Did he mean to expose her? Embrace her? Convince her to go away?

Her throat burned from a tight combination of thirst and confused emotions. She reached for a glass of champagne from a passing footman and downed it in one swallow, putting up a finger for him to wait. She replaced the empty glass with a new one, only to have it snatched from her fingers.

“Champagne is supposed to be sipped, not gulped,” the duke of her fantasies said.

“I am not a child, Your Grace,” Sarani tossed back. “And why aren’t you inside the ballroom? Don’t you have a wager to fulfill?”

“Do you enjoy being groped, my lady? Poked and prodded as though you were a stud bull on display for breeding?” he asked, his raspy voice doing all kinds of unnatural things to her unruly senses, and Sarani nearly let out a shocked laugh. His lips lowered to graze her ear as a firm hand gripped her elbow and steered her toward a hidden alcove behind a potted fern. “Because I assure you, it is quite tiresome. I am not a piece of meat.”

Her suddenly agreeable tongue wanted to point out that he was indeed a fine piece of meat, but she buttoned her lips firmly. Sodding champagne—she’d never had much tolerance for the stuff. “Welcome to the ugly world of courting, Your Grace, and what we women have had to endure for centuries.”

His large frame tensed beside her in the gloom. “Someone has touched you without permission?” His voice was almost a growl…and now the tingling sensation had turned into something more scorching.

“No.” She laughed. “And besides, no one dared to touch me but you, even at the risk of the maharaja’s wrath or my kukri.”

Sarani almost sensed him smile and then felt him shift closer, though he did not touch her. She was grateful. If he did, she was likely to go up in a shower of indelicate sparks. “Do you have your blades on your person right now?”

“Why? Does that scare you?”

“No,” he said, his breath feathering over her face. Gracious, he was close. So close that she was aware of every inch of him, even in the shadows. “But I don’t wish to find myself on the business ends of them.”

“Why would you—?”

But the rest of her words were blanketed by the warm pressure of his mouth bearing down upon hers. Every nerve in her body pulsed like lightning in a storm. Sarani couldn’t help herself—her hands reached up between them to clutch the lapels of his tailcoat, dragging him closer. He’d looked so sinfully handsome tonight. She’d practically salivated when he’d been announced on arrival. Rhystan in full ducal dress was clearly her Achilles’ heel.

And him naked… That might be the death of her.