One Night Is Never Enough by Anne Mallory Page A

He smiled. “I hope you do.”
    She didn’t know how to deal with the emotions he was provoking, so she motioned to the board. “It is your turn.”
    “So it is.” He hummed a bit. “Do you enjoy working with the Orphans of Liberty?”
    She looked up at him through her lashes, relieved to be on a safer subject, wary of what he might twist the conversation toward. “Yes. They are not one of my primary focuses, but I enjoy the group immensely.”
    “Not one of your primary focuses? You don’t think orphans should be a prime focus?”
    She narrowed her eyes but thought she read his expression right. “You are being deliberately difficult. They are already supported by a generous set of benefactors. They don’t require my efforts like other groups do.”
    “Mmmm . . . like the London Women’s Group? Giving underprivileged women a second chance.”
    She moved her queen-side bishop in a jerking motion, snatching one of his pawns, without meeting his eyes. “Should I be flattered that you know of my interests, Mist— Roman?”
    “Merely something I heard in passing.” He waved a hand above his king-side rook and pushed it along its crooked path. “And I am always looking for new interests myself. Perhaps I should donate to some of the causes you find worthwhile?”
    “So that you can brag of them to your conquests? Not be called on your duplicity?”
    “Duplicity, deceit, deception—such useful skills, no?”
    “I hardly think so.” She viciously plucked his rook.
    “No?” The corner of his mouth lifted. “But you employ them so well.”
    “Pardon me?”
    “And on yourself most of the time, mmmm?”
    She clamped her lips on an automatic chilly refusal. Something within her not letting the duplicitous denial through. Panic spread sharply.
    He reached over and touched her chin, thumb skimming her lower lip, releasing it from its tight grip. “But not now, no? Is there something here in this night that makes you feel the release, Charlotte? Something intimate ?”
    She watched his eyes as they traced her lips, felt the pad of his thumb in their echo. Drugging something in her.
    “Is there something about me that allows you to brook the thought of relief? Or have I simply provided you the means at the perfect time?”
    She spoke, his thumb brushing her lip with each whispered syllable. “You think much of yourself.”
    “Only in the way that I read your reactions. I would not play these games with someone I found uninteresting, or with someone uninterested in me.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “No? Is that because you don’t see your own worth? Or rather know it? For I have a feeling you see it quite frequently.”
    In the mirror, every day.
    She tore herself away from his grasp. “And you, Roman? What is your worth? In the games you win?”
    “Perhaps. Or in the people that are mine.”
    Something slithered through her, an insidious thread. “And you? Do you belong to them as well?”
    He leaned in again, smiling, a dark, delicious smile. “Of course. For that is the risk and the quest, is it not?”
    “I don’t believe you. Few men wish to belong to someone else. And you do not strike me as a man who would belong to anyone. ”
    “Where is your sense of adventure, Charlotte? Your desire for competition? For winning?”
    “I am playing am I not?” She shoved her piece onto an empty square. “But most of those feelings are long past. Matured.”
    Safely buried.
    “Then we will simply need to dig them back up. Rejuvenate them. Return Charlotte Chatsworth to her vibrant glory.”
    She didn’t look up from the board, but his words wound through her, hooking in, provoking want. Panic and desire. For he somehow knew exactly what to say to her. Pulling her like the marionette on strings she had been in the hall hours ago. The sands of time slipping through her fingers as they played, just like the metaphorical paint dripping from her skin, baring her with each uttered word.
    “Come.”
    He