She swallowed nervously, pulling herself together. “Another reason women shouldn’t drink hard spirits. In society women wear gloves.”
“But we’re not in society, are we? We’re sitting in a kitchen, you in your nightdress, me not much better, and we’re drinking cognac together. No one to watch, no one to know.” The smile he gave her was peculiarly sweet. “Pick up the glass and hold it.”
She did. The weight of the heavy crystal, the movement of the liquid, the way her heat moved to the glass, caught her attention, and she stared into the golden color, lost in it, forgetting about the man beside her. Almost.
“Very good,” he said softly. “Now lift it to that charming nose of yours and breathe it in. Let the aroma play with your senses. Seduce you with its strength.”
For a moment the spell cracked, and she shot him a wary glance, but he simply ignored her. “Then bring it to your mouth and take the tiniest of sips. That’s right, just a bit, and then hold it on your tongue. Play with it. It’s hot and dangerous, like my tongue in your mouth, but it’s what you want, isn’t it?”
There was no way she could protest, not with the small amount of cognac on her tongue, no way she wanted to protest. The fiery taste of the cognac was divine, full of notes of apple and honey, and she savored it, closing her eyes for a moment, before swallowing.
She opened her eyes to find him staring at her, an intense, heated expression on his beautiful face. Beautiful, she thought. He was beautiful. What would he want with someone like her?
“Do you have any idea how erotic you look when you do that?” His voice was low, as seductive as the cognac. “And I like the way you swallow.”
Why did that seem to mean more than the simple words? Before she could question him he took her hands and wrapped them back around the glass, and the touch of his skin against hers set off all sorts of clamoring need, need she refused to identify. “Another small sip, darling girl. Don’t worry, I’m not planning to ply you with cognac and seduce you—there’s not enough to make a rabbit drunk. This time let it roll around in your mouth. Let it dance against your tongue.”
She could do nothing else. She was caught, hypnotized by his voice, his words, by the book, the instructions, the warmth of him beside her, the heat of the cognac in her belly, the longing for what she could never have.
“Did you like the book I left for you, my precious?”
She almost spat the cognac out again, and she only barely managed to swallow it on a choked protest. Her eyes were watering from her suppressed coughing, and she met his gaze defiantly. “What book?”
He laughed. “You know what book. I collected that when I was sent on the grand tour. It’s quite rare and valuable. Usually the art in these things is a great deal shoddier.”
She could see those pictures in the back of her mind, so clearly that she had to fight the need to push back from the table and run. She had to pretend that the book had had no effect on her. “The writing was excellent as well,” she said, aiming for a disinterested voice. “It was both instructive and poetical.”
“You can read Italian, Miss Greaves? You intrigue me. But then, you already know that, don’t you?”
She should never have admitted to that, she thought, but the cognac and his intoxicating presence were destroying her better judgment. And then she remembered her lies. “I lived in Italy with my former employer,” she said defiantly.
“Yes, my love, but that’s Renaissance Italian, not street argot or the stuff of polite conversation. Even I had a hard time translating.”
“Even you,” she echoed, letting a trace of mockery into her voice. “You find it surprising that a lowly female could reach your lofty intellectual understanding?”
“I find it surprising that a shopkeeper’s daughter could.”
She was making too many mistakes. She was used to being cool and hardheaded, but he seemed to have an innate ability to get inside her thoughts. Get inside her. Inside her. She shouldn’t be thinking like that.
“Why are you blushing, my dear Miss Greaves? Is it in shame over your many
arrant lies, or is it something else?”
“I do not lie,” she said with dignity, taking another sip of the cognac. He was right, it was so much better this way, savoring it, letting it roll around in her mouth. Like his tongue, he’d said. Oh, God.
She set the glass down with a snap, and for a moment she was horrified she’d broken it. She hadn’t, thank God. Bad enough pilfering the master’s brandy—breaking his crystal would be beyond the pale. The master. He wasn’t her master, no matter what role she was playing.
She should get up, leave him. He wouldn’t stop her, wouldn’t force her, she knew that much. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here in the warmth with his eyes watching her with slow, slumberous arousal, and she wanted this. Wanted him. One glass and two sips of cognac and she was losing all her common sense, that was fine with her. She reached for the cognac bottle, ready to pour herself more.
He put his hand over hers, stopping her. “I think you’ve already had quite enough, my girl.” There was laughter and something else in his rich, slow voice.
“I’ve barely touched it. You were the one who told me I needed to master it.”
“You’re a fast learner.” He pulled the bottle out of her way. “So what do we do now?”
“I should go to bed.”
“Excellent idea. Here?”