Bastard.
The firelight gleamed on dark hair and wine-reddened lips. The robe had come apart some more, showing off most of a hard chest and a thigh thick with muscle. And I was tired of fighting.
I tugged him over.
His bent his head and I raised mine. A warm sigh caressed my face for a moment before our lips met. I made a soft sound and pulled him closer.
He kissed me slowly, leisurely, like a man who knows he has all night and intends to use it. It felt . . . strange. My life wasn’t about slow these days. It was all hurry, hurry, hurry and go, go, go, constantly full speed ahead because something was always about to go fantastically wrong.
But slow could be nice.
Slow could be very nice, I decided, as his tongue slid over mine, liquid and warm, a patient, gentle seduction that matched the lingering caress of his hands. His hair fell around my face, gleaming with a few strands of red where the firelight shone through it. My fingers ran though the thick mass—like silk, just like silk—and down the long line of his back.
I sighed, tension I hadn’t even known I had leaving my body.
“How is the date going?” he asked, nuzzling my neck.
“It’s . . . trending up.”
He laughed and slid a knee between my legs.
“You should go around like that all the time,” I told him sincerely, sliding my hands up his chest. God, he felt good. Warm, sleek skin over hard, hard muscle, nipples already peaked under my hands. I let my mouth close over one, my tongue circling it gently, and he made a sound of appreciation deep in his chest.
“I might shock a few people.”
“And make a lot more very happy. Of course, then I might have to beat the women off you with a stick.” I kissed my way over to the other nipple, which was looking sad and unattended and not half so rosy. “But, then, according to Marco, I may have to do that anyway.”
“Marco talks too much.”
“Marco doesn’t talk enough. I couldn’t get anything out of him about my competition.”
“You don’t have competition.”
I rolled us over for better access, and rested my chin on the hard surface of his chest. “You’re telling me you don’t have any mistresses?”
“Not at the present.”
I frowned.
“That was evidently not the right answer,” he said ruefully.
I kissed my way down his body, consciously keeping my nails out of his skin. It was a bit of a struggle. “How many have there been? And don’t tell me you forget,” I added, as he got that look on his face. The one that said he was wondering how big of a lie he could get away with.
“I haven’t forgotten a single one, I assure you,” he said, and then he winced.
And, okay, my nails might have sunk in just a little there.
“So you’re not going to give me a number.”
He suddenly rolled me onto my back again and nuzzled my neck. “Numbers are meaningless. Particularly when they are in t
he past.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“Even Ming-de?”