He rested his hand on her thigh, giving her a moment to prepare, and then she watched while that big, knowing hand slid inside her wrapper and came to rest over her breast.

Through the cotton of her nightgown, she felt warmth from his touch and a coursing sort of lightness through her body. Jasper had been so rough, grabbing at her as if he were testing the ripeness of fruit at a shop of questionable quality. He’d hurt her dignity as well as her body, and for the first time, Hester could feel directly the residual anger his mistreatment of her had left behind.

Thoughts of Jasper evaporated as Spathfoy’s hand closed gently on her breast. “Breathe, love. If you faint, I want it to be from pleasure.”

His arrogance again, but what a lovely way to be arrogant. She wasn’t angry at that moment; she was instead grateful to share a bed with Spathfoy, grateful for his confidence and even his arrogance.

Hester put her hand over his, the better to experience the sensations he gave her. As she drew in an unsteady breath, their hands rode the lift and fall of her chest.

How… marvelous. She breathed again and let her head fall back, surrendering the timing of this education to him. He closed his free hand around the hand she’d let drift to her side and brought her palm to rest over his genitals.

Another circle, a circle of pleasure, trust, and desire. She did not open her eyes, but traced her fingers along the warm, smooth length of his member. Jasper hadn’t allowed her this either, not the luxury of time to explore, not the gracious sharing of bodily knowledge.

Another increment of Hester’s ire dissipated as Spathfoy drew her fingers over the crown of his erection, the skin so oddly smooth. “I’m most sensitive here,” he said, “but I can’t imagine a way you could touch me that wouldn’t bring pleasure.”

She was to pleasure him, which opened up universes of possibilities, wonderful, daring, bold… The trust went both ways. This was a revelation of such magnitude, Hester had to scoot down and hide her face against his chest. He let go of her breast and encircled her shoulders with his arms.

Hester straddled him, and between their bodies, closed her fingers around the hard shaft of his membrum virile. She knew the proper name for that part of him. Tye could probably tell her a dozen terms for it, each naughtier than the last.

“Hester?”

“I’m all right.” She was so much better than that. Edges inside her mind grown jagged with self-doubt and recrimination were being smoothed over; places in her body left aching with regret were easing.

And she still hadn’t even taken off her nightgown. She lifted off his chest and shrugged out of the wrapper, feeling the fabric fall down her bare arms in a sensuous caress.

He lay on his back, resplendently naked by candlelight, resplendently erect, simply watching her. His gaze on her body was another caress, but she lacked the courage to be as exposed as he was.

Spathfoy apparently understood this. “Come here.” He held up one arm, implying that she was to cuddle against his side. She went willingly, though when he hiked her knee across his thighs, she was taken a little aback. “For such a bold woman, you are surprisingly shy, Hester.”

He sounded puzzled rather than disapproving. Just when she thought they might get into a contest of vocabulary—comparing “shy” and “reserved” for example—he shifted so her leg was hiked up over his hip, and he was on his side, looming over her while she lay mostly on her back.

How had he done that?

He peered down at her. “But not too shy.”

She didn’t bother forming a reply. Instead she drew her fingers along the architecture of his jaw, caressed the strong bones and lean muscle that created a sense of resolution and strength in his countenance. He caught her hand, kissed her palm, and set her fingers on his chest.

And his mouth on hers.

Kissing him was a relief of tremendous magnitude. When he settled his lips over hers, Hester felt as if a current ran between them, everywhere they touched. A current that had been damming up inside her body since she’d first laid eyes on him.

And perhaps in his body as well.

He was good at this. He could kiss and go plundering with his hand at the same time. Into her hair, to anchor her head on the pillow, down her arm, to squeeze her fingers gently, and then up her rib cage to… there.

Through the fabric of her nightgown, he teased her nipple to an aching peak, then covered the fullness of her breast with his hand. She moved into the caress, used her leg around his hips to pull herself closer to him, confident in the knowledge that her desire was a precious, wonderful thing to him. On that liberating thought, she hitched closer still.

And felt his erection against her belly.

“Kiss me, Hester.”

She needed the reminder, because his intimate flesh was that distracting, that fascinating. She opened her mouth for him, welcoming his questing tongue, savoring him, and letting him tease her into exploring his mouth as well. When he pulled back and grazed his nose over her eyebrows, she fisted a hand in his hair and manually ordered him to resume his attentions to her mouth.

He smiled against her lips, a lovely sensation, but one that suggested he wasn’t as absorbed in what they were doing as she was. Hester ran her hand down his torso and closed her grip around his shaft.

Only to feel his hand on her bare torso.

“My nightgown—” Somehow, he’d untied the bows down the front.

“Hush. Kiss me.”

He plied her breast with exquisite focus, even as his mouth tried to distract her from those breathtaking sensations of pressure and want—and pleasure. She shifted her hold of him while he peeled her fingers loose from his member and set them on her own breast. Was the skin on the underside of her breast as soft as the crown of his male part? What that what he was showing her?

“Tiber—”

His touch delved lower, until he was teasing his fingers through the curls shielding her sex. She gave up on speech altogether, gave up on trying to figure out how she ought to touch him, gave up on thinking.

“Part your legs a little for me.”

She did not give up on listening, but had to push back a wave of self-consciousness to comply.

“Yes.” He set his palm over her sex, which should have been an act of dominion, except it wasn’t. His hand brought warmth and a vague sort of relief, but frustration too.

Even when she said not a word, he heard her body’s needs. This time when he kissed her, there was nothing coy or teasing about it. He consumed her with his mouth, using his tongue to set up a slow, sinuous rhythm Hester felt beneath the pit of her stomach.

“Move for me, Hester.”

He glossed his fingers over her sex, his touch delicate and yet assured. The touch came again, slightly different, higher. Jasper hadn’t touched her like this, hadn’t done more than pummel her body with his own while he told her to hold still and be quiet.

She could not hold still; she had to move against that knowing male hand. Her hips flexed, and Spathfoy growled into her mouth. “Yes, like that. Again.”

As he fell silent, Hester felt music start up in her body. With his hand and his mouth and even the pressure of his chest along her side, Spathfoy started a drumbeat of wanting in Hester’s veins that ran hotter and hotter while his fingers kept up the same steady, teasing caress.

She should be touching him; she should be asking him what all this was in aid of; she should be… breathing.

The last was all Hester could manage. Though she knew the bed was solid beneath her, she felt behind her closed eyes as if she were suspended over some great chasm, her balance no longer her own but entirely dependent on the man touching her so intimately.

“Let go, Hester. I’ve got you.”

Let…?

Her body understood. When pleasure coalesced into convulsions of soul-scorching ecstasy, she clung to him, flailed herself hard against his hand, and felt him slip two long, male fingers deep into her heat.

Bliss and bliss and more bliss deluged her, and he moved those fingers to ensure the flood did not recede until Hester was panting, her fingers manacled around his wrist, her body a foreign and thoroughly pleasured feminine territory she’d never inhabited before.

He understood about this part too, for which Hester nearly loved him. He did not slip his hand free of her body, wipe it on a handkerchief, and climb on top of her. She could not have protested if he had.

“Hush, now,” he murmured in her ear. He gathered her close, rested his chin on her temple, and trapped her leg between his two. When she pressed her cheek against his chest, she could hear his heart and feel it too. They lay like that, entwined, breathing in synchrony, as feelings rioted through Hester in silence.

Tiberius Flynn was arrogant, but also generous, kind, affectionate, considerate, attentive, and… two more words came to Hester’s mind as she panted against his throat. First, Tye was decent in a gentlemanly sense that one had to be naked with him to understand, and second, he was lovable in the sense that a woman could find many reasons to esteem and desire him greatly.

And the man who’d just given her such indescribable pleasure, and who was holding her so tenderly, was also himself yet unsated. According to Jasper, men needed to spend regularly if dire bad health wasn’t to result, but then, Jasper had apparently known next to nothing.

Oh, how that realization pleased her. She kissed Spathfoy’s breastbone, wishing she could tell him, but lacking the courage. Then, too, there was his male member, hard, warm, and lying between their bodies as a rampant reminder that she had not provided him the pleasure he’d showered on her.