“Your restraint is admirable,” he said, his voice roughened with provoking amusement. “I’m fairly hopping on my toes to tell you my desires.”
The dratted man was a still menacing figure of darkness before her.
“Perhaps I do not care.”
“Are you the author of the diary…or an unwitting reader like myself?”
Apprehension skittered across her nerve endings and mashed painfully with the arousal writhing through her body. Lie, a voice inside warned. “Why is that important?”
“That author would desperately want to know all my lewd fantasies—she is fearless with her desires.”
Oh, the way Lily had always wanted to be with her hidden thoughts, fearless and free. Surely this man was not a gentleman of society? Gentlemen expected ladylike demureness from their wives. Who was he to possesses such an unrestrained mind? “You do not think her, the author of the diary you found, a whore?”
“No,” he clipped icily.
“That is unusual,” she said softly. “And what…frightful desires do you possess?”
“Are we to have a frank conversation, then, my lady?”
“I’m—” She caught her slip just in time. It was so instinctive for her to refute that she was a lady whenever someone granted her the honorific in error. The sneaky scoundrel. He did want to know her identity. “We are, my lord.”
A pulse of silence, then he made a low groan of appreciation.
The sound of a consistent slapping and thumping reached them, and Lily flushed in mortification when she realized it was the earl and his lover, and the thumps were of the headboard against the wall.
A guttural moan issued from the earl as his lover begged for more, some shocking demands spilling from her lips. Lily’s breathing roughened. She was afraid and aroused beyond measure.
She sensed when he moved closer.
“Ah, Lady W and Lord R.”
Her knees weakened. How mortifying, he had read that particular entry.
“Do you like watching?”
She blushed, grateful the darkness hid her reaction. What must he truly think of her? “To ask such a private question is not the mark of a gentleman.”
“Why don’t we leave all expectations of gentlemanlike and ladylike conduct…in the library.”
Blast her irrepressible heart for being so captivated by the scandalous notion.
“Do you like watching?” he repeated.
“Sir, I—”
“We are strangers in the darkness,” he murmured. “There are no rules here.”
The breath left her lungs. “I…”
“Don’t speak, just look.”
Her heart jerked, but she stood still, trying to understand the weakness assailing her and the growing persistent throb in her core.
“Allow me,” the stranger murmured, the warm heat of him brushing her body.
He shifted the small portal, and as if the chaotic cravings controlled her, Lily slowly turned toward the opening.
The earl was between his lover’s spread legs, and his mouth was pressed against her feminine channel.