The Governess Affair (Brothers Sinister #0.5)

She swallowed. “Which way is that way?” Her voice was unsteady.

He removed another hairpin. “Whichever way you’re thinking of right now. Your hands are shaking.”

“What—how—I don’t know—” She choked on her uncertainty, on the dark fears that rose up inside her.

But he kept removing her pins, one by one, scarcely touching her as he did so. Her coiffure tilted alarmingly, and then, as he freed a particularly crucial bit of iron, her hair tumbled down to her shoulders.

“What do you intend?” she asked.

“I am not going to consummate this marriage.” He found one last pin, dangling in her curls, and set this against the others that he’d gathered. He arranged them in his hand, a neat row of gray metal.

“You’re not going to consummate the marriage,” she repeated.

“I’m not.” He held out his hand, and when she reached out to take it, he dumped the hairpins in her palm. “But you are.”

The heat of his body had warmed the pins. While she was staring at them in confusion, he closed her fingers around them.

“This is how it works,” he said. “You may trade a pin for a favor. If you want me to unlace your corset, you can give me a pin. If you want me to give you a kiss, it will cost you a pin. But until you ask, I can’t touch you.”

Serena swallowed.

“Once I have a pin from you,” he said—and this time, he gave her that long, slow smile that she remembered so well—“I can trade it back.”

“For a favor?” Her voice was still shaking. “You could trade a pin for the right to—”

“Ah, yes. You can make me touch you. But I can only make you touch yourself.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

His smile quirked up at one end. “I’m not known for fairness.”

Safe. Safe. It was coming back, that impulse—slowing her heart, driving her darkest fears from the odd corners of her body. He didn’t move. The dark images that had begun to infest her slowly dissipated. And in their place was…confusion.

Still, she knew where to start.

“Take off your coat.” Her voice shook as she did.

He held out his hand. “A pin, please.” She handed one over. Her fingers brushed his palm as she did.

He undid the buttons down his front and then shrugged out of the dark brown material in one smooth motion. His shirt was white underneath; it clung briefly to muscle as he wrestled his coat to the side. He let it fall to the floor in an untidy mess, and turned to face her in his shirtsleeves. Somehow, taking off that outer layer made him seem bigger than before—perhaps because all that impressive breadth of shoulder was that much closer to her.

Serena’s pulse beat harder, but still he didn’t move.

“Aren’t you going to ask for anything with your pin?” she finally managed.

“No,” he said, with infinite casualness. “I want to build up a store of them first.” He didn’t elaborate, but her breath caught. Not, this time, in trepidation. No; this time she felt the first tendrils of curiosity curling about her.

She pointed a pin at him. “Your waistcoat, then, if you please.”

He complied. She couldn’t see through the linen of his shirt, but she could make out the form of his muscles as he worked—strong, defined curves.

She was growing braver now, and handed him another pin when he finished. “Your shirt.”

Wordlessly, he doffed that. As he pulled the fabric over his head, the muscles of his chest flexed and rippled, and Serena stared. She’d known he was a pugilist—his shoulders were broad—but there was nothing quite like seeing the truth of his former profession laid out in the flesh. Those shoulders had tensed when he’d struck another man. He’d taken blows against the hard ridges of his belly. A faint, pink scar traveled in a curving line up from his navel to halfway up his chest; a more ragged red line marked his ribs. There was an entire story written in his skin, and she wanted to learn it all.

He hadn’t said anything as she looked him over, but he was hardly unaware of her perusal.

“Are you flexing your muscles for me?” she asked.

“That,” he said smoothly, “would be vanity.”

She felt herself smile in response—the first smile since she’d entered his room. “So, yes, then.”

He gave her a darkly wicked grin. “Should have known better than to try to bamboozle the governess.”

Serena took a step toward him, and his smile froze. She reached out and touched the point of the pin to his abdomen. His breath stopped. She trailed it up his ribs, and had the pleasure of seeing him break out in gooseflesh.

“I want your shoes.” Her mouth was dry; she could scarcely swallow around the words.

He bent to remove them. As he did, his trousers grew tight around his bu**ocks, and the muscles in his behind shivered.