He was unfairly handsome and much too clever for his own good, even when he was being an utter cad. Luz cleared his throat and read the first few verses in Spanish.
“That was quite forceful, but I fear you could be whirling insults at me and I wouldn’t mind if they sound like that.” His eyes were like embers now. “You are enticing in any language, but in Spanish you are magnificently beddable.”
“You’re taking the wind out of the sails of my battle cry, Evan!” Luz complained, and the scoundrel laughed. “I was supposed to deliver this poem in a thoroughly bellicose tone, and it’s very hard to do so when you’re looking at me like that and saying I’m ‘magnificently beddable.’”
“I am honest to fault.”
“You’re insufferable.” She read the rest of the poem, translating as she went, relaying the scathing commentary on the oppression of women and the ruthlessness of men.
When she was done, they both stayed quiet for a moment, and when Evan spoke he was very serious.
“I can’t imagine a woman being brave enough to write that and not getting pummeled from every direction.” He sounded genuinely regretful.
“One becomes quite bruised from merely concurring with what she espoused,” Luz said, echoing the sentiment.
His lips turned up, but he was not smiling. In fact, his countenance held absolutely no humor in it. “Men have made a world where only we can thrive. Everyone else is in a fight for survival.”
“White men, you mean,” she countered.
“By and large,” he responded with a sigh.
“Read me something else,” he requested, taking his hands from under his head and using one to bring her down for a quick kiss. She flipped through the small book knowing what she was searching for.
“The author of this one is a man, Salvador Diaz Mirón. He’s from Veracruz, the same city as Aurora. ‘Desire,’” she exclaimed when she found it. “That’s the title,” she said, anticipating a filthy comment. Evan didn’t disappoint.
“Mm, do say more,” he encouraged, his hands massaging circles very,verylow on her back.
“Stop groping me. It’s distracting,” she protested without much heat, and he gave her one of those toe-curling, extremely suggestive laughs.
Yo quisiera ser agua y que en mis olas,
que en mis olas vinieras a bañarte,
para poder, como lo sueño a solas,
¡a un mismo tiempo por doquier besarte!
By the third stanza and the fifth pained groan from Evan, Luz realized picking an erotic poem to read while sitting on the man’s lap was perhaps not the best choice.
“What did that one mean?” he asked as his hands, which were now decidedly on her rump, tightened in a very pleasurable way. She squirmed, making him hiss and push up against her.
“It says,” she said, struggling for focus,“I’d like to be the waters in which you come and bathe.”He grunted again, and this time his left hand swiftly slid under her dress. She pushed into his touch, instinctively craving that shocking pleasure she knew was near.
“Finish the poem, darling,” he demanded as his other hand worked to undo the buttons of her dress.
She never got to.
“Luz Alana,” he whispered into her hair as he gathered her in his arms, the poem and the book forgotten as they tangled themselves in each other. “The way you please me, mo cridhe.”
She wanted this forever. So much it started feeling more important than what she’d come to Scotland to do, and all of it terrified her. But she didn’t have to let go yet.
Not until Edinburgh.
EDINBURGH
Twenty
It was done, Luz thought as she stepped out of Mr. Bruce’s office. It was barely nine o’clock, and she was walking to the already-familiar St. Andrew Square with full control of her inheritance. This morning—after ten days of countless visits to Mr. Bruce’s office, an initial planned audience with Percy Childers at which the man never showed his face, and poring over what seemed like a mountain of papers—Evan had signed the control of Clarita’s trust over to her and ordered the final release of funds of her own bequest. She had everything she’d told herself she needed to start her life in Edinburgh.
