“Lucie.”

Her eyes snapped open, wary and alert.

The brazenness of her greeting him in the nude. A worldly woman might do such a thing. Or a woman whose instinct was to fight rather than flee when presented with a challenge. Whatever the challenge. He felt a little sick.

“You . . .” He tried again. “You do have experience. With men. Don’t you?”

Chapter 23

You do have experience. With men. Don’t you?

The turbulence at the back of his eyes made her want to lie. But she never lied.

“Does it signify?” She sounded rather recalcitrant.

Tristan was regarding her as if she were a stranger. “Does it signify?” he repeated. “It does. Because I don’t bed virgins.”

“You don’t?”

“Not ever,” he bit out, and sat up.

She sat up, too, grabbing the edge of a tartan blanket to cover her chest. “Why?”

“Because they are virgins.” He sounded prim, rather incongruous with his bare, tattooed chest.

“Goodness,” she said, amazed. “The rogue has a conscience.”

He blanched. “I do not. I just don’t care for dramatics. A woman fumbling and crying in my bed—not my taste.” He snatched his shirt off the blankets. “And they require training, which would be tedious.”

A pang of panic hit her stomach when he came to his feet. He was leaving. The bite of pain he had caused was only just fading. He’d leave her with the pain and none of the pleasure.

“So it is a matter of convenience,” she ventured.

“Absolutely.” He struggled into his shirt, attempting it the wrong way first, and, when his head appeared again, he said, “No shag is worth major inconvenience. Therefore, no bedding of virgins, or sisters, daughters, or mothers of close friends—dealing with lawyers: major inconvenience.” He stooped and picked up his waistcoat.

“Mothers?” she said, aghast. “Daughters?”

He was buttoning himself up with military precision.

He would leave.

She fought a surge of nervous anxiety. “I won’t be inconvenient,” she said. “I never cry. And I read widely on the matter, all sorts of accounts, lascivious ones—I know enough.”

His eyes were cold. “You know nothing.”

She came to her feet, her own temper rising. “You never asked whether I take lovers. And I never claimed I did.”

“You talk about women acknowledging their desires,” he said under his breath as he strode toward the heap that was his jacket. “A while ago, I noticed your coat smelled like my men’s when they returned from a brothel—then again, you would walk through neck-deep debauchery just to take notes for an essay or such, of course you would.”

She drew herself up to her full height. “It was hardly my intention to break your virtuous rules,” she said to his back. “But it is too late. I’m afraid they have been broken; the virtue, and the rules.”

He stilled. The hand that had caressed her so intimately clenched and unclenched by his side.

The speed at which they had gone from ecstasy to awkwardness was astounding. She was reeling from it. He was right, she knew very little. Still.

“Since my virtue has been disposed of, perhaps consider staying.”

He turned around, disbelief plain on his face. “Disposed of,” he echoed.

She gave an apologetic shrug. “I confess I never relished the idea of dying an old maid.”

Of going to her grave never having been touched. Never having been kissed.

She had used to wonder how it would be, kissing Tristan, and her imagination had been lacking. It was a glorious and terrifying thing, the moment all-consuming, akin to hurtling toward the glittering surface of water after jumping from a great height. Of course, she had been punished for hurling herself off the rock back then.

It felt as though she was being punished now, too.

He was staring at her with anger in his eyes.

It dawned on her that his exaggerated reaction might be of a pragmatic rather than a moral nature. He had mentioned lawyers. He was a nobleman. And at the end of the day, she was still the daughter of an earl, unattached, and young enough to bear children. Men like Tristan could not ruin women like her with impunity; marriage was usually the only way to atone for such a transgression, and rakehell or not, the most sacred tenets of polite society would still run deep.

She sighed with relief, and his brows lowered censoriously.

“Tristan, you must know that the virtue of a woman my age is not a prize,” she said. “It has low bartering value. Don’t frown so—I don’t understand precisely how it works myself. But one moment, a lady’s virtue is her sole worth, the one attribute that determines who, if anyone, will marry her; the next moment, it’s something to pity and snicker about because the lady failed to give it away fast enough. In my position, it is, frankly, quite useless.”

Tristan slowly shook his head. “Do not use politics to try and command me to bed you.”

He walked out, not taking his hat.

She stood staring at the empty doorway, a sinking feeling threatening to pull her to the floor. The most indiscriminate seducer of England was leaving without a backward glance, after merely sampling a taste.

“You have already ruined me—at least do it properly,” she tossed into the room.

The answering silence could not have been more pointed.

She sank back down onto the blankets. “Please.”

A numbing cold spread through her from a place inside her chest. She closed her eyes and forced a calming breath. It was unacceptable to feel unsettled over a man. Especially over such an indecisive one.

When her eyes opened, he loomed in the doorway, cutting her a look she would not be able to read in a hundred years.

She bit her lip. Had he come to collect his hat?

He walked straight past it, back into the circle of light, making the flames of the candelabra flatten and sway.

He went down on his knees before her, his expression a commingling of apprehension and want.

“Hell,” he said softly. “I cannot deny you when you say please.”

He curved his hand around the back of her head, and his mouth was on hers. Her hands fluttered up, startled, then settled on his shoulders. Worrying, how fast her lips softened beneath his again, how she already clung to him again . . .

Tristan raised his head, his breathing ragged. “Have you locked the cat away?”

She blinked slowly. “Why?”

He gave her a speaking glance. “The only claws I’m of a mind to enjoy on my back tonight are yours.”

“Oh. I put her outside before you came.”

He gave a nod. “We shall begin your tutorial, then. Lesson number one: never tell a man you won’t be inconvenient.”

She made to reply, and he shook his head. “Never,” he said. “You would both be sorely disappointed. Now. Undress me.”

He sat back on his heels, a challenging look in his eyes.

Her gaze traveled over his torso, assessing. There was a purpose to this, and she was not certain which.

“Very well.” She raised her hands to push the topcoat off his shoulders, and her blanket slipped and pooled around her hips. Her cheeks heated. He was fully dressed, and she was naked, save the curtain of her hair.

He kept his eyes on her face. “Go on.”

“Patience, my lord.”

She divested him of the topcoat, then set to work on his jacket. He was not assisting her, and it was a near embrace as she wrestled his arms out of the tailored sleeves. The tips of her breasts brushed the silk of his waistcoat, and the delicate contact shot an electrifying current all the way to her toes. At her soft gasp, he shifted. She glanced up and found his face tense, his eyes black mirrors for the erratic play of the firelight.

“Courage,” he murmured. “It won’t bite.” He nodded at his chest, at his waistcoat.

She hesitated. There was something rather deliberate about undoing buttons. A shyness came over her she had not felt when he had been on his knees before her earlier, doing scandalous things with his mouth. It would be easier, she reflected, if he were to just overwhelm her again now.

The waistcoat’s buttons were mother-of-pearl, smooth against her fingertips. By the fourth, she was proficient at it.

“This is you still trying to change my mind, is it not,” she said as her hands worked.

His smile held no humor. “If this part gives you doubts, you should refrain from what comes next.”

He was not just giving her more time to reconsider, she realized. As cotton and silk slid through her fingers, she was learning his body, too: the strength and size and textures of him, the hardness of his shoulders when she pulled off his braces; the warmth and smoothness of his skin when she dragged her palms down the planes of his abdomen, and farther down, to the fall of his trousers. A haziness entered her and left her breathless at the first button there. By the time she had undone the last, she was burning. She touched him without looking, but the way Tristan’s lips parted so helplessly when her fingers brushed over hot velvet made her head swim.

He snatched her hand off him and rid himself of his remaining clothes with remarkable speed. She was nudged flat onto her back, and he was on top of her, large and naked and radiating heat.