"You have had your fun, Ryder."
"Oh, I haven't as yet begun, as you will see. But I do have a question for you, Sophia. Why did you dismiss Lord David Lochridge from your harem?"
"Harem? I think you're confusing your genders."
"It's the same concept. Why, Sophia?"
She shrugged and turned away from him for a moment, looking out over the sea. She was silent for a very long time.
Finally, she turned back to him and that damned flirtatious mask was well in place. "He bored me. He was a boy in a man's body. He cared only for his own pleasures, his own amusements. I grew tired of him, that's all."
"You're lying."
"Oh? Why would you say that?"
"You wish me to believe that you dismissed him because you wanted me and you remembered my demand that I be the only man in your bed and thus in your body?"
"Yes, I remember you saying that."
"What about Oliver Susson? Will you dismiss him as well?"
She shrugged, saying nothing.
"I won't become your lover until you do."
"Surely you are a bit overenthusiastic in your demands, Ryder. Surely it isn't up to the lady to make herself more appealing to the gentleman, I am already appealing; you should be slavering over me even as we speak. You should be begging me to allow you in my bed."
He laughed, a rich, deep laugh. "Sophia, let me tell you something. You are pretty, yes, even with the absurd paint on your face, but understand me. I have bedded many women whose beauty reduces yours to mere commonplace, to nothing out of the ordinary. From what I have seen of your body, it is pleasing enough. But understand me, 1 won't play your games. I won't wait in the wings while you spread your legs for seemingly every gentleman in the vicinity. I am not an uncontrolled boy, anxious to plow every female belly he can manage. I am a man, Sophia, and I have developed standards over the years."
"Years! What are you, twenty-five, twenty-six?"
"I had my first sexual encounter when I was thirteen. What about you?"
In that moment, he saw anger in her, at him, and it was barely leashed. He saw uncertainty then, as if she were arguing with herself whether or not to cosh him on the head if she could manage it. Then she smiled at him, that coy, teasing smile that made him hard as a rock.
"In short, Miss Stanton-Greville, get rid of the others—all the others—or I will never bed you. I find I am already losing interest quickly."
"Very well," she said. "I will dismiss Oliver. Will you come to the cottage tonight? At nine o'clock?"
"Are there any others?"
"No."
"Ah, you already dismissed Charles Grammond, the poor fellow who lost all his money to Lord David?"
"That's right."
Ryder found that he was brooding, picking, but knowing at the same time that she would elude him. She would show him glimpses of herself, but she wouldn't drop her guard unless he pulled something totally unexpected, caught her completely off guard, like baring her breasts or pulling up her skirt.
He rose to stand beside her. He said nothing, merely stared down at her. He grasped her upper arms in his hands and pulled her up against him.
"Perhaps I don't wish to fall into the same bed that has held so many other of your men. Perhaps I would like to sample what you have to offer me right here, right now."
He kissed her, but she jerked her face away and his lips landed on her jaw.
He merely smiled down at her, clasped his arms beneath her hips and raised her, pressing her belly hard against his groin. He was hard and he knew she could feel him.
"Put me down, Ryder."