"Yes." She tossed her head, defiant now. Certain. "Still I want you."

His eyes widened, narrowed, and then he tucked her hand securely in his, lifted the candle, and led the way down the winding stone staircase and out into the fragrant night. He pulled her into his arms and spun her round and round on the cobbled drive.

Emma sensed a freeing of Anthony's reserve, as if by breaching his stronghold, his tower lair, she had breached his personal defenses as well, and he had shared something of himself with her this night. He smiled in a carefree manner, and for a moment she glimpsed what he must have been like as a youth.

"I believe this is my dance," he whispered, his arm a solid strut at her waist.

She had not expected him to be lighthearted. His jaunty mood was contagious, and she responded with an ebullience that obliterated all concerns, all doubts.

The light of the moon poured over them, and the risen wind whipped Emma's skirt about, belling it out like a fancy crinoline beneath an evening dress. Caught in the moment, she could pretend that she was a maiden fair with jewels sparkling at her throat. Her hair, already in disarray from the questing caress of Anthony's fingers, tumbled loose, falling free down her back. She laughed as he twirled her, and kissed her, hard male lips and the delicious thrust of his tongue, leaving her breathless and dizzy.

Emma tipped her head back and watched the stars spin overhead, sparkling bright and clear against the night sky. The crickets were her orchestra, the cobbled drive her dance floor. She laughed, a pure and free sound of joy.

One-two-three. One-two-three. The rhythm of the waltz hummed in her veins, and Emma danced in the arms of her beau, caught in the gossamer web of a dream.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Emma's heart yet pounded from the exertion of their dance, and from the heady feeling of freedom that had spun through her as they twirled in the rhythm of their waltz.

His warm hand clasped in hers, Anthony led her through the darkened house to a closed door at the far end of the hall. Her own chamber, and Nicky's adjoining one, were at the opposite end of the house in a separate wing.

Anthony opened the door and stepped back to let her precede him. Entering his room, Emma was struck by its size. Her gaze was immediately drawn to the large bed that was the focal point of the chamber. No curtains surrounded it. Instead, the bed stood alone and unveiled, stark in the gleaming moonlight that streamed through the windowpanes. An image of Anthony lying in that bed sprang to the forefront of her thoughts. It was a disturbingly tantalizing image, but an incomplete one that tested the limits of her paltry experience.

She stared at the bed. The dark wood headboard was large and simple, with several pillows resting against it. She could not discern the color of the coverlet in the moonlight, but it was puffed with down and she suspected it would be warm on a cold winter night. Anthony's presence just behind her generated a heat of its own, one that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. Without looking, she sensed that he stood so close that the smallest movement on her part would bring her in contact with his body.

Her palms felt damp and her heart fluttered in her chest. She crossed to the window. There was a certain amount of security in standing with her back to the bed, and to him. At least she could control the nearly irrepressible craving to dissolve in a fit of hysterical laughter.

Oh! This would not do. Could a man make love to a woman who t.i.ttered like a schoolgirl?

She hugged herself, wrapping her fingers around her upper arms, and looked through the panes of gla.s.s to the darkness beyond.

"Emma." Her name was a whispered caress.

A creaking sound sliced the silence and she turned from the window to find that he sat on the edge of the bed. That terrible, frightening, enticing bed. The mattress dipped beneath his weight, the perfectly smooth coverlet wrinkling beneath his thighs.

She wanted to skirt past him, to alter her decision, so carefully made. At the same time she wanted to join him on the soft surface of the bed, to sink into the mattress and the warmth of his embrace. Opting for prudence, Emma stayed exactly where she was, frozen in an agony of indecision.

All her life she had been warned against choosing this path. Indecision waged a tormented battle inside her and her fingers curled and clenched, fisting at her sides. To stay. To flee. She had thought the decision made, but faced with the reality of Anthony's bed, the scent of him light in the air, she was afraid.

Leaning forward, Anthony lit a candle on the bedside table. Emma blinked against the sudden flare of light. Her gaze flicked abruptly to his face, then back to the flame.

"I preferred the darkness," she said. "The anonymity of it. The ability to make my choice in the shadows."

His brows rose, but he made no move to snuff the flame. He was a man who would accept nothing less than her heartfelt clear a.s.sent.

Emma watched the flame jump and dance, and she knew that, on some level, her choice had been made that very first night when he had startled a laugh from her with his mimicry of her aunts, then left her in the carriage, alone. She had had a choice, then, as now, to scurry back to the life she knew or to leap forward into the unknown.

Anthony rose and closed the s.p.a.ce that separated them. Standing before her, he seemed inordinately tall and broad. The top of her head barely reached his chin. He stood close and she felt his breath stir the hair at her crown. Taking her hand, he pried her curled fingers open and brought her palm to his mouth. She felt his soft kiss but could not bring herself to look up and meet his gaze. To do so would be to risk losing herself in the fathomless depths of his soul, risking her own in the process.

The neck of his shirt was open. Emma stared at the vee of bared skin, the hollow at the base of his throat that was cast in light and shade. Hesitantly she reached out and traced his collarbone with the tip of her index finger. She felt him tense beneath her touch.

"Do you know that when I am with you I cannot breathe?" she asked, surprised by the thick, husky quality of her voice.

He lifted her chin, tilting her head so she was forced to meet his gaze.

"Yes," he said, and though his expression remained impa.s.sive, she could hear the beginnings of a smile in his voice.

"And that my heart races like a runaway cart?"

Now the smile blossomed across his sensual lips, curving the corners upward. "Yes."

"And that I shake as one ill with the ague?"

The smile grew, a flash of white teeth.

"Yes."

She opened her mouth to ask how he knew, but he bent forward, joining the firmness of his lips with her own, touching his tongue to hers only long enough to tease her senses. Her finger was still on his collarbone, and his movement flattened her palm against the hard muscles of his chest. She could feel the pounding of his heart, the rhythm keeping time with the rushing of her blood, synchronized.

Beneath her palm his chest rose and fell with each breath. Faster now, and deeper too. It would seem that she was not the only one to experience difficulty drawing air into her body.

"You are trembling," he whispered, gliding his hand along her forearm.

The room tilted crazily. Anthony slid his arm around her waist, drawing her thighs flush with his own.

He still smiled, but there was a subtle shift. There was no humor in his expression now. The smile was wolfish, a baring of his teeth before he swooped down and claimed her mouth with his. Tilting her head, Emma welcomed him.

She whimpered, arching into him and opening her mouth to his exploration. Her qualms and maidenly unease evaporated, scorched away by the hunger that consumed her.

The firm touch of his hand stroked her waist, her back, and lower, to cup the rounded curve of her bottom. Heat pooled between her thighs, an ache that gnawed at her. She wriggled against him seeking surcease. Closer. Oh, to touch him and feel him, the heat of him, so much better than her cold, lonely dreams.

His kiss deepened, so hot and sweet that she licked him and bit at him, tasting him on her tongue. Honeyed wine could not compare. She lay half swooning in his arms, reveling in the feel of his hands as they roamed freely over her back and b.u.t.tocks.

Each touch inflamed the hard edge of her desire, making it sharper, keener, feeding the hunger that consumed her. Her fingers tangled in his hair, then moved to touch his shoulders, his back. He was hard and warm, the heat of his body seeping through his shirt. She wanted to touch his bare skin, to feel the contours of his body beneath her hands.

Oh, G.o.d! She was on fire. A blue flame ate at her from the inside out and she knew that only he could quench the heat, ease the near unbearable pain that swelled and grew in the core of her femininity.

Emma rubbed against him in an agony of desperation. The rough moan that rumbled in his chest answered her need. She could feel the hard ridge of his flesh thrusting against her belly. Her bosom felt swollen, the dress too tight to bear. The sensitive tips of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed against the cloth of her bodice, and she wanted the bodice gone, the dress gone. It seemed the only way to get close enough to him, to douse the blaze within.

Her nipples ached. She gave a gasp of surprise, a moan of delight, as he dragged his knuckles across the fabric-covered peaks. Back and forth, softly at first, then with increased pressure until she whimpered and strained toward his touch, the pleasure so acute it was almost pain. Frantically, she tangled her fingers in the fine lawn of his shirt, pulling at him, searching for release.

His fingers closed around the aching tip of her breast, pinching gently. Emma cried out, the sensation exquisite. Her legs buckled beneath her as desire overwhelmed her. She could not feel the floor beneath her feet. There was only Anthony, solid and firm, and between them raged emotions that stole her breath, her thoughts.

"Oh, please." Emma tugged ineffectually at her b.u.t.tons. So many b.u.t.tons.

His warm fingers brushed hers aside. She felt them dip in the hollow between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as the b.u.t.tons came undone. Then the rough pads of his fingertips slid down her shoulders, skin to bare skin.

She was unclothed. She could not think how, but suddenly she was clad only in her stockings, bathed in moonlight and the single candle flame, her dress a dark blot on the carpet at her feet. Vaguely she recalled the impression of her chemise floating against her skin, pulled over her head and tossed aside. Had he done that? Emma could not form coherent thought. It did not matter. Her body was a cauldron of heat and yearning that negated all whispers of conscience.

Anthony stepped back, his head tilted to one side as he stared at her, unblinking, desire casting his features in sharp edges. He caught her wrists as she tried to cross her arms, suddenly shy.

"Better than my imagination," he rasped, lifting one hand to run the pad of his thumb across her nipple. His touch sent a jolt of unendurable pleasure hammering through her.

She cried out in abject misery and absolute bliss. As her legs collapsed beneath her, he caught her, preventing her unceremonious descent to the thick carpet at her feet. Anthony lifted her into his arms, nuzzling the side of her neck as he shifted her to the bed. Glorying in the sensual slide of soft cloth against even softer skin, Emma moved her arms languidly against the smoothness of the spread.

He stood above her, his eyes roaming over her naked skin, and she felt beautiful, desirable. Her gaze locked with his and he smiled, a slow, lazy flash of white teeth that was rapacious and conspiratorial at once. She was his collaborator, his consort. His smile held the promise of shared ecstasy. Emma felt her mouth curve in answer and she held her arms open as he came to her, the weight of him settling over her.

"Emma, my queen of pa.s.sion," he whispered beside her ear, then reared back, leaving her bereft.

"No!" She cried out against the loss. Once before he had left her like this. But not tonight.

Fisting handfuls of his shirt, she tugged at him as he pulled back. His b.u.t.tons tore away, leaving the shirt hanging loose, revealing the hard planes of his chest, the ridges of his abdomen. No marble sculpting this, Emma thought in awe, but a flesh and blood man. Then she realized what she had done-torn the very clothes from his body-and she rolled away to bury her face in the pillows, mortified at her wantonness.

A rustling sound accompanied his soft chuckle, and the edge of the bed sagged beneath his weight. She burrowed deeper, hiding from him, from herself. The rasp of his tongue on her spine left her skin sensitized in the wake of his caress. Her yelp of surprise dwindled to a low purr of pleasure.

The bed shifted and creaked, and she felt him against her back, flesh to flesh, lying alongside her. The hard ridge of his erection jutted forward, impudent and proud, no longer confined by his breeches, urgent against her b.u.t.tocks.

"Come out from under the pillow, Emma."

She merely shook her head and hid, breathing in the smell of the pillowcase. His bed, his sheets, holding the luscious scent of him. She moaned.

"Come now, I won't bite." There was a pause, and she felt his lips on her shoulder blade, then along the bend of her ribs. Then his teeth sank into the fleshy round globe of her b.u.t.tock. "Or perhaps I will. You are too tempting a morsel to ignore."

With a squeak of surprise, she rolled, tossing the pillow at his head. Deflecting it with his elbow, he came on top of her, the muscles of his shoulders and arms corded as he held himself above her.

"I am cold," she whispered, staring transfixed at the curve of his lips, overcome by a strange yearning to suck and nip his mouth, his chest, the skin of his belly. She dared a glance even lower and curled her fingers in the bedclothes, undone by the force of her desire.

"Let me warm you." Anthony lowered the length of his naked body to hers, gliding the tip of himself against the wet, slick core of her. He felt smooth, like the finest silk.

Brazen, she reached down between them and ran her hand along the thick shaft, tracing the broad, rounded head, curious and entranced. She closed her fingers around him, feeling the dull thud of his pulse, or perhaps her own. Dear heaven, how would such a thing fit inside of her?

"Hhh-hnn." The breath left him in a rush, the sound of it stoking the scorching flame inside her. Her touch gave him pleasure. Of that she was certain, and oh, the pure delight of that knowledge, the deep, feminine pleasure of it.

Emma wet her lips, then lifted her head from the cushions and darted her tongue out to lick his perfectly sculpted mouth. As she fell back against the pillows, he followed her, his kiss roughly sensual. Liquid heat. Beautiful, glorious madness. Her stomach leaped, dropped, and she was lightheaded with desire.

Anthony moved, taking her nipple in his mouth, sucking on her until she let out a low sigh, the sinful luxury of his lips and tongue and teeth even more stirring than the touch of his hand. He licked and sucked and oh!-bit her-and she arched up wanting more, panting, throbbing, the rasp of his tongue driving her to lunacy.

His fingers nudged her waist, traced the line of her hip, the dark boundary of her stocking, coming to rest on her inner thigh.

Disconcerted, she moved her legs restlessly but made no protest. Excitement overshadowed mortification. With a soft laugh, Anthony squeezed her thigh and then shifted, replacing his hand with his mouth. Shocked, Emma stared at his dark hair, fanning against the pale skin of her limbs. She felt a tiny sting as he nipped her there, then the soft touch of his tongue when he licked away the hurt.

With a dazed cry, Emma wiggled away from the wet kisses he trailed upward, but his grasp on her waist held her fast as he licked and probed, his attention focused on one sweet, sensitive part of her, the rough-smooth sc.r.a.pe of his tongue winding her tighter and tighter. The breath left her on a sigh, then a moan.

If he was debauched, then she was his true match, for she reveled in his wickedness.

With that thought in her mind, and his name on her kiss-swollen lips, she arched her hips, wanting, aching, so close, quivering and panting until she thought that she could bear no more. Too exquisite, this strange pleasure that built and built until she thought she must surely shatter.

And then the pleasure drove her, harder than she could ever have dreamed, until her limbs quaked and a high keening cry tore from her lips, her body contracting and writhing, arching against his hot, wet mouth, pressing tight against him as she shuddered and sighed, her breath ragged, her senses shattered by absolute delight.

She lay there gasping, eyes shut as the room spun and her body became her own once more. He moved, coming to lie beside her and hold her and stroke her body with long, slow, flat-palmed caresses.

Anthony probed between her legs, his fingers gliding into her, and she stiffened at the alien encroachment. There was a vague sense of embarra.s.sment at the slide of his hand, slick and wet from her body, but then he pushed deeper, widening her, and the strangeness became a strange pleasure.

The feel of him, muscled male body pressed against her own, the soft hairs of his chest brushing her skin, and the scent of him, deliciously appealing, wrapping her in sensual haze. He moved above her, pressing her back into the soft coverlet, the weight of him glorious as he reached between their bodies and positioned himself at her opening, replacing fingers with the thick hard length of him. Hot. He was so hot. She felt a pressure, an intrusion, solid and demanding, and somehow right.

On instinct, she reared up, ran her tongue along his flat male nipple, as he had done to her. He tasted of salt and man, delicious, and the rough sound of his pleasure stroked her senses. Falling back to lie flat beneath him once more, she again followed instinct, wriggling against his shaft, that hard, proud rod that pressed into her, a little, then a little more, and she angled her hips, pumping up against him. The pressure increased and the sense of fullness, and she felt his corded muscles tremble against her. He pulled back, pushed forward, again, and then again. More. A brief flash of pain. A sharp burn.

She exhaled, fast and sharp, surprised.

He stretched her, filled her.

"I-" Uncertain now, she had no idea what she meant to say. The muscles of his arms bulged as he held himself still above her. Reaching between their bodies, he rubbed his thumb across her, slow, gentle, stroking her sensitive flesh until the pain receded, replacing uncertainty with urgent need.

With a gasp, she surged against his hand, loving the feel of each sensitized stroke, and yes, even the feel of him inside her. Then he moved, thrusting into her slowly at first, then deeper, harder, building to a rhythm that made her buck and whimper. She wanted him to push it in again, push it in- "More. Anthony!" Emma cried his name, clutching his muscled shoulders, thrusting against him recklessly, wantonly. And she could feel his pleasure, sense it matching her own with every pumping thrust of his body, and his enjoyment only enhanced her own.

She ran her hands over the smooth skin of his back, his b.u.t.tocks, stroking and clutching the bunching muscle. Oh, this sweet, sweet joining. He was hers and she was his and together they made this journey of wonder and delight.

Her breath rasped, mingled with his, and the pounding of their hearts, their blood, together. She knew only that she wanted him deeper, tighter, there between her thighs, and she rocked her hips, bringing her legs up to wrap tight around him, pulling him closer still.

"Christ, Emma." Oh, the sound of her name, torn from him, and the hiss of pleasure that came from deep inside him.

The precipice was there. She climbed, climbed, then tumbled over the edge again, falling through gauzy clouds and overly bright stars. Clinging to him, the only solid bulwark on this dazzling, whirling journey, Emma sobbed her release.

"Emma!" Anthony cried, the sound ripped from him, his hips pushing against her hard and fast. His body jerked and shuddered. "My-Emma!" He thrust deep, his body trembling, and she could feel the throb of him inside her. He let his weight come full upon her, and she held him, and he held her, and she smiled in secret celebration of newfound knowledge and joy.

"I am a fallen woman." Emma lay on her side in the curved embrace of Anthony's right arm, her head pillowed on his shoulder, contentment humming in her soul. She wondered that she was not bothered by her downfall. Twining her fingers through the dark hair that dusted his chest, she traced its path downward where it drew a thin line along his taut belly to the base of his now quiescent flesh.

"And it seems that you have fallen, as well," she murmured as her fingers reached their destination, and she stroked him lightly, curious about him in this new form. Suddenly, she drew back in alarm as the outer covering of his shaft seemed to come away in her hand. A soft sound of distress escaped her.

Anthony laughed as she jerked back. "Nothing to fear, Emma mine. It is only a French letter."

"A French letter?"

"A sheath designed to catch a man's pleasure, to ensure that you do not become pregnant," he explained. "Nothing sinister."

Emma stared at him in amazement. She had not known such a thing existed. And then the magnitude of his statement struck her, warming her. "You have protected me."

"There is no foolproof method, Emma, but this is the safest measure I know. And the least vile. Pulling out at the moment of delight is a sort of torture I prefer to avoid."