"Not likely when I'm melting inside."

"For me?" His smile was warm like his gaze.

"For you ..." An enchantress's voice, soft, low, eager.

And when he abruptly rose to strip his breeches free she understood another compelling measure of his allure.

"You're very beautiful," she said, her gaze on his arousal. "I'll paint you for myself too."

"Like this?" He touched himself with a practiced hand, watched her eyes widen as his erection grew. "Be my guest," he softly said.

"Later," she promised, feeling fiercely independent, flushed with a precious, new freedom, a universe away from her servitude, from all her recent misery.

"Much later," he quietly agreed, moving over her, sliding between her thighs, guiding himself to her hot, wet cleft.

Lacing her arms around his neck, she clung to him, glorying in his strength and power, in the unalloyed pleasure she was feeling.

He drove forward.

She screamed.

"Jesus." He exhaled explosively. "Jesus Christ ..." He shuddered, his body convulsed by the abrupt, shocking curtailment.

"I won't cry out again," she whispered, pulling his face down to kiss, a keen hot craving overriding her transient pain, avaricious need flooding her senses. "Please."

He softly swore, unsavory practicalities pertaining to wellborn virgins suddenly in the forefront of his brain, danger signals bombarding his senses.

"Let me help," she whispered, moving her hips in a delectable enticement, reaching down to touch him.

Her fingers slid down his rigid length and he groaned, the animal sound rising from deep in his lungs.

"Don't," he said on a suffocated breath.

"But I want to."

He shut his eyes briefly against his overwhelming urges. "You can't change your mind later," he said, his voice rough with restraint.

"I know."

"You can change your mind now." He took a deep breath. "And maybe for a few seconds more," he said, his whisper hoarse, constrained, his eyes half shut against the hot-spur needs of his body.

"I don't want to change my mind." She stroked his rigid erection.

It was too much for a man known for his heedless prodigality.

Brushing her hand away, he braced his lower body, held her hips firmly between his hands, and surged forward, plunging into her with a savage, barely contained violence.

Her cry ricocheting around the teak-paneled stateroom went unnoticed as he sank hilt deep into her luscious warmth and exhaled in acute gratification, sensational feeling strumming down his nerve endings.

Seconds later her soft whimpers and the pressure of her hands clutching his back finally registered on his consciousness. And gallantly tamping his selfish desires, he exerted himself to soothe her distress, because she was his now until Naples and he had all the time in the world....

Lying quiescent within her, he gently kissed away her tears, his mouth delicate on her cheeks and eyelids, his murmured words soothing, apologetic. His voice was deep, velvety, his caresses bewitching, and when her tears were gone and her hands had relaxed on his back, he promised her pleasure in seductive love words ... conjuring up lush heated images in her mind, offering her enchantment. Until soon her senses were flame hot once again and she offered her mouth to him and smiled and said, "It doesn't hurt anymore."

"I can tell." She was sleek, wet, pulsing around him and when her hips first tentatively moved he gently glided deeper until she gasped not in pain this time but in astonished gratification.

"I'm dying," she whispered as the exquisite rapture ravaged her senses and she held him deep inside, her hands firm at the base of his spine, prolonging the blissful agony.

"Not now, but soon," Beau murmured, the words vibrating across her mouth. "Loosen your hold for a second. There. Isn't that better?" he gently queried as he penetrated that small measure deeper.

She couldn't speak but he understood her trembling sigh and with an expertise garnered from years of pleasuring women, he slowly, gently offered Serena Blythe her first joyous glimpse of paradise.

Followed shortly by her second enchanting vision as he joined her in his own explosive orgasm.

And soon after, she experienced a third luxurious climax.

He was a man of celebrated stamina.

Much later as she lay in his arms, basking in the afterglow of a deep contentment, she said, "Do people call you Glory to your face?" Shifting slightly in the curve of his arm, she gazed up at him.

His glance drifted back from the rising sun-a brilliant saffron in the symmetry of the brass-framed porthole. "Sometimes," he carefully said, not sure he cared to discuss a subject related to his sexual prowess, not altogether sure he should have taken her virginity despite her acquiescence.

"You deserve the name," she simply said, smiling. "You're very good. How long will it take us to reach Italy?"

Her smile was flirtatious with an underscoring of naivete so sweet, he found himself suddenly immune to misgivings and the thought of screwing the beautiful Miss Blythe from here to Naples held an irresistible appeal. "Three weeks," he said of the two-week journey. "Maybe a month if we stop at Lisbon and Minorca." He'd already decided to order the sails trimmed in the morning.

"Only a month?" she said with a luscious smile, moving against him with an enchanting gliding progress that brought her semen-damp cleft in proximity to his quickening erection.

"Longer," he murmured with a wolfish grin, "if we have to elude the privateers."

"That sounds nice. Is there any food left?"

He laughed. "Some dessert, but I'll need a kiss to get up and fetch it."

Her response was immediate, luscious, and decidedly heated.

And he gave her something she wanted more.

4.

"Now," Serena murmured a pleasurable time later, tracing a languid finger over Beau's mouth as he rested lightly over her, "I'm going to eat."

"Food?" A boyish grin flashed white against his tanned skin.

"Yes, my glory boy," she whispered, "but don't go away."

"Not likely, darling." His velvety voice licked at her senses. "But I was thinking ..." he whispered, gently stroking the full curve of her breast. "Perhaps you'd like-"

"No," she murmured, placing a restraining hand on his muscled chest. "You have to wait."

"What if I don't want to?" He dipped his head to lightly kiss the slender bridge of her nose. "And you're so easy to please."

"Only now in my novice stage," she said with a seductive lift of one brow. "By the end of three weeks I'll be salaciously demanding."

"Umm," he murmured, smiling faintly, "promises, promises ..."

"Only if I'm still alive, darling." She pushed against his weight. "I'm starving."

She was serious, he realized. "I'll call Remy," he said, instantly obliging, aware of the recent privations in her past, "and you can tell him what you want."

"No, please don't.... There's some food left on the table." A pink flush colored her cheeks. "I mean"-her gaze drifted down his bare chest-"look at us. We're not dressed and the bed's a shambles and-"

"He's not judgmental, darling." His voice was soothing, degage.

Her eyes went shuttered. "And he's seen this often."

For a brief moment he considered lying, her tone suddenly moody, but then he didn't wish to deceive her about either the style of his life or her position in it. "Often enough," he quietly replied.

She gazed at him for a speculative moment, a multitude of implications in that short phrase, his answer perhaps more frank than she might have wished. "I could get dressed and sit in that chair over there."

"If you like," he politely said. "But Remy won't care if you're dressed or not."

"So I shouldn't be concerned with appearances."

He tried not to smile at the concept of appearances, considering their recent intimacies and the warmth of her body currently resting beneath his. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said, repressing his grin.

And then she suddenly laughed-at her absurd notion of propriety, at his gallant attempt to suppress his smile, and reaching up, she took his face in her hands and drew his mouth down to hers. "You're very sweet," she whispered.

"Not as sweet at you, lollipop."

Stretching slightly upward, she licked his lower lip, a sensuous, lingering caress.

"Anywhere ..." he murmured, his smile cheeky, "... anytime."

"Because you're always ready," she purred, feeling him rise against her belly.

"I've been in training."

"While I've been waiting for you."

"Lucky me," he whispered, gently nudging her legs apart.

"Do women ever say no to you?"

His hesitation was minute. "Of course," he lied.

"Good," she asserted, looking up at him with artless innocence. "Because if you don't feed me right now," she softly added, "I'll never fuck you again."

"Remy!" he bellowed, and rolling off her, he swiftly rose from the bed.

"You really like me," she teased, from the disordered jumble of the bedclothes, all pink-cheeked, tousled, delectable.

"Oh, yes ... you're vastly pleasing, Miss Blythe." Gazing down on her, his dark eyes heated, his libido on full alert, he wondered for a moment whether all virgins were so tantalizing or whether Serena Blythe's naively tempting allure was unique.

The perfection of his muscled body gleamed in the golden rays of the rising sun, his broad-shouldered frame dwarfing the confines of the small stateroom, his dark beauty breathtaking in the full light of day, and Serena understood-beyond the lure of his sexual virtuosity-why Beau St. Jules never slept alone.

"Who first called you Glory?" she asked, wanting to know what woman had so aptly named him. At the sharp rise of his brows, she added, "I've overheard all the stories from the Tothams' son. He was forever trying to ape your rakish ways. 'Lady C. was seen emerging from the maze at Chatham with Glory R., her expression one of deep satisfaction,' " Serena quoted with a quirked grin. "Mrs. Totham devoured the scandal sheets too."

"Do I know them?" Beau blandly inquired, interested in deflecting her query.

"Hardly," Serena answered, entertained by the notion of Beau St. Jules seated across the tea table from the self-righteous Maud Totham. "Tell me about your name."

"Rochefort?" Reaching for his breeches, he swiftly pulled them on, an unconscious defense perhaps, female inquisitiveness invariably provoking evasion.

"If you don't want to tell me," Serena playfully chided, "just say so."

His gaze swiveled to her, his fingers arrested on the buttons at his waist. "I don't want to tell you."

"I could always sleep under the stairs again," she said in a seductive purr.

"You'd have to get out of here first."

"Are you threatening me?" A mischievous glint shone in her eyes and she wondered what it would be like to truly challenge the Earl of Rochefort. He'd killed a man in a duel last year, she knew; Neville had talked of little else for a fortnight.

Dropping into a chair, he surveyed her from under half-lowered lashes. "Just pointing out your physical limitations, lollipop," he murmured.

"Do you always bully your women?"

"I've never had to."

"Which brings us back to your nickname."

He sighed. "If I tell you will this interrogation cease?"

She smugly nodded.

Exhaling softly, he said, "A lover once referred to my height as glorious and the name caught on."

She snorted in disbelief. "Liar."

"She liked tall men."