A muscle moved in Miles’s jaw. “I have not.”

She could read him too well by now and almost hated herself for it. “But you have thought about it?” she persisted, wondering even as she did so why she needed to know and to give herself more pain. Why could she not just run, back to the light, back to the lawyers, and tell them it was all over…

“I never sent for Louisa Caton but I did think about slaking my lust with a willing maidservant,” Miles said, with a brutality that shook her. His deliberate use of the word maidservant flicked her on the raw and she flinched. Miles saw it and shrugged.

“I don’t need to tell you the truth anymore,” he continued mercilessly, “but I will. Courting a virgin was proving frustrating work and the girl at the Morris Clown offered her favors, so…”

“So you thought about accepting her offer?” Alice forced the words out past the tears blocking her throat.

“I wanted to.” Miles’s eyes met hers. She could see at last that the anger in him was for himself, not for her, and her heart missed a beat. “Give me no credit,” he said bitterly. “I would have bedded her if I could.”

The fury flicked at Alice again like a whip. “Then I cannot see why you held back.”

Something flared in Miles’s eyes, dark, primal and fierce. His fingers gripped her wrist. “How could I take her,” he ground out, “when I burn for you?” He gave her a little shake. “It would not be wise to push me any further, Alice, unless you can take the consequences. Do you understand me? I have wanted you a long time.”

Alice thought about it. She really thought about it for several moments. Sensible Alice, practical Alice would draw back, of course, play safe, preserve what was left of her innocence. She was free now. She could leave and Miles could not force her into marriage because he had been proved the unworthy man that she had always known him to be. His past had caught him out, betrayed him and delivered her. And yet she did not want to flee. Trapped there in the complicated web of anger and desire she wanted nothing but him and that was the honest truth between them.

She pressed her fingers to Miles’s lips and saw him close his eyes. A muscle flickered in his cheek. She rubbed the stubble of his lean jaw with gentle, experimental fingers and slid her hand around to the back of his neck to bring his head down to hers in a kiss.

Her lips touched his, inexpert, hesitant, and suddenly Alice was afraid because for all the things she had learned from him and everything they had done, there was still an enormous leap between imagination and experience, and she felt woefully inadequate. She made to draw back, anxiety gnawing her stomach, but then Miles angled his head and took her mouth with ruthless precision, and her fear was flattened by a need so great it stifled everything else.

She could feel the anger still in him and the tension and a driving desire that burned up everything in its path. She did not understand it but she clung to him and felt the material of his jacket beneath the desperate clutch of her fingers. His arms went about her and then suddenly she was down on the stone slabs of the floor and they felt hot and slippery beneath her back, as hot as her body felt within the damp evening gown. She gasped and Miles covered her mouth with his and his tongue invaded deeply, and his hand moved to cup her breast and her senses swam.

She knew then, suddenly, that he was not going to stop. He was going to take her here, now, on the stone floor, with the steam clinging in wisps to her body and the heat of it in her blood and her clothes still on and no words spoken. The terror and the excitement made her heart pound so hard she thought the strength of it would lift her entire body from the ground. She could hear the blood drumming in her ears and feel her sweat mingle with the water vapor as she gave herself up to the seeking mouth that was demanding every last ounce of submission from her.

The command was in his hands as they moved over the bodice of her gown, skimming her breasts, stroking through the muslin that was soaking now and clinging to her like a second skin. Her nipples hardened and peaked unbearably tight and he lowered his lips to them and nipped and sucked through the muslin. Alice arched upward, obedient to that absolute demand, and felt him lick up the salty sweat that ran in the cleft between her breasts. He groaned and his mouth returned to hers, roughly now, and she responded eagerly, drinking deep of him, learning the touch and the taste of him even as the hard coiling desire within her threatened to explode. His hands moved blindly, bunching up the skirts of her gown, tugging her drawers aside, then moving to the fastening of his breeches.

The hot, moist air touched her bare thighs like a caress. She felt Miles’s hand push her legs apart and they fell open to the damp kiss of the air. The tight, whirling, painful spiral of need in her stomach intensified. She was frantic, desperate for something that felt so close but yet was still so elusive. She could feel the shimmer of it just out of reach and the painful tightening of desire like a ratchet twisting so taut that it was unbearable.

“Don’t stop.” The words were wrenched from her. “Please don’t stop now.”

And then his fingers were at the very heart of her, parting her, sliding over the slick, tight core and she felt him between her legs and then he was inside her in one smooth stroke.

The pain was fleeting. She noticed it and lost the sensation almost at once as others crowded it out. Her body, rippling with pleasure, seemed to move to accommodate Miles. She felt the size of him, filling her completely, stretching her, impaling her, the feeling so strange and yet so familiar that she felt she had always known him. She was claimed, taken, all innocence stolen, and yet she felt so wicked and wanton in her newfound knowledge that she writhed beneath him instinctively and heard him groan. Her fingers were deep in his hair, pulling his mouth back down to hers as he started to move within her, the rhythm gentle at first but so relentless, so inexorable, that she felt utterly ravished. The damp material of his pantaloons slid against her bare thighs as he moved within her. The stone was hard and hot beneath her, but Miles’s arm was about her, holding her up to meet the thrusts of his body and protect her from the unyielding solidity of the stone floor.

Her body grasped greedily after the pleasure he offered and sensations took hold in response to the slick thrust and slide of him within her. It built and built in shimmering bliss until the world came apart in a shocking, shattering explosion that gathered her up and utterly consumed her. She felt Miles grip her hips and bury himself so deep within her. She heard him groan and felt him shudder as the same intense force took him to tumble them both over the edge and into the whirling darkness below. And then he had gathered her close, his arms about her as though he would never let her go, and she felt completed and triumphant.

MINE. THE WORD ECHOED through Miles’s head.

He gathered Alice closer to him. Her body felt soft and utterly relaxed in his arms, completely trusting and surrendered. Her eyes were closed, the moisture beaded on her lashes. Her skin was rosy and flushed. Her curls tickled his chin. She smelled faintly of flower scent but also of sweat and the salt he had tasted on her skin. The scent drove another spike of lust through him. His desire for her was not diminished. He wanted to carry her out of there to some impossibly soft and comfortable bed and make love to her for the rest of the night and probably forever after. Yet at the same time he felt enormously, powerfully protective and possessive of her. The sensation ambushed him with all the unexpectedness and force of a tidal wave, and for a moment he felt lost and adrift in uncharted waters. This was the moment when he usually made his excuses to his lovers and left. He had never had the urge to cherish them and hold them and simply look at them with this mixture of awe and triumph.

It was only because Alice had been a virgin, he told himself. It was natural that he should feel some sense of responsibility for her pleasure, even he who had never cared a rush for anyone’s satisfaction but his own. He looked at Alice and felt a wash of regret. It really should not have been like this. He should have had more care for her than to have ravished her on the hard stone floor of the spa baths. Yet despite his regrets over the mode of Alice’s seduction it had been the most extraordinary and perfect lovemaking that he could ever remember. Although that, too, was no doubt an illusion brought on by this strange sense of responsibility he was feeling. Or so he tried to reassure himself. He shifted a little under the unaccustomed weight of the feeling. The reaction felt strange, almost unwelcome, and yet there was something about it that also felt inevitable, as though all his certainties were shifting and dissolving away and something new was taking their place.

Fanciful stuff. The simple truth was that in his anger and his selfish desire he had taken his virginal fiancée on the floor in the spa at the Pump Rooms and everyone in the entire building would know it by now. Which actually worked in his favor, for neither Mr. Gaines nor Mr. Churchward would stand in the way of a marriage now, not with the whole village talking scandal. It did not matter now that his ex-mistress had proved him to be the unworthy and unrespectable man he knew that he was. The disgrace of Alice’s ravishment was the greater dishonor and it worked to his advantage. He had Alice and he had her money, too.

He waited to feel triumph, relief and conquest. The feelings never came. He looked at Alice, and the vise of his need for her tightened impossibly. He had to marry her, not for the money but because it felt right and natural and absolutely the only thing to do.