"I should thank you, I suppose, for spending so lavishly." Elizabeth knew how costly the hand-embroidered ribbon silk must be. "But I don't need this splendor."

"Indulge me, sweet." He shrugged one velvet-clad shoulder. "And it keeps a dozen seamstresses busy in the village." He grinned with a small boy's sort of dissembling charm.

"Well, thank you then, for the village charity." But she smiled a little at the last; his good spirits were contagious.

"I brought you something," he said, leaning across the crisp white linen, handing her a small velvet box. "For fun," he added with a smile.

Opening the blue velvet lid, she discovered an intaglio ring in lavender jade, the incised design depicting the facade of her new house at Three Kings. "It's beautiful."

"I thought you might enjoy using your architectural design as a seal."

"Am I going back to Three Kings?" But a lightness insinuated itself into her words.

He grinned. "Eventually. I just want to marry you. I don't want to own you."

"Really."

"Really, Elizabeth. This is such a useless argument. You can go where you please once we're married. You're not my ward."

"And you can do as you please as well?"

Her voice had taken on a faint edge, and he wasn't sure how to answer. "Is this a trick question?" he said with a smile.

"Answer me."

"What do you want me to say?" He felt as though he were running a gauntlet blindfolded.

"Whatever you want to say."

"Come downstairs then. I've something to show you." A man of action, he was weary of debate, and polite behavior, and three days of waiting.

He held her hand while they walked down the narrow hallway and descended two flights of stairs, then traversed the wide corridor on the main floor to an elaborate portal through which he took her, ushering her into a large chamber with a muraled ceiling, paneled walls in honey-colored local pine, Turkey rugs on the floor, and dozens of China vases and urns filled with peach-colored roses.

"This is your bedchamber!" Elizabeth exclaimed, not expecting so unsubtle a ploy.

A large tester bed, magnificently hung in forest-green brocade, took up an entire wall, the heavily carved posts soaring a dozen feet toward the gamboling G.o.ds and G.o.ddess on the ceiling above.

"Do you like it?" he innocently said, as though the room itself were their point of discussion, and finding the range of emotion pa.s.sing across her face fascinating.

"I'm leaving!"

"I don't think so."

"Would you keep me here against my will?" She'd never considered that he would handle her so roughly.

"Yes," he quietly said, "I would. I intend to bed you and then marry you, Elizabeth Graham, before witnesses." The necessary requirements for a legal marriage that couldn't be severed by court action were a license, a clergyman, the vows repeated by both parties, with two witnesses to the ceremony and to the bedding.

"Just like that," she whispered in shock. "Like a barbarian?"

"Like a barbarian." His voice was soft, his decision made hours, days before.

"And I've nothing to say in the matter?"

"No."

"This is too irregular; it'll never stand up in court. You can't get witnesses to condone this, or a clergyman," she heatedly argued.

He smiled at her naivete. "It's all quite legal, darling. And I don't know whether they condone it or not, but they're all next door. Waiting."

"They're next door?" Her voice dropped to a murmur.

"You may not want to scream with your usual carnal abandon," he said with a smile.

"You don't actually mean to go through with this?"

"We'll be more formally married in the chapel tomorrow."

"You've thought of everything, apparently."

"I think so." A faint smile touched his mouth.

If he hadn't looked so d.a.m.nably smug, she wouldn't have hit him with such force, but a frustrated, vengeful fury overwhelmed any normal degree of prudence or control.

And if she hadn't hit him so hard, he wouldn't have responded in so unusual a manner.

He actually stood arrested for a moment, his palm to his stinging cheek, tasting the blood inside his mouth, tamping down his violent urge to hit her back. His voice when he spoke a moment later gave indication of enormous self-control.

"You require a lesson in manners," he said with exquisite restraint.

"And you're the man to teach me?" The moment she uttered the words, she regretted her insolence, for a sudden grim tyranny gleamed from his eyes.

"The ideal man," he said in almost a whisper. With an unnatural courtesy he'd submitted himself to her principled disdain since Hexham, and he'd reached the limits of acquired manners. Without waiting or caring whether she responded, he walked away from her, went to the door, locked it, and tossed the key on the bureau top without breaking stride. "Now we'll see to your instruction," he quietly said, walking back toward her, using the royal "we" with ease, stripping his elegant velvet jacket from his shoulders and dropping it to the floor without notice. He stepped out of his red-heeled shoes, moving nearer like a great cat on silk-stockinged feet. "Don't be frightened, Lady Graham," he murmured as he approached her where she stood in the center of his bedchamber, "I don't intend to hurt you."

"What do you intend to do?" She stood bravely facing him, refusing to show fear.

He smiled at her courage. "I thought we'd begin with a lesson on wifely conduct."

"No!"

"I promise you no pain, my Lady."

"Don't touch me."

"I'm afraid I'll have to." And while his voice was obliging, he was not. His hands captured her shoulders, his long, graceful fingers firm on the silk of her gown, and as he drew her close, he said, "You must learn to say, 'Yes, my Lord.' "

"I won't. I'll scream, and your d.a.m.nable clergyman will run away home. And we shan't be married after all."

"Don't delude yourself, darling. They'll stay until I give them leave to go. Now let's see, I think you should kiss me first." And he dipped his head, holding her securely in his hands. His mouth brushed hers gently; his tongue touched the full curve of her bottom lip, glided upward slowly, slid delicately into her mouth....

And she kicked him with all her strength.

He grunted in pain, his fingers tightening on her shoulders until a second later one of his hands swept downward to cup her bottom and jerk her tightly against his lower body as he ground his mouth into hers so brutally, her back arched against the powerful pressure. She couldn't breathe; the taste of his blood invaded her mouth; she felt his erection hard against her stomach as she struggled to free herself from his bruising hold.

Her agitated exertions only increased the friction of her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s and soft thighs against Johnnie's hard body, each movement provocative, arousing. She felt it first in her nipples, more sensitive since her pregnancy; she felt a streaking heat race downward from their hardening peaks. And she tried in the flashing moment of heated perception to deny the sensation, discipline it, or chastise it away. But perception and memory had instantly merged as her body began to betray her; her senses recognized the intimate, forceful pressure. She found herself remembering the precise, intoxicating feel of that rigid hardness inside her, and disastrously she felt her body respond further to that memory. In flashing recall that ignored all efforts at suppression, all the indelible sensations revived-how exactly he felt when he was deep inside her, how long he could keep her shuddering on the brink, how his hands touched her intimately-everywhere; it almost seemed she could hear again from those days at Three Kings, her keening cries of pleasure....

And all the defenses of reason and logic she'd erected against Johnnie Carre the weeks past fell ignominiously before the inexplicable searing rush of her own desire.

Johnnie felt the sudden change as though a curtain had fallen on the first act of a play, for she ceased struggling; her mouth opened beneath his with a remembered sweetness. And he felt her soft thighs drift lightly against his arousal.

The pressure of his mouth altered subtly, and he seduced her then with the skill acquired in countless scented boudoirs, with the patient application of a nun at her prayers, with infinite variety-until he heard the first breathy whimpers, until Elizabeth arched her eager body against his, until she clung to him like a flagrant invitation to pleasure.

Then he said, very softly, "And now your education begins...."

She shook her head, her platinum curls brushing against his hands that held her close. "No, not now ... I don't want to play games...." Lying back in his arms, she smiled up at him, her gaze half-lidded with pa.s.sion. "I want to feel you.... Take off your clothes ... or at least some of them," she whispered, her hands slipping around from his back, reaching for the closures on his trews.

"Later," he quietly replied, catching her hands in his, balancing her for a moment against his thighs, his blue eyes drifting suggestively down her sumptuous body. "Let's take off yours first."

"I might be persuaded," she playfully murmured, swaying in tantalizing promise.

"I thought you might," he murmured, his mouth quirked in a smile. "Could I interest you in my bed?" He tipped his head slightly toward the lavish piece of furniture he'd had made for him in Macao.

"If you come along with it."

"Consider it my pleasure," he promised, taking a step toward the bed.

And she followed him in a sensuous walk as he led her, her hand warm in his, a half-smile of expectation curving her lips.

He stopped at the foot of the bed, beside one of the corner posts, and gently pulled her forward. "One small detour, darling," he said, sliding her arms behind her.

"A swift one, I hope," she murmured, stretching up to kiss him on his chin, her purr vibrating along his jawline.

"You sound ready," he whispered, guiding her back one step against the carved bedpost, placing her arms behind it. "This won't take long," he added in a soft breath, looping the braided silk bed-curtain cord loosely around her wrists, binding her to the post.

"What are you doing?" A sudden apprehension appeared in her eyes, a tiny chill frisson raced through her heated body as she recalled the last time she'd been tied and abducted by this man who made his own laws.

"Entertaining you ..." His voice was a negligent murmur, his eyes lazily a.s.sessing her. "Appeasing myself."

"I'm not entertained." She struggled against her bonds, the tumult of her emotions disordered, uncertain, her fevered senses at odds with her temper ... with her unease.

"I haven't started yet," he said with a faint smile. Reaching out, he touched her nipples through the silk of her gown, lightly, delicately, the pads of his fingers stroking with practiced skill.

"Untie me," she pleaded, but her words were a whisper now, desire trembling under her breath.

He heard it, and felt her nipples like hard jewels under his fingers. His smile was a.s.sured. "Eventually I will ... but first we have to take your clothes off. Now ask me nicely, with suitable wifely devotion," he softly prompted, moving back a half-step. "Come now, ask me to unclothe you like a dutiful wife."

"You can't make me," she said, her glance wary under the overt pa.s.sion glittering in her eyes, "if I don't want to."

"I can make you do anything," he gently a.s.sured her.

"Only now, when I'm like this," she murmured, her chin slightly raised so she could look into his eyes, the heat of desire spreading languidly through her senses, the throbbing between her legs powerful, echoing a rhythm of urgency in her mind.

"But then I know how to keep you like this," Johnnie said. "So you'll always want more. So ask me sweetly now, puss, and if you do, I'll undress you, and we'll move on to more pleasant things." He touched the white swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s visible above the sheer lace of her kerchief, his fingertips gliding lightly over their mounded fullness. "Do you like that? Can you feel the tremors slide downward between your legs? Would you like to feel me between your legs? Tell me what I want to hear, and I'll satisfy you."

Her eyes flew open at the sudden harshness in his tone.

"You must do this for me."

He was serious, she could see. "You've reached your limits of grace?"

"Yes. I don't understand it, but then, I've never had a wife."

"And if I don't?"

He took a deep breath because he'd never experienced such uncompromising feelings. "I don't know what I'll do. I'm sorry." Perhaps he was making her pay for George Baldwin, for the fact that she'd almost given his child away. Maybe he was punishing her for his own terrible need and his submission to her the days past. Or was he unworldly enough to want recompense for the years she'd offered herself to her husband before him? A curious sense of rage trembled within him, and without reason he required her to humble herself to him.

She looked at him for a moment, her own thoughts racing to keep pace with her emotions, with the glowing heat pulsing through her body, understanding perhaps better than he how each was subject to the other. How she needed him, too, with an unspeakable longing. Her answer reflected both her wild need and remembrance of all her years of unwanted subjection. "I do this of my own free will," she clearly said.

His smile was wry. "One would think this was mortal."

"It could be," she said with a lightly suggestive smile, content with her decision, gracious in her understanding of his own struggle. And rising on tiptoe against the pressure of her bonds, she reached up to touch his lips with hers.

"I will this once," she said in a hushed whisper. "Only this once."

"Because you want me inside you?"

"Yes."

"Yes ... what?"

She looked at him, a vagrant flash of emotion in her emerald eyes, and then she said, "Yes, my Lord."

"How charming to have a docile wife." His words were a velvety murmur, his blue eyes lenient now. "And for that obedient response, I'll accommodate you." Taking one corner of her lace handkerchief delicately between his fingers, he slid the fabric free of her decolletage.

She felt the fine lace slip over her skin, the slow, languorous withdrawal a whisper on her flesh as if he were promising her more if she conceded more. "My dress, now," she whispered, pliant and tractable, sensible of the pleasurable rewards in her submission. "Unhook my dress." She rubbed her back against the bedpost like a cat in heat, her large, pale b.r.e.a.s.t.s spilling over the low neckline of the gown. With the modesty of the lace kerchief removed, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were almost fully exposed, jutting forward like quivering ripe fruit. Tugging against the silk cord, she softly pleaded, "Now, Johnnie, please, my dress." Her garments seemed oppressive, stifling against her heated skin; she wished the liberation, the sensual intoxication of her skin against his.

"But you didn't ask me properly," Johnnie chastised, tapping his fingertip lightly on her pouty bottom lip.

"Please, my Lord," she prudently rephrased, her green eyes on his, restless, tantalized, "please take off my dress."

"So respectful. How can I refuse?" And bending down, he kissed her gently on the soft pink flesh of her neck.

Arching against him, she offered herself to him, wanting to feel his touch, his mouth, everywhere. "Please, Johnnie, I can't wait...."

Drawing away from her, he ran his palms over the luscious plumpness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the heat of her body warming the heavy silk of her gown. "Of course you can," he countered, exacting the price of his entangled discontent. "You have to."

And she shut her eyes as peaking sensation made her tremble under his touch. "I can't," she whispered.