Juliet was swiftly discovering the joys to be had in forsaking the restrictive upbringing she’d been smothered with since birth. Bah, other than talent with a needle and foreign languages, what had her unsolicited birthright into high society ever gained her? Only an even more restrictive spouse and lonely existence, accompanied by a mountain of debt when said spouse choked and croaked.
That and several unwanted, up-close visuals of Leth’s pasty groin and floppy appendage before he’d moved on and taken up residence in his new underground abode.
Really, the tedious toad had even forced her to touch it a time or twelve. Blech.
Fulfilling her duty as a dutiful wife, she might have done so at the time without heated protest. But Juliet now came to recognize the revulsion she’d suffered and suppressed, lacking, in her youth and naïveté, the courage or comfort to make her own wishes known.
What was the opposite of revulsion, she pondered, weighing her options—and the sight before her. Untethered delight? Sheer joy? A strong passion to discover more secrets of the male flesh?
She currently experienced those and more, evaluating Mr. Tanner and his attractively appealing attribute. The one she couldn’t seem to avert her gaze from.
So he wanted reasons, did he?
Easy enough to supply, for she tasted a wealth of them upon her tongue. “Reason three, the only other manful prominence I’ve had the misfortune to be intimately acquainted with made my flesh crawl as though a thousand maggots creeped along every speck of my skin.” Without intent, she scraped her palms down the tops of her thighs, wiping off the offensive memory for the last time. “Reason four, I find my curiosity about yours greater than I ever dared conceive and—”
“Thank God for that,” he interrupted, standing tall and imposing, his fierce brows slashed over those shimmering sapphire eyes—in frustrated relief or disapproval, she couldn’t tell which.
“Five. Just because I said no immediate…uh…”
“Licking? Suckling? Tasting?” he supplied, rather unhelpfully she thought as his words sent her mind and senses scattering in all sorts of naughty directions.
“Just so. Um… Does not mean I am not amenable to the possibility at some point in the near future.”
“How near?”
How was it his length continued to expand? To thicken? To make her mouth water in ways even the veriest of roasted goose and Belgian chocolate failed to?
He was built so exquisitely. She yearned to explore every strong and powerful inch, from the tops of his broad, expansive shoulders, past the corded plane of his stomach, all the way down, down to those big, brawny thighs covered in just the lightest sheen of hair. Exquisite didn’t do him justice, really…
As if watching someone else, Juliet saw her—for once—eager-to-touch hand lifting out, toward him. She recalled it, balling both together in her lap. Blazes! Her cheeks were on fire again. One would think another stormy, dreary afternoon would put to rest the heated response, but she swore her insides were sweltering, melting…
“Six!” she exclaimed, sensing another interruption looming, judging by the way a muscle in his jaw had started ticking. “I am at six, aren’t I?” Without giving him a chance to complain, she rushed on. “Or if not, six and a half. Since reaching my majority, I have spent a good deal of time fearing the unknown. Observing you helps put that fear to ground.”
“The unknown?”
Rather than respond to his guarded tone and corroborate his suspicions, Juliet realized other questions of the newly aroused mind must be answered. “Would you…ah…” Oh just say it, Juliet! It’s one thing for him to suspect you’re an inexperienced ninny—it’s another to confirm it outright! “Please turn around.”
“Like so?” Accompanied by the tiniest of grunts, Mr. Tanner complied, shuffling around in a tight circle, its journey completed so fast, she collected naught. No new information. No complete views.
“No! Not like that. Turn and pause, if you would. Facing away.” Hearing it, her ears burned at what she requested. Juliet wanted to check the air beside her for smoke but feared if she took her eyes off Mr. Tanner, like a genie bound to dispense wishes, he might disappear once released. Or was that leprechauns? “Oh, would you just please grant me a view of your…”
What did she term it? His posterior? Backside? Derrière? What did one call their sit-upon in polite company? “Your hindquarters! I desire to see them, please.”
His banked gaze narrowed. “You care for a glimpse of my arse?”
“Not so much a glimpse as a look. A, umm, long one.”
She could see him calculating either a refusal or another demand of her clothing. Given how she possessed but the two remaining items—her tightly laced stays and gossamer shift beneath—Juliet cajoled, “For every moment you comply, I will give you another reason why it matters so very much.”
“How could any man decry such an offer?”
As he started a breath-stealingly slow revolution, the muscles in his thighs straining and flexing, Juliet loosed the other, possibly most profound reason swirling about her mind. “Seven, I never, in all my wildest, most secret hopes and imaginings, thought to gaze upon such a magnificent sight of grandeur and grand proport—”
“Me?” He turned his head to the side to inquire, fairly preening like that peacock she’d thought of earlier. “Magnificent?”
“Yes, most assuredly you. And
