“I can.” Overwrought was a mere beginning. He left his hand where it was, his fingers drifting over her mons. “Give me a little more time.”

“Kiss me.” She glared at him, clarifying that this was an order, not a request.

“Of course.”

He treated her to a voracious kiss, not like anything he’d given her before. He consumed her, challenged her, teased and demanded and had her mouth clinging to his, even as her hands tried to map every inch of him. She found his nipples, sending a bolt of arousal straight south through his body. She found his buttocks and made him groan with the pleasure of being pulled close where she wanted him close. She kissed him back, to make demands of her own, only to fall utterly still when Ethan caressed her sex with two reverent fingers.

“Oh, holy saints, Ethan…”

He whispered his fingers across damp, intimate flesh.

“What are you doing?” Alice asked, circling his wrist with her fingers.

“Pleasing you, I hope.” He leaned in to kiss her, a soft, voluptuous distraction from the lust raging through him, then shifted to take a nipple in his mouth.

“Ethan, I can’t…” Her chest was rising and falling, but she said nothing more, just panted her desperation.

“Move, love. Move against my hand the way I’ve moved to your touch. Move the way your body wants to. Move toward the pleasure.”

She undulated against his hand, taking long moments to find synchrony with his rhythm, and then she still didn’t seem to know how to go on. Ethan realized she’d never trod this path before and was ignorant of the destination—another reason to shoot the leek-loving Mr. Droopyfield on sight.

Ethan slowed his hand, letting her catch her breath, then abruptly shifted to a fast, light stroke.

“Let it happen.” Ethan’s voice was urgent as he felt the sensations welling in her body. “Let yourself go. Come for me.”

She arched into his hand, hard, repeatedly. She called his name, she dug her fingernails into his wrist, and she didn’t stop until her breath was a harsh rasp and her body was a warm, replete bundle of naked womanhood against his side.

“That’s my lady.” Ethan’s arms came around her, and she clung with surprising strength. His hands stroked slowly over her back, her arms, her shoulders, until Alice’s breathing slowed.

“What was that?” She sounded bewildered, and a touch disgruntled, no doubt out of sorts to think some parcel of knowledge had been kept from her ken.

“I hope it was pleasure.” For him, it had been nothing but pleasure, far eclipsing the lust still throbbing in his body.

“Is that what you feel?” Alice tucked her nose against his throat. “When you…”

“When you bring me off?” Ethan finished for her. He could feel her blushing against his neck. “Probably, or something very like it.” Except he could do it only once, while she could repeat the pleasure endlessly. He wouldn’t inflict that knowledge on her just yet, not when she seemed almost upset by her experience.

“I feel empty,” Alice said on a shuddery sigh. “It was pleasurable, Ethan, profoundly, but now…”

His hold tightened around her protectively. “Now?”

“I feel lonely and worried,” she said. “Like I could have trouble breathing if I let myself. That can’t be normal.” He wrapped his arms around her and cuddled her snugly to his body, offering her comfort, reassurance, and a different kind of pleasure in the secure warmth of his embrace.

“Better?” he asked a few minutes later.

“Better.” She nodded, burrowing against his chest. “So is this what Nick shared with half the demimonde?”

He let her change the subject but felt a spike of exasperation that Nick—dear, bedamned Nick—should join them in the bed.

“Not quite. Physically, perhaps something similar, but emotionally, Nick would not have joined with someone capable of admitting the loneliness.”

So there, Nicholas.

“He’d want a woman to lie?”

“I think the point of the kind of dalliances Nick sought was for everybody to lie, to pretend such matters could be undertaken only superficially.”

“God above.” Alice paused in an exploration of his collarbone with her tongue. “What a lot of poppycock. I’ve never done anything so intimate and lovely and overwhelming in my life. I could not abide the thought of sharing such a thing with a near stranger.”

And that is a large part of why I love you.

“I thought I could. I was wrong.” That he could say so to her was another part.

He held her to him, treasuring the feel of her naked body in his arms, until Alice levered up and speared him with a look.

“I want you in my mouth.”

“I beg your pardon?” She was already shifting up and across him, intent on her goal. She curled up at his side, her cheek resting low on his belly.

“No sass from you, Ethan Grey. We have talked about this, and I have kissed you here.” She took his erect cock in her hand. “Fair is fair. There’s such a lot of room in this bed, too, we shouldn’t let it go to waste.”

Ethan didn’t even have time to be thankful he’d bathed earlier, before Alice’s lips were closing over him.

His hand tangled in her hair. “You don’t have to do this. It isn’t a ledger account, to keep balance or score.”

“Hush,” she admonished, gently cupping his testicles.

They had discussed this on one of Alice’s scholarly tours of his body; they’d discussed it as something beyond naughty, and moved on to less fraught topics.

“Naughty” and “don’t stop” collided again in Ethan’s mind as Alice gained confidence in her welcome. She explored him carefully and thoroughly, and tried different touches and approaches, until she found the combination that had Ethan’s hips slowly undulating.

“Sweetheart”—Ethan’s voice was urgent—“I’m close… Too close.”

She sealed her mouth around him and sent him past too close to that realm where reason and restraint were dim memories. His body bowed up, and she plied him with ruthless devotion until he was panting and spent, his only movement the caress of his hand in her hair.

“Everlasting… powers.” Ethan wanted to gather her up, to tug her back over him, like a blanket, like a comforting lemony blessing, but he was simply incapable. Alice remained where she was, nuzzling his parts as she cradled him in her hand.

“Easy,” Ethan cautioned. “I’m… sensitive. No sudden moves, please.”

Alice shifted, sitting up and reaching for the glass of water on the night table. “I was sensitive too. I wanted to cry.”

He smiled at her admission, misdirected though it was. She offered him the glass when she’d had her fill, and he took it, pleased at the small sharing. When she set the glass aside, she tucked herself against him without him having to ask, and his gratitude for that assumption—that they would want to hold each other—nearly did make him cry.

“So this was my warning shot?” Alice asked, her hand once again finding his flaccid penis. She held him gently, though not in a casual way either.

“In what sense?” Ethan liked that she touched him this way, loved it, in fact. There was reassurance in the gesture of insecurities he hadn’t known he still had.

“Tomorrow night, you’ll come to me again, and it will happen all over, but we’ll be… joined.”

“I pray to God that’s so. Having second thoughts?”

Alice gave his cock an admonitory little tug. “Hush with that question, or I’ll make you stand in the corner.”

“But you’ll spank me first, won’t you? I’ve been very naughty.”

“You are the furthest thing from naughty, but I think you’d like this spanking, wouldn’t you?”

“Any touch from you would be to my liking.”

She climbed over him, and while he missed the feel of her fingers around his cock, Ethan enjoyed the press of her breasts against his chest.

“Don’t be shy.” He caressed her bottom, shaped the smooth, warm female wonder of her. “Cuddle up.”

“I’m not…” Alice frowned against his chest. “I’m untidy.”

“You want a handkerchief? Or would you instead let me feel this luscious untidiness that follows when a woman is well pleased in bed?” He patted her bottom again, a more businesslike affection that urged her down against him.

“Naughty, naughty, naughty.” Alice sighed, easing her hips down. Ethan bumped up, letting her feel the softening mass of his penis against her damp sex. A body kiss, a cozy, intimate kiss of parts that made Ethan ridiculously happy.

“With you, I’m the friendly sort,” he said, sweeping her braid down her back. “And I like to feel you near me.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” Alice said, stifling a yawn. “I don’t mean to be rude, but my eyes are heavy.”

“Go to sleep, love.” Ethan kissed her temple. “I’ll be gone by morning, but back tomorrow night.”

“I shouldn’t,” Alice protested as Ethan felt her lashes sweep a butterfly kiss to his chest.

“You should. Sleep in my arms, Alexandra, and dream of me, for I will certainly dream of you.”

While she drifted into the arms of Morpheus, he was a long time holding her and considering what it meant to love a woman for the first time in more than thirty years on earth. He’d wanted to love his wife, tried to talk himself into believing lust and initial infatuation could mature to something more. He’d wanted to fall in love, to find someone to whom he could entrust his heart, his future, his children.

Well, he had the children, and now he had a woman to treasure and cherish and intimately appreciate. It was enough; it was more than he’d hoped to have when he’d consigned himself to marrying Barbara—so much more—and it was enough.