"It is." West was happy to encourage this line of thinking.

"It seemed as though it might be painful."

"A perfect agony."

The glance she cast in his direction was suspicious. "It cannot be so terrible, else no one would ever engage in it-even for procreative purposes."

"One endures a great deal to continue the species."

"I don't believe you."

West shrugged.

"I liked it well enough when you kissed me."

"Kissing is meant to lull the senses to what comes afterward."

Ria was a trifle less certain than she had been moments earlier. "What about giving and receiving pleasure? You mentioned that before."

"I may have overstated that aspect. In truth, there is precious little pleasure to be had."

"The poets speak favorably of it."

"They speak of love. You are speaking of..." His voice trailed off as he searched for the proper word."Mayhap you should continue this discussion with Lady Tenley."

"Coward." Ria turned toward him. "Can you not say fornication? That is what the couples are doing, are they not? Fornicating. You may as well say so."

"Of course," he said with an ironic lift to his brow. "I seem to offend your sensibilities when I least mean to do so."

Ria's expression was grave. "I know you have respect for me," she said quietly. "It is not necessary to consider your words so carefully."

"Ria, you flinch when I say bloody hell."

It was a valid point, and she did not deny it. "It is just that sometimes you think I do not know my own mind. That is what I find truly offends my sensibilities. I wish you would not try to protect me from myself. I wish your respect for me was not predicated on a fact of biology. I am a woman, true enough, but that might be cause for celebration, not a reason to set me from you."

"And it is not because you are a woman that some distance is in order. It is because you are a lady."

"Bloody hell."

West's laughter rumbled softly at the back of his throat. "It will require more than colorful language to make me treat you like a strumpet."

Ria sat up and drew back the blanket. His erection made a tent of the fabric of his nightshirt. Before he knew what she was about, she straddled his legs and pushed the material upward as far as his thighs.

"Then mayhap this will be enough to encourage you."

Chapter Eight.

West caught Ria by the shoulders as she began to bend toward him. The centers of his eyes were so dark and large, the emerald edge of his irises had almost disappeared in response to wanting her. His heart hammered in his chest, and the thundering he heard was the roar of blood in his ears. "You don't know what you're-" He stopped because Ria was shaking her head slowly, and he knew he was lost when it took no more than this subtle movement to set him from his own course.

"Then you'll have to teach me," she said. "Or allow me to learn it for myself."

He had no doubt that she had deliberately misinterpreted what he'd meant to say, but neither was he proof against that soft and sumptuous mouth or the way her words parted it. His hands fell away, and he watched her continue her downward descent. At the first touch of her lips, he felt his entire body go taut.

It was too much and not enough. His hips jerked as she opened her mouth around him, drawing back his foreskin with her hand so that her tongue could sweep over the silky, sensitive head of his cock.

Her pale braid fell forward over her shoulder, and the tip of it brushed his thigh, swinging back and forthlike a pendulum as she moved over him. Her hands went to his hips, and she stroked him with her fingertips, running them lightly across the firm flesh of his buttocks, using her thumbnail to score his skin with a pale pink line.

He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to watch her. It was erotic either way, and for a while he did one, then the other, until she drew back at last, her breathing husky and slightly ragged, and asked for more. At first he did not understand, but then her eyes fell on his arousal, and he realized it was more of him that she wanted. Like the illustration. To the hilt.

He sat up and turned to the head of the bed, drawing off his nightshirt. The room's chill did not penetrate now, not with his blood heated to the temperature of molten lava. He leaned back against the headboard and held out his hand to her, inviting her to come to him as he had not done before.

Ria knelt before him, and this time when she bent to him she started at the smooth curve of his neck and shoulder and worked her way down. His skin was warm and taut, the muscles defined by planes and angles that seemed carved with a sculptor's eye for detail of the human form.

She drew her mouth along his collarbone and made a damp trail with the edge of her tongue. The taste of Mm was both unfamiliar and tantalizing. Sweet and salty, musky and humid, it seemed to Ria that she should know it, yet it was wholly new to her, a combination of tastes and scents that teased her own senses. Her skin prickled, and her nostrils flared. She felt something hot and sweetly urgent uncurl in the center of her. Ribbons of sensation followed the path of her blood until her fingertips tingled. Between her thighs she was damp. She felt a pressure there, but also a void, and the effect of both was that she wished he would touch her.

He did not, though. His fingers curled in the sheet on either side of him instead.

She ran her fingertips down the length of his arms until they reached his wrists, then they curved like talons, and she took him captive while her lips and tongue, and finally her teeth, made a separate exploration.

Her head dipped lower. She felt the catch of his breath and then the vibration of his hum of pleasure.

She took him in her mouth again, and everything about the taste and scent of him here was more intense.

This act of giving pleasure struck her as profoundly intimate, a thing done in which she was both master and supplicant, at once powerful, yet in the service of him.

It seemed to her that he sensed these things as well, for it was no different for him. He could command that she stop or surrender to her. The pull of both kept him exactly where he was, straining slightly under the pressure of her hands and mouth, but not so much that he would remove her. He was still except for those movements he could not help, and the fact that she was responsible for each small stirring excited her almost beyond bearing.

She suckled him more deeply this time, helped by their altered positions and his hoarsely whispered instructions. The cry she wrested from him was her own name, and the sound of it was so pleasing to her that she determined she would hear it again.

West slipped his wrists free of Ria's loose grip and lifted her hands to his hips. With no more encouragement than that, her fingers trailed along his inner thighs. She found the base of his shaft and added the rhythmic massage of her hand to the steady suckling of her mouth. One of his hands captured her loose braid and wrapped it around his fist; the other found purchase in the sheets. He felt the change in the cadence of his breathing. It was ragged now, and harsh. Things that he wanted to say came to hismind in disjointed phrases; words simply lodged in his throat. His hips surged Upward, and then she had all of him, and his fist around her hair held her just so. He knew himself to be incapable of removing her at that moment. He was riding a wave of pleasure so sharp that its crest was like a finely honed blade. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that he would be split from balls to brains by it-then thank her for having done it to him.

There was something about this last that caught his sense of humor. Whereas laughter usually left him weak, this time the effect was exactly the opposite. His pleasure was so whet by it that he felt the quickening of his pulse and the urgency for release more acutely than he had moments before.

Swearing softly, his words hardly intelligible to his own ears, he lifted Ria's head away and guided his seed to the sheets, aware all the while of her surprise and deeply fascinated study. Feeling rather like an insect with its wings pinned back for examination, West yanked on a blanket to cover himself as he set his feet over the side of the bed. Without a word, he disappeared into the adjoining dressing room.

West poured water into a basin, though whether he should use it to make his ablutions or drown himself was not entirely clear. He stared at his reflection in the mirror above the washstand but saw nothing there that helped him understand what had just transpired. His sense of honor was deeply offended by what he had allowed Ria to do, yet there was no denying that his pleasure at her hands and mouth was unlike any he had ever known. Other women had shown greater skill-the barmaid at the inn, for one-but none had been so determinedly interested in every aspect of his response. Perhaps it was Ria's very innocence that made her curious, but West suspected it was more than that. From the outset, she seemed to be aware of him in a way few people were. She was sensitive to his mood, to his wayward thoughts, even to his contrary humor. Was it so unlikely, then, that she would be so keenly perceptive about what gave him the sharpest pleasure?

West unhitched the blanket at his hips and threw it over a nearby bench. He washed himself, removing the scents of lavender and musk from his skin. The icy water made him draw in a quick breath, but it had the desired numbing effect on that part of him that was still stirring.

Water splashed his chest when he dropped the sponge back into the basin. He wiped it away with a negligent flick of his fingers, then turned to take a towel from a brass hook beside the door. His line of sight into the bedchamber did not include the head of the bed where Ria sat. The candlestick cast sufficient light for him to see that most of the blankets had been pushed from the middle of the bed to the foot of it, and the warming pan was set where it could finally do some good. Ria's slippers were still on the floor, but the pillow that had fallen there earlier was gone. He also did not see the book.

For a moment West braced his arms on the marble edge of the washstand and hung his head, not so much in the manner of a man avoiding his reflection, but in the manner of one reflecting. After a long moment in this position, West pushed himself away and straightened. He raked his thick hair with his fingertips, leaving it furrowed at the temple and crown, then grabbed the towel and dried himself. When he was done, he tossed the towel aside and went to the highboy dresser to root out a pair of drawers.

His tread was almost soundless as he padded back to the bed. Ria was indeed sitting comfortably at the head of it, surrounded by a throne of pillows and still modestly attired in her nightdress and flannel robe.

Her knees were drawn up and propped on them was the erotic treasure he had stolen from Beckwith's private library. She was studying the illustration of the pair engaged in more traditional coupling, though even that description of their activity was suspect, given certain aspects of the drawing that Ria seemed to have failed to notice.

West grasped the book by its backboard and spine and removed it from her hands. She did not resisthis interference. Closing it, he set it on the table. "I think you've had enough book learning today." He was gratified to see that she was still capable of blushing. He did not like to think that her experience had already hardened her against it. It pained him that she might become so changed by it that she would be indifferent to all sensibilities. "I want you to go now."

Ria had been expecting this. She nodded faintly, but it was only an indication that she heard him. She made no attempt to leave the bed. Instead, she moved one of the pillows from her side and pressed it against the headboard, inviting him to sit beside her. "I have questions I am learning a book cannot properly answer."

"And I have already suggested you apply to Lady Tenley."

"I think broaching this subject with her would be a mistake. How would I explain my interest?"

"Don't women discuss these things among themselves?"

She lifted one eyebrow in an incredulous arc. "I have never been privy to conversations of that nature, and you can be certain no governess ever thought to educate me. It is not a subject broached at the school, even among the teachers who have been married." Ria folded her hands and rested them atop her bent knees. "Therefore, it falls to you."

It was precisely this sort of responsibility that he had been trying to avoid. His sour, impatient look reminded her of that. He took the blanket he was carrying over his arm and rolled it lengthwise. Before he sat down, he placed it beside Ria so that it would be between them. It was an inadequate physical barrier, but as a reminder of the need for distance between them, it was more than sufficient.

"I am not ashamed," she said. This was offered somewhat defiantly as he crawled in beside her. "You can't expect that I should be."

West yanked on the blankets still mounded at his feet. He snapped them out and pulled them up over his legs, offering Ria a portion of them to tuck around her. She accepted them so gratefully that he realized she had been waiting for this invitation. Apparently she would not be moved from his bed until she was ready, but neither would she nest there without his permission.

He did not comment on whether he thought she should be ashamed or not, but let it lie with her. "What is it you want to know?"

"You are angry with me."

It was no question, but a statement of fact. "Yes," he said, "but you seem to be impervious to it." No part of his response was completely true. That she mentioned his anger at all showed she was not immune to it, and it was more to the point that he was angry with himself, not her. "You mentioned a question, I believe?"

"Why did you take the book from Mr. Beckwith?"

It was not at all what he'd expected her to ask. He could not decide if this line of questioning was preferable to the other. "I took it because I know someone who publishes books-not of this type, to be sure-and I thought he would be able to tell me about the origin of this particular one. I was curious what I might learn from it." "You told me it is not uncommon."

"It is not uncommon for gentlemen to own books with an erotic content, but the breadth of Beckwith's collection sets it apart from what one might consider ordinary. This particular type of book is relatively rare. The fact that the illustrations were printed on both sides of the page makes it rarer still, yet I had no trouble finding two others like it on Beckwith's shelves in a very short period of time. Finally, there is Beckwith's taste for such fare that is a curiosity. There are certain peculiarities of content that make his collection so unique."

"Peculiarities?" She frowned. "I thought what I saw on those pages was naught but what was in the nature of men and women."

"If you allow that violence is sometimes in the nature of both, then it is just as you thought."

"I don't understand."

No, she didn't, he thought. Her inexperience had caused her to focus her attention on the illustrations'

more striking features. She had not regarded them as a whole nor comprehended precisely what she was viewing. "Both women were shackled," he said. "One to the iron bedrail, the other to the column that supported the man's back."

Ria's head snapped up. "That cannot be right."

West sighed. "I wish you would find another manner of expressing your astonishment that was not a challenge to my every word." He held up his hand, stopping her from reaching across him for the book at his side. "I will show you." He retrieved the book, opened it to a random page featuring the couple on the bed, then used his hand to cover every part of the drawing except the woman's hands curled around the iron rail. He held it up for Ria to see and watched her face for comprehension.

She stared at it, blinking once, then accepted what she was seeing. West turned the book, covering the other drawing in the same fashion, and showed her the woman's wrists were indeed manacled to the column. These were not heavy irons that held the woman in place, but delicate bands that might have been gold or silver. The links from the wrist cuffs to the rings that secured them were almost invisible, so lightly were they drawn, but Ria saw them once she knew where to look.

West closed the book and put it aside again. Ria's face held a little less color than it had a few moments earlier. "You must have some opinion," he said. "I should like to hear it."

"No, you're wrong. I don't know what to think... about the illustrations or the fact that the book belongs to Mr. Beckwith."

He allowed that it would require considerable effort on her part to take it all in. "There are men who find pleasure in the subjugation of others. In this case, it is women who are made their slaves. To further complicate your mind, I must tell you that not every woman would object to being used in such a manner, though it is not the artist's intent to show this. His drawings have a particular purpose and that is to create excitement in the person viewing them. The appeal may be to the act itself or it may be to the themes of domination and helplessness. There is restraint in the illustrations, literal and figurative."

When Ria spoke this time, her voice was almost inaudible. She continued to stare at her folded hands. "I thought the women were wearing bracelets. Bangles. I thought they were Gypsies." She shook her head slowly, feeling weak and vaguely ill of a sudden. "But I think some part of me understood there wassomething more that I was seeing, something I was responding to without being fully sentient of it. When I was... when I was touching... that is, when you and I were forni-" Ria bit off this last word, no longer certain it was the most appropriate one.

"When you were pleasuring me," West said. "Let us call it that and dispense with more graphic descriptors-unless it offends you to do so."

On the contrary, Ria was grateful for his suggestion. She cleared her throat, but her speech was still impaired by a tightness there, and she had to force out a shaky breath to give the words sound. "When I was pleasuring you, I was struck by... by this odd notion of being both in command and subservient. I never... I never experienced anything like it before and I... and I think I rather enjoyed the conflict of it.

I am very much afraid that it excites my blood."

West might have found this confession piquant if she had not been so earnest. Clearly she was troubled, and he could only imagine what it cost her to make the admission. In the course of a single evening, she had been roused by a fierceness of passion unknown to her before, and now she was discovering the complicated truth of its birth. He turned slightly so he might see her better. It was not her usual way to avert her eyes, but she was doing so now. He reached across the barrier separating them and touched her chin with his fingertips.

"Look at me, Ria." He nudged the point of her chin until her head swiveled slowly in his direction. "What you experienced is not something to fear. It was you who put forward the idea that a woman should know what she must embrace or endure. What occurred between us is meant to be embraced, and if it seems otherwise to you now, then you are denying your own nature. Do you think I did not share in the same thorny emotions? Was there perhaps some other proof you required to know that my blood was also excited?"

The shake of Ria's head was almost imperceptible. She drew in her lower lip and worried it between her teeth, concentrating on the pain she inflicted in order to keep her eyes steady on his. It troubled her that she felt so young and so thoroughly vulnerable, yet this was Evan Marchman come to save her from the consequences of her own recklessness, and the knowledge that there was safety here righted the world.

The pad of West's thumb passed across Ria's lower lip, drawing it out so the fullness of its line was visible to him again. "I cannot say, as you can, that I did not understand the whole of those drawings. I knew what they were when I took them from Beckwith-indeed, I selected the book for precisely that reason. I did not mean for you to see it, but having seen it, I should not have teased you with the contents. I bear a measure of responsibility for what happened, whether I want to own it or not, whether you want to give it to me or not. I understood it is the very nature of fire to burn and blister, even if you had not the same experience."

"You are speaking again of protecting me."

"I suppose I am, and I cannot say that it will ever be different." She surprised him by not insisting that it should be. He brushed back a wayward strand of hair at her temple. "Nor can I say that I will never fail.

That I should be your guardian has a certain fox-guarding-the-henhouse bent to it." West saw that this raised her slight smile, and he was glad for it. "I am certain Tenley has thought so from the beginning, and Margaret is coming to that conclusion. My valet wonders what I am about, bringing you here. My friends would be exchanging significant looks between them, each thinking they knew the answer."

"What is the answer?" she asked softly. "I do not know myself." "Don't you? You quite accurately have pointed out that I am a coward. I did not want to face down my brother and sister-in-law alone."

"Oh."

"You are disappointed?"

"No... yes... a little, I think."

West caught her eyes shifting from his again. He tilted his head a fraction to hold her glance. "You have not truly developed a tendre for me, have you?"

"No."

"That is good. I like you enormously, Ria, but certain finer feelings can make things between us hopelessly complicated."

She nodded. "I understand. You needn't concern yourself. I like you well enough-I don't suppose I should have been able to pleasure you if I did not."

West was glad to have positioned himself toward the middle of the bed, else he might have fallen out of it. While he was generally appreciative of frankness, Ria had a way of practicing it that invariably disarmed him. His throat felt unaccountably strangled. "Yes," he said hoarsely, "there is that."

"Are you all right?"

Because she looked as if she meant to pound his back, West stopped her by catching her wrist. "I'm fine." He eased his grip but did not release her completely. "You comprehend, don't you, that there will be no repetition of tonight?"