Free Lorelie Brown by An Indiscreet Debutante

Not really. Not much.
    She put on her best, brightest smile and tucked her hands behind her back. “Have you found everything to your satisfaction?”
    He couldn’t have been more shocked to see her. His lips parted on silence. Someone had found him a banyan. The dark blue silk wrapped around his torso, and he wore dark trousers beneath, but under that his feet were bare. He had pale and slender feet and toes with a tiny sprinkle of dark hairs across the top.
    Her fingers curled into her palms.
    They’d brought the tea, and he sat at a table next to the window. A tree’s leafy green canopy obstructed most of the view through the window, but she knew that was no hardship. Next door was a brick townhouse.
    She barely managed to restrain her hands from plastering along her temples. Apparently she needed some assistance keeping her brain inside her skull because she was losing it. The throbbing, heavy weight in her blood was expanding through her whole body, the way she’d always feared.
    “You shouldn’t be here,” he said after a long moment.
    Likely he’d tired of waiting on her to be less insane. “It’s my house. I’m allowed to be anywhere I like.”
    “I doubt that.” He leaned one elbow on the arm of the chair. The embroidered lapels of the robe parted enough to display three inches of his chest. There was a division between two thick muscles. He was a man who hadn’t ignored his body.
    He made her not want to ignore her own body.
    Losing her virginity had been an idle thought, one born of convictions and supposition. Not need. Not any amount of want. She ranged closer to the table, closer to him. Her fingers trailed over the cold metal edge of the tea tray.
    “I’m all but mistress of this domain.” She nudged a plate of iced biscuits to the side in order to get at a tiny dish of cubed sugar. The piece she picked up was rough between her thumb and finger. She rubbed it over her bottom lip, then licked away the grains left behind. Sweetness burst over her tongue.
    He never moved. His hands didn’t shift, nor did his feet, nor any other variety of limbs. The tilted-down angle of his chin stayed still, and he watched her from under thick, dark lashes.
    Despite not moving, he was…alive. Aware of her and of the heat that flowed back and forth between them. Far, far away in the recesses of the house a timepiece chimed. Between them was the thick molasses of promise and potential. His eyes all but burned her skin, turning the stretch between her shoulder blades into a tickling, sensitive place that begged for his touch.
    Except instead of following through with those silent promises, he shook his head, so very slowly. “You don’t want to head down this route.”
    She edged closer. Near enough that her skirts folded over and around his calves. His knees. She managed to smile, but no one would ever know what it cost her. The way her lips felt nearly numb. She wanted to run her tongue over them, just to feel.
    Maybe she could feel his mouth instead.
    She still held the sugar cube. When she lifted it to his lips, it almost seemed that the room would implode from what built and wove between them. He speared her with that wicked gaze, and despite the reluctance she could feel rolling off him, the tiniest quirk of his lips said she hadn’t gone too far astray.
    His lips parted for the cube. His tongue darted out enough to wet the tip of her index finger. A full-body shiver rolled over her skin and dove into her veins, turning her into both more and less.
    “Maybe I don’t want to wander down the route. Maybe I want to run.”
     
    Ian knew better.
    Sugar melted on his tongue. Granules rubbed across the top of his mouth with sweet abrasion. Comparatively, her finger had little flavor, with the slightest hint of warmth and life.
    She made him feel like he were Genghis Khan. A conqueror who didn’t need to be bent on taking because the slave girl was already offering him everything she had. Everything she