you might like it. It’ll be a change for you.”

I winced, but only slightly.

How did she manage it? To speak to the very innermost of my begin? To point out the things I hated most about myself?

And she did it with such sweetness, too. It was galling.

“I think you just wanted me close to you,” I said with a grin as I reached the window. It was so clean, such high quality, you could almost forget it was there. Almost imagine you could fall through it at any moment. “I think you’re desperate for me, Briar, and so made up this request?—”

“You can’t speak to me like that,” Lady Briar said, close by my shoulder as I looked out of the window. “I'm a lady, and you’re a cad. And if you can’t handle that?—”

I don’t know what made me do it.

Fine, I knew. She was far too intoxicating and I had to get the woman out of my system. One way or another.

I grabbed her, but her little gasp of astonishment didn’t fool me. Lady Briar wanted me to touch her. Well, now she had her wish.

Time for mine.

“Markham!”

“You can shout all you want, but I don’t think anyone’s going to come, do you?” I murmured, pressing her against the window.

Behind her, the expanse of London cascaded around. Did she feel it too, this strange giddiness at being on top of the world? It almost looked as though she could fall at any moment.

Perhaps that was why Lady Briar’s eyes were so wide.

“I think your advisors leave you well alone, and they wouldn’t even think to come barraging back into this room after you told them to leave,” I said, my hands pinning hers to the glass.

Lady Briar shivered, and I was almost undone immediately. God, she felt incredible, pushed up against me, every part of her warm—but it wasn’t just how she felt.

No, it was the passion in her eyes that did it. How she could look at me like that, as though I was the worst person in the world…and the only one she wanted in her bed?

Did she know she was doing it? Was this all a ploy?

“I could have you on that table in minutes,” I breathed, lowering my head to hers, leaving my lips just an inch from hers, teasing, working her to distraction. “In another ninety seconds, I would have you calling my name.”

“You think for one minute I would let you do that?” Lady Briar said, her voice low.

I chuckled darkly. “You would. And you’d be glad you did.”

I shifted slightly against her and almost crushed my lips to hers, I couldn’t hold back any longer.

Lady Briar’s lips slipped into a grin. “I think you underestimate me, Lord Markham, like everyone does.”

“You—”

“I think I would be the one putting you on the table,” she said, cutting across me with a wicked glint in her eye. “You’d be the one on your back, waiting for my touch. You’d be the one calling my name.”

My breath hitched in my throat as the image burst into my mind. My manhood twitched. Damn, I would like that.

Not that I was about to admit to as much.

“But I won’t, because I don’t think you deserve it,” Lady Briar said softly.

My smile disappeared, even as my manhood hardened. “Deserve it? At least I’ve worked for something in my life, Lady Briar. At least I know what it is to put hard work and effort and ideas and creativity, blood sweat and tears into something. I’ve failed, and failed again, but then I succeeded.”

“And stole?—”

“At least I had built something worth stealing,” I breathed, my eyes darting to her lips. Oh God, how I wanted to?—

Just as I thought she was going to kiss me, break the connection, end this torture we’d given ourselves, Briar did something entirely unexpected.

She slipped from my grasp, stepping away from me with a coolness of expression that I had never thought possible after such an encounter. I could barely stand up.

“Well if that’s all, Lord Markham, I’ll see you tomorrow for a discussion about the report that you will have read by then,” Lady Briar said smoothly, as though I hadn’t just had her pinned up against a window, about to make her weep with pleasure. “That will be all.”