Chapter Twelve
For one heartbeat—two—Nicholas waited.
He was prepared for the slap. Half expected it.
Not because she was hysterical—Beatrix Winslow would sooner die than be accused of hysteria—but because she was fire. All flint and spark and blistering wit, and not for the first time, he had just laid a match directly beside the fuse.
But she didn’t slap him.
She didn’t flinch. She didn’t gasp. She didn’t retreat like a maiden whose sensibilities had been offended.
No…she fixed him with a slow, assessing stare. A warrior’s stare. A tactician’s. It sent a curl of heat through his blood.
“If I told my father what you just said,” she replied at last, cool as winter glass, “he’d never speak to you again.”
Nicholas kept every line of his face smooth. “Would he? Or would he decide you were embellishing?”
Her eyes narrowed at that.
She looked him up and down with deliberate irritation, which amused him far more than it should have.
“Is threatening to accuse me of exaggeration your idea of seduction?” she demanded.
“No,” he said calmly. “But I’m not worried.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m entirely certain you won’t tell your father what I said.”
Her chin lifted, proud and defiant. “How can you be so sure?”
Because you’re not repelled, he thought. Because your pulse just leapt. Because you’re fighting your own curiosity harder than you’re fighting me.
He didn’t say that, of course. Instead, he stepped closer. Just enough to test her. Not touching. Not yet. A whisper of distance, barely there, yet unmistakable.
He saw the way her breath hitched. Saw the faint tremor at her throat. Saw the way she did not retreat.
“Because,” he murmured, “you’re not a telltale.”
She blinked. And then she laughed.
A real laugh. Warm, bright, unguarded. Honest in a way Society would never coax from her.
He let himself enjoy it. Just for a moment.
“No,” she said, recovering with that wicked spark in her eye that he was beginning to crave. “No, I’m not.”
Nicholas allowed himself a small smile. Not triumphant—he didn’t dare that yet, not with her—but appreciative. Admiring. Because God, she was magnificent when she laughed instead of slicing him apart.
“And,” he added, his voice dipping lower, smoother, “because you can handle yourself.”
She sobered, though her eyes still gleamed. “You think I wouldn’t tell my father when a man says something I don’t like?”
“I think,” he replied, “you’re perfectly capable of deciding when it’s worth telling. And when it’s not.”
Truth. Absolute truth. He’d known it for years. He’d watched her—quietly, from the edges of rooms, the backs of ballrooms, the shadowed corners where one could observe without being observed in turn.
And it struck him again with sudden clarity. She had no idea how well he knew her.
What he’d noticed. What he’d remembered.
There was a beat of silence. A soft breeze tugged at a loose curl near her cheek. She looked…unsettled. Not panicked. Not offended. Just pulled inward, as though weighing his words more heavily than she meant to.
A good sign.
“You’re right,” she said finally, her voice low and even.
Nicholas’s pulse kicked. It was time to press…
just a bit further. “And…” He paused for effect.
“I don’t believe that you didn’t like it.
” He stepped even closer. Still not touching, but close enough that he felt her breath hitch.
It was faint, but he caught it. She tried to mask it, but he’d been watching her reactions too long not to notice.
“Oh,” she murmured, her voice dropping to a low purr.
That landed. God, it landed beautifully.
Her posture changed.
Not much, a shift of her shoulders, a tightening of her fingers at her side, but he saw it. Felt it.
He leaned in. Slowly. Deliberately. He angled his mouth toward her ear with all the care of a man navigating a minefield. “And I guarantee you will like it.”
Her pulse fluttered at her throat. A tremor—small, exquisite—ran through her. She thought he wouldn’t notice. She was wrong.
She smelled faintly of rosewater and the salt of warm skin, hinting at a heat that had nothing to do with the evening.
She was trying so very hard not to be affected.
He smiled inwardly.
He was winning.
And he knew the exact moment she realized it—her breath caught, her lashes lowered, and for a brief, devastating moment, she swayed imperceptibly toward him. And the fact that he’d apparently rendered her speechless was quite a feat, considering.
He exhaled a barely there breath along the curve of her jaw and felt her shiver.
A thrill went through him—raw, intoxicating.
He’d never been more grateful for his height, his shoulders, his looks, his voice—the tools he normally wielded with political precision. But here, with her, they mattered differently. Dangerously. Deliciously.
“Indeed, I’m counting on the fact,” he whispered, velvet-dark, “that you’re going to like every single second of it.”
She exhaled, shallow, shaky, betraying far more than she intended.
Nicholas went still.
He’d been playing a dangerous game since the moment he decided to pursue her. A woman who claimed to dislike him. A woman who hid her true nature behind barbs and wit and stubborn walls.
But she wasn’t pushing him away. She wasn’t protesting. She wasn’t running.
And in her eyes—in the flicker she tried so hard to suppress—he saw something he’d never expected. Not this soon, at least.
Want.
Real, unmistakable want.
He was winning.
And God help him, he’d never wanted victory more.