Philippa set her hands on his shoulders, her palms curving over on to his back. Her eyes were closed, her mouth parted. He shifted himself into place, and she knew exactly what it meant that he nudged aside her thighs. He knew what it meant that her hips shifted underneath him, that inviting tilt of her pelvis, the slight bend of her knees.

“Now?” he whispered. He was grateful to sound both calm and amorous when in fact he was hardly anything of the first and the second was a trite description of the emotion that made his chest tight. He hadn’t ever needed a woman the way he needed to possess Philippa, and that frightened him.

She slid her hands along his sides to his hips. Her fingers dipped in and out of the small of his back and then around to cup his backside. Every caress of her hands made him harder yet. “Yes, Alec,” she said. “Please. Now.”

Her hands urged him forwards, and he slid inside her. He almost lost his mind. This moment, this moment was purely about sensation, but there was also the sound of her slow intake of breath, which shook him to his core. It enchanted him that she would make a sound like that.

He wanted — no, needed — her to find pleasure in his arms. He needed to see to her every satisfaction. He needed everything to be perfect. And then he just wanted to keep doing this, because this felt so good. She felt so good. His Philippa.

Dane groaned as the warmth of her body enveloped him. This was Philippa who was sending him crashing over the edge. She wasn’t passively accepting him, something he’d worried might happen. She raised her knees so that her thighs slid up to his hips, and she rocked her pelvis into his. They were naked, both of them, and what they were doing was more than fucking. The quiver of incipient orgasm pooled at the base of his spine.

Since the moment this evening when he’d realized there was more than an intellectual spark between them, something physical that hadn’t existed before, he’d been anticipating this moment. He sank down, pressing his forearms to the mattress above her shoulders. Her breasts were warm against his chest, her hips matched the rolling, rocking motion of his, her body utterly feminine, soft where he was hard, curved exactly so.

“Alec.” Her voice was low and smooth, and she made him feel like he was the only man ever to satisfy her.

He wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t recognize the carnal element of this encounter, but he understood for the first time in his life the difference between taking a woman to bed for the physical pleasure alone and what he was doing at that moment. To be honest, he was worried about what that meant; knowing he was making love to Philippa and that she might not be making love to him.

He said, “Look at me, Philippa.”

She did and he could see the faraway look in her eyes. He panicked at what that signified. She might not feel as he did. For Christ’s sake, she was going to marry bloody Captain Bancroft. He fell into her eyes, into those green depths, and he knew himself and her well enough to understand he wasn’t going to come away from this intact.

He thrust again and again, and she held him and matched him. He kept remembering all the times he’d seen her, talked to her, laughed with her or simply sat at her side without needing to say anything. Or sat alone in his London apartments reading or rereading one of her letters or writing one to her. Never once had he thought she was someone he could have. Not once had he thought she was the woman he was destined to love. All this time, he hadn’t known. He’d never guessed.

Why hadn’t he?

He pulled out and turned her over, and she understood right away what he wanted because she went to her hands and knees. God, yes.

Dane cupped her hips, and he shouted when he was inside her again, because it was even better this time than the first. They were close to the head of the bed, and he shifted them again until she had her hands on the wall above the bed frame. He was on his knees behind her, one hand holding her breast, the other around her hips with his fingers between her legs, making sure she came to climax.

Her response was, quite soon, a long, low moan. He kissed the back of her neck, moving inside her, and felt the tremor of her impending orgasm around him. He stopped.

“Alec.” His name was a sob of frustration.

He held her tight, not moving. “What?” he whispered. “What do you want?”

“Finish me.”

“Finish you. I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You do,” she said. She turned her head to him as far as she could.

“Like this?” He slid out of her almost all the way and pushed back in slowly.

“Harder.”

“This?” A little harder, this time.

“More.” She pushed her hips back.

“Like this, then?” Again. When he was inside her this time she came and, Jesus, he’d never felt anything like it. She called his name and what he heard was Philippa’s voice. Philippa. The woman who knew him best. Who was kind and generous and thoughtful and who had always been able to make him laugh, to whom he had confessed some of his most intimate thoughts and concerns. What if she didn’t feel the same?

Something inside him broke. He felt the strings of his heart vibrating with the power of what he felt for her. He wasn’t the same man as when this had started.

He put her on her back again. He was trying to just fuck her but he couldn’t. He was rough, but she met that without reservation. She gave him back even more until he was the one rushing to orgasm.

Moments before his crisis, with his body quivering on the edge of release, he gritted his teeth and, his heart pounding at his chest as if it would break through his ribs, it occurred to him that Philippa was not a courtesan whom he could expect to have taken precautions or who had the resources to act if there were consequences.

He stopped moving in her. When he was certain the danger had passed, he grabbed her face between his hands. Philippa pressed the back of her head into the mattress. “Alec.” She wrapped her arms around him and groaned. “This is unfair of you. What are you doing to me?”

“Look at me,” he said.

Her eyes flickered open and slowly focused on him.

He swept his thumbs along her temples. “Philippa.” He kissed her forehead, and he couldn’t help himself, he pressed further into her. Then he dropped a kiss on both her cheeks.

“What is it?” she asked. She reached to brush his hair off his forehead. “What’s made you look like your heart is breaking?”

“Only you would know that.”

“What is it, my darling Alec?”

Panic constricted his chest when he saw her eyes widen. He had himself in better control now. “You’ll think I’m mad, but I’m not. And you know me. You know I’m not the kind of man who would put a lover at risk. I will not put you at risk of a child out of wedlock.” He kissed the edge of her mouth. “Never.”

Her eyes went wide. “Hush, my darling. It’s all right. You can withdraw, isn’t that so?”

He started moving in her again. “I could, Philippa.” Very quickly, he was near the edge again, and she sucked in a hard, fast breath when he was as far inside her as he could get. “I will if that’s what you want.” Her eyes never left his face, which gave him hope. “You know I wouldn’t ask that of you if I didn’t mean every word. We’re here, Philippa. Like this.” He stared into her face. “You wouldn’t be if you didn’t love me.”

He pushed up on his hands again, still inside her. Her fingers curled around his arms, and she matched him, moved with him, wrapped her legs around him. But he did not see any answer in her face, and he did not intend to take silence for consent.

“You can’t marry Bancroft when we feel like this together. Not when I’ve made you scream my name, and I’m about to scream yours.”

She put her arms around his shoulders and held him tight. Her eyes glittered with tears. But she was looking at him. “Alec.”

“Say yes, Philippa.” He thrust a little faster now and, when he spoke again, his words were breathless. “I’m very close. Answer me now, before we have to stop this.” He felt his orgasm coming on, but he kept his eyes on her face. His heart twisted in his chest. He bent his head to kiss away a tear that escaped when she blinked.

She brought him closer yet. “Come, Alec.”

“Is that yes?” He stared into her eyes, wet with tears, and didn’t know the cause.

“It’s madness. The moonlight made us mad.”

He stilled. “Answer me, Philippa.” His gaze locked with hers. “Don’t make me live without you. Don’t make me spend the rest of my life bereft of you.”

She closed her eyes and opened them slowly, and then she smiled. “Yes.”

“Jesus.” He surged forwards.

Neither of them said anything more. Philippa made a tiny sound in the back of her throat as he gave in to all the physical sensations coming at him. He gave in to the emotions, too. He knew, dimly, that he was unlikely to get a child on her this time, but he still thought of how he would feel when he held his first child in his arms, by the woman he loved beyond all others.

Her sweat-slick body moved with his, her arms tightened around him and she kissed his cheek, his mouth. She let her head fall back while he drank in her face, her parted lips, until he had no choice but to give in to a climax that shook him hard and rolled him through a wave he wasn’t sure he was going to survive.

He did, of course. As did Philippa.

They were married by special licence a week later by the vicar in a small ceremony in the rose garden of Frieth House. If anyone in attendance wondered why the bride and groom vanished through a blue door at the rear of the house at the end of the ceremony, no one said a word.