“Spath—Tiberius?”

“Tye.”

“Are you all right?”

* * *

“I’m fine.”

Tye silently chided himself for having graduated from dissembling to outright lying. “Just catch your breath, hmm?” He buried his nose in her silky hair and wondered when a plan to scare her back into possession of her common sense had transformed into a burning need to cover her naked body with his own.

And when had that plan—perhaps understandable, if not excusable under the circumstances—shifted to a craving to bring her pleasure and comfort?

“But this?” She brushed her fingers over the head of his erection. “It can’t be very comfortable.” She let go of his cock but smoothed her hand down his chest and lapped at his nipple—for God’s perishing sake.

He caught her hand in his own and brought her knuckles to his mouth for a lingering kiss. Where the resolve to leave the bed, pour himself a drink, and make light of the situation ought to be, he found a stubborn unwillingness to hurt her feelings to quite that degree.

She hadn’t been a virgin, and yet she was still an innocent.

A passionate innocent, and Tye was only a human man.

He wrapped her hand about his cock, and then set his hand around hers. “This way, nobody risks conception. Every schoolboy becomes proficient at it if he isn’t to lose his reason.”

He fell silent, the pleasure of her hand on him eclipsing his ability to explain. She wasn’t shy either, accepting the firmness of the grip he preferred and giving him the exact rhythm he demonstrated.

And she had the knack of slipping her hand over the head of his cock just loosely enough to make his breath catch in his throat. His hand fell away, and she didn’t falter. “Don’t stop.”

She didn’t. Of all times for her to turn up biddable, now Hester Daniels did exactly as he’d directed her. For long moments, he withstood the siren call of pleasure, hanging suspended over a cauldron of erotic sensations: Hester’s hand on his swollen cock, the warm weight of her body plastered to his side, her leg flung over his hips, and the way the scent of her winding into Tye’s brain became the scent of every pleasure he’d ever forbidden himself.

“Hester—” He’d meant to tug her hand away, to finish himself, but she gripped him tighter, wonderfully tighter, and it pushed him beyond the call of volition. Between their bodies his seed spurted, his body seizing with the force of his satisfaction. His ears roared, his mind went blank, and when he could next claim to have awareness of anything save pleasure, he was breathing like a bellows, his arm lashed around Hester, and his cock trapped between their naked bodies.

When he could recall how to form words, he tried to speak. “I’ve made quite a m—”

She didn’t lift her head from his shoulder, but she put her hand—bearing his intimate scent—over his mouth. “You hush. Catch your breath.”

How in the hell did a woman become so quickly attuned to the man who was supposed to be much more experienced than she was?

Who was much more experienced?

He shut up and subsided into her embrace. Yes, he’d made the predictable, inconvenient, indelicate mess on their bellies. Yes, he’d completely failed in his plan to shock Hester back to her own room, permanently cured of boldness where he was concerned. And yes again, he’d failed utterly to control his own attraction to her.

But she was right. He needed to catch his breath, to locate his reason, recollect his duty—honor being a sketchy concept under the circumstances—and to forget for all time the sensation of her soft wool sock brushing provocatively across his arse as he gave himself up to soul-deep pleasure in her arms.

* * *

“Where are you going?” Hester tightened her arms around Spathfoy. He was strong enough to break her hold, of course—he was strong enough to break her neck—but he paused in his flight from the bed.

“We are untidy, my dear.” He kissed her temple, and this time she let him go. They were untidy—sticky, at least, and there was musk hanging in the air Hester found more fascinating than unpleasant. Her body was still humming with the revelations she’d experienced in Spathfoy’s arms, leaving her both languorous and energized.

Pleased with herself—also pleased with him—and curious about what other aspects of the dealings between men and women she’d been kept in ignorance of.

“Lie back.” Spathfoy approached the bed, a damp cloth in his hand. “The only water to be had is cold. I do apologize.”

His torso glistened with dampness, and his skin was red where he’d scrubbed himself clean. He was gentle but brisk with her, swabbing her belly with no more sexual innuendo than if he’d been grooming his horse. And then he sat on the bed, regarding her where she lay in her opened nightgown and wool socks.

“What a picture I must make.” She tried to bring the side of the nightgown closed over her naked body, but his hands stopped her. He leaned down, pressing his face to her midriff.

“You are beautiful, Hester Daniels. Never doubt it. Never.” He kissed her sternum and laid his cheek over her heart, an oddly submissive posture from a man Hester wouldn’t think capable of such a gesture. She settled her hands in his hair, reflecting that she’d learned a great deal from him in the past hour, not the least of which related to the man himself.

“Is there a name for that messy business?”

He stayed where he was, though he might have smiled against her skin. She liked the weight of him on her chest, liked the feel of his hair in her fingers, his breath on her skin.

“Onanism, casting one seed’s upon the ground, to use the scriptural reference.”

“I’ve wondered what the passage meant. It made sense to me as a girl that seed should be cast upon the ground.”

“There are other names for it, some of them vulgar.”

He seemed in no hurry to leave her embrace, which was perfectly acceptable to her. Maybe he even sensed she needed this time to steady her nerves and appease her curiosity. “Is it the same term when you do it to me?”

He raised his head. “You can do it to, or for, yourself, madam. The more genteel term is masturbate, from the Latin masturbari, of the same meaning.”

“We’ve sinned in Latin. I’m impressed. Maybe that’s why it felt so marvelous.” Though she suspected it had felt so marvelous because he’d been the one responsible for her pleasure. “And what, if I may ask, is the proper term for—” She frowned and kissed his hair. “That lovely business, inside my body.”

“The French call it la petite mort, which will serve.”

“But there are less genteel terms?” She wanted to know them. Wanted to hear the less genteel terms from a man who could spout Latin when naked and make it sound beautiful and imposing.

“Coming. When pleasure overwhelms you, you come, or I bring you off. Move over.” He extricated himself from her arms and climbed onto the bed. She moved over, finally casting the nightgown to the bottom of the bed. This earned her a smile as Spathfoy lay back beside her.

She treated herself to the sensation of his lean, warm, naked length all along her body, then tucked her leg across his torso, which put her sex in close proximity to his hip.

“Comfy, Miss Daniels?”

“Not quite. I like it when you hold my foot.”

“You will not avail yourself of my nipples, if you please. They are overly appreciative of your touch.”

“Yes, your lordship.” She rubbed her cheek over one of these overly appreciative parts and sighed with the wonder of him. “How can you sound so unassailably proper when you’re not wearing a stitch and I’m not either?”

“You are proud of yourself for this accomplishment.” He took her foot in a lovely, firm grasp about the arch. “Well you should be.”

“Good. If you’d scolded me, I might have started laughing.”

“I need to scold myself. I have no business allowing you into my bed, Hester.”

She wanted to bite him, to grab him by his now-curiously-unassuming male member and make him shut up. “And yet, here I am. You can’t undo this, Tiberius Flynn, you can’t take it back. I have that on the very best, most certain authority.”

He fell silent, which was better than if he’d started spouting off about propriety, and gentlemanly deportment, and God knew what else. As his hand kneading her foot conjured a lovely bouquet of sensations, Hester realized that for all they’d been intimate, for all they’d been naked and trusting with each other, they hadn’t joined their bodies in the sexual act itself.

And yet, he was preparing to flagellate himself.

“Tiberius Flynn, I forbid you to fret over this. I accosted you in your room, demanded attention from you, and left you no alternative but to accommodate me. The male of the species is weak and easily led astray. There is biblical authority for this.”

He let her foot go and brought up his hand to stroke over her hair. “Even the devil can cite scripture for her own purpose.”

Maybe his lordship intended that they have a nap, and then they’d become lovers in truth. Hester was beginning to doubt it. She had allowed him to catch not just his breath, but his damned gentlemanly scruples.

“Go to sleep, Tiberius.” She kissed his jaw, which was now scratchy with an inchoate beard. “Whatever moral hammers you are using to beat yourself, set them aside. You can pick them up in the morning and resume your punishment.”

She hoped he’d be reassured by the implication that she wouldn’t demand further attentions from him, and she hoped he wouldn’t toss her out of his bed just yet.