Romancing the Duke (Castles Ever After #1)(36)

“I didn’t forget how to spell the word,” he objected. “I just got bored with the spelling of it.”

The truth was, he wasn’t as quick with words as he’d once been. Especially when he grew fatigued.

These predawn conversations with Izzy Goodnight were extremely fatiguing.

“Well, anyway. That’s what you should have said.” She lowered her voice to mimic his. “ ‘Do I have to spell out the danger for you? R-A-N-S-O-M.’ ”

He scrubbed the sleep from his face with both hands. “That’s ridiculous. I’d never say that.”

“Why not? It’s perfect. Your name is the one word you can’t forget how to spell.”

He shook his head, frowning. “This argument was days ago now. It’s over. And you’ve been thinking about this spelling nonsense ever since?”

“I know, I know. It’s absurd. But that’s always the way for me. I never think of the right thing to say until days later.” She drifted closer to where he sat on his pallet. “I know it’s hard to get back in the spirit of the moment now. But believe me, ‘R-A-N-S-O-M’ would have been the perfect retort.”

He couldn’t begin to decide how to answer that. So he didn’t.

“I made tea,” she said.

She drew very near him. Too near. His whole body went on alert, and his blood pounded in his ears.

Then she bent down and set the mug of tea on the table. “Just to the right of your elbow.”

He could feel heat. Probably the tea, but maybe her. He was vibrating between the desire to clutch her close and the instinct to push her away. A muscle quivered in his arm.

“You have a bit of fluff just here.” Her fingers teased through his hair, sending ripples of sensation down his spine. When he flinched, she said softly, “Hold still. I’ll get it.”

No, you won’t.

He caught her wrist. And then he caught her in his arms, tugging her down to his lap.

“What are you doing?” she asked, breathless.

“What am I doing? What the devil are you doing?”

Her hips wriggled, taunting him.

He held her tighter still, immobile. “You come down here and torment me at the crack of every dawn. Now you’re making me tea. And flicking fluff. Is this some kind of coddling? I don’t want any coddling.”

“It’s not coddling. It’s not meant to be tormenting, either. I just . . . enjoy greeting you in the morning.”

“That’s impossible.”

Ransom would have believed just about any other excuse. But she couldn’t expect him to credit that she stole down here in the misty, early dawn for the pleasure of his company.

“It’s true. Every time you wake up, you let fly the most marvelous string of curses. It’s never the same twice, do you know that? It’s so intriguing. You’re like a rooster that crows blasphemy.”

“Oh, there’s a c**k crowing, all right,” he muttered.

She smiled, and he heard it. Or felt it, somehow. The warmth was inside him before he could shut it out.

She said, “But that’s what I like most, you see. No one ever talks that way to me. You’re so crude and profane. I . . . I know it’s absurd, but I can’t help it. I find it perversely delightful.”

She liked crude? She wanted profane?

Very well, then. Crude and profane he could give her.

“Listen to me. When a man wakes, he wakes wanting. He wakes hard and rude and aching with need.” He shifted, pressing his massive erection against her hip. “Do you feel that?”

She gasped. “Yes.”

“It wants in you,” he said.

“In . . . in me.”

“Yes. In you. Hard, deep, fast, and completely. Now don’t wake me at this hour again unless you’ve found the perfect retort to that.”

She didn’t answer.

Good.

He hoped this time she was well and truly alarmed. Because he was alarmed. The pent-up need in his body felt near some kind of breaking point, and he had enough broken parts already.

The most frightening part of all?

He couldn’t seem to let her go.

In all his years of bedding women by night, Ransom made certain he never woke up with them in the morning. Now he was waking up to this woman—this strange, eccentric, tempting woman—every morning, and he wasn’t even getting the pleasure of bedding her first.

It was intolerable. Unjust. And very worrisome. Because he was starting to grow accustomed to her.

Damn, he was starting to like her. It felt so easy, sitting here, wreathed in the aromas of tea and morning mist. One arm about her slender waist, whilst with the other hand he teased her—

Bloody hell.

Somehow, he’d wound a lock of her hair about his finger. There it was. Right This Moment. And he had no recollection of doing it, either.

What was he coming to, when a woman sat in his lap, he gave her a stern what-for . . . and then ten seconds later, oopsy-daisy and la-di-dah, he went and twirled a finger in her hair?

That was not ducal behavior. It certainly wasn’t normal behavior for him.

He tried to nonchalantly withdraw his finger from its embarrassing predicament, but he recoiled too quickly. The curling strand of hair tightened around his knuckle like a slipknot.