A Week to Be Wicked (Spindle Cove #2)(59)

After standing back a moment to look at her, he untied one of the ribbon bows and left its ends dangling.

“Why would you do that?”

His eyebrow arched. “It makes a suggestion.”

“The suggestion being that I’m loose?”

“Your words, not mine.” He framed her waist in his hands, and spun her around—so that she faced away. His hands went to the row of hooks down the back of her dress. Beginning at the base of her neck, he undid them one by one.

“Now this is too much,” she protested, trying to wriggle away. “I won’t be made to look slatternly.”

He held her tight. His breath fell hot and rough on her neck. “You’ll be made to look the way I wish you to look. That’s the point of a mistress, after all. No doubt Sir Alisdair Kent likes his women looking prim and demure, but you chose me as your travel partner. I have a reputation to maintain.”

He unhooked her dress to the midpoint of her back, just between her shoulder blades. Then he worked the widened neckline over the slopes of her shoulders, shimmying it down to a most indecent latitude. The edge of her chemise was exposed, making a lacy ruff of white to frame her exposed cle**age.

After whirling her back to face him, he surveyed his handiwork. Minerva flushed with shame. He’d taken her perfectly respectable traveling gown and turned it into an off-the-shoulder ensemble befitting a pirate wench.

And he wasn’t through with her yet. He lifted his hands to her hair and began plucking the pins from her failing chignon. If she weren’t faint with hunger and terrified of being stranded penniless in the Midlands, she would not have stood for such treatment.

This went beyond teasing. Could he . . . could he possibly be envious?

“Really, Colin. I’m sorry if you resent my regard for Sir Alisdair. But humiliating me this way is hardly going to earn you my good opinion.”

“Perhaps not.” He pulled the last of the pins free and shook her hair loose about her face. “But I’m convinced it will add greatly to my personal satisfaction. And it will save us both a great many prying questions.”

He removed the spectacles from her face and folded them, tucking them inside his breast pocket.

“I need those.” She reached for them.

He caught her wrist. “No, you don’t. From the moment we walk through those doors, you’re not leaving my side, do you hear? Believe me, you don’t want any of Halford’s guests thinking I mean to share you.”

Share her? What sort of den of iniquity were they entering?

“For my part,” he said, “I’ll behave as if I’m your slavish, besotted, jealous protector.”

She bit back an unladylike laugh. “Now that will be the role of a lifetime.”

“And you . . .” He tipped her chin with a single fingertip. “You had better play your part to perfection, my pet.”

“My part? I don’t know how to be a mistress.” Certainly not among dukes. She became an absolute pudding around powerful men.

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short. I think you’ll do very well indeed. You see, a mistress is a sharp, savage little creature. When it suits her, she can make a man feel as though he’s irresistible, desirable, endlessly fascinating. The only man in the world.” He leaned closer, lowered his voice to a dark whisper. He was too near for comfort or clarity, just a blur of male ferocity. “She moans as if she means it. And when she’s got what she wanted, she’ll make it bitingly clear that the man means nothing—absolutely nothing—to her at all. I think you were born to that role. Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” she said, her voice wavering. “How dare you suggest that I’m some sort of . . . Last night was all your idea.”

“I know it.”

“And I can hardly be the first woman to pass an enjoyable night in your arms and want little to do with you the following day.”

“Of course not. You’re merely the most recent in a long, distinguished line. And don’t harbor any illusions you’ll be the last.”

“Then why are you so angry? Why am I singled out for such cruel retribution? What wound can I have possibly caused you, save a miniscule twinge to your pride?”

He stared at her for a long moment. “I don’t know.”

Then he reached up with both hands and pinched her cheeks. Hard.

“Ow!” Reeling, she clapped her hands over them. “What was that for?”

“You need a blush on those cheeks if you’re to play my trollop, and we haven’t any rouge.” One of his arms shot around her, gathering her close. He traced her bottom lip with his thumb. “And these lips are looking entirely too pursed and pale.”

Bending his head, he caught her mouth in a harsh, bruising kiss. His tongue thrust between her lips, making a thorough, claiming sweep of her mouth. Then he caught her bottom lip and gave it a teasing, puppyish tug with his teeth. He left her mouth swollen, stinging with pleasure and pain.

She dug an elbow into his side, using all the strength in her arm to lever some distance between them. He released her, and she stumbled a few steps back.

She touched her fingertips to her mouth, checking for blood. “Are you satisfied now?”

He released a long, frustrated breath. With some distance between them, she could better make out his expression. It was one of lean, wary hunger.