He could have managed the words if not for their intonation—for the slight, panicked emphasis on the him, meaning someone other than he. Meaning Castleton.
Meaning she had been hoping for Cross to touch her.
She was temptation. She was torture.
All he had to do was reach out and take her. No one would ever know. Just once. Just a taste, and he would send her on her way, to her husband. To her marriage.
To her life.
No.
She was untouchable. As untouchable as every other woman he’d known for the last six years. More untouchable.
Infinitely better.
His throat worked as he searched for words, hating that she’d rendered him speechless. If his partners could see him now, clever Cross, laid low by this bizarre, bespectacled, beautiful woman.
The words did not come, so he settled on, “Pippa . . .”
Color flooded her cheeks, a wicked, wonderful blush—the kind that a younger, reckless Cross would have read as invitation. The kind he would have accepted.
Instead, she looked back at her hands, spread them wide, not knowing how those crooked fingertips tempted him. “I’m sorry. That was thoroughly . . . It was . . . that is . . .” She sighed, her shoulders bowing with near-unbearable weight. Finally, she looked up and said, simply, “I should not have said it.”
Don’t ask her. You don’t want to know.
Except he did. Desperately.
“What did you mean by it?”
“I would rather not tell you.”
One side of his mouth kicked up. Even now, when she no doubt wished to do so, she would not lie. “And yet I would know.”
She spoke to her hands. “It’s just that . . . since we met, I have been rather . . . well, fascinated by . . .”
You.
Say it, he willed, not entirely certain what he would do if she did, but willing to put himself to the test.
She took another breath. “By your bones.”
Would she ever say anything expected? “My bones?”
She nodded. “Yes. Well, the muscles and tendons, too. Your forearms. Your thighs. And earlier—while I watched you drink whiskey—by your hands.”
Cross had been propositioned many times in his life. He’d made a career of refusing women’s requests. But he had never been complimented on his bones.
It was the strangest, sexiest confession he’d ever heard.
And he had no idea how to respond.
He didn’t have to, however, as she was pressing on. “I can’t seem to stop thinking about them,” she said, her voice low and filled with utter misery. “I can’t seem to stop thinking of touching them. Of their . . . touching me.”
God help them both, neither could he.
He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t.
But the King himself could have stormed into the room and it wouldn’t have stopped him. “Touching you where?”
Her head snapped up, fast enough to have done damage if she had been standing any nearer—if she’d been standing as near as he would like for her to be. He’d shocked her. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s a simple question, Pippa,” he said, leaning back against the desk, impressed with his ability to seem calm while his heart raced and his fingers itched for her. “Where do you imagine coming into contact with my bones?”
Her mouth fell open, honeyed lips soft in their surprise, and he crossed his arms. Her gaze followed the movement, his hands clutching his biceps, the only thing keeping him from grabbing her and kissing her until they were both gasping for air.
“Your hands,” she whispered.
“What about them?”
“I wonder what they might feel like on . . .” She swallowed, and the movement drew his attention to her throat, where her pulse no doubt pounded. He missed the next words on her lips—which was likely best for them both. “On my skin.”
Skin. The word conjured images of pale, beautiful flesh, heated curves and soft swells, of wide expanses open to exploration. She would be sin and silk, and everywhere he touched, she would respond to him. He imagined the sounds she would make, the way she would gasp as he stroked up one leg, the way she would sigh when he ran the flat of his palm down her torso, the way she would laugh when he inevitably found a place where she was ticklish.
She was riveted by his left hand, braced against his arm, and he knew without question that if he moved it, if he reached for her, she would let him have anything he wanted. Everything he wanted.
He did not move it.
“Where, specifically, Pippa?”
She shouldn’t tell him, of course. She should run from this room as quickly as she could . . . no doubt she would be safer on the floor of the casino than she was here, with him. But he wasn’t about to tell her that.
“My hands,” she started, the hands in question splaying wide. “M—my cheek . . . my neck . . .”
As she spoke, she traced the body parts she named—unbeknownst to her, he would wager—and his desire deepened with every word, with every soft touch. Her fingers trailed down the long column of her neck, across the soft, pale skin of her chest, toward the edge of her bodice, where it stilled, hovering there on the green fabric.
He wanted to reach out and rend it in two, to ease the passage of those marvelously flawed fingertips. He wanted to watch her touch every inch of her body, pretending her hands were his.
Damn that. He wanted her to use his hands.
He wanted to do the touching.
No.
“What else?” he said, moving his hand, releasing her from her trance.
She met his gaze, eyes wide, cheeks pink. “I—” She stopped. Took a breath. “I should like to touch you, as well.”