"Have I been remiss?" he gently inquired.

"Well, besides that," she replied. "And thank you very much, dear Glory, for your exceptional talent. But I mean really know you."

He never liked the sound of that phrase, particularly from women in bed. It always presaged their wish to insinuate themselves into his life and by definition change his comfortable existence. Restive at the familiar consequences of a woman in pursuit, he rolled up into a seated position, the flux of rippling muscle impressive. "Why don't I feed you?" he suggested.

"Why?" Perplexed, she stared at him.

"Because I want to." Beyond the need to derail her train of thought, he couldn't dismiss the tempting allure of her sumptuous body, nude, available, only inches away. And with her hot-blooded libido, he didn't doubt his ability to distract her.

"And you always do what you want."

"Almost always." His dark eyes were direct.

"Then maybe I'm not hungry right now," she retorted, taking issue with his careless authority, her servitude at the Tothams' too recent.

"Why don't we see whether you are or not?"

He spoke so softly she barely heard the words, but his languid intonation was offering not food but sex and the faintest of challenges.

"No." Sitting up straighter, she clasped her hands in her lap, presenting an incongruous image of nude primness.

"Just a small bite," he coaxed, as if she hadn't spoken, as if the pink blush rising on her throat indicated a far different response. Reaching out, he dipped his finger into the cake frosting and plucked a candied violet from the creamy chocolate. "Open for me," he whispered, leaning forward, his dark gaze provocative, sensual.

And heedless to all but the tantalizing promise in his eyes, a throbbing began deep inside her. His intent was palpable, his nearness overwhelming, the hard muscled strength of his shoulders and chest so close she could feel the heat from his skin. Drawn by a chrysalis desire that overlooked temperament and jealousies, she slowly reached out to touch him, the sensitive pads of her fingers delicately sliding over his powerful shoulders before her fingers splayed, her hand flattened, and her palm brushed down over his sharply defined pectorals. With the warmth of his body seeping into hers, her hand glided lower still, drawn by a hunger she couldn't resist, her fingers tracing the ridged tautness of his torso, slipping over the waistband of his breeches, her pulse accelerating as her gaze focused on the bulging prominence of his arousal.

He followed the tantalizing progress of her hand, watching, waiting, aware of her patent interest. "Touch it," he murmured.

Helpless against such manifest lust, she looked up at him for a flashing moment, her gaze hot with need.

"Touch it," he repeated, "it's for you."

And after taking a small steadying breath, her hand moved that last small distance and closed over his hard, pulsing erection.

He sucked in his breath, her touch triggering a flaring surge of excitement. His gaze flickered briefly to her small hand before lifting to hers. "Try it now, lollipop," he murmured.

Double entendre licked at her senses as he raised the sugared violet to her mouth and his enormous length grew beneath her hand, whetting her appetite.

"Open," he softly breathed.

She was wet, covetous, tantalized. And she obeyed his quiet command because she could no more resist his seductive promise of pleasure than the hundreds of women before her.

His finger invaded her mouth by leisurely degrees as if making her wait now that she'd capitulated. And when he'd penetrated sufficiently, he whispered, "Lick it off...."

Trembling with expectation and need, she closed her mouth over his finger and tasted sweet violet and scented lust ... and a luxurious, voluptuous surfeit uncommon in her world-like the nectar of the gods.

A man of finesse, he knew how to sharpen that fine edge of feeling, to intensify her quivering ecstasy. Sliding his hand up her thigh, he touched the pale silky hair of her mons, his fingers slipping downward, delicately stroking the satiny tissue of her labia. "Can you feel me?" he murmured, his question rhetorical with his fingers in two of her orifices. "Or is this better?" he asked, slipping a second finger deep into her throbbing cleft. "Or this?" he added over her low moan of pleasure, forcing a third finger inside.

Salacious feeling overwhelmed her, so violent and unrestrained she bit down hard on his finger.

Grunting at the sudden sharp pain, he jerked his fingers free. "Bloody little savage," he murmured, shoving her backward with a sweeping shift of his forearm. Following her down, he held her captive, the weight of his body lightly braced above her, his hips cradled by her outspread thighs, his dark eyes amused. "What are we going to do with you?"

"Fuck me," she said, relishing the blunt, decisive sounds on her tongue, his powerful body overwhelming her senses.

"I'm bleeding." He scowled in mock anger.

"Fuck me anyway," she whispered.

"Maybe I'll exact my revenge instead." A roguish smile played on his lips.

"I should like that immensely, milord," she breathed. "I just know I would...."

He laughed, a delicious, husky sound reminiscent of wickedness and sin. "You're a hot little baggage, Miss Blythe."

"You've a great deal to do with it, dear Glory." Her hips moved in a slow, sensuous rhythm so they both felt the pleasurable extent of his erection. "I'm enamored with my new ... toy."

"And you want to play again." His voice was velvet soft.

"Oh, yes ..." she purred. "Do you think you could arrange it?"

"I must live right to be rewarded with you, Miss Blythe."

"And you must be my reward for surviving the Tothams. Now take these off," she insisted, working at the buttons of his breeches, "or I'll turn tantrumish."

"A second, lollipop, before you scream," he teased, easing away to slide the cake plate and Champagne bottle onto the floor, then settling back between her legs. "And now, we're at your service."

Lacing her arms around his neck, she murmured, "You're very fast."

"For you, wild thing ..."

"Good, because I need you, now." Her gaze was flame hot.

"Then I hope you can sew." Ripping off the unopened buttons on his breeches, he freed his erection and plunged into her. The instant he entered her, her orgasm began, her unbridled response so precipitous and unexpected that a second later he had to curtail his withdrawal stroke to accommodate her hot-spur urgency. Completely submerged once again, her nails biting into his back, he braced his legs and held himself hard against her womb, filling her, fulfilling her, her rapturous whimpers an adjunct to the fevered pulsing of their bodies.

She moved minutely in entreaty and he moved less delicately, understanding her, answering her, penetrating that essential, lustful distance even more.

"Oh, god," she breathed, delirium assaulting her senses, the shocking pleasure exploding in her brain, "oh, god, oh, god, oh, god ..."

Her voice trailed away.

She was dying.

She was melting away, she was dissolving.

And a hush enveloped the sunlit room, the only sound the faint rasp of breathing.

5.

Long moments later her eyes opened and then the faintest of smiles slowly curved her opulent mouth. "I couldn't wait," she softly said, her gaze heavy-lidded, surfeit in her husky contralto.

"You never have to, kitten. There aren't any rules."

"Why doesn't anyone ever tell you it's so ... wonderful," she exalted.

"So you can find out for yourself," he neutrally replied, not wishing to blight such charming delight. The cynical truth related more pragmatically to the price of virginity in the marketplace than to self-realization.

"When did you find out?" she asked, still faintly awestruck.

"A long time ago." Feeling her honeyed warmth still pulsing around him, he wondered if she was some fairy nymph with special siren powers that could make him want her so. "It's better than anything, isn't it?" he softly added.

"Even better than Remy's genoise."

His eyes widened in mock surprise. "That good."

"Although you didn't ... I mean ..." The warm flush on her cheeks deepened in color.

"Don't worry, lollipop," he gently replied. "I will."

"Be sure and tell me if I'm doing anything wrong," she said with an ingenuous sincerity.

He smiled at the notion of a tutorial. "You couldn't possibly do anything wrong."

"I'm willing to learn-Oh dear-" she said on a smothered gasp. "What are you doing?"

"Can you feel this?" He drove in a fraction deeper.

And she trembled under his hands. "Oh, yes," she whispered, the sensation so exquisite she didn't wonder why he was in such high demand. "Please ... do it-again."

How sweetly artless her request, he thought, like a child requesting a second cookie. "Like this?" Holding her hips lightly, he forced himself deeper and deeper still until she cried out softly and her breathing abruptly altered to a less tranquil rhythm. And when he shifted slightly to withdraw enough to indulge her again, her hands slid down his back to restrain him, to keep him hard within her throbbing flesh.

"Let go," he whispered, stirring against her unyielding grasp, his lower body poised to ease back.

"No." Her grip tightened.

"It gets better if you wait."

"No." A fretful, suffocated sound. "You said I didn't have to."

"Did I?" he murmured, dismissing any further contemplation of leisured foreplay. The innocent Miss Blythe must have been virginal too long for she was wildly impatient now as if making up for lost time. Clasping her tightly so they remained joined, he rolled onto his back, carrying her with him. "You set the pace, darling," he said, easing her upright, adjusting her on his hips so she was riding him. "Here." Slipping his hands under her bottom, he raised her so she slid up his erection. And when she was poised on the swollen crest, his hands glided up to her hips. "Then thusly, kitten," he murmured, exerting pressure downward, guiding her until he was sunk hilt deep inside her honeyed warmth.

She uttered a small blissful sigh.

"Ride at any breakneck speed you prefer, lollipop," he said. "I'll try to keep up."

"So I have my own personal stud," she murmured, exquisitely impaled.

"For as long as you want." A connoisseur of sensation, he was considering keeping her beyond the journey to Naples. They were a very good fit.

"Are you always ... this ready?"

"We try," he modestly said, this man who held most of the sexual records in the club betting books.

"How nice for me," she replied, moving upward slowly until she was hovering on the tip of his erection.

"And me." His smile was wolfish.

"Can I keep you locked away till landfall?" she murmured, inundated by joyous sensation, a new, wondrous world suddenly at her command.

When he didn't answer, she gazed down at him from under languid, half-lowered lashes and slowly slid down his rigid length. "Say yes," she whispered.

He smiled faintly. "I don't take orders-even from pretty governesses."

Rotating her hips in a sensuous, intoxicating revolution that gave new meaning to the word friction, she said, sultry and low, "You give the orders, then."

His smile broadened. "An imaginative solution."

"A selfish one, darling. But the orders better be to my liking."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning they must be confined to carnal matters."

"Really. You won't make my bed or wash my clothes?"

"My four years of servitude ended"-she looked out the window at the bright morning light, gauging the time-"two days ago, Rochefort. And I don't know how to wash clothes."

"I don't suppose you make beds either?"

"I've learned to particularly unmake beds now, thanks to you, my dear Glory. And I think," she said with a grin, "we're going to need some clean sheets soon."

"What if I ordered you not to climax for ten minutes?" he teased. "Would that be carnal enough?"

"Be reasonable, Rochefort." Her pout looked delicious.

"But then I'm never reasonable," he said, effortlessly lifting her free of his erection, ignoring her squeal of protest as he placed her on the bed. "Now what are you going to do?" he added, grinning.

"Attack you."

She lunged at him and he rolled away, laughing.

"You're mine, darling," she said, still in pursuit. "It's just a matter of time."