Such striking virility. Even in repose, the length of his penis was formidable. Aroused, he would bea tiny flutter raced up her spinemonstrous. His legendary reputation was well deserved.

"You're all fucking crazy," he growled. "And yes, jumping fifteen feet to the ground leaves a bruise or two, not to mention your guards who are none too gentle."

"Why not agree to my proposal and be done with this?" She gestured at his bindings.

"Because I'm not inclined to suffer capture docilely. Your deranged husband will rue the day he chose me as stud for his dynasty."

"Then we might as well get on with this," she said with a repressed sigh.

"You forget there are some things your husband can't control," he snapped. "I'm not in the mood for sex."

"Then shut your eyes and pretend you're somewhere else," she noted, in parody of his earlier remark. "I'll take care of everything else."

"Good luck," he curtly said.

But when she unclasped the jeweled closures of her robe and slipped it from her shoulders, he found himself drawn to the glorious sight despite his raging anger, regardless of the bindings cutting into his wrists and ankles. Her husband must have had her vetted before marriage, he thought, for her sumptuous body was perfectionevery depiction of Venus from antiquity to the present outdone by the flaunting pride of womanhood before him.

He swore under his breath, the term "compromising position" advancing front and center in his mind, and he wondered how long he'd be able to control himself. It would take an impotent saint to withstand such blatant sexuality. And sainthood had always eluded him.

"I have instructions to see that you come in me twice a day during this month-long hermitage," she murmured, walking toward the bed. "I hope it won't be too arduous for you," she went on, a half-smile forming on her mouth as his erection came to life. "Apparently not," she sardonically noted.

Her demented husband understood lust at least, even though his other sensibilities were suspect, Hugh thought. He knew his nude wife would be irresistible. Now what the hell was he going to do?

As if logic and reason had a chance against rapacious desire. As if deductive analysis would serve as a reliable restraint in the next few minutes.

Squaring her resolve, the princess knew she must do what she must do. In sending her to England, her husband had taken added measures to see that she obeyed him; her mother was hostage at her husband's court. She must submit to his commands. "I'm as resentful as you," she said, moving onto the bed, kneeling beside him. "Neither of us wish to be here… so this should be"she exhaled softly"interesting."

"Do you play the whore for him often?" the marquis maliciously drawled.

She slapped him so hard, her fingers left red welts on his face.

"Touchy, are we?" he sarcastically murmured, the taste of blood in his mouth.

"You don't know anything, Crewe, about man's inhumanity to man. And until you do, I'd suggest you reserve judgment on others. Now I'm going to have intercourse with you and I expect you'll enjoy it whether you want to or not. Consider this your first lesson in the realities of life."

Having spent three years in India, he'd seen misery on a grand scale, but he supposed the princess wasn't in the mood to compare life experiences. "Perhaps someday, I'll be able to return the favor," he coolly said, "in terms of showing you the realities of life."

"I doubt that. At the end of a month, we'll never see each other again."

"Don't count on it," he brusquely muttered, vengeance burning through his brain. "I don't plan on walking away from this, no matter what you and your crazy husband want. This won't be over in a month."

"I'm not here to argue with you."

"No, you're here to fuck whomever your husband tells you to fuck," he viciously replied.

"You don't understand."

"A slut is a slut."

"While your libertine ways arewhatmasculine prerogatives? Why don't we see how virtuous you can be, how righteous and unsullied," she murmured, leaning forward to trace a gentle finger down his chest. "Will you resist temptation? Can the profligate Marquis of Crewe say no?"

He twisted in his bonds, trying to avoid her touch, but her hands lay warm on his flesh, her plump breasts quivered before his eyes and when she purred, "Gossip says a night with you ruins women for other men. Why not show me that splendid… expertise?" she dulcetly breathed. Bending low, her breasts brushed his arm, seared his senses, the silken pressure of her pliant flesh reminding him that she was pliant… everywhere, and if not exactly willing, receptive. "You can refuse me, of course," she whispered, lightly cupping his testicles with one hand, the fingers of her other hand closing around his penis.

He tried to recall every repugnant image, every gruesome picture in his memory, he tried counting in German, mentally recited the alphabet in Greek. But the pressure and rhythm of her fingers slowly increased, her scent accosted his senses, her warm body half covered his, and in brief moments, he was in heated rut, his erection rock hard, lust pulsing through every nerve and muscle in his body.

"I don't suppose you're saying no… with this," she whispered, tracing a delicate path around the swollen crimson crest of his penis. "You must set records."

"Like you," he rudely retorted. "Have you found stripping naked has predictable results?"

"It depends on the man," she flippantly replied. "Or do you prefer a single style of woman?" She knew better; the only thing Crewe preferred in a female was availability.

"I'd prefer to be untied," he ground out.

"But then I'm not witless. The only freedom you're allowed is with this deliciously rampant penis. Do you think you might be interested in putting this"she lightly squeezed the pulsing tip"inside me?"

"No," he said through clenched teeth, his refusal taking every shred of willpower at his command.

"Youseem interested," she murmured, dipping her head to brush a flickering caress over the distended head.

He groaned, every muscle taut with restraint.

"Such self-control, Crewe. Your vicar would be proud. Perhaps I'll have to exert myself more. Can you feel this?" Her closed fingers slid downward again, her grip tightening, the pulsing veins of his erection graphic in high relief as his penis reared higher. His breath caught in his throat and he arched his back against the exquisite sensation. "Damn you," he grunted.

"And damn you, Lord Crewe. But then, this isn't an amorous interlude," she murmured, her fingers sliding up his erection, "so we needn't like each other at allonly procreate. Something you're very good at." She watched his arousal swell larger, disturbed by her own flaring desires, irritated that she could be aroused, that the throbbing between her legs was immune to his venom.

She should thank him, she supposed, for making it so easy, for being so virile and male, for exciting some sordidly voracious need she didn't realize existed. Such pulsing anticipation was reminiscent of her youth when the first, tremulous stirrings of carnal urgency, inexplicable and illicit, had overwhelmed her senses. She hadn't felt like that for a very long time, the men in her life no more than idle distractions.

"When this is over, I'm going to find you both," he panted. "Keep that in mind." Anger pulsed through him with as much vehemence as the lust bombarding his senses, revenge a powerful craving.

"If a child comes of this," she said, suddenly wanting to expedite the proceedings, uncomfortable with her feelings, with feeling anything at all in this hideous drama, "it won't matter what you do. Because it'll be too late," she grimly added, moving to straddle his thighs.

"I'll take the child away," he brusquely muttered, his pulse pounding in his ears.

"Why?" Shocked, she sat motionless on his hard thighs, her green gaze on him. "You never have before."

"Who knows if any of the children are mine with married women?"

"How is this different?"

"You said yourself your husband wasn't interested in women."

She shrugged. "I have many lovers. Does that put your mind at ease?"

He struggled against his bonds, his frustration monumental. "Fuck you," he whispered, his body twisting against the silken cords.

"At last we agree," she murmured, rising on her knees enough to position the crest of his erection on her throbbing labia. "Tell me how this feels," she insolently murmured, taking note his breathing had stopped, her own breath momentarily in abeyance, the exquisite wash of pleasure rippling up her vagina so intoxicating, a moment of pure personal pleasure overrode the repellent coercion.

He suddenly heaved his hips upward and drove into her, his body's responses automatic, necessity, blind instinct operating.

She cried out as he rammed into her, stretched her, thrust so deeply inside, it felt as though he were in her throat. "Oh, God," she breathed, impaled, his enormous erection buried to the hilt, her tissue taut, pulsing, a dizzying delirium burning through her brain.

"And now I'm going to fuck you," he growled, embittered, an unreasoning need for retaliation driving his lower body deeper and deeper, the drumming urgency of both vengeance and orgasmic release a heedless tumult in his brain, the powerful rhythm of his carnal lust forcing her wider and wider until she was gasping, panting, hysterical, frenzied, meeting each surging thrust with a passion as rapacious as his.

It was a mating, pure and simple.

When she first climaxed, he swore, and when she climaxed again he called her whore, slut, wanton, but he lived in a world of double standards, and when his orgasm came rushing down, filling her sleek interior with a white-hot river of semen, he forgot deviations of morality, overlooked impropriety and self-denial and ejaculated the blue-blooded sperm so coveted by the lady's husband.