Page 2 of Winter's Waltz
“I warned you about your nose, Sundenbury.”
She stalked toward him, her boots pounding on the carpets. By the time she rounded her desk, he had risen at last, and he was still smiling, curse him. Her body’s reaction to him was infuriating. Instinct, she told herself. He was a handsome man. She was a woman. That was all. There was nothing a disreputable ne’er-do-well who could not handle himself at the green baize had to offer her.
But he was also surprisingly stealthy for a lord she had supposed to be cup-shot when she had entered the room. He caught her elbows and spun her with ease, then used his larger, taller, more powerful body to force her backward. There was nowhere to go save her desk.
Her bottom landed on her much-abused ledgers.
He insinuated himself between her parted thighs and flattened his palms on the desk, trapping her. “Go on then, Miss Winter. Give me your worst. I dare you.”
He wanted her worst, did he? Well, curse the devil for being a thorn in her arse on the first day his miserable hide had appeared. And curse him for being handsome and provoking and having that mouth that made her think wicked thoughts, the sort she had banished some time ago. Also, curse him for tempting her in a way she could ill afford. For being near enough his breath—not gin-scented as she had expected, but smelling instead of something sweet—coasted over her lips.
For making her skin go hot and feel too tight for her body.
Lust, she told herself. It was what she had felt for Gregory, curse his rotten hide. A weakness. Proof she was made of flesh and bone, a reminder from above that she was mortal.
Imperfect.
She sneered. “You don’t want my worst, yournabs.”
She was speaking flash, when she had been studying so damned carefully to keep her vulgar tongue at bay. That was what this man’s presence in her sphere—her own gaming hell, which she had worked her fingers to the bone securing—did to her.
Intolerable.
Unacceptable.
There were other words—bigger words, the words of a lady, taught to her by her half sisters-in-law, but she had forgotten them. The first two would do.
He was smiling again, that knowing scoundrel’s grin that probably made all the ladies swoon and fetch their smelling salts. Grinning, actually. And the man had dimples. Two dents in his cheeks which ought to have been annoying but were, in fact, alluring.
Rather than hindering his looks, those two unlikely divots heightened them. All the more reason to dislike the man. And his face. Especially his mouth. Those bloody dimples, too.
“I assure you, Miss Winter—Genevieve. I can weather your worst.” The scoundrel dared to touch her then. He dragged the knuckles of his right hand along her jaw in a silken caress that made shivers dance up and down her spine. “It is more than apparent you do not want me here. I can alleviate your frustrations. For the right price, I will go.”
She clenched her jaw and slapped his hand away from her face. “Are you suggesting Ipayyou?”
The man had worms for brains. This was a terrible idea. What could he possibly teach her about polishing her mannerisms? A carriage wreck was what he was. Ascourge. Aye, rats were in his larder. He was an utter disaster.
A handsome disaster, but a disaster nonetheless. And one who thought he could charm himself out of his obligation.
“I am, admittedly, pockets to let at the moment,” he said, with a rather sheepish air, as if he had done nothing at all to land himself in his current predicament.
His intolerable masculine scent—something tangy and sharp and altogether pleasing in the fashion of a fancy gentleman who gave a shite about the way he looked and smelled—only made matters worse.
“I ain’t paying you,” she growled. “And you are standing too close to me. Move.”
He did not retreat, but he did move. Those bloody fingers of his were back on her jaw, then down her neck, tracing to her cravat. “Your pulse suggests you do not mind, pet.”
He had received his final warnings. And yet he dared to remain where he was, crowding her with his larger body, touching her, and calling herpet. There was only one answer she could give.
Gen’s brother Gavin was a prizefighter, and he had taught her, in painstaking detail, how to defend herself. Forming a fist in the proper fashion—thumb tucked against the knuckles of her forefinger and middle finger—she took aim and landed her blow squarely upon its intended target.
The Marquess of Sundenbury’s aristocratic nose.
* * *
The hellion hadpunchedhim.
Right in the damned nose.
