She clenched her teeth tight. Make no sounds. Do not, under any circumstances, make any sounds. If she remained as silent as the night, he would not know how she felt. He would not.

The buttons on her back gave away as if before a Mongol horde. The small cap sleeves at her shoulders sagged. He pushed them down, his hands lingering on the inside of her elbows.

The skirt of the ball gown was a monument of ruching and pleating. It contained so much understructure that even with the bodice of the gown hanging limply in defeat, it still stood upright on its own, stalwartly defending her virtue with silk ramparts and chiffon moats.

He simply lifted her bodily and—good Lord—did he kick her magnificent and costly ball gown out of the way?

Now he turned her around to face him. “Should be easy from here on,” he said.

She shuddered. Indeed, it was easy for him. Her corset cover evaporated. Her stockings melted away. He passed his hands down the front of her corset; the steel busk fasteners split apart as if he’d said “Open sesame.”

“Stop,” she said, as he undid the first button on her combination. “I would like to keep it on.”

And not just for modesty, but for pretense. There was too much honesty in nakedness. Skin heated, heart pounded, and God knew what other reaction he’d provoke from her. Best keep a layer of deniability between them, however thin.

He paused, as if considering. “Certainly.”

She was struck dumb. By relief, of course. And perhaps, a bit of chagrin that he did not even want her naked.

“You may keep your combination,” he continued. “And in exchange I will turn on the lights.”

“No! No lights.” No lights under any circumstances.

He undid another button on her combination. His thumb traced a line down the center of her cleavage, his knuckles brushing against the side of one breast, his signet ring coming dangerously close to her nipple.

A kiss landed lightly on her jaw, just below her ear. Then he bit her on her earlobe; the pressure of his teeth singeing her. She clamped down on her lower lip and barely managed to swallow her gasp.

He dropped kisses on her cheeks, her chin, and at the corners of her lips. She could scarcely breathe, but with each breath she inhaled his scent of open fields and wide skies. He went on unbuttoning her, his finger trailing down her torso. Dear God, he dipped one fingertip into her navel—she was practically naked.

Ten seconds later she was naked, the combination pooled at her feet. Darkness was the only thing that separated them. A moment of hush descended; neither of them moved—or breathed, it seemed.

Then his palm slid across her nipple.

Make no sounds. Do not, under any circumstances, make any sounds.

She faltered. A whimper of unutterable pleasure escaped her tightly clenched teeth.

Deep inside her, a dam that had been ceaselessly reinforced crumbled. Years upon years of pent-up desires flooded her. Suddenly she couldn’t care less that she must remain quiet and pliant.

She wanted. She wanted. She wanted.

She gripped him by the lapel and yanked him to her.

But he kissed her before she could kiss him—hard, the way he’d kissed her in his long-ago hallucination, when he’d thought her his Isabelle. She whimpered with pleasure and gratification. She wanted this ferocity, this vehemence.

His hands cupped either side of her head, holding her in place for the onslaught of his lips and tongue. She thrilled to it: It was exactly how she wanted to be secured. And the kiss, God, wild, unrefined, full of raw, barely leashed needs.

She did not know until she heard the pinging of buttons flying everywhere that she was ripping off his waistcoat, tearing apart everything that separated them. He pulled away from the kiss to help her. She slapped his hands away: She would do it.

He tumbled them both into bed.

His rasping breaths aroused her. His ungoverned hands aroused her. And his erection, pressing insistently into her thigh—oh, yes. She’d thought she’d be afraid of it. Or at least wary. But she only gloried in its dimensions and its hammer-hard rigidity. This was how it ought to be. He ought to want her this much. He ought to swell and extend to the limits of his endurance.

She pushed off his braces and yanked his shirt overhead. And then she went for his trousers.

“My God, Millie.”

Yes, every utterance of her name should be preceded with such an imprecation, an uttering of the Lord’s name in vain.

He certainly did not slap her hands away, but helped her to release the fastenings and get rid of both his trousers and his linens. Immediately she set her hand on his cock. It pulsed in her grip. He sucked in a breath.

“Take me,” she ordered, impatient, imperious.

He touched his hand to the seam between her legs. She was utterly sleek.

“Take me now.”

“Shut up, Millie.”

“But I want—”

He silenced her with a harsh kiss. “Shut up or I’ll make you wait longer.”

She shut up.

He stroked, teased, and plucked her. Every touch was unbearable pleasure. She wanted more. She wanted him. She wanted this emptiness inside her pounded to oblivion.

She kissed every part of him she could reach. She bit his shoulders and his neck. She plunged her hands down the length of his back and grabbed his firm buttocks.

He retaliated by licking her nipple. She moaned, a long, keening admission of enjoyment. He rolled her nipple around his tongue, grazed his teeth across it, and pulled it deep into his mouth. Her cries of pleasure ricocheted about the room.

His fingers, which had not been idle a moment since they descended between her legs, chose this moment to flick a most gloriously sensitive spot. Her breath hitched, snagged, and disappeared altogether. He flicked the spot again and she convulsed involuntarily, a fast, juddering slide of pleasure.

On the heel of that, he centered himself between her knees and pushed into her.

It was the most incredible sensation, a splitting open of her person, widening, deepening. But he was so frustratingly slow, as if advancing against an opposing army. At least he sounded as impatient as she felt, his breath catching with each minute movement forward.

The thrust came all of a sudden. One moment he was on the cusp, the next moment he was deeply embedded in her, the two of them locked together by the force of it. He gasped. She gasped, too.

It hurt. But she welcomed the pain—good riddance to her virginity. And the pain was nothing compared to the rightness of it. This was what they should be doing, nightly, daily, hourly.

She raised her hips, wanting more. He held her still with his hand on her abdomen. “Are you not hurt?”

“Not enough to stop,” she answered in complete honesty. “Not even enough to want a reprieve.”

Still he withdrew. Just as she was about to cry out at the unfairness of it, he drove back into her.

How did one describe a sunrise to the blind? Or the sound of rain to the deaf? How could words ever adequately express the pleasure of lovemaking? Each thrust was a voluptuous surge of sensations. Each plunge both compacted her and expanded her.

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

She didn’t know whether she was issuing a command or a prayer. But he must not stop, not yet. Not when the pleasure was so new and acute, and she so ravenous.

Six months.

Suddenly she was convulsing, her back arched, her person shaking, her heart in pieces.


They’d barely started. And yet here he was, on the verge.

Don’t stop, she begged.

Everything about her was such pure decadence. Tight, sleek, hungry—an overload of sensations. Her skin was too soft. Her legs, clamped about him, too smooth. Her mouth, which he couldn’t stop kissing, too delicious.

Don’t stop, she begged again.

All those rampant urges threatened to crash upon him. He held back. Slow. Slower. But though he moderated his pace, he couldn’t help taking each stroke to the hilt.

His climax began gathering again, rising toward a point of no return. He didn’t know if he could restrain himself this time: He was too close, too near to being overwhelmed.

She cried out, trembling exclamations.

He lost all control, his release hot, violent, and endless.


Millie touched her husband’s hair—a first time for her, after all these years. It was thick, a little wavy, and just slightly damp at the roots with perspiration. His heart beat fast and hard against hers. His breathing, like her own, remained tattered.

So…this was how one made babies.

No wonder the population was ever increasing.

Her fingers continued their exploration: his ear, his eyebrows, the bridge of his nose. He nuzzled her on her shoulder, her throat, her cheek—and claimed her mouth once more.

The kiss was slow and leisurely. He’d never left her, now he hardened again inside her.

Yes, she thought, more. As much as possible.

He located innumerable obscure nooks and crannies of her body that needed only a caress to reveal themselves superlatively sensitive and starved for attention. Each touch was luxuriant, every nibble unhurried.

But this was lovemaking for people who had years—decades—ahead of them. They did not have that luxury. Each slow brush of his hand reminded her of the ticking clock. Every measured path he kissed only made her that much more aware of the end drawing nigh.