“Stand up,” he murmured against her ear, and though she was reluctant to move away from his touch, she obeyed and opened her eyes to watch her nightgown slip away to the floor. She felt curiously unembarrassed even though the fire was still burning and two candles were flickering on the mantel, and she had always hated looking at herself in a mirror. She sat down again.

She was aware of him pulling his shirt off over his head and tossing it to join her brush on the floor. And then his bare chest was warm and solid against her back, and his arms were beneath hers again. He rubbed his hands hard over her breasts and then spread them flat over her ribs and moved them down over her waist and abdomen. She set back her head and closed her eyes again and moved her shoulders and back to rub against him. His chest was lightly furry. He slid his hands down her legs to her knees and back up again. She spread her arms and set them along his outer thighs, cupping his knees with her hands.

It was at the next moment that she knew she had passed the point at which she might have stopped what was to happen. But she did not care. She did not. Common sense and propriety and morality would show her the full extent of the error of her ways in the glaring light of tomorrow, but though she knew it, she simply did not care. This was the night that would give light and warmth and meaning to all the rest of her days. She knew that just as certainly. Fallen woman—who would ever know? Who would ever care?

His right hand had moved down between her legs to the warm, secret place. She should have been horrified. Yet she heard herself make a low sound of approval deep in her throat, and she opened her legs a little to allow him freer access.

She was very warm there. She could tell that by the contrasting coolness of his fingers. She feared she might also be wet. But he did not recoil. His fingers explored her, parting folds, rubbing lightly between them, finding the innermost reaches and sliding up a little way inside. She could hear the sounds of wetness but was beyond embarrassment. It did not take her long to understand that he knew exactly what he was doing. Desire throbbed through her entire being. And then he did something with his thumb, something so light that she could not even tell exactly what he did. Except that desire suddenly crashed into pain and beyond pain even before she could feel it. She arched her back, every muscle in her body tensing, and cried out before collapsing, panting and trembling, back against him.

What... what on earth had happened ?

“Yes,” he was whispering against her ear, a note of exultation in his voice. “Ah, yes. Magnificent!”

Her breath was shuddering audibly out of her.

“Lie down,” he told her.

“Yes.” She no longer even considered not lying down with him. Her head was spinning, but whether from the effects of the wine or from what had just happened, she did not know.

She lay down between the sheets while he got to his feet, and watched him strip away the rest of his clothes. He looked even more magnificent without them, all hard muscles and flat abdomen, and ... For a few moments she wondered if she should feel frightened after all, but she wanted it, she realized. She desperately wanted it. She wanted him.

He came down directly on top of her, pressing his knees between hers as he did so and pushing her legs wide—very wide. She bent them at the knees and set her feet flat against the mattress to brace herself.

He lifted himself from the waist up, bracing himself on his forearms, and lowered his head to kiss her. His mouth was open, and soon hers was too as he licked through the seam of her lips and explored the soft flesh behind. When she parted her teeth he pressed his tongue into her mouth, clashing with her own, stroking over the sensitive roof, arousing the rawness of desire in her again.

When he lifted his head again, he was smiling his rather mocking smile at her.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that I may explode as soon as I mount, quite as speedily as you just did. But we have the rest of the night in which to play at our leisure. Am I excused in advance?”

“You are excused.” She smiled back at him, though in truth she did not understand what he was saying.

He came down fully on her again and she felt his hands come beneath her buttocks to hold her firm. She felt him hard and probing at her entrance, but before she could draw a steadying breath he had plunged into her. There might have been pain. She was not at leisure to notice. There might have been shock.

There was no time to absorb it. There was only a wondering surprise that a man could be so large and so hard and yet fit fully inside her. And then he moved in her, almost withdrawing and plunging deep again, over and over, faster and harder until he strained deep, cried out, and collapsed all his weight on her. She wrapped her arms about him. He was hot and slick with sweat.

She felt the shock then. Her virginity was gone. Just like that. And with the shock came knowledge.

Knowledge not only of what happened between a man and a woman, but of what it felt like. It had been disappointing. And yet not entirely so. Part of her exulted. She had mated with a man. She would not go through life without that most primal of human experiences. She had mated. She still lay beneath him, her breasts pressed to his chest, her thighs hugging his powerful legs, his ... that part of him inside her.

She was not sorry. And if it was the wine telling her that, then she would tell the wine the same thing tomorrow. She was not sorry. She never would be. He had touched her and delighted her and made her feel feminine and beautiful as no one had ever done before—quite the contrary, in fact. And she had mated with him and satisfied him. He was sleeping, she realized. He was heavy. She was having difficulty breathing. Her legs were going to cramp soon. She would surely be sore inside. But she willed him not to wake up. She hugged her splendid, stolen dream to herself.

After Rannulf woke up and rolled off her, apologizing for squashing every bone in her body, Claire Campbell excused herself. He could hear her washing herself behind the screen, and grinned, lacing his fingers behind his head. A fastidious lover. He would soon have her wet and smelling of sex again.

She was magnificent. Her body and her hair were enough to keep any red-blooded male in a state of constant arousal, but there was more to her than just those attributes. There were her eyes with their drooping, come-hither eyelids when she was aroused, and her perfect teeth, and her low, seductive voice. There were her acting skills and her smiles and laughter. And there was her knowledge of the game.

An actress of her allure and experience might well have tried to lead the way, and their first sexual encounter might have become a clash of wills and expertise, each trying to establish mastery and control.

He would have enjoyed it— how could one not enjoy any sexual encounter with someone like Claire Campbell?—but not as much as the game he had set out to play and she had complied with. The game of slow, quiet seduction.

She had sat on the bed like a prim virgin while he had brushed the red glory of her hair and felt desire course through him like an ever-building flood that would sweep all before it when it burst its dam. She had allowed him to lead every step of the way though he had felt her growing heat and seen her peaked nipples and felt the wetness of her desire. Her orgasm had been powerful and flattering. So many women faked it and imagined that their lovers did not realize. The genuineness of her release had given him permission to take his own swiftly without feeling inadequate, like a randy schoolboy.

She appeared from beyond the screen and came around to the empty side of the bed. His mouth turned dry at the sight of her. His big regret was that this was a one-night-only encounter. He would need a month or more to explore all the delights of her body and slake his appetite for her.

“Don’t lie down,” he told her. “Kneel on the bed.”

She did so, facing him, and gazed inquiringly down at him. The fire had been reduced to mere glowing embers, but the two candles still flickered across the room.

“Let’s play,” he said, reaching out and touching her hand.

“Very well,” she said gravely.

He chuckled. “Little Miss Prim has already been done,” he said. “Exquisitely, I might add. I do promise you that I am not usually so ... frenzied in my mount. That was merely the effect your quiet compliance had on me. I had my way with you that time. It is your turn now. What would you like to do?”

She stared down at him for a long time. Even her stillness and her steady look could stir arousal in him.

“I do not know,” she said at last.

“Is your arsenal so vast, then?” He grinned at her. “I wish the night were a month long so that you could try the whole of it on me. Would a month be long enough, though? Make your choice. I am all yours.

Your slave if you will. Have your way with me. Make love to me, Claire. Have sex with me.” He spread his arms and his legs on the bed.

She knelt there for a long time not moving. But her eyes were roaming over him, he saw, watching her, and her eyelids drooped over them. Once she licked her lips, the tip of her tongue moving slowly from one corner to the other.

She was very clever and clearly far more experienced than he had expected. He had anticipated that she would fall on him and subject him to any number of blatant, exquisite sex tortures to drive them both into a precoital frenzy. He had observed that her manner of dress was understated. But so was her behavior.