"Ten minutes, to be precise," he lazily replied, catching her as she fell atop him. "And I'm giving the orders."

"You don't really mean it, do you?" she whispered, moving her hips seductively.

"Abstinence is good for the soul," he silkily murmured, stilling her hips.

"How would you know?"

"I read it somewhere." His gaze was shameless.

"But I don't want to wait." She struggled against his solid grasp.

"Perhaps there's an alternative."

Appreciation warmed her eyes. "How sensible you are, Rochefort."

"While you're a sizzling little baggage. Are you religious?" he asked, as if the two thoughts were related.

"If I were, dear Glory, meeting you would have made me deeply concerned about the fires of hell."

He smiled faintly. "Then you haven't considered becoming a nun."

"Not since Dover at least."

He laughed, and releasing his hold, eased away and rolled off the bed. Coming to his feet, he held out his hand. At her questioning gaze, he said, "I'm offering you instant gratification."

She immediately clasped his hand and rising from the bed followed him. Blowing out a candle flame as he passed his desk, he lifted the half-burned remnant from the candelabra and drew her after him to the settee. "Have you ever masturbated?" he casually asked, dropping onto the small sofa, his fingers sliding from hers.

She stared at him, not certain she'd heard him correctly.

"You must not have," he noted, her startled gaze answer enough. Leaning over, he lightly stroked her mons with the base of the candle. "I thought you might like to learn during this ten-minute hiatus."

Serena blushed.

"Everyone masturbates," he lightly acknowledged, "at some time or other. There's nothing to blush about. Would you like to try?"

She shook her head, embarrassed.

"You might enjoy it," he quietly said, sliding the candle between her legs.

"I prefer you."

"But you can't have me right now." Exerting upward pressure, he forced her labia open with the pale beeswax candle.

"Then I'll wait." But she was quivering slightly, the insinuating penetration, the tangible gliding pressure of the candle on her clitoris detonating tiny sparks of carnal lust.

"No need to wait," he murmured, conscious of her heated response, the sleek progress of his makeshift dildo potent evidence of her irrepressible passions. She was slippery wet, her body receptive, eager for sex. "I saw a nun in an oratory once-doing this-putting a candle deep inside her ... up to here," he softly added, forcing the candle delectably deeper, watching Serena's face. "Can you feel it?"

Standing before him, she closed her thighs on the intoxicating sensation, his whispered words echoing in her brain, provocative, tantalizing, as if he knew precisely what he was making her feel.

"Tell me," he murmured.

She couldn't. She was incapable of conjuring words with breathless, lust overwhelming her.

"That nun had dark curls down here," he softly said, "not golden silk like this," he added, gently stroking the damp verges framing her swelling clitoris. His touch was delicate, sensitive, her engorged flesh responding, her breathing accelerating into a light panting rhythm.

"All the altar boys used to hide behind the tapestries and watch her when she'd take advantage of the privacy in the small chapel. She had a beautiful cunt," he murmured. "Turn around, darling." He nudged Serena's hips. "So we all can see you. You're almost ready to come, aren't you? Here ... hold the candle yourself or it's going to fall out." He knew how close she was, how primed, and he smiled faintly at her swift securing grip when he released his hold on the candle.

"There now ... you move it ... push it in a little farther." And leaning forward, he gently kissed her silken mons. Her whimper of pleasure as her yielding flesh absorbed several inches more of the candle sounded delicately erotic in the quiet room. "Show my friends your big breasts," he whispered, reaching up to stroke the weighty undercurve of one breast. "Turn this way so they can see," he instructed, rotating her slightly, his hands on her hips. "We've seen them before, haven't we? Last week behind the altar when you thought you were alone, you undressed, didn't you? Alastair particularly likes your huge breasts. He's never seen any so big. He'd like to touch them-like this...." Beau's voice was husky, low, the fantasy he evoked scandalous, wicked. She was nude, exposed, exhibiting herself before all the covetous boys who wanted to touch her. Beau's fingertips slid over the plump, flaring roundness of her breasts, then slowly circled one nipple. "Would it be all right if Alastair sucked on this hard little tip?"

Eyes shut, Serena shook her head, her body on fire, Beau's voice kindling provocative images, stirring guilt and feverish desire.

"She's shy, Alastair," Beau murmured, squeezing her nipple so hard she half swooned from the staggering pleasure. "She doesn't know you. Maybe later ... after she's come to orgasm a few more times. But remember, she's mine first; I'm going to fuck her first."

She felt his finger trail down her stomach. "Have you ever been fucked by an altar boy?" Beau whispered.

And she came in shameful, shocking response-a wild, turbulent, scorching orgasm so prolonged it left her gasping.

Beau didn't touch her until the last dying flutter had vibrated away and then, sliding the candle free, he pulled her down on his lap and held her close while the delicious heat subsided and the throbbing between her legs slowly eased. After a time her arms slid around his neck and she offered him a languorous, sated smile.

"Were you actually an altar boy?" The bridge between fantasy and reality seemed inexact and confusing.

He shook his head. "Only by association. Some of my friends were; they initiated me into a number of youthful pleasures."

"Are you saying there really was a nun behind the altar?" Bewildered now, she questioned the extent of her naivete.

"More than one." He spoke matter-of-factly, unselfconscious and frank.

"How convenient," she sardonically noted.

He shrugged, recognizing a female tone best left unanswered.

"Did you actually watch them?" she persisted, thinking her life very sheltered in Gloucestershire.

He'd done considerably more than watch in those youthful years. "Sex is a strong focus at that age," he casually replied.

"And it isn't now?"

"You of all people chiding me?" he lightly challenged. "You can't last ten minutes."

"I could," she said in rebuff. "I just don't care to."

"I noticed," he said, the faintest irony in his tone.

"Are you complaining?"

"Au contraire, lollipop. You're every man's dream. But with your libido, I'd suggest you practice with this or its equivalent," he mildly said, indicating the candle he'd set on a nearby table, "because most men won't be able to keep up."

"You set yourself apart?"

"It's just a suggestion," he blandly said, not responding to her jibe.

"Do you often serve as tutor, Rochefort?" she querulously inquired, resentful of his suave amiability that sidestepped any pertinent queries.

"I occasionally have a charitable impulse." His gaze was impudent.

"Perhaps I'm not in need of your charity," she coolly replied, temperamentally opposed to all his former charitable impulses apropos of females.

"You're bashful," he gently mocked.

"No. I simply take issue with all the complaisant students in your past. I don't care to be added to the number. If and when I decide to, er, practice these, ah, solitary amusements, I certainly don't need any help from you."

"You sound so damned prim, it's quite arousing," he murmured.

"An unusual state for you," she dryly retorted.

"We're a perfect match then, aren't we?" he said, his gaze angelic. "And you like it, after all," he went on with a simplicity that couldn't be denied. "Come, darling, consider this an indulgence for me." And rising from the settee over her protests, he carried her to the bed, where he dropped her onto the disarray of pillows. "Shut your eyes," he quietly said.

She stared at him for a heated moment, irresolute, willful, piqued by an incomprehensible jealousy that served no earthly purpose in terms of Beau St. Jules.

"If you really were a nun, you'd always have to do what you're told," he murmured, his voice deep and low. "You'd have to learn obedience; they insist on it-and devotion. So lie back, darling, and enjoy your lesson. We'll start with something simple. Put your hand here," he murmured, drawing her fingertips to her cleft. "Shut your eyes, now ... that's a good girl ... touch this just lightly," he coached, his fingers over hers as he massaged her clitoris. "Press here. Does it feel good?" he softly asked, guiding her fingers so she stroked and exerted just the right amount of pressure.

It did.

He could tell.

"Try it alone now," he whispered, "and think of waiting for me ... of how I'll come to you tonight after evening vespers, when you're supposed to be on your knees in your cell praying. Can you feel the cool tiles and the summer air?

"I slowly take off your habit while you kneel in prayer, your cowl and veil, your apron and gown and petticoat-your skin is pale in the evening light ... luminous. When I let down your hair, you shiver in anticipation; you forget the words to your prayers because you want to feel me inside you. You remember how I feel inside you, hard and thrusting, stretching you, and you begin to rise." His voice changed and his hand drifted slowly downward over Serena's stomach with exquisite tenderness. "But I make you finish. I make you recite every prayer in order and only then can you undress me. You always liked that, didn't you? You touched me so gently, so perfectly, I never could wait. And you'd always smile at my impatience."

An austere convent cell, a young nun tempted by worldly longings, a coltish, passionate St. John heir and forbidden pleasures. The images burned through Serena's blood-rash, reckless cravings like hers, like her constant need of him.

"You loved her, didn't you?" she said, her eyes open, direct. His tone, the faint shift in verb tense had been revealing.

Horror showed in his eyes and, drawing back as if he'd been struck, he precipitously came to his feet.

His heart was beating like a drum as he strode to his liquor table, ghastly memories flooding his mind. He hadn't realized what he was saying. He hadn't dreamed of Caitlin in years. What a fool he'd been to have spoken so unwisely, he thought, pouring himself a large brandy. The associations, the words, the fantasy-all too thinly veiled-he'd been careless, foolhardy.

Watching the brandy slowly fill the glass, he felt the lacerating pain again and the old anger, the incorrigible, perverse anger he'd never been able to resolve.

How long ago it seemed when he'd first seen Caitlin walking in the convent garden with Sister Mary Martha. But unlike Mary Martha, who'd fueled all his friends' fantasies with her private carnal urges, Sister Claire was utterly chaste.

But he'd wanted her desperately-with a young boy's heedless indiscretion. He'd sent her notes and left her flowers, bought her jeweled prayer books she couldn't keep and had frantically returned. He'd been stubborn in his pursuit, however, relentless. Although none of it would have mattered had not those irrepressible vestiges of the sensual Caitlin Garrick from Ulster still existed beneath Sister Claire's hard-won piety. And one warm summer night when he was fifteen, she'd succumbed to him.

"You're spilling," Serena quietly said.

Her voice broke his disturbing reverie and he looked at the pool of liquor spreading over the polished cabinet top. "Christ," he muttered, reaching for a shirt tossed on a nearby chair.

"I'm so sorry," Serena apologized. "I shouldn't have asked."

"It's not your fault." Quickly mopping up the spill, Beau tossed the wet shirt into the washbasin. "It's other people's fault. Would you like a drink?" His voice was emotionless.

When she shook her head, he picked up the bottle and returned to the bed. Settling back against the footboard, he distanced himself on the modest dimensions of the mattress, careful not to touch her when he stretched out his legs. And then he proceeded to drink his extremely full glass of brandy without further conversation.

The silence was rife with disquietude.

Some time later as he began refilling his glass again, Serena said, "I don't suppose you want to tell me about her."

"There's nothing to tell. She died," he said in a caustic murmur. Recorking the bottle, he tossed it aside. No religion was worth such a sacrifice, he bitterly thought. He'd loved her and she'd loved him.

But that hadn't been enough when the abbess had discovered them.

She'd hung herself that night without a word to him, without caring that he loved her with all his youthful heart.

Swearing under his breath, he lifted his glass to his mouth and drained it.

"Would you rather be alone?" Serena's gaze was replete with sympathy.

"God no." He exhaled softly. "I think you must remind me of her somehow. Your eyes, I think ... She had blue eyes like yours that shone green in certain lights. Are you sure you don't want a drink? Some Champagne ... or wine? I could use a drinking companion about now."

"Then I'll have some Champagne."

"Good," he said with a kind of earnest relief, leaning over to retrieve a Champagne bottle and glass set beside the bed earlier. "Jesus, I detest melancholy." He preferred the amnesiac oblivion he'd constructed eight years ago.

"Then you might want to consider the speed with which you're drinking. Papa was plagued with melancholy after a bottle of brandy."

Disagreeing with a shake of his head as he uncorked the Champagne, he said, "Liquor generally cheers me." He smiled faintly. "At least until my fifth bottle."

"I don't think I'll try to keep up."

One dark brow quirked intuitively and she decided he was regaining some of his normal insouciance.

"You keep up very well, Miss Blythe," he lazily replied, offering her a glass of Champagne.

"Thank you, Lord Rochefort. My maman always said a lady should endeavor to please."

"Very astute guidance," the Earl of Rochefort benevolently murmured. He raised his glass to her and dipped his handsome head in salute. "To forgetting," he softly said.

And some lengthy time later when recall of the cheerless afflictions in their pasts had been mitigated by one bottle of Champagne and two of brandy and the door that had accidentally opened into Beau's psyche had been slammed shut once again, when their mild alcoholic bliss had evolved into a luxurious exploration of sensuality, Serena found herself seated astride Beau's hips, thoroughly impaled, shuddering from the bewitching ravishment, and she lightly touched his dark, crisp hair where it met her paler curls. "Mine," she said, looking down at him, winsome, infatuated, a young maiden awash in pleasure.

Unaccountably, he thought her charming, although two bottles of brandy may have tempered his judgment. And more unaccountable yet, he slid a finger delicately over her dewy wet cleft and softly murmured, "Mine."

He didn't mean it, he would have said had some voice of reason called him to account. But no such voice did in the midst of the winter gray Atlantic a hundred miles offshore. And Miss Serena Blythe, so recently released from a long bereavement in durance vile, couldn't be expected to experience less than heady, dizzying bliss. Beau St. Jules was, after all, renowned for his competence.

And the next time she came to climax, he met her release, pouring into her unchecked, each spasm jolting, acute, the world reduced to the minutiae of riveting sensation in the familiar, safe landscape of carnal physicality he preferred. His eyes were shut, his body sheened with sweat, a tidal wave of feeling draining from his body with each convulsive stroke.

A sudden sharp knock on the door jarred his senses.

Softly swearing, he refocused his concentration, recapturing his feverish rhythm, sliding back into his heated orgasmic nirvana.