Chapter 5 #2
Cyn knew it was unwise to have her touch him like this, but being unwise in such matters was second nature to him. He relaxed back in the chair, studying her serious features.
Gad, but she was beautiful. Her skin was as smooth as cream satin, and the lines of her nose and jaw were as perfect as a marble statue. Her lashes were not as thick or long as his, but the purity to their dark curve was the only possible frame for her clear gray eyes.
He felt a cad for having lustful thoughts about such a pristine being, such a madonna.
Then she was concentrating. Her lips parted. Her tongue came out to touch her upper lip with moistness. He caught his breath.
She looked at him. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” he said, swallowing. “It tickled.”
She considered him warily. He caught the revealing flicker of her eyes toward his crotch, but any physical response was safely concealed beneath quilted silk and heavy cloth. He smiled blandly, and she went back to work.
Cyn didn’t know why he was hell-bent on having this torture continue. He’d be a wreck before they finished.
Chastity watched nervously for a return of Cyn Malloren’s lust, but then she realized it was not him she should be wary of. Each touch of his skin against her hands was like fire to her nerves. Each breath she took carried a musky smell that dried her mouth and made her lick her lips . . .
This couldn’t be happening to her! Men were animal creatures, easily stirred to lust. Women were more refined. They didn’t come into heat just from stroking a man’s chest!
She sternly commanded her foolish senses to behave, and pummeled his bosom into shape.
Cyn worked at appearing bored. It wasn’t easy. His damsel was pressed against him, breathing unsteadily, lips full and moist with the need to be kissed.
And he’d go odds she didn’t even know it.
Her hands trembled against him, and she looked into his eyes for one lost, revealing moment . . .
Then she caught herself and moved away. “There. I think that looks true to life.”
Cyn sighed for what might have been, then he looked down. “ ’Struth!” he exclaimed. “I’ll cause a riot!”
Chastity’s mind was fogged by unruly longings, but his remark dragged a laugh from her. “Not if you thrust it forward and glare,” she said. “Then they’ll call you a battle-ax. And you better had. If anyone does feel your tits, they’ll know they’re not real.”
He looked at her with a wicked glint. “I think you’ve been leading me on, young Charles. How do you know what tits feel like?”
Chastity could not think of a clever answer. “You know the problem with this?” she said quickly.
“No.”
“We’ll have it all to do again tomorrow.”
She saw the hilarity in his eyes before he stood. “Il faut suffrir pour être femme,” he drawled, and twirled again. “Now. Will I do?”
And, heaven help her, she too would enjoy playing this game again tomorrow. She was undoubtedly mad.
She pulled her mind back to work and looked him over.
“Somewhat,” she said with a frown. “But I don’t think you make as pretty a woman as you thought you would.”
“Want to change roles?”
She remained silent and he smiled.
Cyn peered into the small mirror. “I forgot to buy a cap. A matron should have a cap.”
“I’ll get one,” she said, and left.
Not pretty? Cyn realized she was correct. His jaw was a little too square, his cheeks too lean. He carefully applied rouge to them, and was heartened to realize that for once he looked too masculine.
He dusted his tanned neck, chest, and face with the pale powder, then rubbed some rouge onto his lips and pouted into the glass. He pulled the ribbon from his hair and combed the russet waves so they hung about his face. He teased curls out around his temples as he’d seen his sisters do.
Then he took up the perfume and dabbed a little by his ears. It was a musky, sultry fragrance that would distract the senses of any man who came close. That, along with his tremendous bosom, would have him defending his honor ten times a day.
He’d mainly bought the perfume, however, in the hopes that eventually his damsel would wear it for him. He indulged briefly in thoughts of her, naked and damp with lusty sweat, her body perfumes mingled with this artificial one . . .
When he heard her return, he turned and pouted his reddened lips. “Kiss me, sailor?”
Chastity was startled by how feminine he looked. He’d fluffed out his hair and rouged his cheeks, but it wasn’t simply the cosmetics and the figure. It was something in he way he stood, in the slight droop of his neck, and the coy use of his lashes. He was a gifted mimic.
Again, she knew he was dangerous. As she handed him the plain cotton cap, she swore off all future skirmishes.
He took it between two fingers and considered it as a disdainful lady would. “No frills? No lace? How terribly dull,” he drawled in a husky but feminine voice. “I suppose it does match the equally dull neckerchief, however. To whom do these drab items belong?”
Chastity didn’t want to answer that question. “That’s all there is,” she said bluntly. “Verity has scarcely the clothes she stands up in. If its plainness bothers you,” she added sweetly, “you can embroider it in the coach. ’Twill be a suitably matronly occupation.”
“ ’Twould be disastrous,” he said, matching her tone.
“I’m sure even you could wield a needle better than I, sir.
” He turned away to put on the cap in front of the mirror.
It was designed to cover all the hair, but he managed to set it back on his head so the front hair showed.
When he’d tied the strings under his right ear, even that dismal headgear looked almost fetching.
Chastity discovered that high-minded resolutions didn’t always work. She had sworn off skirmishes, but was still under assault. She and Cyn weren’t touching, they weren’t even looking at each other, he seemed more like a woman by the moment, and still she felt light-headed.
It was impossible that she feel like this. She had never in her life reacted to a man in such a way, and these days she hated all men. She wondered if women could come into season, like horses. That was what it felt like. As if she were a giddy mare scenting her first stallion.
But he was hardly the first male she’d met.
She’d encountered all kinds of men, especially in London.
There had been ones who quoted poetry, and ones who made sly, unseemly suggestions.
Ones who reverently kissed her hands, and ones who groped at her body under the concealment of the dance.
Then there had been Henry Vernham, who had thought he had the right to put his chilly hands all over her until she’d shown him his error by stabbing him with a pair of needle-sharp scissors.
None of these men had made her feel at all as Cynric Malloren did, and he wasn’t even trying.
It was unreasonable.
It was impossible.
It was incredibly dangerous and could not be allowed.
For heaven’s sake, she’d even enjoyed a brief flirtation with Rothgar without this effect, and he was the kind of man mothers warned their daughters about. As handsome as Cyn was beautiful, he carried an aura of dark power which had its own magnetic quality.
She remembered one encounter in a dim arbor of a garden during a ball. She’d known it was bold to go apart with him, and had been curious as to what he would do.
Smiling, he’d put a finger under her chin and merely touched his lips to hers. She’d felt singed—wickedly, deliciously singed, in a far more potent way than during the few groping full kisses she had permitted from other men.
Chastity had enjoyed the excitement of touching on something so dangerous, and yet she had felt nothing in particular for Rothgar, and had been secure in the knowledge that he felt nothing in particular for her.
There had been none of this obsessive awareness of the man’s every move, this dizzying vibration from the slightest touch.
She made a silent prayer that Cyn never find out she was female, for then he might unleash the full power of his wiles against her, and she’d surely be lost.
Cyn grimaced as he put on the plain, coarse cap. He guessed cap and kerchief must belong to his damsel, but what could possess her to choose such ugly pieces? They were more suitable to the inmate of a house of correction.
When he put these garments together with her masculine dress, he wondered if she hated her very femininity. Look at her now. Her face had all the warmth of a marble deathmask.
Why on earth was he drawn to such an oddity? Why was he stirred by her more than he’d been stirred by the most skillful whore, or the most fetching lady? It must be abstinence. He’d not had a woman since before he became ill. Perhaps this reaction proved he was fully recovered.
In that case, all he needed was a lusty, willing wench and his obsession with his damsel would disappear.
But he found he had difficulty imagining being aroused by any woman other than this one. That was alarming in the extreme.
He sifted through the pathetic collection of trinkets and clipped a pair of earrings of painted tin on his lobes. He dismissed the rest and demanded his own jewels. He sprinkled them about the sober garments, then turned his attention to the flat straw hat.
He wound the yards of fawn ribbon around the low crown and then formed a great deal of it into a loveknot at the front, anchoring it with the pearl-and-diamond pin.
He passed the remaining ribbon through the two slits at either side, popped the confection on his head, and tied the ribbons in a large bow.
Chastity was astonished by his nimble expertise. “Dress like this frequently, do you?”
He turned and smiled, disconcertingly female. “No, but I’ve dressed, and undressed, a number of females in my time.” He fluttered his outrageous lashes. “Don’t worry, young Charles. Your turn will come.”
Chastity’s body responded to a meaning he could not possibly intend. For a moment a vision of his long brown fingers slipping off her clothes swamped her reason.