Only with you, apparently. He quirked an eyebrow at that playful answer, amused and strangely pleased by it. She knew how to flirt and how to flatter.

And he had told himself he was seducing her, here – he had brought her here, suggested it, had instigated – but by the time she was a few steps above him on the stairs and kissing him again, he felt almost at her mercy. As though he would not quite have been able to protest it if he had tried.

She led them up the stairs and he navigated them from the landing, along the hallway to the bedroom, a hand on her waist to steer them. “So,” he said, low, as he returned to the task at hand with renewed attack, undoing her skirts with impatient hands and fingers now toying at her corset, “should I fancy myself special? Or do you do this with everyone?”

She was full of surprises, and with all her confidence he could believe that she might have gone to bed with half of society’s gentlemen if she chose, charming as she was – but it was a dangerous game for a debutante to play, and perhaps a small part of him did want to think she had made an exception of him. (A foolish desire – ego speaking – even if he was making an unwitting exception for her.)

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