“You do mean it.” She was looking at him in wonder. “I wasn’t sure-”

“Well, be sure,” he said. He dropped her foot to the rough floor and stood up. “I bluff only in poker, Elspeth.”

“You’re going to ravish me.” It was said with the same wonder he had seen in her experience. “Will it hurt?”

“Not if you don’t fight me.” Would it hurt her? He had never had a virgin, and the subject had never come up. He had heard that sometimes… He firmly blocked the thought. “If you don’t make it difficult, I’ll be careful to-”

“That means I’ll be a fallen woman, doesn’t it?” Her brow was wrinkled in a pensive frown. “Perhaps even a hetaera.”

“What the devil is a hetaera?” He pulled her to her feet and his fingers began working swiftly at the buttons at the front of her gown.

“They were ladies in ancient Greece who were trained to pleasure men and-” She inhaled sharply as he slipped the gown from her shoulders to her waist and then to the floor, leaving her in only her chemise, crinoline, and petticoats. She looked straight ahead. “They were very accomplished at-” Garments were falling from her like maple leaves after the first frost. She closed her eyes tightly. “The hetaeras became well known for-”

“My God!”

She was perfect. Small and infinitely delicate with the clean symmetry of a young Venus. High taut breasts crowned with pointed pink nipples flowed down to a flat stomach and an impossibly small waist, then widened to pertly rounded buttocks. His gaze moved down to exquisite thighs that invited the touch and then up again to center on the golden-brown curls that shadowed her womanhood. He felt the breath stop in his lungs and the blood pound painfully through his veins.

“Am I… completely unclothed?”

Her eyes were still tightly shut as if her nudity would cease to exist if she could not behold it. He could see the delicate color move beneath the fair skin of her throat and shoulders and, for a moment, he felt a wild surge of tenderness. She was so goddamn vulnerable. Why did the blasted witch have to look vulnerable? She was the epitome of a desirable woman and he was one yearning ache just looking at her; and at the same time her exquisite vulnerability caused him pangs of guilt at the mere thought of touching her. Hell and damnation, he would not let her sway him. She had humiliated and tormented him until he had been driven to this end and he was not going to let her go unscathed. Not that he had any choice, he thought grimly, there was no possible way he could stop himself from taking her now. “You’re as naked as the day you came into this wicked world.”

She moistened her lips with her tongue and he felt a jolt of pure lust strike his groin. “This isn’t too terrible so far. Does it get worse?”

Tenderness flooded him again and with it a desperation born of guilt and frustration. “No, it gets better. Much better.” He picked her up and carried her toward the mat across the room. “As I’m about to demonstrate.”

Flesh against naked flesh. Elspeth could feel the dark curly hair of his chest pressing against the side of her breast, his warm muscular arm across her naked back. Heat again. Why couldn’t she think? She was going to become a hetaera, but would that be such a terrible fate? In ancient times hetaeras had apparently had a greater freedom and independence than their more respectable sisters. There must be some disadvantages, but she was having trouble thinking of them at the moment.

Still, she must think, for this was a very important step in her life. She was merely caught unprepared because she had never thought she would be placed in this position.

“Stop shaking,” Dominic ordered as he placed her carefully on the mat and settled himself beside her. “I told you I’d be careful.” If he could, he thought desperately. The soft pressure of her body against his thighs was driving him insane. Her hair was a fragrant mass of honey silk splayed across his arm, and she was trembling like a bird. “I won’t hurt you.” Tenderness again. The thought of hurting her was becoming intolerable. He had to prepare her, ease her into passion. Damn, she was so tiny and he didn’t know how long he could keep himself from mounting her. Just the thought of sinking into her warm satin tightness caused him to flex with mindless hunger. He drew a deep breath. “I’ll pleasure you, Elspeth. Yield to me.” His lips brushed the delicate skin at her temple. “I’ll find a way to ease you through it.”

Her lids lifted slowly and she looked up at him. “You don’t wish to punish me any longer?”

His throat tightened. “No, not any longer.”

His voice was so strange, she thought hazily, but no stranger than his eyes looking down at her or the heat of his skin against her flesh… It was all strange, all foreign. She couldn’t think.

His hands were golden against her pale skin as they delicately touched her belly.

She inhaled sharply. Heat, heaviness, dizziness.

His face above her was taut, the long planes of his cheeks hollow. His dark hair shone with midnight flickers of fire in the lamplight. Beautiful. She hadn’t realized a man could be this beautiful. Michelangelo’s statues were beautiful, of course, but they were cold. Dominic wasn’t cold, he was blazing. She could feel his fire coiling and sparking, wreathing her in flames. Yet he was scarcely touching her, the tips of his fingers brushing her belly with a touch as light as butterfly wings on the petals of a flower.

Did butterfly wings leave this trail of fire on a blossom’s petals? she wondered hazily. Was this ravishment?

His fingertips had left her stomach and were moving over her, touching lightly on her breasts, the sensitive skin beneath her collarbone, the hollow of her throat. “Elspeth.”

She tensed. “Yes?”

His fingers moved to her lips, his index finger tracing the curve of her lower lip. “I don’t want to frighten you. How much do you know about what I’m going to do to you?”

The hot color stung her cheeks. “I’ve seen… drawings that were made by my father’s students of murals on the walls in Pompeii… women are not permitted to view them… the murals, I mean. And once I saw a statue in a temple in India…”

Dominic felt an enormous surge of relief. At least she wasn’t completely ignorant.

“It looks… uncomfortable,” she whispered.

A faint smile tugged at his lips. “It’s not at all uncomfortable. You’ll see, Elspeth. It feels very right.” His voice was soft, coaxing, as his hand moved down to her belly once more. His fingertips began to stroke the tight golden-brown curls and she felt a sudden hot tingle between her thighs.

He said it would feel right, but how could that be, when everyone said this was a sin? It had to be wrong, didn’t it? She wished she had been taught more about the consequences of being a woman. Her father had never told her anything except to say it was something a plain body like herself would never have to fret about. The housekeepers who had come and gone through the years in their small home in Edinburgh had been hired to tend to the cooking and the cleaning and discouraged from wasting their time with Elspeth.

Except Clara. Clara had been younger than the rest and had a small child of her own. She had been kind and even let Elspeth slip out into the garden to play with Bobby when her father had business at the university.

Bobby.

Elspeth suddenly stiffened as the memory of that day in the garden came back to her. The other children with their faces pressed against the black iron gate and their harsh cruel words. Bastard, they had called Bobby. Taunting words that had caused helpless agony in a small child.

“No!” She pushed against Dominic with all her strength and jumped to her feet.

Elspeth was across the small room before his bemused senses could fully comprehend what she was doing. One moment she had been lying quivering in his arms, letting him fondle her, permitting him to do whatever he wished, and the next she was standing across the room. Her pale, naked body was even more alluring as the candlelight played upon it like a loving, golden hand, her long tawny hair flying about her in a wild shimmering cloud. He frowned. “Come back here, Elspeth.” His voice held a dangerous softness.

She shook her head. “No, you’re a terrible man. How could you do this?” Her voice was shaking and her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Ravishing me is wicked enough, but how could you be so cruel to a bairn?”

“Bairn?” he asked blankly.

“If you ravished me, we could have a bairn. Do you deny it?” She plucked her black cloak from the chair and flung it around her shoulders. “I’m not sure I’d mind so much being a hetaera, but what of the bairn? Children can be very cruel to a bairn born on the wrong side of the blanket. They’d taunt him and throw rocks and-” She broke off, the tears suddenly pouring down her cheeks. “You’re a cruel, cruel man and I’ll not be ravished by you.” She whirled and ran toward the door. The next instant the door was thrown open and she was gone.

6

A bairn.