"Sshh." He bent his head and whispered, "Lady Mackintosh is haunting the bottom of the stairs."

She drew back to stare at him. "She isn't?"

The look he threw her spoke volumes. "You don't think I risked climbing that damned creeper just to look romantic?"

His disgusted tone made her giggle.

He hauled her close, smothered the sound with a kiss — a kiss that quickly shifted from practical maneuver to seductive exchange, from light caress to long, slow, explicit invasion.

When he finally released her lips, he murmured, "We'll have to keep quiet."

"Quiet?" she breathed.

He kissed her briefly, demandingly. "Totally and absolutely silent," he confirmed. "No matter what."

The tenor of that last phrase, the words a hot whisper feathering her hungry lips, made it clear he hadn't forgotten his declaration that, this time, she'd scream.

The essential contradiction tightened her nerves, made her wish she could question him, but he was kissing her again, drawing her deeper into the exchange, his arms closing around her.

When he finally paused to let her breathe, she did, and quickly said, "I thought you wanted to talk."

In answer, he took her mouth, her lips, again. His hands wandered over her back, her hips — he drew her tight against him, molded her to him, making it patently clear rational discussion did not feature on his immediate agenda.

Her head was spinning when he drew back from the kiss — purely to deal with the knotted tie of the robe she'd worn over her nightgown. "Tomorrow." He touched the tip of his tongue to the corner of her lips, lightly probing — an erotic little touch that had her breath catching. "We can talk then." He briefly transferred his attention to the other corner of her lips, then captured them fully, making them cling to his.

'Tonight" — his voice was so low, so deep, she wasn't sure she heard so much as felt the words resonating inside her—"we have more important matters to explore."

He kissed her again, his hands moving over her shoulders, sliding her robe away. Arms freed, she reached for him — for his coat. She felt the smile on his lips when he finally consented to notice her tugging and release her long enough to shrug the garment free. She let it fall to the floor, aware that his fingers had fastened on the tiny buttons down the front of her nightgown.

Without letting her free of the kiss, he steered her, the long hard columns of his thighs herding her around and back, step by step, until the backs of her thighs hit the bed. He trapped her there, his legs outside hers, his chest a wall before her. Catching her hands, he drew them down, then releasing them, swiftly drew the halves of her nightgown, now gaping to her waist, over her shoulders and partway down her arms, effectively anchoring them to her sides.

She would have pulled away from the kiss and slipped her arms free, but he didn't let her. Didn't let her retreat from the demanding kiss; instead, he captured her awareness completely by closing both hands about her breasts.

He knew precisely what he was doing, knew how to focus and hold her attention, how to blend the now-familiar sensations evoked by his lips and tongue, by his wicked fingers and hands, into a symphony that built at first along well-remembered lines, then swelled into something hotter.

Something different.

Something wicked and just a touch wild.

That promise of wildness held her absolutely, drew her in, drew her to commit unreservedly to their play. She kissed him back avidly, eagerly, as blatantly voracious as he — his response was instantaneous, a towering tide of heat and urgency that poured through him, and her, and swept them both away.

She could reach as far as his waist; grasping, grabbing, she tugged his shirt from his waistband. He took his hands from her long enough to shrug out of his waistcoat, unbutton the shirt, strip it off, and toss it aside. She didn't wait for him to gather her to him but boldly pressed close, eager to feel his chest against her breasts, all but purring through their kiss as she sinuously rubbed against him, glorying in the raspy friction and the tight tingling that spread beneath her sensitized skin.

His hands closed on her shoulders; the kiss turned incendiary. Her breasts were swollen and hot — as hot as the hard muscles of his chest to which she wantonly pressed them. She sensed a growl in his throat, then his hands dived down her back, his arms pressing her nightgown wide, pushing the garment lower as he ran his hands down her back, blatantly possessive, down over her waist, the small of her back, over the curves of her hips to close, hard and urgent, over the globes of her bottom.

He kneaded provocatively; their lips fused, tongues dueling, not for supremacy but for mutual delight. Then he lifted her; her nightgown slid down her legs as he raised her. He held her tight against him, her naked stomach cushioning his erection; they both clung and gloried in the moment, in the flagrant promise of what was to come, then he tipped her back and they fell on the bed.

Luc kept his lips on hers, trapping her laughing gasp. He grasped handfuls of her hair and held her down so he could ravage her mouth — and take one long moment to savor the feel of her naked and squirming beneath him. He used his weight to subdue her, kissed her long and hard, then swiftly drew back. "Wait."

The hissed whisper echoed through the room. She lay there, wide-eyed, golden curls in bountiful disarray, the soft candelight playing over the even richer bounty of her body, naked and waiting — all his. She watched as he sat and dispensed with his shoes — carefully setting them aside. No thumps. Then he stood and stripped off his breeches, flinging them to join his coat.

He turned back to the bed, and surprised her delicately licking her lips. Her gaze was fixed a long way south of his face. He would have laughed, but didn't dare; instead, he crawled back on the bed, back to her, running his hands slowly up the sides of her bare legs, his mind quickly scripting all that was to come — he would have to keep his lips on hers the entire time.

She started to reach for him, to pull him down to her; he grasped her waist and lifted her. Startled, she would have gasped, but he sealed her lips with his, drank her surprise, then arranged her as he wished. She acquiesced; through their kiss he could sense her curiosity. Her hands touched his shoulders, drifted down his chest as he set her on her knees before him.

He held her there and shuffled forward to sit on his ankles, his spread thighs on either side of her knees. One hand splayed in the small of her back, he pressed her hips to his stomach so his rigid erection throbbed in the valley between her thighs — safe for the moment from her wandering hands.

She seemed fascinated by his chest — he let her explore while he took his own time exploring the wonders of her mouth, the sleekly feminine planes of her back, the decidedly evocative curves of her bottom. He touched her as he wished, knowing when her breath hitched, when her attention refocused on his hands, and on what he was doing. On the soft dew that dampened her heating skin, on the tightness of the pebbled peaks of her breasts that he knowingly brushed to aching hardness with his chest, on the tautness of her stomach when he pressed a hand between them and evocatively kneaded, on the wetness his questing fingers encountered when he speared through her curls and touched her. Opened her, probed her.

All the while holding her lips with his.

When her hips tilted against his hand, when her nails sank into his shoulders, he drew his fingers from her, slid both hands to the backs of her thighs, gripped, and lifted her to him, laying her spread thighs over his, bringing her hips to his abdomen. Instinctively, she grasped his hips with her knees — slowly, he let her down until her knees rested on the coverlet.

She took control of the kiss, surprising him, pressing a burning caress on him, one nothing short of a flagrant invitation. It sank through him, distracting him; she reached down and closed one small hand around him.

His heart stopped, then she eased her hold and caressed, then closed her hand again. Caught, trapped, he let her play, unable to summon the strength to stop her. There was a sense of dedication, of wonder and joy in her touch that snared his jaded mind, that prevented him from cutting short a moment that, given who she was, what she was, was frankly somewhat shocking. How long she held his senses in thrall he didn't know; only when he was aching, throbbing with the need to sink into the haven of womanly warmth that hovered but a few inches above, did he shift his hands, closing them about her hips, taking control of their kiss again.

Or attempting to — she didn't, this time, willingly yield, as she usually did. Instead, she met him, matched him — rather than draw her hand from him, she braced her other hand on his upper chest, and guided his erection to her entrance.

They both held their breaths, forgot to breathe.

The instant her swollen folds enveloped his head, she let go and he surged in — then stopped, and, chest laboring, let her, as she wished, slide her knees farther past his hips and sink, slowly, inch by inch down, taking him in willingly, eyes closed, lips on his, impaling herself on him.

He let her do it; held back the raging impulse to seize her hips and fill her deeply — instead, muscles flickering with the strain of desisting, he savored the gift of her body as she gave it, as she opened and eased about him, sank lower yet, her breath catching in her throat as she realized how high inside her he was.