"Have you had lovers?" he asked, unreasoning, without contemplation, the plain question like thunder in the quiet room.

Like thunder in her heart. But Elizabeth subdued her tremulous reaction, considering instead the consequences when apparently he did not, and said, very coolly, "I beg your pardon."

With most men that chill disclaimer would have been enough.

"Tell me," he said.

She drew herself up very straight, as if her physical stance would act as barrier or still her racing heart. "I don't have to tell you. And might I remind you ... we're not alone."

He glanced quickly at Helen, as though he'd forgotten her presence, and when she appeared quite lucidly in his field of vision, he told her, "Go."

"Stay," Elizabeth commanded.

He was surprised to be countermanded. No one had dared since he'd come home from Paris at his father's death eight years ago to become Laird. He hesitated a brief moment before he gestured toward the door with the merest nod of his head.

Helen gazed at Elizabeth for a heartbeat, apology in her look, and then left the tower room.

"Will you force me?" Elizabeth inquired as the door clicked shut, sarcastic in her anger. Like Johnnie, she'd been seldom thwarted in the last few years, save for the occasionally oppressive bonds of matrimony imposed by Hotchane.

"Of course not." The thought was incomprehensible. "Answer my question."

"About my lovers, you mean." Haughty, she demonstrated the arrogance commensurate with her rank of heiress.

"Of course," he said again, but his voice was softer now. In control again, familiar with seduction, he relaxed. "Have you?"

"Why does it matter?"

"I don't know. It shouldn't."

"Then I won't answer."

"Why so defensive?" he mildly retorted. "I'm not judging you. Far from it."

"I may not wish to discuss my private life with you."

And at the phrase "private life," Johnnie saw her again lying on the bed, the image so intense and vivid, he half reached out to lift her in his arms.

But he restrained himself. Walking over to a cushioned chair, he sat down. "I'm twenty-five," he said.

She knew what he meant as though he'd written a lengthy essay on his feelings, but she was still fighting her own chaotic emotions. "Then I'm too old for you."

"Really? Why?"

"Men like young women."

He laughed. "How very sheltered you've been."

"Maybe I'm just realistic."

"Maybe you're just wrong." Janet Lindsay was older than he, as were several of the women who'd entertained him over the years. "You're very beautiful, and I expect all the marriage applicants your father's bringing round aren't exclusively interested in your wealth."

"Are you proposing?" she inquired, her voice over-sweet.

"No. I don't need your money-or a wife."

"You steal what you need-is that right?"

"I'm a businessman," he softly said.

"You're in the business of raiding other people's property."

"I take back only what's stolen from me and protect my family and land. My business is in trade: cattle, sheep, wool"-he grinned-"and wine. I've a fleet of merchant ships currently trying to evade the English fleet. But the profits are enormous on the Continent right now after two years of war."

He looked very beautiful lounging in the oddly carved chair in her bedchamber, the soft blue plaid of his coat4 invitation to touch, his long legs sprawled out before him, their powerful muscles visible beneath the fine wool of his breeches. He wore diamond buckles on his shoes, and she believed him when he said he had no need of her money.

His clear blue eyes held hers for a moment before he softly said, "I think I know the answer to my question. Come sit with me."

"No." Her voice was no more than a whisper. "I don't want to."

"Yes, you do."

He knew. How could he know? And she took a step backward as though that small extra distance would stop him, the silken swish of her robe overloud in the sudden silence.

He rose then, but didn't move further, not wishing to frighten her more. "I've tried to avoid you," he said very quietly. "I've never done that with a woman." He paused, trying to arrange his emotions into some order when what he wanted was to hold her beyond all rational thought. "But Robbie's more important to me, so I stayed away. I intended to do the same tonight. I sent the servant up to give you warning ... and also as a conscious obstruction to myself." Restlessly, he raked both hands through his hair, forgetting he'd tied it back in a queue. "Oh, h.e.l.l," he exclaimed, referring both to his disturbed hair and his tumultuous desires. "You tantalize me," he said, very low, only sheer willpower keeping him from gathering her into his arms. "Do I frighten you?"

Unnerved by her exposed feelings, unsettled by the novelty of her sensual vulnerability, she didn't answer, and another small silence fell in the candlelit tower room.

"Talk to me," he murmured, afraid of the violence of his emotions.

"You don't frighten me ... I frighten myself," she finally whispered, reaching out for a chair back to steady her trembling. She no longer questioned the extent of his allure, for no man had ever made her tremble merely at the sight of him.

And she should know after the dozens of candidates her father had paraded before her.

She never trembled. Never.

And her heart never pounded like this.

And the heat warming her face matched another heat, a pulsing ache, deep in the pit of her stomach.

Johnnie Carre was the cause of that heat.

His gaze dwelt for a moment on her small hands gripping the carving of the chair before he raised his eyes to her face.

"Let me hold you," he said, his deep voice hushed. And he held out his hand.

No man had ever said that to her before. She'd never been offered tenderness and comfort by a man. Like so many other young women, she'd been sold to the highest bidder-although marriage settlements couched the transaction in more palatable euphemisms.

"I won't hurt you," Johnnie murmured, walking over and gently loosening her fingers from the saints' heads bordering the chair rail.

She believed him, despite the fact that his hand dwarfed hers when he enclosed it in his palm. He towered over her-a Border chieftain of renown, a freebooter in diamond buckles and courtly attire.

"I'm not afraid of being hurt," she quietly replied, her face lifted to his, the warmth of his hand surrounding hers. She smiled then, her green cat's eyes gazing up at him from under a drift of lacy lashes. "I'm afraid of being forgotten."

He grinned, boyish and sweet, his ruffled dark hair framing his aquiline face, a small gold earring visible for the first time on his left ear as he brushed his hair back in an unconscious gesture. "I never forget." He said it very plainly, the way a boy would a.s.sure his mother of some act of faith.

She liked the simplicity of his reply. It rea.s.sured her ... although she wondered for a cynical moment whether in her current state of desire she would have accepted any suave disclaimer.

"You're very gallant," she said, and touched her free hand to the downy black silk of one brow. "I've been wanting to do that," she remarked, as direct as he and as simply.

"It's a start," he noted, his grin widening so his fine white teeth showed in the dark bronze of his face. "What I've been wanting to do," he went on, his voice a low murmur, his hand tightening on hers, "is see you lying on that bed."

Without pretense or coyness she said, "You have to stay the night then." Imperious, she was setting the guidelines.

Unknowingly, Elizabeth Graham was offering him paradise, but he controlled his exultation. Pulling her close in a fierce rush of pleasure, he whispered as his mouth touched hers, "My pleasure ..."

She tasted sweet as he'd imagined.

His mouth, she thought with shameless joy, was resolutely twenty-five ... and wonderful. He tasted deliciously of Rhenish wine, and when she told him so, he offered to pour her some.

She refused, drunk already with uncontrollable desire.

A fact he'd noted with a connoisseur's eye for detail. She hadn't had lovers, he could tell. And that knowledge brought his own urgent pa.s.sion to the flash point.

They didn't wait the first time for languorous kisses and drawn-out foreplay. He had, in fact, to rush, for she said, breathless with pa.s.sion, "I can't wait," while he was unclasping the closure at the neck of her fur-collared robe. Momentarily startled, he quickly improvised and, slipping his hands under her knees, lifted her into his arms.

She clung to him as he carried her to the bed, covering his face with kisses, beside herself with desire, not caring if he thought her shameless. She'd never experienced the sheer physical splendor of youthful muscled strength, and the feel of him, powerful and hard against her body, intoxicated her, made her dizzy with longing.

Reaching the bed in three lithe strides, Johnnie laid her on the crewel-worked coverlet and lace-trimmed pillows, following her down when she wouldn't release her arms from his neck, kissing her while he gently extricated himself from her grasp.

"I'm not going anywhere," he murmured as she whimpered, frantic at her loss. "I'm here," he soothed, "I'm staying...." And he wondered at the degree of her deprivation during the years of her marriage.

"Help me," she whispered, flagrant in her need, beyond pride, humbled by her desire for this man who wouldn't remember her next week. No longer caring, with her aching need overwhelming all else ... she only wanted to feel him inside her.

"We'll help each other," he breathed, his face very close to hers as he traced the curve of her mouth with a fingertip. "A few seconds more ..." And he brushed aside the hem of her robe, beginning to push it upward to free her body from the enc.u.mbrance of the voluminous garments. When his fingertips brushed her thigh, she climaxed with a muted groan.

Incompletely, imperfectly. And tears filled her eyes.

"Don't cry," Johnnie softly said. "You'll feel better next time...."

Her lashes fluttered open at his words, a small inkling of recognition flaring in the green of her eyes.

"There is a next time, darling child," Johnnie murmured, feeling eons older than the untried woman who apparently didn't know there could be. He stroked her warm thigh, a light upward drifting of his fingertips, a gentle motion, incidental to his words.

Overcome by a flaring heat spiking upward from his touch, she moaned, an indistinct sound m.u.f.fled by her notions of nicety. Conscious of her repression, Johnnie moved his hand closer to the seat of her desire. "No one's here ... except you and me. There aren't any rules...." His soft voice mollified and absolved her, his warm palm resting firmly on her mons made her forget all a young woman was taught about purity and licentiousness, about temptation and excess.

"You never have rules, though," she murmured, her huge eyes half-drowsy already with new-felt pa.s.sion. "I haven't had as much practice."

If he'd been less polite, he would have mentioned she'd had no practice at all, but in a strange way that circ.u.mstance roused him more acutely than a dozen proficient Janet Lindsays.

"Well, then," he whispered, lifting up the brocade robe and night rail so her pale white flesh was exposed from the swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to her toes, "we'll have to apply ourselves to remedy that situation."

"I won't be biddable." Her voice had a small edge to it, and he wondered how often in her past she'd been admonished to conform.

"Tell me no whenever you wish. I'm not overly selfish ... although," he added with a teasing grin, "if you don't mind, my darling Elizabeth, we'll slow the pace just a fraction this time."

"Am I supposed to apologize?" She was half-teasing now, the transient seriousness banished from her gaze.

"Never apologize in bed-rule number one, and that's the only rule recognized, although if you don't mind," he added, the fair hair between her legs gleaming like innocence, "we'll slow the pace next time." His own need for release-albeit more controllable than hers-was fierce; he'd been wanting to lie with her since Uswayford.

He reached for the b.u.t.tons on his breeches.

And found her small hands ready to help.

Unskilled and clumsy, she was allowed to unfasten two of the gold b.u.t.tons before he placed her hands on his shoulders with a smile and swiftly finished the task. If he didn't hurry, he'd embarra.s.s himself like a schoolboy, and after six days of resisting Elizabeth Graham's allure, he wasn't about to relinquish the pleasure of climaxing inside her sweetness. He quickly lowered himself between her warm thighs and guided himself into her warmth.

She fit around him with perfection, and when she lifted her hips to draw him in more completely, enchantment streaked up his spine and exploded inside his head like corporeal pleasure. Gratified, more, obsessed with sensation, he glided into her slick, hot pa.s.sage, penetrating deeply in compliance with the lady's strong, insistent hands on his lower back. His withdrawal was leisurely, the continuing, languid rhythm of withdrawal and penetration a tantalizing dance of pa.s.sion enchanting for them both. And when he could no longer wait, he moved that small obliging distance more, so he touched her where sensation exquisitely peaked, and he heard her climax break in a high, keening cry.

A step behind the impetuous Lady Graham, he was able to please her again almost immediately as she followed him a third o.r.g.a.s.mic time in conjunction with his own explosive release.

Reaching up, she rained kisses on his face and neck and chest in grateful, blissful content as he rested above her, her soft, breathy words of grat.i.tude and awe punctuation to her trail of kisses.

His own sense of satisfaction throbbed in his head and toes and fingers and in his erection rampant still. He liked her kisses, he liked the feel of her surrounding him, he liked her hands stroking his spine, and he considered with satisfaction the number of hours until dawn.

"Is it possible ..." she said into the bewitching afterglow that bathed the room in resplendent gold quite separate from the candlelight, "I don't know ... and I don't wish to appear greedy, but with ... your experience-well-you should know ... I mean-do you think-"

"I can keep you up all night, darling," he replied, amus.e.m.e.nt rich in his voice, "if that's what you're trying to ask."

Her eyes opened wide, eloquent with surprise and astonishment. "All night?" she breathed, clearly amazed.

"All night, darling Bitsy," he gently answered, the image of a child in a candy shop coming emphatically to mind, "unless you think you're too old."

She stuck her tongue out at him, prompting him to cheerfully reconsider her maturity on several counts. "You're absolutely perfect," he a.s.sured her, "not too young, not too old, faultless in every respect," he facetiously went on, "except ..."

"Except?" Uncertainty and a kind of newfound arrogance simultaneously infused her tone, a sense of wonder and accomplishment blissfully existing in concert.

"You've too many clothes on," he said in the direct way men approaching problems do.

"Oh ... is that all? I was afraid I'd made some terrible s.e.xual faux pas. Um, can women ask for things-I mean-" At his seductive grin she knowingly acknowledged, "With you ... they can ask for anything, can't they?"

"I'm always willing to learn," he teased.

"So modest ..." Elizabeth purred.

"One of my many virtues." Johnnie Carre could almost make her believe he had virtues with the radiance of his smile.

"But not one I'm currently interested in." Her own smile was pure seduction.

"A wanton woman. How nice." His pale blue eyes glittered down at her, alive with merriment.