Chapter Three #2
It should not, Phylis thought darkly, ruffle heat and longing through my body when he says my name.
It should not!
But the trouble was, she could no longer deny the fact that the tension between them that had started from a place of annoyance when he had barged into her in the alleyway had transformed into a quite different tension.
Phylis swallowed, wetting her lips, and almost moaned as the man’s gaze flickered to her mouth.
Moaned with irritation!
Not anything else.
Definitely not.
“Very special I might be, but very busy I am,” she said in a voice that was not quite as strong as she would have liked it to have been, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it. “Now if you don’t mind, Mr. Chance, I would like to be alone.”
His smile was warm. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“Well, it is,” Phylis said smartly, patting the paperwork before her and thanking God she was sitting down.
A man shouldn’t be allowed to put that much longing, that strain of erotic desire into his voice.
“As you can see, I have a great many things to do, as the captain of the Dreamer, and I need to get it all done before she returns from—”
“It must be lonely.”
Phylis blinked. “What?”
“Being the only woman on a ship,” said Mr. Chance lightly as he leaned forward in his chair, the sunlight drifting through the window glinting a copper in his hair she hadn’t previously noticed. “You are the only woman, I assume?”
“I am.” She shifted in her seat. “But I’m not lonely.”
She was, but that was beside the point. Gentlemen she had just collided with in an alleyway weren’t supposed to be that perceptive.
Or this handsome.
“I can’t imagine that being around so many men would suit many women,” Mr. Chance was saying lightly. “Though I suppose if you had any particular…well, needs in that direction, you would be well taken care of.”
It took Phylis more than a few heartbeats to understand what on earth the blighter was on about. When her mind caught up with her, it caused burning heat to flood through her cheeks. “Pardon me?”
But he’d known exactly what he’d been saying. Phylis could see it in the way Mr. Chance smirked, in the knowing look he gave her, the knowing look that flickered down to her breasts, still mostly hidden in her men’s shirt, then returned to her mouth before her eyes.
He was talking about—about erotic pleasure!
About satisfaction. About that burning need one felt at three o’clock in the morning, when your cabin felt empty and so did your heart. About the throb one felt between one’s thighs—
Phylis cleared her throat and put all thoughts of throbbing, between thighs or otherwise, out of her mind. “I assume you have business to take care of, Mr. Chance, so—”
“Oh, I would love to take care of your business,” was his quiet reply.
This time, she worked hard to keep her cheeks clear of heat and propelled the fury instead through her voice. “You are very direct, Mr. Chance.”
“And you are very uncared for, Captain Seaton,” he shot back, a strange sort of smile twisting his mouth. “Unless you are telling me that there is a special someone on that ship of yours who understands your…needs?”
Fighting the instinct to cross her legs and press her thighs together, because though that damned throb was back, Phylis was going to ignore it, she instead retreated to the most basic of conversational elements. The glare.
“There is no one on my ship who would dare to take such a liberty,” she said coldly.
There it was—the flash in Mr. Chance’s eyes that was triumphant. “What a shame. A woman like you, so sensuous, so…so potent, really deserves to be looked after. Deserves to have her needs taken care of. Deserves to feel good.”
She was not hot, Phylis told herself inflexibly, even as her chair threatened to combust under her. She was not warm in any way. She did not want to think about the pleasure he was referring to, and yes, sometimes she had taken the matter into her own hands, as it were, but—
“You know, it was a strange meeting that we’ve had,” Mr. Chance said lightly. “You, a ship’s captain hardly ever in London. Me, about to leave forever. After today, we will never see each other again and you see, that opens us up to a fascinating possibility, doesn’t it?”
Phylis swallowed and tried not to think about how dry her mouth was. “It… It does?”
Mr. Chance’s eyes flashed with wickedness. “Say, if I decided to get on my knees right now underneath this desk and pleasure you with my mouth.”
Phylis did not whimper. She did not.
But it was a damned close thing.
“Neither you nor I would have to pay any consequences, social or otherwise,” Mr. Chance continued, as though he had said nothing but the dullest of comments. “We will never see each other again; it will almost be as though it had never happened. You would be satisfied, I would be satisfied—”
“And what possible satisfaction,” Phylis interrupted, delighted to hear that her voice was strong, even if her resolve was not, “could you gain from…from…from that?”
From something she had only ever dreamed about, in those dark, delicious sort of dreams one only found halfway across the Atlantic.
Mr. Chance pinched his lips before speaking again. “Why, the satisfaction of hearing you cry my name, of course. It’s Michael, by the way. For when you need to scream it.”
Oh, dear God, it is a good thing I am already seated.
“Someone will hear,” Phylis whispered.
Which was the wrong thing to say. She should have said, absolutely not. She should have said, you are being ridiculous. She should have said, leave my office and never return.
Instead, she was squirming in her seat as her buttocks moved lower, giving him access before the man had even—