Abigail knelt before the marquess—right between his knees. The posture was so brazen, so unthinkable. She could have been offered the world and she wouldn’t have been tempted to move from her place before him. This was where she was meant to be.

Her arousal drew into a tight point. She might never have lain with a man, but there was little question as to what the heat of desire was coaxing her to do. And she’d never wanted to partake in the act so much in her life—never before wanted to surrender so absolutely, with exhaustive detail in every point of pure ruination.

Let down her hair? Were the night to take its natural course, it would be only a matter of time.

If only they weren’t fighting against the threat of tomorrow’s first light. Never before had a new day seemed so unwelcome, so repulsive.

The mostly unconsumed wine rested forgotten on the side table by the arm of his chair.

She took one of his hands. He was steady and warm. One by one, she pulled at the fingers of his gloves, loosening each in turn until the covering slipped away, baring his skin to her.

Then, with a single glance downward to lower her lashes, she caught his stare again and reached up to pull the first pin.

Beside them, the fire crackled over the dry wood, light in the room shifting and jumping as the flames consumed their prey.

Abigail dropped the pin in Harland’s open palm.

He released a shuddering breath.

She withdrew another and another, locks of hair falling with each pin she plucked until they were all collected in his hand. She shook her head, letting the strands fall where they would about her shoulders, the mask tied low enough about her head to avoid what otherwise would have been a very strange effect.

The marquess slid forward in his seat, hovering over her. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He cupped the lower part of her face with his still-gloved hand. She nuzzled closer.

“I believe it’s my turn, my lord.”

“Yes. So it is.” He stroked her face tenderly. “What if we had more time together?”

Her heart ached for that exact thing. They might be wrapped in the warm embrace of a stolen moment now, but dawn would come, and with it, the end of their time together. “But we don’t.”

“But what if we did—what then? Tell me what you would want. Tell me your desires.”

She halted at the unexpected turn. Her desires? Things she hardly ever even admitted to herself? “I don’t know if I dare.”

“Too shocking for words?”

Abigail’s throat was dry. “Yes, my lord.”

“Now I’m all the more intrigued. You won’t escape now. You must tell me.”

“They’re not at all what a woman should be thinking.”

“Rubbish. Cast such nonsense from your mind immediately and never believe that wretched lie again.”

“Still…”

“Please, Miss S. Try to shock me.”

A charge of boldness shot up her spine and Abigail licked her lips. “I would…I would want to remove my gown.”

“Yes?” There was a breathless quality in the monosyllabic utterance. “And then?”

“I would want to lie upon your bed.” One bold turn was begetting another. “And I would want you to lie with me.”

Speaking the words aloud—saying things that she’d never dreamed could be spoken, admitting to wants that before she’d only ever deny possessing…

Were she alone, she’d have reached between her legs to touch herself. She’d have moved her hand back and forth, maybe even have slipped a finger inside of herself and rocked herself over her pressing palm until all the yearning came to a peak only to come crashing down in one breathless burst of pleasure.

He stroked her hair. “You would, would you?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me more.”

Her face flared with heat, one part mortification, two parts flourish of arousal. “I’d want you to—to touch me.”

“Good. Because I’d want to touch you. And I’d want you to touch me.”

“I’d want it to be—to be…” She swallowed. “Nice.”

“Nice?”

“Nice.”

Harland smiled. “I would want you to sit upon me and move yourself over me until you couldn’t stand it any longer. I would watch your breasts and stroke your thighs and touch you between your legs.”

Abigail couldn’t help herself. In so many ways, touching was easier. She ran a hand up his leg towards his waist, stopping only when she neared the crease of his bent hip.

He let out a moan, eyes falling shut for a moment. After depositing the pins along side the neglected wine, he slid off the chair entirely to kneel with her there on the floor. One whisper closer and their bodies would rub against each other. He grasped her arms at the elbows while she in turn took hold of his forearms. “It’s still your turn, you know. Tell me your demand, Miss S.”

“Kiss me.”

For a silent interval, it seemed he was about to invoke his right of refusal. She waited, no breath in her lungs, heart still beating only out of long-established habit.

“I don’t want you to do what you will wake tomorrow regretting.”

“Of all the possibilities scattered between us, my lord, the only one I’d regret us choosing is not making the best possible use of this night.”

“A kiss doesn’t always stop with a kiss. It can lead to other things. Two people together like this, wanting as much as we do—it can be difficult to maintain a hold on reason.”

“Hang reason. That is, so long as we’re careful…”

“You’re sure?”

“My lord, I think a part of me has been sure since you happened upon me in the gallery above the ballroom.” It took speaking the words aloud to realize how very true they were. She might be going mad. If she was, she welcomed lunacy with open arms. Just one night. One night for her most secret yearnings to be realized.

Clutching her, he tipped his head to one side and leaned close. “I still haven’t an idea of who you are.”

“I have nothing to tell you. Until tonight, I was unknown to myself.” She’d stripped away every mask but the one on her face. “You don’t have to know my name to know me.” The double meaning of know rattled through her brain the second the last word had launched from her tongue. “And what does that matter when the only thing I wish to be tonight is yours?”

He took her into his arms in earnest then and at last—at last—their lips came together.

* * *

Harland was lost. Hopelessly. Irrevocably. They were tangled together, he and she, and whatever brought them together was a force greater then the sum of either, alone or together.

All this and he’d barely started kissing her. Lord help him, but he really wasn’t going to survive the night, was he?

He had his mouth lighting upon hers, touching and moving. He inhaled the mix of smells around them—first and foremost, the woman before him. The familiar comfort of the old cottage, the wood fire lurking somewhere back there behind the new. How long would it be before he could smell a wood fire again and not think of her?

The kiss deepened. He let his hand wander over her body, the sweet swells and the dramatically curving dips covered by the layers she wore.

“There’s a bed in the second room. What would you say if I asked you to join me there?”

She let out a little cry as his lips traced their way down her neck. “Take me.”

What further invitation did a man require?

He pushed to his feet and reached to help her to hers.

At the doorway to the room containing a bed just big enough for two, he paused with an abashment previously unknown to him in such encounters.

But this wasn’t just any encounter. This was her. Whoever she was.

“I’m so eager, I’m not sure this will be all you deserve.”

“You’re apologizing before anything’s happened, my lord.”

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

“Don’t.” She slipped her hand into his and squeezed. “I want this. Whatever it is, whatever it might be. I don’t care about oughts and shoulds, only that we have something of our own.”

He drew her the rest of the way inside the room. It was about as big as the kitchen storeroom at the main house. The laundry and servants’ rooms were larger—granted, most of the servants shared their sleeping spaces.

But this was their room. Just for tonight, it belonged to them and only them. He lit the lamp in the room, the soft glow casting a quiet spell through the small chamber.

“We’re going to undress now.”

Her answer came in a breathy whisper, color heightening in the portions of her face visible. “Is it your turn to make a demand, my lord?”

Indeed it was. “Yes it is, my fair Miss S.” Never in his life had it been more his turn, not in this game, or any other.

With her gown went his cravat and jacket, Harland doing double-duty helping her while acting the part of his own valet, hands brushing over her body as he worked. With her short stays went his waistcoat and shirt, with only a slight pause to place a strategic handkerchief on the bed for himself. His boots went next, along with her slippers, stockings, and garters.

Then all that remained were only his breeches and her chemise. The tips of her nipples tented the billowing fabric around her, cotton rumpled from having been under stays and the form-fitting gown.

Harland tossed the breeches aside to the pile growing on the chair, and her eyes went directly down, widening with what she found jutting upwards from between his legs.

He stepped close. “Now you.”

The last layer fell and they stood together, utterly bare. Bare but for the mask she still wore.

If there’d been air in his lungs, it certainly seemed to have vanished in a hurry.

Her skin glowed. The rises and falls of her body were more than he could have imagined, even having explored the length.

What a woman.

She was everything—everything—the female form should be. Full breasts boasting light pink areolas at least as large as a sovereign. A rounded belly and plump thighs.

His cock jerked in eager anticipation.

* * *

The air in the sparsely furnished room was cool, but when the hardness of his body came up against hers, heat seared her skin. He was hard—so exhaustively different than she. Where her body was described by smooth roundedness, his was defined by sharp outlines cutting him into planes of masculine beauty. Where the only hair upon her to speak of was upon her head and between her legs, there was a more plentiful selection upon him—on his chest and arms and legs.

Dear sweet savior, have mercy. His erection arched in a slight backbend as it reached for the sky, so full, so intent. The way it pressed into her belly, so hot and hard—the inevitable couldn’t come too soon. At the same time her insides were clenched with pleasure, she also felt a strange sort of swelling between her legs, heightened by every brush against her skin. It was like awakening for the first time to the life she’d been meant to live.

The back of her thighs found the edge of the bed. They tumbled back together, her body splaying open to allow his between her legs. He ran his hand down a breast, trailing the rest of the way down between her legs. He moaned when he slipped deeper between the slick bits. “You’re so wet.”

He touched her and fondled her, hands moving over her skin as if born only to worship her body, all the while pushing the need inside her higher and higher.

Eventually, he pulled away to stare down at her, breath coming audibly in deep inhalations and exhalations. “Are you ready?”

“So ready.”

He adjusted himself.

Abigail’s breath hitched at the unexpected pressure from the blunt point. Managing himself so she didn’t take the entire weight of him, he sunk his fingers into her backside, his chest smashing her breasts. The skin of his face was textured from the stubbly hair growth shadowing the lower half.

Her eyes were wide, staring up at the ceiling. This was it. She was about to have a man inside of her. All those years of wondering, questioning, dreaming—of feeling her own finger pushed deep into her own body and hoping with wish after fervent wish that one day a man would do this very thing to her—it was going to happen.

And then it did.

She sucked in a hard breath at the breach.

Harland froze, whole body straining above her. “Have you done this before?” His voice was thick with tension.

“Does it matter?”

He winced, pain on his countenance. “Oh, dear God.”

She wiggled her hips—tensing a little at the utterly foreign sensation. Nothing she’d ever done to herself had prepared her for reality. He was inside of her. He was so big. She was splayed so wide and filled so full. “Isn’t it too late?”

“I don’t wish to take anything from you that—”

“Take? My lord, the only take here is the issue I take with that word. What is this but nothing that I don’t give—freely, completely, and with the whole of my being?”

“You haven’t, have you?”

“Well…no. Of course not. But…”

Her heart beat a panicked rhythm—her body screamed no. No, no—she wasn’t ready for it to end, please, no.

But he was already withdrawing. Pulling himself off her, he rolled to the side and sat on the edge of the bed.