Her fingers stilled, and he heard her rustling around behind him. He was tempted to keep his eyes on her at all times, in case she’d taken a notion to shed her clothes and climb on the bed.

Which thought had even his cock making stupid, hopeful pronouncements.

“Are you a virgin, my lord?” She put the question casually as she resumed her seat, but she’d scooted, so she sat on her chaise with one leg on either side of him.

“You asked that merely to shock me, Hester Daniels. I will not dignify it with an answer.”

“If you are”—her voice came so near his ear he could feel her breath on his neck—“then one shudders to think of how skilled you will be when you’re no longer such an innocent.”

He felt something—her lips, her nose—graze his ear, and then a brush was being drawn through his hair. It was the oddest sensation. He brushed his hair several times a day, but to be sitting lower than Hester while she tended him this way… Some of the tension eased out of his shoulders.

“What is the sigh about, my lord?”

“I do not excel at pursuit in the romantic sense.”

The rhythm of the brush did not falter. “You’re no bloody good at it?”

“Apparently not. Are you interested in becoming my marchioness, Hester?”

She hesitated, then resumed grooming him. “If you’re asking whether I’m trying to trap you into marriage, my lord, you can take your bloody romantic incompetence, leave, and not come back.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rested her chin on his crown. “I would miss you though. Honesty compels me to admit that much.”

Her words implied there were things she wouldn’t admit, which was encouraging.

“That wasn’t exactly my question.” He laid his cheek on her forearm. “How is it you’re soft everywhere? Even here.” He nuzzled the crook of her elbow, which bore a concentration of lavender scent.

“I took a bath in hopes you’d come visit, Tiberius. Did you take a bath in anticipation of making a call?”

“Of course not.” Except he had. And to ensure a dignified interval between the last of their evening meal and his next interlude with her.

“I’ve noticed something about the nights here in Scotland.” The damned woman ran her tongue around the outside of his ear. This sent all manner of peculiar shivers down his spine, each of which landed with an erotic tingle in his groin.

“The nights are damp,” he managed. He’d never before in his entire life labeled anything in his direct experience as a tingle.

“The nights are quite short, Tiberius. The sun goes down later and comes up earlier. If you’re on a particular errand, you’d best be about it.”

He left off sniffing her knuckles. He’d come over here intending to seduce her into accepting a proposal of marriage. Despite her earlier rebuff, it still seemed like a sound plan—at least the seduction part did.

“You will please forgive my lack of efficiency in this regard.” He turned and half rose in one movement, so he was kneeling between her spread knees and she was blinking back at him. He plucked the brush from her hand and set it aside. “Be warned, Hester. I have recalled my purpose for joining you in your boudoir.”

He swooped in, lashed his arms around her, and fused his mouth to hers. She did not immediately kiss him back, but neither did she resist. In that moment, when he might have hesitated or drawn away, he eased her to her back on the chaise.

And then, ah then, she caught fire, fisting her hands in his hair and spreading her legs so he might wedge himself closer.

“You made me wait, you dratted man—” She muttered this against his teeth.

“You left me to question, infernal female—” He wasn’t sure what the rest of the sentence might have been, for Hester shifted beneath him, making him abruptly aware of how his growing erection was snugged up against her sex.

Snug, but not as close as he wanted to be.

“Spath… Tiber… Tye, for pity’s sake, kiss me.” She dug her nails into his backside so that even through his robe, she got his attention.

“Too many clothes, Miss Daniels.” He crouched over her, vivid images of her naked on the chaise while he devoured her fogging his brain.

She went still beneath him. “Let me up. I can’t remove your clothes when we’re wrestling among the furniture.”

He liked the sound of that, so he sat back and regarded her. Her cheeks were flushed, her breathing was deep, and her eyes held a slightly wild light. “You first, my dear. I was more than patient on the last occasion, if you’ll recall.”

She blinked again, the haze of passion cooling in her gaze. “Ladies before gentlemen? Are we concerning ourselves with deportment now?”

He realized two things in the next procession of instants: First, the idea of coaxing her from her clothing was not onerous in the least. He’d done it before, and he was looking forward to doing it again. The reward—her, relaxed and comfortable with her own nudity as well as his—was well worth the effort.

Second, and this took some fortitude to admit, he did not want to rush her, did not want to push her past any boundary she wasn’t willing to exceed. She desired him, and that was probably as far as she knew her own mind.

And she hadn’t said she wouldn’t be his marchioness.

“Fine then, leave your clothing on. I feel no such compunction.” He shrugged out of his robe and let it slide to the floor while Hester’s chest rose with a substantial breath. He didn’t move, but remained sitting back on his heels while her gaze slipped over his shoulders and down his torso, to the erection arrowing up from his groin, then back to his face.

“I love that you’re shameless about this.” She’d said it solemnly, but then her lips quirked up. “You’re so proper about everything else, and in some way, you’re proper about this too.”

She wasn’t laughing at him, exactly, but he felt a frisson of ridicule in her words. The same faint sense of puzzled censure his father turned on him in almost every communication between them.

“Shamelessness can have its rewards.” He put a hand on her knee, and abruptly, she wasn’t smiling. She was watching his hand as he gave her a slight squeeze through her night rail.

“I can feel the warmth of your hand even through my clothing, Tiberius. You make me a stranger to my own body.”

He accepted that as a confidence, a reluctant one. He leaned forward and slipped his arms around her waist. “You are not meeting a stranger, Hester, but are encountering an aspect of your being you did not previously allow yourself to enjoy.”

This kiss was decorous, because her admissions were telling and deserving of respect. Tye’s usual partners knew better than to make intimate confessions in bed, knew better than to allow even a hint of deeper sentiment to pass beyond the bedroom door.

Hester didn’t know better—she knew very little, in fact, and if she thought Tye was nothing more than a man driven by propriety and duty, she’d failed utterly to note the tenor of their private dealings.

He let the kiss warm up, let her be the first to slip her tongue over his lips, let her be the first to part her lips in invitation. He obliged, tasting delicately while he felt her wedge closer to him. When she ran her hand over his back, then down to clutch at his backside, he reciprocated by tracing her ribs with his fingers.

She half twisted at the waist, so he could palm one full breast. This prompted her to break off the kiss and rest her forehead on his shoulder.

“You can touch yourself like this, you know,” he whispered in her ear. He closed his grip slightly on her nipple. “Bring yourself pleasure.”

“I couldn’t.”

He did not take his hand away, but he leaned back enough to put some space between their bodies. “Undo the bows, Hester. My hands are busy.”

A hint of a smile passed over her features. She started on the top bow while Tye caressed both breasts through the fabric. When she’d undone the lot, he didn’t push the material aside but drew back.

“Will you let me see you, Hester?” He passed his thumbs over her nipples, the feel of them peaking beneath his touch making him want to tear the nightgown from her. He’d seen her breasts before but really hadn’t done them the kind of justice they deserved.

She deserved.

“No rush.” He bent his head and kissed that place where her neck joined her shoulder. She sighed against his neck, and her hand cradled the back of his head.

“I like that.” Her voice was dreamy. “I do like that.”

She must have liked it a very great deal, because when Tye pushed her robe and nightgown off her shoulder, she merely sighed again. Her skin was silky soft, warm, and bore the scent of lavender from her bath.

Perhaps lavender and lemon verbena both belonged on the well-educated young man’s list of aphrodisiacs, because arousal was straining hard against Tye’s good intentions, to say nothing of his grand plans.

He lingered over the pulse in her throat, for his own pleasure as well as hers, switched sides, and bared the second shoulder.

Seven

To go by inches, to make no move until he was positive she desired him to make it was different… sweet, and precious in ways Tye did not want to examine too closely. He focused instead on Hester, on the rise and fall of her chest, on her fingers winnowing through his hair when he ran his nose down her sternum.

He’d neglected this before—he’d neglected a great deal having to do with her pleasure and her enjoyment of his attentions. Stupid of him to ignore such a lovely feast, to deny himself such pleasure.