Quinn strode for the parlor door with his blood aflame. He burned to make her his, to have her in his bed, his arms, his life, at last.

If she would let him make love to her, surely she would agree to marry him. She’d already admitted that she was attracted to him, that she preferred him to Fulkham because . . .

You’re exactly what you seem—a decent man devoid of schemes.

Hell and be damned. Well, she’d never find out about his foolish plan if he kept quiet about it. His servant was entirely loyal to him.

As he turned the key in the lock, he thrust those small misgivings aside and headed back to her. Then he froze. She had her skirts hitched up to her waist and was unfastening her drawers.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he approached her.

Two bright spots of red stained her cheeks. “I thought we were . . . I mean—”

“We are.” He gently tugged her skirts from her hands. “But I’m not going to toss up your skirts and ravish you like some doxy. I’ve been waiting months for this.” His voice thickened. “I want to undress you, to see you laid bare one delectable piece at a time.”

He took her hair down, and the rich cascade of golden curls nearly brought him to his knees. Twining a hank of it around his hand, he took in her scent, which mingled soap and almonds in heady measures. God, how he loved the smell of her.

Turning her around, he unbuttoned her gown and slid it off, then went to work on her petticoats. “I want to kiss and caress every part, taste every part. I mean to take my time making love to you.” I mean to convince you that marriage to me will have benefits you haven’t yet fathomed.

If he could hold out that long. His cock was already as hard as the fireplace poker.

He ran his hand down the soft contours of her bared arms, and she trembled. “I thought men . . . liked this to be quick.”

“Some men, I suppose.” Smoothing her hair away from her neck, he kissed the nape, exulting when her breath sped up. “Why? Was your husband like that?”

“John was always in a . . . hurry with everything. It was in his nature.”

“Well, it’s not in mine,” he said, praying that he could make good on that just now. “Anticipation is part of the pleasure.”

He undid her corset and slipped it off before filling his hands with her ample breasts through her shift. She gasped, then pressed into his caress. As he thumbed her nipples, they hardened into cherry stones, making him hunger to do more than just touch them.

Drawing her around to face him, he removed her shift so he could see what he’d been caressing. A blush spread down her chest as he surveyed her bounty. His mouth went dry. Her breasts were heavy, topped with luscious, shell-pink nipples he wanted to lick and nibble and suck.

So he did, bending to take one breast in his mouth as he fondled the other with his hand.

“Oh, Lord,” she whispered, leaning into him. “You do that . . . very well.” She clutched his head to her chest, and he obliged her by laving and kneading her until he had her panting.

When she reached down to unbutton his trousers, he not only let her but shrugged them off, then went to work on removing her drawers.

In his haste, he knotted them, and she murmured, “Let me.”

He stood back to watch as she deftly undid them, then dropped them to the floor, revealing the most perfect mound of Venus he’d ever seen—thickly veiled by blond curls he couldn’t wait to delve beneath.

“God have mercy on me,” he choked out as he scanned every inch of her gorgeous female form.

Her eyes went wide. Then she flashed him her Mona Lisa smile—part seductress, part Madonna. “God may. But I won’t.”

In that moment, his control broke. He half pulled, half dragged her to a table so he could lift her onto it and fall upon her like a wolf upon a feast. As she ran her fingers over his shoulders and chest, he indulged his need to stroke and fondle and generally lay waste to the glory that was Meriel naked.

But when he knelt to worship her with his mouth, she put her hand on his head. “What . . . are you doing?”

He gazed up at her. Had her husband really been such a fool? “I told you—I mean to taste every part of you.”

“Oh.”

With his fingers, he burrowed through her pretty curls to the luscious flesh he wanted to devour, then flicked his tongue over it.

“Oh my,” she gasped.

When her fingernails dug into his scalp, he glanced up at her. “Shall I continue?”

“Yes. Oh my word, yes.”

So he did.

Meriel had never imagined such a thing, but she was more than willing to learn of it. To relish it. Because her dear Quinn used his tongue quite deftly.

Heavens! Her heart pounded in her chest, in her blood, and even in the part of her he was sucking and stroking with his tongue. “You are . . . very good at this . . . too.”

He chuckled against her and went on until he had her shimmying on the table, inching closer and closer to that frustrating point where things had always ended with John.

But Quinn went past that. Within moments he was driving her toward the heavens . . . up and up and up until she shattered in a delicious explosion beyond all her experience.

“Quinn!” she cried as her body quaked beneath his expert mouth. “Good Lord!”

As she was reeling from the burst of wild satisfaction, he rose to shuck his drawers. She got only a glimpse of his magnificent, surprisingly large staff before he murmured, “My turn, love,” and entered her with a thrust that lifted her up off the table, burying him to the hilt inside her.

And she was rapt once more.

He was so strong, much stronger than she would have imagined. The feeling of having him joined to her was exquisite.

“You are . . . everything I dreamed,” he rasped against her ear. “More than what I dreamed.”

He began to drive into her in a slow dance that warmed her again, roused her again. Lord, but she hadn’t guessed that was possible. “We should have . . . done this a long . . . time ago,” she said. “I had no idea . . .”

“I knew.” His black eyes smoldered—coals igniting her heat—and his gaze felt even more intimate than the fullness of him inside her. “I always knew it would be you.”

The words, so like a vow, thundered in her ears as he increased his strokes until she felt that wonderful building of tension between her legs again, felt him engulfing her with his body, making her want . . . so much . . . for this to last forever.

For them to be together forever.

Even as she thought it, he drove deeply and let out a triumphant cry that sent her right over the edge again into ecstasy.

And as they stood clutching each other, she realized that this intimacy was what she’d been waiting all her life for. He was the only man who didn’t demand anything of her but that she be herself. He was always himself with her, and all he asked was that she be the same.

Tears rose to her eyes. How was she to give him up? She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

He kissed her hair and temple and cheeks, but when his lips moved over her eyelids, he paused. “Why are you crying?”

She managed a watery smile. “Because it was perfect. And perfect things always make me cry.”

“Then I damned well should be crying buckets,” he rasped. “Because I’ve never met anyone more perfect than you.”

“Flatterer.” She smoothed her hands over his arms, then gave a start when she felt something wet on the bandage. “Oh no, you’re bleeding again! You may have burst open your stitches.”

He laughed. “I don’t care. It was well worth it.”

She pushed him away. “Come, I have to check your wound.”

His face fell. “Must you?”

She dragged on her shift, then hurried over to the chest. “Well, I’m not going to let you bleed to death after all my trouble to prevent you from doing so.”

“If it keeps you tending to me like a doting wife, I will happily endure some blood loss,” he murmured as he tugged his drawers on and went to stand beside her.

“I haven’t agreed to marry you,” she said as she unwound his bandage.

“You will.”

She fought a smile. “Rather sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“I’m sure of you. I know you would never have given yourself to me if you hadn’t intended it to mean something more.”

Trying to figure out what to say to that, she checked his stitches. “They held, thank heaven. I guess the strenuous activity just caused them to bleed a bit.” Because of her. Because he’d fought to protect her, and then had made love to her to boot. “Let me rewrap it and you’ll be fine.”

He read the consternation on her face. “If you think that, why are you frowning?”

She sighed as she bandaged him again. “I just hate that your association with me did this to you.” Her heart caught in her throat. “Gregory never told me my task tonight was dangerous.”

A look of what appeared oddly like guilt crossed his face. “About that—”

“I never wanted you dragged into any of this, and now you have been, and I just feel awful about it.”

“It’s not your fault,” he bit out. “There’s something I should—”

A click at the door alerted them both that someone was trying to enter the room. Then, to Meriel’s horror, the key turned in the lock.

That was all the warning she had before Gregory burst into the room.