A reluctant laugh escaped Abigail. "You are mocking me, sir."

He lifted his arm and slanted a look at her. "Not at all. You will forgive a sudden sense of vulnerability on my part. It's not every day that a man bears his all for a lady's private schooling."

A twinge of reality intruded on her pleasure. "I am not a lady, Robert."

He reached out a long, tanned finger and flicked her nose. "You are a lady, Abigail, from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. And I am here to give you pleasure."

"What about your pleasure?" She trailed a hand down his chest, a muscled, contoured belly, and grabbed the root of their discussion.

"Get on with your studies, Miss Abigail, else you lose a student."

Abigail scooted down the bed. And was distracted by the sight of the angry red scar on his thigh. She lightly touched it with her left hand.

"Does it still hurt?"

His gray eyes were unreadable. "That's not part of the lesson plan, Miss Abigail."

"You were limping last night."

"Because I fell on it when the bloody horse threw me. Continue with your studies."

Abigail obligingly studied the swollen shaft that sprang out from a bed of black, curly hair. It seemed impossible that he had fit inside her. "Have you ever measured yourself?"

"You're putting me to blush."

"The head is purple." She ignored his sally. "It is very large, like a small fist. It has an eye." She captured the single drop of moisture that glistened on the tip and smeared it over the swollen glans. "And it weeps. Is it sad, Colonel Coally?"

"Very, Miss Abigail." Robert's voice was strained. "Why don't you kiss it and make it better?"

Abigail leaned down and touched her tongue to the purple-hued bulb. "You tastesalty, sir."

"You cannot judge the flavor by a single taste. Take it between your lips."

Robert knew exactly what he tasted likejust as Abigail did. Yet he was as entranced by this play between a man and a woman as was she.

Grasping the stalk of his penis in both hands, she pulled it taut so that she could take the crown of him fully in her mouth. And re-tasted him for flavor.

"You still taste salty, sir."

Robert's breathing quickened. "Perhaps you are mistaken you should try again. Taste made in haste is not a good method by which to judge."

"Perhaps. But only if you tell me if you have ever measured yourself."

"Never."

"Then I shall do so." She spanned the length of his manhood with her fingers. They fell short of the purple-hued crown. "My fingers spread six incheshere. If I take my other hand and spread it out, so, then I spannine inches, Colonel Coally. When next you go into battle, you can not only astound your enemy with your chameleon properties, but you can also intimidate him with the size of your great lance."

The mattress shook with Robert's laughter.

"But you have yet to determine whether it does indeed change color, Miss Abigail."

"How do you suggest I test that, Colonel Coally?"

His laughter stopped.

"By suckling me, Abigail. As hard and as deep as you can take me."

Abigail cradled him between her handsthe purple-hued crown throbbed. "But I did that last night, Colonel Coally. Today I want to do something else."

A half-smile formed on his lips. "Your fantasies, Miss Abigail."

She gently rubbed the thick shaft between her palmsand imagined him all alone on the eve of battle. "Do you ever touch yourself?"

"Do you?"

The rain echoed softly inside the cabin.

Abigail swallowed her fear and uncertainty at confessing what no respectable person did, let alone admit. "Yes."

"I think we all do. The only problem in the field is finding privacybut sometimes even that doesn't matter."

"Show me how you touch yourself."

It could have been a blush on Robert's cheeksthe light was too dim and his skin too dark to be certain. The thought that he could still be rendered as vulnerable as she warmed herand fired her determination. "You said everything, Robert."

Closing those dark eyelashes, he reached down and cupped his hands over hers. "Rub me between your handslike this."

Abigail's hands were sandwiched between heat and friction. She quickly learned the motion, varied the motion, until he took his hands away and he was all hers.

She could feel his readiness through his body, drawn as tautly as a pulley. See it in the stomach that corded and strained for release.

Suddenly the bulbous head grew a deep burgundy. Even as she watched, marveling at the change that was occurring, it throbbed and shot up a geyser of white fluid. At the same time, a groan worked its way past Robert's throat.

The sound drew Abigail's attention. Robert's eyelids were squeezed shut and his lips pulled back from his teeth as if he were in the throes of agony. Slowly his features relaxed into an expression of utter peace.

His black lashes lifted.

Abigail stared into the depths of those stark gray eyes that had seen too much death and pain and wanted to give this man…everything.

Reaching out a finger toward his stomach, she touched the mound of warm, white fluid there.

His essence.

Last night it had shot up inside her.

"So, do I change color, Miss Abigail?"

Abigail thought of him, inside her, doing all of the wonderful things she had just witnessed. And felt tears clog her sinuses.

"Oh, yes, Colonel Coally."

His gray eyes were too intense. Just when she thought she would laugh or cry or do something else entirely uncalled for if he continued to stare at her so, the skin around his eyes crinkled.

"Lance, Abigail?"

"Do you prefer a different name, Robert?"

"Prick."

Hot color flooded Abigail's face at the explicit word that she had only ever been exposed to in print. "Battering ram."

"Cock."

"Jacob staff."

Robert threw his head back and laughed in that purely masculine, uninhibited way of his. "Wherever did you learn such phrases? Never mind. Your erotica. You were quite enraptured when I peeked through the window last night. What were you reading about?"

Before Abigail could reply, Robert crawled over her and stood up on the floor.

She watched the sway of his testicles with interest as he leaned over the foot of the bed. They were rather hairyand oddly touching; man at his most vulnerable. And exposed.

He was all too aware of her interesthis gray eyes, when he turned around, glinted. He held up a copy ofThePearl.

"Is this the one you were reading?"

"What number is it?"

"Twelve. Do you have them all?"

She flipped the quilt over her naked body. "Yes."

He flipped the quilt away from her. "Come over to the window."

She gazed at the front of him. He had gone from limp to hard. "Why?"

"I want you to read to me."

Abigail's mouth dropped open. "Absolutely not."

"Ashamed, Abigail?"

She closed her eyes against the truth. Shewas ashamed. That she had desires. And pursued those desires.

She opened her eyes. "No, I am not ashamed. Merely feeling very vulnerable. It's not every day that a woman shares her secret life."

Robert's dark face hardenedshe could imagine that look on his face before he killed. Without warning, he reached down and grasped her hand in his, his skin hard where hers was soft, calloused where hers was smooth.

For a second she felt trapped. And knew that he, too, was trapped by the desires that, for however long the storm lasted, were neither his nor hers, but theirs.

He pulled her across the bed and up to her feet.

"Go stand by the window No, the other window."

Abigail skirted the cupboard and stood uncertainly in front of the surviving window on the opposite side of the door. The open curtains offered neither warmth nor concealment.

Robert deposited a chair in front of the window. "Sit down."

Abigail primly sat down with her back toward the light. The wood was cold and hard against skin that was flaming hot and achingly sensitive.

Robert dropped a pillow onto the floor, then dropped down on his knees in front of the chair. He held out the journal.

"Turn to the page you were reading when I walked in on you last night."

She flipped through the pages. The murky light penetrating the window blurred the print, as if the only thing real in the room was her… and him.

"Have you found it?"

"Yes."

"Start reading exactly where you left off. But first tell me what happened before, so I can follow the story."

She cleared her throat. "The story is called 'La Rose D'Amour; Or the Adventures of a Gentleman in search of Pleasure. Translated from the French.' The man, Louis, is forming aa harem of women, and he has kidnapped Laura, a virgin. When I stopped reading, he was in the process of persuading Laura of the pleasures to be had if she travels with him and allows him to deflower her."

Robert leaned closer, cocooning her in his body heat. A single drop of desire bridged her knee and his manhood. "How was Louis persuading Laura?"

Abigail inhaledsmelling him, smelling her. And stared into his stark gray eyes mere inches away from her own. "He had his finger in her cream jug."

The expected laughter did not appear, only a blazing heat that took her breath away. Holding her gaze, he grabbed her hips and pulled her forward in the chair until her buttocks were draped over the edge of the seat.

Gasping in surprise, she dropped the journal and grabbed the sides of the wooden seat.

He promptly picked up the journal. Prying her right hand free of the chair, he clasped her fingers around it. "Read, Abigail."

It was one thing for Robert to be aware of her collection of erotica; it was an entirely different thing to read it aloud.