Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
They crossed a section of formal garden, with topiary bushes trimmed into odd shapes and soil borders that were probably a riot of colorful flowers in summer but now looked bleak and bare.
Livvy pulled the edges of her cloak around her, glad of its warmth, and together they stopped on the edge of the lake. “You were right, only the edges are frozen.”
Dev picked up a small stone and sent it skipping across the ice. It made an odd, echoing sound as it slid over the frozen surface, then plopped into the dark hole of unfrozen water in the center.
“Go on, have a go,” he said, handing her a pebble. “Pretend the stone’s something that’s troubling you and just throw it away.”
Livvy pulled back her arm and managed a creditable distance. The rock cracked the ice and fell through with a satisfying splash.
“What was that?” Dev asked.
“My father’s stupid debts,” she said with a wry smile.
“Should have used a bigger stone,” he grinned, lobbing another rock.
“What was that?”
“My sad, unmarried status.”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t consider that a problem. For you, it’s a source of pride.”
He turned to her, and his gaze was so intense it was almost like a caress. “Not true. It has been a problem. It still is a problem. But there’s a simple solution; all you have to do is say yes.”
She shook her head, amused by his teasing insistence, until a dreadful suspicion entered her brain. She eyed him warily. “Wait a minute. Did the dukedom come with some kind of stipulation that you couldn’t marry before a certain age?”
She’d heard of such conditions before, but usually the requirement was for the recipient to be married to attain the title, or funds, not to remain single.
He shook his head. “No, nothing like that, I swear. And before you start thinking of any more bizarre conspiracies, I haven’t been secretly married to someone else for the past six years, only now they’ve died and left me free to marry again without committing bigamy.”
Livvy blinked, then burst out laughing. “That sounds like the sort of thing you’d find in an opera, or the scandal sheets.”
She was still itching to ask him the real reason he’d avoided it for so long, but she lost her train of thought when he took a step closer and cupped her jaw. His gloved thumb traced across her lips, and he tilted her chin up and lowered his head, so their breaths mingled in the frosty air.
Livvy didn’t move, desperate for him to close this distance and just kiss her.
But the monster simply waited, deliberately taunting her with his nearness, his size, his scent, building the tension like an expert.
His lips, so close to hers, curved upwards. “Is there something you’d like to ask me?”
She frowned in confusion. “What?”
“If you want a kiss, you have to ask. Remember?”
Ohh.
Heat curled in her belly. Had he refrained from kissing her in the greenhouse because she hadn’t specifically asked him, out loud? Wasn’t practically stepping on his toes and lifting her face to his not obvious enough? Apparently not.
She almost stamped her foot in frustration.
“Yes,” she breathed.
“Yes, what? Yes, you remember. Or yes, you want me to kiss you?”
He was a devil. A handsome, infuriating, thoroughly irresistible devil.
“Yes, I want you to kiss me,” she clarified, glaring at him for teasing.
His smile didn’t waver. He was enjoying this, the brute.
“Right. Just wanted to make sure. And for the sake of clarity, is this permission to kiss you now, just once, or is it a blanket permission to kiss you in general, at other times in the future as well?”
Livvy nearly punched him in the ribs. God, he was vexing. “I want you to kiss me now. And you may also kiss me in the future.”
“At any time?” His brows lifted and a wicked, mischievous expression crossed his face.
“Only when we’re alone,” she added, in case he got any ideas about kissing her in the middle of the High Street, or in front of the guests who were coming in the next few days.
“And where can I kiss you?”
She wrinkled her nose, thoroughly impatient with the delay. Why was he suddenly so intent on discussing the minutiae now? “Where? Well, here, or in the house, I suppose. Anywhere on the estate.”
He flashed her a look that managed to be pitying and mocking at the same time. “No, I mean where on your person?” His gaze dropped to her lips, then back up, and he lifted his hand and touched the slope of her nose. “Here, for example?”
Her stomach somersaulted. “Yes.”
He pressed his lips to the very tip, the briefest of teases. “Cold,” he murmured. He brushed her cheek. “Here?”
Her throat seemed inordinately dry. “Yes.”
His lips pressed just above the corner of her mouth, and she sucked in a shaky breath.
He tilted her jaw to expose the side of her neck. “What about here?”
“Y-yes.”
Her knees turned to water as his lips brushed the place just beneath her ear where her pulse pounded close to the surface of her skin. She reached up and caught his elbow to steady herself as his leather-covered thumb traced her bottom lip, snagging on it slightly.
“And what about here? Can I kiss you here?”
There was only one acceptable answer to that. Her head was swimming, her body swaying towards him. “Please.”
With his lips a hairs breadth away from hers, she could feel the warm heat of his exhale as he chuckled. “Is that a yes?”
The amusement in his tone pushed her over the edge. “Yes, it’s a yes, you idiot!”
She went up on her toes and pressed her lips to his.