A movement in the doorway caught Dahlia’s eye. Faith! Thank God.

“Miss Digby,” she called out before Faith could trudge up the stairs. “What perfect timing. You do recall that favor you owe me?”

Privacy? Faith mouthed silently, eyebrows raised in portent.

Immediately, Dahlia mouthed back, tilting her head toward two dozen delighted schoolgirls. “Ladies, Miss Digby will now cover the operational aspects of Circus Minimus while I have a brief chat with Mr. Spaulding.”

“I just want to say…” Simon paused and his knee seemed to buckle.

Dahlia grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him out of the ballroom. “Not here.”

In fact, she didn’t want to waste time with talking at all. From the moment she had realized he was going to be empty-handed after his incredibly sweet gesture, all she could think about was filling his arms with her body.

“Where are we going?” he asked as she all but dragged him up the staircase. “To your office?”

“Yes,” wasn’t a complete lie. It wasn’t her fault the abbey’s small size meant her office and her bedchamber were now the same room.

He was too good for her. She recognized that. She intended to change it. For starters, as soon as the Circus Minimus amassed sufficient donations, she would never go back to being a thief again. She now had a business partner. A plan for raising money.

And for the first time: hope.

The rest of her situation hadn’t changed. The school still balanced on the edge of financial ruin. Until the donations far outweighed expenses, she could not dare jeopardize her position in society with the barest hint of scandal—such as a romantic involvement with a Bow Street Runner.

But just because there could be no courtship didn’t mean they couldn’t be together for just one night. There was no one she would rather have clandestine affair with than Simon. Heat-of-the-moment kisses and secret embraces were far from enough.

She flung open her door, pulled him inside, and turned the key in the lock.

His brow furrowed only briefly before he seemed to take heart. “Dahlia, it would bring me the greatest pleasure if—”

She rose up on her toes and pressed her lips to his.

Her heart pounded. She knew exactly what would bring them the greatest pleasure. She hooked her hands about his lapels and tumbled backward onto her mattress, bringing him with her.

“I…” he began again. “That is, would you…”

She sank her fingers into his hair and kissed him with all the abandonment of her heart.

He either forgot whatever he’d been about to say, or finally realized there were far better uses for their mouths than wasting them on conversation.

Kissing him within the privacy of her locked bedchamber was even more thrilling than their first forbidden kisses had been, in stolen moments at the front alcove or in the ballroom, where anyone might have seen them.

Here, they were certain not to be interrupted. There was nothing more dangerous than that.

He propped himself up on one elbow—likely to allow her to breathe, or to voice concern about impropriety and a gentleman’s disinclination to take advantage of a lady—but Dahlia loved having to gasp for air between breathtaking kisses. She didn’t want propriety. She wanted Simon Spaulding. And she had him precisely where she wished: legs tangled with hers in the middle of her bed.

She reached up to loosen his cravat. If he intended to ruin the moment with concessions to ladylike decorum, she’d yank him back down with his own strip of linen and kiss him until gentlemanly behavior was the last thing on his mind.

The moment the knot of his cravat loosened, Simon ripped it from his throat and hauled Dahlia into his lap.

His kisses were faster than before, more demanding, as his fingers unfastened the first of her shirt buttons then flew back to his own shirt to unbutton his.

She met him kiss for kiss, her fingers tangling with his as she fumbled free his shirt buttons while he unfastened hers.

He shucked his coat, his waistcoat, his shirt, then paused as he reached for hers.

She lifted her arms over her head and arched her back, silently challenging him to yank the thin cambric over her head with the same mercilessness he’d treated his own.

Rather than do so, he lifted the hem gently, slowly, taking care to allow the ridges of his fingers to graze her hips, her waist, her ribs, the sides of her breasts. Gooseflesh followed the trail of his touch, as did a growing pool of desire that left every inch of her exposed skin tingling in anticipation of his next touch.

When at last her shirt sailed over his broad shoulders to join the other discarded garments upon the floor, Dahlia’s pulse beat so frantically she was certain he could hear it. Her breasts were fuller than before, her nipples hard and aching.

He tipped her backwards into the pillows, then lowered his mouth to hers.

“I’ve never undressed a woman in trousers before,” he said gruffly. “I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”

Before she could think of an appropriate reply, he began a trail of incendiary kisses from her collarbone to the valley between her breasts, then down toward her waistline.

“I’ve never been stripped of my trousers before,” she countered belatedly, and gasped as he accompanied each newly unbuttoned inch with a kiss or flick of his tongue to her bare flesh.

She tilted her pelvis to help him tug her gaping trousers down over her hips. He took advantage of the closer proximity and slid his tongue between her legs to touch her core. Her eyes rolled back in shock and pleasure.

He had not stripped her of her trousers as she had anticipated. He had left them bunched about her ankles, affording her just enough resistance to feel trapped, and yet more than enough freedom to widen her knees to give him greater access.

The twin sensation of being simultaneously submissive and demanding stole her breath and made every lick, every touch, all the more pleasurable. She had imagined being helpless in his arms. This was infinitely better. She could thread her fingers into his dark hair and force him even closer to her core, or she could widen her trembling legs and let him plunder her however he saw fit.

She cupped her hands over her breasts, capturing the stiff nipples between her fingers. Her body was no stranger to her own touch. Many nights when she thought of Simon, she placed her fingers where she thought he might touch, pinched where she thought he might pinch, rubbed where she thought he might rub.

But he didn’t know she did that. Didn’t know she’d had her fingers exactly where his tongue now licked. Didn’t know how many delicious nights she’d teased her own nipples, pretending it was his hands, his mouth on her flesh, not hers.

With her head lolling back against the pillows, she could not see him between her legs. Perhaps right now, even as he licked her into distraction, his dark blue eyes were watching her cup her own breasts, toy with her own nipples. Perhaps his hands were not on the bed, but reaching into his own trousers, pulling out his—

She gasped as one of his fingers slid into her core, impaling as he licked, coaxing as he suckled. Waves of pleasure shot through her, rocketing her past all conscious thought. Her hands fell limp to her sides as the spasms tightened her legs and curled her toes.

Only when he’d taken everything from her did he tug the bunched trousers free from her still-trembling legs and position his bare hips against hers.

“Tell me you want this,” he demanded between kisses.

“You know the answer,” she managed to gasp, her body flickering back to life at the sensation of his shaft gliding again and again along her slick core.

“Say it.” His voice was rough as gravel, the tip of his shaft pressing at her opening. “Say it if you want it.”

She gave her hips a sudden tilt, forcing the tip to fully penetrate her. “Do it. Make love to me. Make me forget my own name.”

Before she had even finished talking, he sank into her inch by inch until she was no longer certain whether she’d spoken aloud or if Make me forget my own name had been the last coherent thought she’d managed to form in her mind.

The pain was first. Sharper than expected, but gone just as quickly.

His strokes were long, gentle. He probably imagined the slow, deliberate slide a way of easing her into the process, but she had never wanted easy. She wanted him. She wanted him to surrender to the same helpless ecstasy he had given to her.

Already her body had warmed to this new invasion. The parts he had licked were still so sensitive that her nerves sprang back to life with every hedonistic brush of his body against hers. Each stroke brought dual pleasure.

“Do you like this?” he whispered as he drove within her.

“I love it,” she managed to gasp in reply.

The pleasure robbed her mind of its ability to form words. All she could do was feel.

The strokes of his hard shaft inside her and the luscious friction on the outside were a combination so potent she could do little more than lock her legs about his hips and ride each breathtaking thrust.

“Simon,” she whispered. “Simon, I’m going to—”

The spasms fractured within her, the pleasure multiplying as her helpless muscles clenched and released his thick shaft as it stroked deep within her.

He pumped faster and faster and then jerked out from between her legs to bury his bucking hips in a blanket.

When she lifted her head in question, he slung one of his beautifully muscled arms about her waist and tilted his exhausted face toward hers.

“It’s not the order I planned to do things,” he murmured once he’d caught his breath, “but you’re definitely the one I planned to do it with. I always knew my first would be my last. I’m glad it was you.”

Dahlia turned her shocked gaze up to her bedchamber ceiling in dawning horror.

Simon hadn’t thought this was a heat-of-the-moment dalliance—he’d thought he was proposing marriage.

And she had just stolen his virginity.