“You diversify,” Vivian said as Bernice stepped around a puddle. “Just as you have already. You excel at it, with your chickens and sachets and… other things.”

“My whoring.” He cocked an eyebrow, looking pleased to have an opportunity to shock her with bad language.

“Your enterprise. I suspect you feel sorry for those women, Darius.”

“Vivian…”

“Don’t scold.” She kept her tone mild, but this aspect of his life bothered her increasingly. “No matter what they pay you, you have to feel a little something for them, or you’d just sell more chickens.”

“Chickens produce only so much income. The ladies pay very, very well, and they cost me nothing.”

“They cost you dearly.”

“I’ll race you to that stone wall.”

He nudged Skunk with his heels, so Bernice cantered more forward as well, and Vivian knew the point he was making: sexual pleasure, or pain, mattered only like a good gallop on a crisp day, nothing more. So she let the subject drop and let the mare have her head for the next half mile, but when she woke in Darius’s bed on Christmas morning and saw a small, wrapped box on the breakfast tray, the cost of Darius’s enterprises with the ladies came to mind again.

She nodded at the box. “Why is that there?” William gave her presents, on their anniversary or her birthday. Little things—a book of old verse, a pair of ear bobs, nothing unique to her, but thoughtful gestures nonetheless.

“Happy Christmas, Vivvie.” He poured her tea and passed it over to her, the same as he had every morning for more than a week. “Open your gift.”

“I thought you told me my gift was hiding under the covers on your side of the bed?”

“You’ve already enjoyed that gift.” He sipped his tea placidly, though there was something… grave about his demeanor, or watchful, so Vivian took a fortifying gulp of tea, passed the cup back to him, and reached for her present.

“This had better not be naughty, or I’ll leave it here, and you’ll be reminded of your…”

Inside the box was a small, elegantly cut glass bottle holding about four ounces of golden liquid. She lifted the stopper and sniffed delicately.

Her nose woke up, and she sniffed again, finding something that started off a little like the scent Darius himself wore—soft, soothing, a little sweet, a little spicy—but then the fragrance took off in a more mysterious direction, carrying notes both floral and spicy in a blend that intrigued and promised and drew interest on a purely sensual level.

“It’s lovely.” She sniffed again. “What is it?”

“I had it blended for you,” he said, watching as she continued to inhale through her nose and consider, then take another little whiff. “The recipe is under the lining, as is the name of the parfumier who blended it for you.”

“You had this made for me?” She was still trying to analyze the fragrance as she frowned and whiffed. “Did it turn out as you’d planned?”

“Scents are tricky.” He set the breakfast tray on the night table. “You think you know what will go together, but then the ingredients react with one another, and with the wearer, and sometimes it turns out better than you planned, but not always.”

“This is fascinating.” She passed him the bottle, and he took a cautious, glancing sniff, held the bottle away, and repeated the move several times.

“It’s what I wanted for you,” he decided, “maybe a little richer.” He tipped the bottle against his finger, then replaced the stopper and set the bottle aside. “Hold still.”

With his wet finger, he touched the sides of her neck then drew a line from her throat to her cleavage.

“We’ll see how it takes on you, assuming you like it?”

“I love it. Thank you very much.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her against his side, and for the moment, Vivian was content to lie against his warmth, the lovely scent subtly spreading over them as they drowsed together.

“I’ll miss you.” Vivian’s words came out without any warning, to her or him, and Vivian felt Darius stiffen beside her.

“Vivian…”

“Don’t Vivian me.” She hitched her leg over his thighs, as if he might toss back the covers to escape her. “I’ve been married five years, and never once has William given me a gift this thoughtful. This personal. I’ve known you two weeks, and you give me this… and frocks, gloves, and waltzes, and… I know, it means nothing to you, but to me…”

“To you?” His face was unreadable, but he wasn’t telling her to hush or to finish her tea, nor was he lecturing her about ices on hot days.

“I was a married spinster—you were right. Not so much in my dress and choice of reading material, but inside, where no one sees. Where no one cared to see.”

“It can’t mean anything,” he said sternly, as if he were reminding himself and hoping it was true.

“Too late, Darius.” She closed her eyes and relaxed against him. “What you think you mean, is that the sexual business means nothing. What you really mean, is you want Darius Lindsey to mean nothing to me. The two are not the same, and you won’t convince me they are.”

He kissed her into submission, gently, slowly, entrancingly, and she let him sweep her away again, because he’d at least let her have her say, and she owed him the fair hearing he was demanding with his hands and mouth and body.

But what was wrong with the man, that he’d try to convince them both such tenderness and caring meant nothing at all?

She bided her time and waited until the night before the New Year to counterattack. By tacit agreement, they now slept together in his bed, and on a few occasions, had fallen asleep without having intercourse. On those occasions, Vivian would wake up to find Darius making love to her sometime in the middle of the night. She had cuddled up with him and let sleep overcome her, because he’d exhausted her once again with final fittings, riding around the property, a rousing argument over the Catholic question, and a long chess match, which she’d won.

When she was sure he’d fallen asleep, she got up, built up the fire, and then gently eased the covers back to reveal Darius’s naked form.

Everlasting God, he was beautiful. The whip marks had faded, leaving only smooth, burnished skin over hard muscle and powerful bones. She knew his body now, knew the scents and textures, the sounds and touches. Tonight, she wanted to know the taste of him.

“Vivvie?”

“Here.” She curled down to rest her head on his stomach, and felt his hand stroking over her hair. Heaven help her, when did his touch create in her the desire to purr? Her hair, her hands, her shoulders, anywhere and everywhere on her body, she wanted his touch and missed it on some level when she didn’t have it.

She curled her fingers over his shaft, and his hand went still.

“Vivvie, no…”

“You hush,” she chided as she touched her tongue to the tip of his cock. “For once, Darius Lindsey, you hush, and you let me.”

His fingers laced through her hair, and Vivian was sure he was going to gently deny her this—deny himself this, more significantly—but then his palm cradled the back of her head, and she heard him sigh.

He said nothing, verbal surrender being too much to expect, and Vivian settled in to explore him with her mouth. He was religious about his personal hygiene and typically bathed before retiring. There was a lingering fragrance of lavender about his person, but something beneath that unique to him, and just as distinctive. Cautiously, Vivian used her tongue to wet the length of him, feeling his erection grow as she did.

When she concentrated her attention on the silky-smooth head of his cock, she felt the jump of arousal in his stomach where it lay under her cheek. She suckled gently, and his fingers tightened in her hair.

“Let me,” she whispered again, rubbing him against her cheek and easing off to stroke the wet length of him with her hand while she held the head of his cock in her mouth.

“You don’t owe me this,” Darius whispered, his voice oddly tight.

“Hush.” She emphasized her command by drifting her fingers over his balls, and he sighed and arched toward her. He liked her hands on him. He’d never said as much, but he’d told her nonetheless, and so she explored him with leisurely thoroughness, using her tongue and lips and fingers to map him over and over again.

His cock was magnificently hard, his hips moving in small, slow undulations when he again attempted to tug her away.

“Darius, no.” She returned to the spot under the tip of his cock and applied a hint of suction. “Let me, please.”

He went still, and she drew on him slowly, feeling arousal coil up more tightly in him, though his hips weren’t moving. She knew his struggle: This wasn’t merely an ice on a hot day, not merely a brisk gallop on a cool morning. There was nothing merely anything about letting himself have pleasure like this.

Holding him carefully in her mouth, Vivian reached over and found Darius’s free hand. She slid it up his torso until his fingers rested over his own nipple, and then she retrieved her hand and wrapped her fingers around the thick base of his shaft again.

The sound he made was low, pained, and soft, but when Vivian began to stroke him, he moved slightly in counterpoint. She caught the rhythm and gradually got her mouth, his hips, and her hand synchronized, until it was as if she could feel his arousal building in her own body.

“Vivvie…”

She neither paused nor sped up, but kept at him with the sort of determined patience he’d shown her time after time. His pleasure was the object of this exercise, and she would neither relent nor show him mercy. She’d learned that from him, that to pleasure another person took discipline and self-sacrifice and genuine caring. When she felt the tension in him drawing impossibly tight, she realized he was holding off, purposely, maybe trying to hold off altogether.