“No,” Emily yawned. “But give it three days. He’s a man who thinks without a drop of blood in his brain, as it’s too busy pooling elsewhere. Three days, and I promise you, he’ll be at our door.”

* * *

She nearly had him.

“Nox?” He repeated her name reverently.

“Mmm,” she agreed, eyeing him half-curiously. The duke unbuttoned his shirt a bit hastily, and she chastised him with a wicked smile. Nox hiked her dressing gown up over her thighs and began to move toward him. Rather than mount him as he’d perhaps hoped, she slid into the space behind him, resting his golden-brown head against her chest and rubbing his neck and arms with her gentle hands. She could feel the slump of his disappointment, and it was all she could do to keep from rolling her eyes. Predictable. Surely, he’d entered her rooms expecting whips, wax, and knife play but instead found himself getting a massage.

He’d have to be patient for a moment longer.

“My Lord, you carry too much tension. I can’t imagine the pressure you’re under.”

He agreed with her assessment, attempting to shake off his annoyance. “You don’t know the half of it.”

The banter in the lounge had been charming, but his eagerness would undo them if she couldn’t keep him focused. He licked his lips and attempted to turn his body to make a move, but she held him to her, forcing him to stay in the massage. His impatience to touch her, taste her, see for himself if she was exceptional were little more than an annoyance to Nox.

She concurred, her voice a low, erotic drip of honey as each word stuck to the one before it. “And thank the goddess I don’t have to!” she said. “The kind of responsibilities a lord of your stature must have…it’s understandably too much to handle.”

She ran a hand along his arm, her nails tracing soothing lines down his veins.

“I didn’t say that it was too much,” he protested. “I just don’t see the point in it all. What does it matter what the queen wants to do with my men, or how much we owe the crown? Whatever Moirai wants, she gets. She can take them for all I care.”

Nox reached a hand into his shirt, her fingers moving in lines along his chest. She felt the steady thud of his heart as she carved a path between the demarcation of his pectorals. His skin was too soft, almost as if it had been waxed and oiled before he arrived. “I agree,” she soothed. “I wouldn’t have the sense about me to deal with troops either.”