Page 13 of Buon Natale, My Wicked Rogue
“Evan.”
“They cannot be drab, can they, Evan?”
His grin made her catch her breath. “What is it?”
“I like hearing you say my name. Few people call me by my name, and none say it as lovely as you do.”
“I hear that you have many, many women. Surely, they call you by your given name.”
His eyes widened. “Many, many women, eh?”
“So, I have been told.”
“Lady Wyndam has been telling tales. I take it.”
“She says many ladies have sung your praises.”
“She flatters me.”
“I wonder.” She rolled her eyes, and he chuckled softly. “Surely, such contented ladies called you by your given name?”
“Most have called me Ash. It is what I am known by to most people.”
“Why didn’t you ask me to call you Ash?”
“I am not sure why not.” He traced along the lace collar of her day dress, right below her collarbone. Their bodies were somehow closer now. “I think I wanted to hear you say my given name.”
“Oh.” She heard the delighted wonder in her voice, the delight she couldn’t and didn’t want to hide from him. “Why do you think pearls are modest and drab?”
“Lady Wyndam says that she will invite you to the Widows’ League Christmas party. Are you going to accept?”
She nodded.
“Then you will need something sparkly and expensive for your lovely neck. You’re going to need some pretty frocks to wear in the evenings.”
“How tedious and ostentatious that sounds.”
“I know. You are so ravishingly beautiful.” He resumed tracing her collarbone with his fingertip. “You don’t need embellishments.”
“You think not, eh?”
“You know it is the truth,Bellissima.”
She wasn’t so foolish that she’d play coy about the topic. She’d known since she’d left the schoolroom that men found her attractive.
“However, these things are necessary in the world you are about to enter.” The assessing way he was staring at her made her consider what he might really think of the issue.
“You don’t really feel that way. You want to see me in those jewels and clothes?” He was the same as every other decadent nobleman, was he not?
Again, the heart-stopping grin. “Yes, I’d like to select those things and see you dressed up in them.”
“I knew it.”
“Then I’d love to strip you out of them and have you bared for my pleasure.”
She caught her breath. That could have been a very crude thing for him to have said. And it was likely too early for him to have said it, even for potential lovers such as they had become.
But the smooth, sensual timbre in his voice made the words a caress and a high compliment. Like the burn of good Kentucky whiskey, rude but stimulating.
