Page 135 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

“You are abominable. How far would you have allowed this to go? Until I was n-n—without any clothing.” Her face was doubtless fiery at her inability to articulate a simple word.

Lord Shelton, naturally, looked delighted. “I would have stopped long before you were n-n—without any clothing.”

She laughed before she could catch it. “You are a horrible man!”

“I am trying to be better,” he said meekly.

“I don’t believe that for a minute.” Stacia threw her cards at him, and he laughed. “How could you be so sure of your skill? I might have had a run of luck, after all.”

“True,” he said, gathering up the cards and then tidying them into a stack before setting them on the table. He shrugged. “The trick is not caring if I won or lost.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that as much as I wanted to see you naked, I would also enjoy taking off all my own clothing in front of you…Stacia.” The laughter that had been brimming in his eyes was gone and the same hunger she had seen before replaced it.

The memory of her hand on his taut nipples and hard muscles slammed into her.

Stacia swallowed down the moisture that flooded her mouth.

“Come, Stacia…be brave. Life does not offer a person opportunities like this very often.” He gestured to the room around them, as if she didn’t know exactly what he meant.

“I—” the word came out a choked squeak. She cleared her throat. “I am not going to marry you just because Lady Kathryn forced our hand.”

“So you have said. What I am suggesting is not marriage, Stacia. It is sensual pleasure.”

If you don’t take what he is offering, you will regret it every single day for the rest of your life, Stacia.

She would.

And yet… Stacia knew that she could not look at his naked body—and certainly not touch it—with the twin blue flames of his eyes burning into her.

Why do I want this so much?

Stacia suddenly, and vividly, imagined herself years from now, a faded specter of a woman who was still a companion, walking some ill-humored dog, and dreaming of her past, reliving the memory of these few days over and over again. Wishing there was more to remember…

She wanted this. Maybe she even needed it.

She risked a glance at him. “Nothing we do would mean more than what it is.”

“If that is what you wish.”

She did wish it.

Darkness, which had so emboldened her the night before, would hide what she so wanted to see, so there would be no point—

“A blindfold,” she blurted.

His eyebrows arched. “Er, you want to wear a blindfold while I undress?”

Stacia snorted. “I want you to wear one.”

Rather than look shocked or uneasy or anything a normal man would likely look, he appeared thrilled.

“I would love to wear a blindfold while I strip for you, Miss Martin.”