Page 19 of The Duchess in His Bed
Christ, removing her gloves had him so hard, Aiden was surprised he retained the ability to walk over to the wall and take a cue stick from the rack. He grabbed the chalk and began grinding it into the tip of the stick, which unfortunately had him thinking about grinding into her and did nothing to relieve his embarrassing circumstance.
“Select your ball,” he said.
“The red.”
Lifting his gaze to her helped reduce his swelling somewhat because she appeared so hopeful and innocent standing near the table with her hands clasped before her, so intent on learning the lesson he was to teach—only he didn’t really want to teach her about billiards. He wanted to educate her on exactly what she wanted him to: bedding.
But tormenting them both was going to make it all so much sweeter in the end.
“Do you know nothing at all about the game?”
She blushed, and he was glad the mask was gone, so he could watch the swath of scarlet traverse slowly over her face. “We have a billiards room, of course, where the gentlemen retire whenever we have guests. The ladies aren’t allowed in. The gents smoke their cigars and drink their scotch. I rather imagine they don’t always discuss topics appropriate for a lady’s ears.”
“I’m sure they don’t.” Just as there were topics they’d not discussed. She spoke of her siblings, but not her children. She had children, surely. Providing an heir was the first order of business. It had taken his father two wives before he produced one. He imagined she’d have given her husband an heir within a year of exchanging vows. But for the remainder of the night, he wasn’t going to ask about children or anyone else in her life because he wanted to create an atmosphere in which only the two of them existed. He tapped the end of the stick on the table, near where the three balls rested. “The red ball is the target. You need to select the white ball or the white ball with the dot.”
“The dot.”
“So that one is yours. The plain white one is mine. The system regarding the accumulation of points involves a series of additions and subtractions, but we’re going to do away with that for tonight and play using simpler rules. You hit your ball in such a way that it bounces off the sides of the table and hits both remaining balls, in any order. Each time you hit both balls, you get a point and another go. If you hit one ball or neither ball, the turn comes to me.” He placed the red ball near one end, the white balls near the other, then smacked his ball and set it sailing against one of the sides where it bounced off, raced to another side, hit it, rolled until it struck the red ball, carried on toclackagainst the white ball with the dot, and came to a halt a short distance away from it.
“You’re very good,” she said hesitantly.
“It’s a matter of geometry. By figuring out where exactly to hit your ball, how hard to strike it, where it will hit the sides, you can plot its trajectory, determine its path.”
“Which you no doubt learned by reading your books onrealmatters.”
Her response pleased him, that she understood he wasn’t a ninny. “I’ve always loved mathematics, numbers. It’s one of the reasons I gravitated toward owning a gaming hell. I liked figuring the statistics, the odds.”
“I daresay you have me at a disadvantage.”
“I’ll go easy on you. As long as you hit one of the balls, we’ll let it count.”
She jerked up her chin defiantly. “No, if we’re going to play, we’ll play fair. The same rules must apply to us both.”
Which meant she was agreeing to do whatever he asked of her. Oh, the things he was going to do to her. He’d make her damned glad he’d won. He jerked his head to the side. “Come over here, and I’ll show you how to position the cue, how to strike.”
“The cue?”
He held it up. “The stick. It’s a cue stick. Most people refer to it as a cue.”
“And the thing you were rubbing it with?”
Rubbing. His body had finally calmed down, and he didn’t need to think of her rubbing him. “Chalk. It helps to add some friction so when the leather at the tip of the cue strikes the ball, it’s more likely not to go skidding off the ivory.”
“I see. All right then.” She came over to stand before him. He handed her the cue, explained how she was to hold it, bent her over slightly so her hand was resting on the table, and fought not to rub his crotch against her backside.
At some point, he would take her from behind, perhaps in this very room, while they played billiards naked.
With his arms around her, positioning her just so, he inhaled her fragrance of strawberries, the very fruit that he thought had inhabited her hair to give it the barest reddish tint when the light hit it at certain angles. He’d spent most of their journey to this room noting the different ways the light struck her hair, changed the shade of it. He wanted to remove all the pins that held the strands in place, gather them up in his hands, and bury his face in the silken tresses.
Instead he placed his lips against her neck where it curved into her delicate shoulder, took great satisfaction in the hitching of her breath. He had a feeling she’d be like kindling, easily set alight when he went about ravishing her completely. “Striking the ball here will send it on a path to the left.” He guided her hands, moving the stick over. “Here, to the right.” Another move of her hands and the cue. “Here, it will follow the path outlined by the cue.”
Sliding the cue between her fingers, he imagined himself sliding within her. Taking a deep breath to clear his mind of everything other than the table, he envisioned the play, then guided her as together they struck her white dotted ball. It bounced off three sides before hitting the red ball, careening toward the other side—bounce!—and traveling across the green tosmackagainst his ball.
He stepped back. “Easy. The balls remain where they are. Now you give it a go on your own.”
He positioned himself to the side, so he could view her more easily. Her concentration was astounding, as though her task were a matter of life or death. She licked her upper lip before biting into the lower lush one. God help him, he’d be the one who was kindling when the time finally came.
She brought the cue back, pushed it forward—
