hey reached the end of dinner in forty minutes, a record at Huntington. She rose and withdrew with a significant look his way. Don’t make me wait.

But he did make her wait—she ought to know better than anyone else that he was that sort of bastard. He enjoyed his glass of Armagnac with a smile—and perhaps a leer—on his face, thinking of her willingly spread thighs. He walked up to his apartment imagining the moans of her helpless pleasure. And as he slowly prepared himself for bed, in his head he could already hear her pleading for more.

And more. And even more.

He barely managed to duck a flying hairbrush as he opened the connecting door.

She stood at her vanity table, still in her evening gown, her hair loose, her face screwed in displeasure. “I told you not to make me wait.”

“My goodness.” He laughed. “I didn’t marry just a liar, but also a virago.”

She turned her head away with great, hair-tossing drama. “I am not in an amorous mood anymore.”

“What a thing to tell a man who’s come to make love to you,” he said, stalking toward her. “And why, pray tell, if you were in such an amorous mood, did you keep on your dinner gown?”

“I dismissed my maid before I left for dinner. I was planning to use you for a variety of menial tasks tonight—including brushing my hair, by the way, which I had to do myself, because you were probably out in the gardens staring at big-busted statues.”

He pinned her between himself and the vanity table. “Quite wrong. I was picturing your bust and hoping it would be spectacularly diminutive.”

He gathered her hair to one side so he could press a kiss to her nape. She expelled a whimperlike breath. “Why would you want me to be that flat-chested?”

He kissed her earlobe, delighting in the tremor beneath her skin. “Because I like secrets, the bigger the better—and the size of this secret is inversely proportional to the size of your breasts, my dear, dear Louisa.”

The buttons on the back of her dinner gown presented very little challenge. She watched him in the mirror as he undid every last one of them, her lips parted, her gaze heavy lidded. He extricated her from the gown and started on her corset.

“Where is this mythical bust improver of yours? I’m most anxious to make its acquaintance.”

“This one is built into the corset.”

He had now loosened the corset enough to slip it over her head—and examine its amply augmented interior. “Well done.”

“Thank you—I suppose.”

“Now, if you will allow me to help you out of these petticoats, we will be able to tackle your combination and see just how much you’ve exaggerated.”

“Can’t you see that I am practically concave on top?”

The petticoats slid to the floor. He turned her around. “Promises, promises.”

She bit a corner of her lower lip. “I wish I could tell my mother your enthusiasm concerning my hollow chest. She was quite apprehensive during our ‘talk.’ I do believe she barely restrained herself from suggesting Frederica, who needs no help filling bodices, as a substitute bride.”

He rubbed a finger along the neckline of her combination. “Your mother is proving herself an exceptionally silly woman. Did she manage to tell you anything useful?”

“No. I believe you taught me more about the male anatomy with your walking stick.”

They tittered, she winking conspiratorially at him. He was still smiling when he began to toy with the topmost button on her combination. She was so very pretty with her hair tumbled all about her in fat, bouncy curls, her limpid eyes fixed on him, her gaze on his hand one moment, on his eyes the next.

He, on the other hand, watched only her face. The size of her br**sts was quite irrelevant—what excited him was the transparency of her desire, the depth of her hunger, and the thoroughness of her infatuation.

Her skin, however, was rather exceptionally fine-grained and smooth beneath his fingers. And the expectancy in her eyes, that tinge of nervousness, was most gratifying—she wanted to please him with her body.

With almost a sense of noblesse oblige, he glanced down.

Somewhere in the back of his mind was an almost inaudible voice, reminding him that he had lost his objectivity where she was concerned, and therefore ought to temper his reaction with a healthy dose of skepticism.

But he wasn’t listening. All he heard was the sudden roar of blood in his veins. And all he saw was perfection, sheer, absolute perfection.

Small breasts, yes, but high, firm, and marvelously shaped, with the most beautiful ni**les he had ever seen, rosy and most eagerly erect. His mouth went dry. His hand reached out and caught one nipple, so firm, yet so incredibly soft and satiny.

His heart pounded. His breaths turn ragged. And he became so hard, so fast, he was light-headed with this southward rush of blood.

He looked back at her face. Did he used to plan, step-by-step, a watertight seduction of this miraculous creature? He must have. He vaguely recalled things he meant to do to her, words he meant to whisper in her ears.

But the rawness that had overtaken him made him incapable of such finesse. His hand behind her nape, he yanked her to him and kissed her. Ravaged her. Somewhere inside he knew that such pure devouring was all wrong for a first kiss. But she didn’t seem to mind. Her hands dug into his scalp; her lips fastened upon his as if she were trapped underwater and he the reed that brought her precious air.

Without breaking the kiss, he lifted and carried her to bed. Still without breaking the kiss, he rid her of the combination altogether. Greedily he touched her, incapable of strategy, or even tactics. All he wanted was more. More of her heart-stoppingly smooth skin, more of her intoxicatingly sweet mouth, more of her unbearably supple bottom.

His fingers slipped between her thighs—and the grunt of helpless lust he heard was his own: She was as ready as if he had been preparing her for hours. Days.

The entire Season had been one excruciatingly drawn-out loveplay.

His lips never leaving hers, he touched her in that secret place. She moaned; she writhed; she kissed him with a depate fervor. Then suddenly she was crying out, her body tensing.

A heartbeat later he was deep inside her, filling her with his essence, convulsing with a pleasure that turned him in-side out.

The tremors of his paroxysm lasted and lasted, draining him to the last drop—or so it seemed. Yet he found himself still rock hard, still beside himself with the need to possess the delicious woman beneath him.

He kissed her cheek, her lips, her chin. He did not neglect her throat or her shoulders. And at last he tasted her delicate nipples. The moans he drew from her made him thrust into her with the force of a battering ram.

She gasped.

He forced his lower body to hold utterly still. His unsteady hand caressed her hair; his lips pressed into the tenderness just beneath her jawline. She smelled faintly of flowers, of fresh, dew-covered petals.

“Tell me to stop and I will.” His voice was hoarse, nothing like how he usually sounded.

And his eyes were tightly shut. Dimly he remembered that he’d meant to look his fill of her as he brought her to one trembling peak after another. But the sensations of her person were all he could handle; the sight of it would undo him altogether.

“I never want you to stop,” she whispered, kissing his ear as she spoke, jolting him with another surge of lust. “Never.”

Her hands gripped his arms. Her thighs parted wider beneath him. And dear God, she lifted her hips, as if trying to draw him deeper.

The pleasure of her—he was mindless with it. He invaded her again and again, her whimpers of pleasure a fire in his blood. Her name escaped his throat; he could not stop telling her how exquisite she was and how much he craved her.

When her body tightened voluptuously around his cock, he lost any and all control he might have still possessed. And gave himself up to the most explosive pleasure he had ever known.

• • •

The night was nothing of what Louisa had anticipated—and everything she could have hoped for.

Knowing him, she had prepared herself to be the willing but hapless mouse in a cat-and-mouse game. He would tease and torment her to the limit of her arousal—and probably make her beg for everything along the way: kisses, touches, any kind of satisfaction.

But this unbridled lover who came out of nowhere was so much more gratifying for her vanity.

And the things he said to her. Some of the words she had never heard in her life—and none of them she had expected to pass his urbane lips. So raunchy, dirty, and, well, raw.

So she could drive him out of his mind—and with her puny chest, no less.

She smiled.

She might have giggled a little.

When he pulled away from her, she turned onto her side to snuggle close to him.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, his arm over his eyes.

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” she told him cheerfully.

It had stung at first, and she was still rather sore, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle. Especially not when there were mind-boggling pleasures to be had, such as when he rolled her nipple on his tongue, touched that place between her legs with his finger, and drove into her all at the same time.

She kissed his shoulder. “So... we will do this all night long, right?”

Unless she was very much mistaken, when they’d discussed the Greek folly—the Greek folly public copulation, as she termed it—he had told her that it would be only the beginning of the night. That afterward he was taking her to bed and keeping her there until dawn.

She could see no reason for them not to pleasure each other until the small hours of their wedding tonight.

“Absolutely not. That would be execrably inconsiderate of me.”

She removed his arm from his face. “Not if I want it.”

He opened his eyes. She’d never seen him like this, tousled and slightly glazed, which she found enormously appealing. It made him seem more human, and less like a djinn whose intentions could veer from malice to mischief—and back—in the blink of the eye.

He reached out, slowly, almost reluctantly, to play with a strand of her hair. “Your body is not meant to be abused like that. Not tonight, in any case.”

Pouting, she pushed away from him. But the distance was also meant to give him a far better look at her na**d person. If it worked once...

He exhaled audibly.

She lifted her hair out of the way, so that it would not conceal her bosom. The motion drew her br**sts high and taut. And as he stared, her ni**les tightened.

As if in a trance, he slid a palm across one nipple. She whimpered. He placed it between two fingers and played with it. She moaned.

And now he did what she really wanted: took her nipple into his mouth. The man had a most talented tongue, and wrought unutterable pleasures.

She wrapped her legs around his waist. “You make me willing to do anything with you—and for you.”

Her flattery did not go to waste. The next second he was inside her again, hot and huge. She pulled him in for a kiss, and did not let him go until her pleasure was winding tighter and tighter and she was struggling to breathe.

It was like the sky falling.

Beyond, the stars.

• • •

Felix couldn’t stop touching his wife.

Not lasciviously, and not with the intention to arouse—at least, not at the moment. At the moment it was only for the pleasure of his hand on her skin. He also traced the sweep of a brow, the hollow of a cheek, and the outline of her bottom lip. She kissed him on the pad of his finger, her eyes smiling, but also beginning to close with drowsiness.

“It is not even midnight, Marchioness. Are you already in your dotage?”

“You, sir, obviously know nothing about weddings. I had to get up at the crack of dawn to look worthy of upholding The Ideal Gentleman’s boutonniere, let alone his name.”

“And here I thought you would demand to be made love to at least twice as many times.”

“Who says I won’t? This is just a nap to refresh myself,” she retorted, though her words had become slow and mumbly.

He leaned forward and kissed her on her forehead, her cheek, and the tip of her nose. By the time he had kissed her on her chin, her eyes had closed completely—and his body was stirring anew.

He wanted to nibble every inch of her person, especially the nooks and crannies. He wanted to make her moan and writhe in her sleep. He wanted to repeat yet again the brain-melting pleasure of coming deep inside her.

Not that he would actually do any such thing—the poor girl clearly needed her rest. He restricted his hand to her hair, her arm, and her back, his mind on how he would wake her up at dawn, in a way she was certain to approve.

She shifted.

“Sorry,” he murmured. His stiffly starched cuff might have scraped her slightly.

His stiffly starched cuff? He was still wearing his shirt?

He looked down at himself. He had come to her room in his shirtsleeves and his trousers, and he still had on both—the shirt buttoned, the trousers pushed below his hips, but no farther.

He didn’t know which was more shocking, that he had been in such desperate haste that he hadn’t disrobed, or that he had been in such a state of erotic intoxication that he hadn’t realized.

His c**k twitched, heavy with lust and straining toward her. A moment ago the sight would have amused him, and perhaps even made him smug—he hadn’t been eighteen for ten years, but he was proving he could still get it up half a dozen times a night.

Now, however, the sight bothered him. He pulled up his trousers and shoved his member inside. The discomfort that caused only served to underscore the dismay that was beginning to coalesce in his head.

What had happened?

He’d always intended to fully enjoy every second of his wedding night—but with a certain serenity, as if at the same time he was making love to her, he were also observing the proceedings from a suitable distance.

He clearly recalled the nearly entire hour he’d deliberately whiled away after she’d left the dinner table—he had been cool, calm, and detached. Even after he’d entered her room, he’d retained complete mastery over himself, bantering with her, disrobing her at a most leisurely pace.

He got out of the bed. She made a sound at the loss of his warmth. He pulled the counterpane over her and tucked it snugly around her person.

A sight of her nipples, had that been all it had taken? Did that mean, if he averted his eyes from her bare br**sts in the future, he would be safe from such a comprehensive loss of control?

As he looked down upon her, however, with the counterpane up to her chin and not an inch of skin below her face visible, he couldn’t wait to touch her again. To kiss her. To hear her whisper, You make me willing to do anything.

He took a step back from the bed, then another. He could deal with an occasional loss of control. What he could not countenance, under any circumstances, was this kind of covetousness.

But how had he fallen into this kind of covetousness in the first place?

He gazed at her another moment and extinguished the lights. In his apartment, he pulled on a pair of shoes, shrugged into a jacket, and stepped out the door. The corridors of the manor were dark and silent. He walked without a hand candle, long accustomed to the shadows of his own house.

He meant to work for some time in his observatory, located inside the cupola he’d added to the manor. But all he did was pace back and forth on the roof, his fingers pressed to his temples, an occasional profanity leaving his lips.

He had been The Ideal Gentleman too long, and his success had annihilated his sense of caution. When he couldn’t stop thinking about her after their first meeting, when he began accepting invitations with the specific goal of being in her vicinity, when he persuaded Mr. Pitt to leave town straightaway after receiving his parents’ cable, so he could take the latter’s place at the Tenwhestle dinner that evening—he could have stepped back at any point and seen his idiocy for what it was.

Even if none of those actions had struck him as outlandish and entirely unlike himself, he should have reined to a full stop when he began concocting the scheme of making her his mistress. It appalled him now to think he had formulated, let alone tendered, such a proposal. How had the sheer inanity of the idea not struck him like a bludgeon to the head?

Had he recognized it sooner...

He had. All along, the saner parts of himself had been issuing warnings that it was a terrible idea to fixate on this girl. And all along, doltishly preoccupied with her, he had ignored all the danger signals.

While telling himself that he was only after a bit of perverse fun, as if Captain Ahab had somehow come to the belief that he was only a recreational angler, even as he pursued his obsession all over the seven seas, a harpoon at the ready.

Obsession. He winced at the word, but there was no denying the truth: He had been obsessed for months.

He stopped midstride, horrified. To assuage his conscience and make sure that she was not forced to marry a man beneath her station, all he’d had to do was settle the thousand pounds a year and the house on her, but without the condition that she repay him in bed.

He would not have missed the outlay. She would not have suffered for knowing him. And he would have been free of her.

But the thought hadn’t even occurred to him until now.

Of course not. There was no idiocy bigger than that committed by a man who believed himself the cleverest creature under the sun.

His head throbbed. He didn’t want to stand here, flogging himself until the sun came up. He wanted to go back to his marriage bed and make love to her again, and let her sweet eagerness make everything better.

Dear God. At this juncture, he still wanted to be closer to her.

What was the distance between obsession and love? And how near was he to that disastrous tipping point? Would he wake up tomorrow, look into her eyes, and simply accept his fate?

No.

Why not? asked an insensate part of him. She adores you. The real you.

She does not know the real me, you moron.

A man who wanted nothing had the world at his feet. A man who yearned for something—anything—was doomed to disappointment and heartache.

And he’d had more than enough disappointment and heartache for a lifetime.

He pressed his knuckles into his forehead. He wanted her much too much, but it was not the end of the world. Not yet, in any case. Given time and distance, sexual ardor would cool, both on his part and hers.

Until then, he would stay away from her.