Regardless, all but immediately she felt the temperature rise.

Telling herself she could now go to sleep, she closed her eyes.

Waited for her senses to subside.

To calm.

They didn’t. Her lungs remained tight, her breathing too restricted for her to possibly succumb to slumber.

Her skin prickled, acutely aware. Her mind refused to let go of the information that he’d undressed before lying down.

She’d seen naked men before — her younger cousins and their friends swimming when they hadn’t known she and her sisters had been near.

Instinct warned that what she’d seen then would be significantly different to what lay stretched out in the bed behind her.

It didn’t matter. He wasn’t for her.

Determinedly closing her eyes, she lay still and willed herself to sleep.

Dreams came even though she remained awake. Haunting, tempting thoughts of what it might be like. With him. To lie with him, to touch and be touched. .

As her life now stood, she was never going to lie with any other man. She wasn’t going to marry, was never going to need the virginity she still possessed, was never going to gift it to any man. . so what use was it now to her?

Was she really going to let the opportunity to be made love to by the ton’s foremost rake slip through her fingers?

Especially when the alternative was to remain a bitter old virgin to the end of her days?

Especially when she knew that he was as attracted to her as she was to him, attracted in a purely sexual way. They’d never really liked each other, so what else could it be but sheer lust?

And she didn’t think him so arrogant and insensitive, so distant, hard, and ungiving now, not after the last days.

The notion of sharing a brief, passionate liaison with him before commencing the rest of her lonely life held serious appeal.

Of course, she’d have to make the first move, and knowing him, he’d make her spell out her wishes, possibly even make her beg. .

She inwardly sniffed. She wasn’t that innocent, or at least not that naïve. If he lusted after her. . perhaps she might make him beg?

That idea held significant appeal.

But how?

It didn’t take many minutes to decide that that was one of those questions that the longer one thought about it, the less easy finding an answer became.

So. . first step. She released her grip on the mattress.

She turned over and even without trying found herself rolling into him.

He was lying on his back; her hand came to rest on his chest. He was still wearing his shirt and was lying on top of the sheet, not under it, as she was.

He’d been staring upward. Slowly he turned his head, and through the moonlight that poured through the window above them met her gaze. Then he arched one faintly supercilious brow.

She cleared her throat. “I. .”

When she couldn’t find suitable words, that damned brow arched tauntingly higher.

She glared into his eyes.

Then she pushed up, slapped one palm to his bearded cheek, bent her head, and pressed her lips to his.

There was nothing tentative about her kiss — it was full of fiery purpose and determination.

Even less uncertain was the response that surged through him, then raged into her.

Passion.

Unleashed, searing. Relentless.

For one dizzying moment it ripped her from the world, cindered her senses and left her reeling. .

Then he reined it in. Ruthlessly, with an ironclad will he drew the heat and the tempestuous fury back in. Until he held both in the palm of his hand.

But he didn’t break the kiss.

Instead, with that same ironclad, utterly unopposable will, he took control of the exchange. Until he was kissing her with slow, drugging intensity. Long, unhurried kisses that supped and tasted, that kept the heat within her simmering. Kisses laced with promise, with a leashed hunger that spoke of desire, and passion, and intimacy, and tantalized her. Mesmerized her. Made her want.

Made her ache with that wanting.

Then he surged up, rolled, and she was on her back.

Her lips parted on a gasp as she sensed him so close, sensed the heated hardness of his muscled chest a mere inch from her breasts.

Breckenridge took advantage to sink deeper into the kiss, to send his tongue gliding past her luscious lips into the honeyed sweetness beyond. He found her tongue and stroked, inwardly smiled as he set himself to tempt and taunt her into playing, into learning to engage with him in the more intimate exchange, one he knew she’d never shared with any other man.

She’d never taken a lover, but she was going to take him.

And he was going to take her, slowly, elaborately, and very thoroughly.

His hips lay alongside hers, separated by the tangled sheet. Propped on one elbow, he held his chest above hers, hands locked about her wrists, pressing them into the pillow on either side of her head as he slowly, thoroughly, ravaged her mouth, claimed every silken inch.

She was panting and heated when he at last raised his head.

He waited for her lids to rise, from a distance of mere inches looked into her stormy eyes. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

She stared into his eyes, then the tip of her tongue slid over her lower lip and her gaze lowered to his mouth. “Do you?”

His laugh should have been supremely confident, but to his ears it was a trifle ragged. “I’ve been down this path before.”

Her eyes returned to his, open challenge darkening the blue. “Not with me.”

That was undeniable. He’d never seduced a woman with any serious intent before. He’d never had to exert himself as he intended to exert himself that night. “Which brings me to my next question.”

“I didn’t know interrogation would form such a large part of your play.”

“And I didn’t know you would want to play at all”—he caught and held her gaze—“and I still don’t.”

She didn’t look away. “I would have thought I’d made my wishes plain.”

“Tell me in words.”

Her eyes flared. She drew in a deep breath, stopped — cut it off — when her breasts brushed his chest. She hesitated, but then didn’t draw back, instead left the crests of the pert mounds teasingly touching, shifting the linen of his shirt against his skin.

It took considerable effort not to react.

“I want you to make love to me.” She uttered the words clearly, deliberately. Her eyes remained challengingly locked with his. “I want you to be my lover.” And as if that wasn’t inducement enough, she added, “My one and only lover.”

Beyond his control, his lips curved, not with humor, with intent. He would be her one and only lover; that was his aim, his goal. But he intended to claim the position forever, not just for a night. “If I oblige”—looking down at her, he sensed the will behind the delicate curve of her jaw—“we’ll do it my way. No demands, no directions. You follow my lead.”

She shrugged a bare shoulder. “You’re the expert.”

“Exactly. So you agree?”

She studied his eyes, clearly sensing there was some motive behind his request that she didn’t understand. She would soon enough.

Drawing in a tight breath, she nodded. “All right. Your way.”

He smiled even more intently, then lifted over her, and slowly lowered his body to hers. The sheet formed a barrier from waist to feet; his shirt as well as her flimsy chemise screened her breasts from his chest.

She stopped breathing, stiffened slightly, but the widening of her eyes, their glazing as her distracted senses slid away to explore, and the sudden leaping of her pulse beneath his fingertips assured him she wasn’t about to change her mind and resist.

Releasing her wrists, his weight still partially on his elbows, he slid both hands into the silk of her hair, framed her face, then held it, tipped it to him, and kissed her.

Deeply, more intently, than before. Arousingly, with just a hint of urgency. Using every ounce of sensual guile he’d ever learned, he probed, caressed — there, and there — stroking the spots where she was most sensitive, the places within the succulent heaven of her mouth that most powerfully evoked her nascent passions.

They rose to his call. Slowly, steadily he drew them up, to him, until he could send them, all elemental want and smoldering heat, sliding through her to sink beneath her skin. And melt her.

He didn’t rush, saw every reason not to. He took his time, until she was shifting, instinctively searching, her body rising, surging evocatively under his. His weight kept her pinned, held safely immobile so she couldn’t exert any undue influence.

Only then did he break from her lips and send his own questing. Over the delicate, so feminine line of her jaw, down the long, arching line of her throat.

Heather caught her breath when he licked the pulse point at the base of her throat, then placed a scorching, openmouthed kiss over the spot, then suckled lightly. Teasingly.

He seemed to know exactly where to kiss, where to touch. How to touch.

She’d expected — hoped for — nothing less.

His hands slid from her hair, from her face as he shifted lower in the bed. His retreat freed her forearms, her hands. Lids still lowered, seeking by touch, she brushed his cheek, his jaw, then ran her fingers back into the dark bounty of his hair, gripped lightly as his lips traced a path from her collarbone across to the ribbon strap of her chemise.

At least he hadn’t suggested she’d been swept away by his kiss, that because of it she didn’t know what she’d asked for.