26. Woosy

WOOSY

L eopold was no prude. He'd had many an overnight tryst along with a couple longer affairs, meeting various women at different inns and brothels, including Malum's Emporium. This particular scenario should not have been such a shock; in fact, it was quite familiar.

But he'd never invited a woman into his room at Smuggler's Manor before.

The fact that it was Amelia, radiant as she ever was, with her skin practically glowing in the dim candlelight and her eyes glittering with determination…

She might just as well have hit him on the head a second time.

Despite all his bruises and an almost inhuman level of exhaustion, Leopold felt a stirring of desire. If he wasn't so aware that he was the worst kind of man for her, he'd have taken a moment to feel proud about that.

"Can we talk tomorrow?" Although that primal want sent a flicker of heat dancing in his blood, Leopold didn't have the energy to fight with her.

Or do anything else, unfortunately.

She took a step toward him and the rippling shadows on her dress revealed?—

"What are you wearing?"

"A nightrail." She smoothed her hand down her front and shrugged. "I found it in the wardrobe and then cleaned it up myself." She met his gaze innocently.

But was she? Gazing at him innocently, that was?

"If you say so…" It wasn't like any nightrail he'd ever seen. "But why are you wearing it?" In my bedchamber .

"Rule number one."

Stunned into silence, he blinked.

"You—I—This—" Leopold floundered, shaking his head and trying to remember why taking a tumble with this woman wasn't a good idea.

She licked her lips, moistening them. The candlelight made them shimmer. Wearing her hair in a single braid draped over her shoulder, the weave revealed strands of copper, bronze, and platinum Leopold had missed before.

Her bravery all but reached out and touched him.

"I was just following your rules," she said. "Earlier today."

Earlier today…? His befuddled state prevented him from making any sense of what she was saying. He'd been about to fall unconscious into his bed, alone, but he was more than happy to have some company. And although some buried part of him knew it would be a terrible idea, he couldn't, for the life of him, recall why.

"You look bloody beautiful," he said. "But you know that."

She grimaced, but only for a second. "Can we talk?" she asked, her hands clasped primly at her waist.

Something of an irony, actually. Because Leopold was learning that Lady Amelia was many things, but prim wasn't one of them.

This daughter of a marquess, it seemed, was making up her own rules tonight.

"Talk?" Leopold parroted the word. Because he couldn't seem to drag his gaze away from her—he searched his brain for the word… negligee. That was the word used to describe a nightrail made of translucent material.

Essentially, it hid nothing. Not her taut little nipples, pebbled and straining against the fabric, or any of her slender curves. In the candlelight, he could just make out the shadow of a triangle at the apex of her thighs.

But she was nodding. "Yes. I want to pick up our conversation where we were before Mr. Fitzgerald interrupted us. I needed to discuss the actual reason, not the one you assumed, for why I stopped you earlier—when you moved your hand up my leg, to my thigh."

The little wench dropped her stare and pointed one delicate foot in his direction as though he required clarification.

He might be a little woozy, but he did not, in fact, require clarification.

Even now, his fingers remembered the silky texture he'd been tracing.

"The real reason?" He actually did need clarification on this point. And he'd use the last remaining blood in his head to try to focus on what she was saying.

Amelia was here. She had come to him.

To his bedchamber.

"You said I'd come to my senses. You thought that was why I stopped." She was twisting her hands now.

Leopold lifted his eyes to study hers. "Wasn't it?"

"Not at all. I was abiding by rule number two. You said either of us could stop if we needed to. No expectations. I simply needed to… pause."

"Pause." There he went, parroting her again. Perhaps the blow to his head did need looked at by a physician. Because he could hardly form a proper sentence.

"Yes. To collect my thoughts. Once I'd collected them, I was ready for more." She took a few more steps towards him, so close now that if he could manage to lift his arm he would be touching her.

"Amelia…"

Her blue eyes sparkled up at him. And whereas his limbs weren't functioning properly, hers were.

She raised her hands and, after half a second of hesitation, lowered them onto his shoulders.

And then two adorable little lines of confusion appeared between her eyes.

"You're soaking wet."

His mind conjured all the ways he'd like to get her wet, even if his body wasn't acting on them.

She tilted her head. "Did you have to go into the water? To do your smuggling?"

"My… what?" But, most unfortunately, his head chose that moment to remind him that he wasn't quite himself, and the room began spinning and tilting alarmingly. His stomach lurched, and he barely managed to get to a waste bin.

Where he then proceeded to cast up all of his accounts. And perhaps a few organs as well.

Sodding runner .