“Seeing as I’m holding a real man in my arms now, and I’ve had some quite fierce wishful thinking in my life, I can tell you that one would never be mistaken for the other.” Reaching up, she laid her hand alongside his face. “Easy,” she murmured. “We’ll get there.

At my pace, bushman. You understand?”

“I can’t handle much more in the way of games, my lady.”

“I never play games. It’s all about what I want, and when I’ll demand it. Now . . .” She put some more space between them again, let go to take a turn under his arm, and then came back to him, a piece of footwork that couldn’t help but make him smile. “What type of thing can a real bushman do that will impress me? Quick, the first thing you can think of.”

“I can guess your exact weight. We do that at the fairs. If I guess right, you have to buy me a drink.” He gave her a wink, trying to regain some sense of the upper hand. In response, her thigh pressed to the inside of his so she grazed his aching balls. Her hip slid across his groin and her lips parted. The bloody tease.

“If your guess isn’t ten pounds less than my actual weight, you’ll owe me a drink.” Her eyes glinted in that elusive way, a danger back in the air he couldn’t identify. And didn’t give a damn about anyway.

“I don’t lie. But I can tell you, your body couldn’t be more perfect.” When he leaned in close to her ear, his nose against her hair, she stilled on the outside, while everything inside him just locked up. His nostrils flared, taking in the scent of soft female flesh. He wanted to taste her, put his lips under the ear, bury his nose deeper into spun gold silk. He made himself rein it in. Settled instead for caressing with his breath the shell of an ear so delicate it looked like something found broken on the beach sands. He hadn’t been to the ocean in a long time. Surfing at Cottesloe . . . He shoved that thought out of his mind and whispered the number to her.

When her head turned, he stayed where he was, so her nose brushed his jaw and he could see the moistness of her lips up close.

“That’s my exact weight. So according to my terms, you owe me a drink.” Her fingers skimmed the line of his jaw, several days’

worth of stubble, down to the vulnerable Adam’s apple, his jugular. “Again, when I demand it.”

“I never agreed to the bet.”

By all the cruel gods, she felt good. Good enough to suffer that crushing despondency he’d feel in the morning if he took her to bed.

It was looking like a closer-than-distant possibility, and he already knew he wasn’t smart enough to walk away.

Her breasts were firm and soft at once, and she didn’t seem to mind his hand was low enough on her trim waist to graze the top of one fine arse cheek. As he said, he wasn’t a dickhead. He didn’t grope, but Jesus, he wanted to fill his hands with her. Maybe he’d be better off with a whore. His wants tonight were tumbling off the edge to savage, and while she sparred a fine game, he wasn’t stupid enough to think she was ready to take a rutting beast to her bed.

“I noticed you carry a whip.” She nodded to it, coiled on his pack, the handle slid through a loop. “Are you a fair hand with it?” He tried to pull his thoughts back in order. “Passable.”

She chuckled. “You said you always tell the truth.”

“Well, there’re degrees, love. There’re men tons better than I am.”

“Then I have no one but myself to blame if I don’t believe you.” She leaned back in his arms then, way back. Dropping her head and shoulders in an elegant and impressive dip, she trusted him to hold her by the waist as she did it. The strands of her tied-back hair brushed the floor before she straightened, displaying a grace and dexterity that caught every man’s attention with its obvious implication. When she’d come all the way back up, he made sure she was so securely held in his arms there wasn’t air between them. She’s mine tonight, mates. He could feel their attention and envy pressing in on them like wolves, and wanted to make it clear who was alpha this evening. No matter the men she’d brought, she was sending out a strong message with her behavior that could turn this lot into beasts in truth if she wasn’t careful. That was likely why Elle was so stirred up over her.

She’d chosen him, though. Over all of them. The thought roused something just as primal in him, only it would make him far more dangerous than the other blokes.

Her breasts were pressed to his chest, her hips against his arousal, her mouth so close. He put his lips there, brushing the fullness of hers as she spoke. “Tell me, Dev. Can you strike me without marking my skin, so that it feels as good as your breath on my flesh, like right now?”

It took him a minute to remember her question about the whip. The smile had left her lips, and her blue eyes were focused, intent.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to be sunk to the balls inside you, to have you under me.” He wasn’t going to dress it up for her. Oh, hell, it wasn’t that. He was a coward. She was making him feel a hundred different ways he couldn’t afford to feel, and he was resorting to crudeness. Part of him cursed himself, for he was going to lose her with the defensive tactic. Another part hoped it worked, so she wouldn’t tear his guts out.

When a shiver rippled through her body, his arms tightened around her.

“I’m at the boardinghouse down the way,” she said. “Once the sun sets, I’m going to take you there. I’ll show you what scraps of fancy I’ve got on under my clothes. We’ll see then if you can curl that whip around me without the slightest pain. You show me you have that kind of control, no matter how worked up I’ve made you—and we’re nowhere close to how worked up I intend to make you—and you can dish out whatever pain you want. I’ll take every bit of it. But you will owe me that drink.”

“God, you’ve no sense of fair play, do you, love?”

“Play assumes a game, Dev.”

He’d lost his mind. “Whip’s mainly for cracking. Strikes are usually trick stuff.”

“But you can do both.” She wasn’t leaving him any room for escape.

“Maybe I should leave it at the one dance,” he said. She really didn’t understand the extent of what he wanted tonight. He wasn’t sure himself anymore.

“Elle, do you have a back room?” Lady Daniela spoke as if she’d known Elle all her life. As if she were a family servant. Dev almost winced at the imperious sound of it.

The woman gave her a gimlet eye, jerked her head at a door on the back wall.

“Good, then.” Lady Daniela turned to lead the way. Gathering his wits back about him, Dev shot Elle an ironic look. But he followed the Lady Danny, as he’d dubbed her in his mind. While her eagerness to get him alone for whatever reason was flattering, he was prepared for her reaction when she turned the knob and pushed her way through with confident determination.

Or so he thought.

She stepped right into the light of a sun a breath away from setting, because the door led not to a back room, but to the yard behind the building.

He’d been right on her heels and so pulled the door firmly closed, eager to have her to himself, only to find she’d spun on her heel and thrown herself into him with a gasp of genuine alarm. Reacting instinctively, Dev swung her behind him, back against the door to protect her with the shadow of his body. He was uncertain what the threat was, but he suspected his city lady had startled a snake on the back steps.

“Inside.” As she made the demand, she shoved at the door so the jamb splintered. It had a history of being stubborn, but apparently it had rotted through at last, though the shards of wood that fell off looked sound enough. He pushed it open for her with his palm on the panel above her head and she quickly lunged back into the bar. It was then he smelled burned flesh.

The three men were on their feet as she made a direct line for Elle, moving so swiftly Devlin couldn’t catch up in time. Elle was going for her shotgun, but before she could bring it out, Lady Daniela had caught the woman’s collar and hauled her halfway over the bar one-handed, as if Elle’s stocky body weighed as much as a doll.

“You human bitch,” she snapped. “I paid in advance for your drinks. Not to mention the filthy rooms at that boardinghouse leased by your cousin.”

“Love.” Devlin eased up beside her, quickly taking in the light burns on her exposed forearms. He hoped he wouldn’t have to get physical to intervene. Only an idiot got between two women in a blue. “Elle was getting back at you for putting on airs. Let her go now. She didn’t know you had a sun allergy.”

“I’ll be happy to give all your money back if you take you and your mob elsewhere.” Elle spat it out. Dev had seen Elle take an indifferent attitude toward foreigners before, but this was active dislike, tinged with the stink of fear. What the bloody hell is going on here? “I’d even lend you transport, but it won’t have those nice dark windows. It’d be a shame if the engine died right before dawn.”

He realized he wasn’t disrupting a possibly entertaining brawl of hair pulling and female slaps. His own hackle-raising intuition, as well as the tense reaction of her men, told him that Lady D’s level of violence could be anything but entertaining. Another piece of the puzzle, one he was sure keyed in to both the aborigine’s and Elle’s not-so-subtle hint that he was playing with fire. And it was likely he was going to get sensitive bits of himself scorched.

“Elle, leave off.” As he reached out, Devlin judged Lady Danny’s temperament much as he’d gauge a croc’s appetite before he knelt by a creek to refill his water supply. When he put a hand carefully on her wrist, she flicked him a glance. “My lady, let her go.

Look, the sun’s said its final farewell for the day. You know how it is here. Sunset and then boom, it’s night. And just to be sure . .

.”

Determining that it was reasonably safe to step away a moment, and glad Joe wasn’t around to mix things up further, he turned, scanned the bar and found what he sought. Going to that corner, shouldering past the few men watching, he procured the paper parasol that Elle had as one of the decorations for the place. “I’ll bring it back,” he promised, before Elle’s scowl got any darker.