A year or so earlier, Lavinia and Willa had bent their heads over a page in a book depicting a man lying between a woman’s legs. The man’s mouth was there, and one hand was on himself.

They had looked at each other and turned the page in unspoken agreement: either that was pleasant, or it wasn’t.

It seemed Willa was about to find out.

Alaric looked up at her and the expression in his eyes made her legs fall open in a truly improper fashion. She did so instinctively—because he looked as if he were on fire to kiss her there.

Feeling welled up inside her … she laughed. No, she giggled. She never giggled.

But there it was. She giggled.

“You surprise me, Evie,” Alaric drawled, his voice husky and suggestive. His thumbs were rubbing provocative little circles on her skin, leaving trails of flames and pure want.

Willa lost all inclination to giggle, and a startled gasp came from her lips instead. When a broad finger touched her, she melted backward, her head falling to the pillow, her lower back arching without conscious volition.

Gasp followed gasp as his tongue followed his fingers: one callused and strong, the other sleek and smooth. Both beguiling, both entrancing.

Hunger, this hunger, was like a fever, Willa discovered. It raged through her brain and took away conscious thought. It spread through her body as if her blood had been replaced by burning brandy.

It was a pleasure she could never have imagined. Touching herself was a pale thing compared to this assault on her senses and her body. She couldn’t find words, but he did.

Hoarse, aching words spilled from Alaric’s mouth. She felt unmoored, flung into a deep sea by the racking waves of desire sprung from his words and his mouth on her. She reached down and he laced one of his hands with hers.

Their fingers clung together and that fulcrum became her steady point in a world in which desire drove her higher and higher—

Until she broke, the feeling overflowing her body. Her fingers locked on his and a scream broke from her lips. He stayed with her, his tongue making the pleasure last, flowing from wave to wave, until she finally slumped, boneless.

He made a satisfied sound, and gave her a last caress. Willa pulled her fingers away from his and pushed hair back from her damp forehead, gasping for air. She was still panting when he crawled up beside her, his erection straining his breeches. “Alaric,” she whispered.

He grinned at her, the triumphant grin of a bad man who knows his way around a woman’s body. “You have a rosy splotch on each of your cheeks,” he said cheerfully. The back of his hand felt cool against her heated skin.

Willa didn’t know what to say. All the modesty and shyness she hadn’t felt earlier came flooding in, making her skin tight with embarrassment. With a wiggle she restored her nightgown to something resembling decorum.

“The splotches are joining together and you’re turning rosy pink all over.” That twinkle in his eye should be outlawed in polite society.

She coughed. It was an expressive cough, the sort one makes when a gentleman has overstayed his welcome: a morning call gone on too long; an unwelcome request for another dance; a second marriage proposal after the first was refused.

Predictably, Alaric paid no attention. Instead he rolled onto his side and watched with interest as she wriggled her nightdress all the way down to her toes.

He didn’t seem to be taking the hint, so she finally met his eyes again. He quirked up one side of his mouth in a smile that made her feel unnervingly happy.

“That was quite lovely,” she said candidly. “But I think you should leave now.”

“You are a hard-hearted woman,” he offered, eyes dancing with laughter.

“Why so?”

“You accepted my best ministrations with nary a thank-you.”

Color flooded up her neck again. “I apologize. I wasn’t … I’m not cognizant of the proper comportment after ministrations of this nature.”

He laughed so loudly at that, she felt obliged to clap a hand over his mouth. When that didn’t work, she poked him in the side, and threatened to put a pillow over his face to smother the noise.

“Hush, you utter beast,” she said, giggling despite herself.

“When a lady has been plundered and despoiled …” Alaric began. Caught sight of her face and gave another shout of laughter.

“Someone will hear you!” Willa squealed.

“If they heard anything, they heard you,” he said, pushing himself up against the headboard, his eyes gleaming.

“Hush,” Willa commanded. She was beginning to feel like herself again. Her heart had settled into a normal rhythm, and the pulsing heat between her legs had subsided. “I have been neither plundered nor despoiled,” she said firmly.

Looking at the bare chest of the man lying in her bed made that throbbing sensation return, so she kept her eyes above his chin. “I am thankful for your … for you, Alaric. But you should return to your bedchamber.”

He reached out and cupped his hand along the curve of her jaw, bent forward and pressed a kiss there. “Am I to take it that my skill has not changed your mind as regards making our sham betrothal into a true one?”

Willa’s heart skipped a beat. Alaric was so … just so much himself. Beautiful in an untamed way, his rumpled hair, worn too long for fashion, if the truth be known. Most gentlemen were shaved these days. She and Lavinia had wondered what it would be like to kiss a man with a scalp as bare as a baby’s bottom.

If she accepted Alaric’s hand, she’d never kiss a bald man.

Or she might, if she refused him again. The arguments for and against tangled in her mind like a thorny hedge.

“If only you were an ordinary man,” she said, hopelessly. “Even if you had nothing!”

“My ministrations must have truly pleased if you would accept me without a ha’penny to my name.”

She reached over and gave his chest a little slap. It was warm and broad, and her fingers clung there. “Don’t be silly. I mean you, Alaric. You. It’s just Lord Wilde …” Her voice trailed away into helplessness.

“So you have said.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed. Her fingers slipped from his chest. His expression wasn’t cold in the least. Or angry, or anything unpleasant.

It was just … not there.

He was giving her his “Lord Wilde” face, Willa thought with incredulity.

She came to her feet as well. “Don’t you dare bow to me.”

“I beg your pardon?” His face, too startled for politeness, appeared through the neck of his shirt.

“You are Lord Wilde-ing me,” she said, folding her arms over her breasts. Then she thought better of it and snatched up her dressing gown and put it on.

He looked bewildered, the way men do when they are being particularly idiotic. That was an unfair thought, but she couldn’t make herself unthink it.

“You have a way of being Lord Wilde,” she explained, tying her sash tightly around her waist, as if adding another layer would take away from the fact that her knees were still trembling. “It’s all very well if you wish to behave that way with your legions of admirers, but not with me.”

A smile softened his mouth. “You are not an admirer?”

“I am not,” she said stubbornly.

His smile grew as he buttoned up his waistcoat. “Willa Everett, you are unlike anyone I have ever met.”

“As you have already pointed out,” she said. “And I will repeat that your circle of acquaintances must have been regrettably small, for all that you boast of having friends in many parts of the world.”

“They are not friends,” he said. “Merely acquaintances.”

“Because they all met Lord Wilde,” she said, nodding. “And not Lord Alaric.”

A smile lit his eyes. “If you ban Lord Wilde, you will have a remarkably impolite spouse.”

“I have not agreed to have you as a spouse,” she reminded him.

“Yes, you have.” His smile was wide, and warm, and sent a bolt of pleasure straight down her body. “You haven’t quite accepted it yet, Evie, but you are mine. There’s no rush, though. Take your time.”

That was pure Alaric. That sinful, teasing look, the one that promised to come to her room night after night, roly-polies in hand, no doubt. It made her blood simmer with lust, weakened her knees again.

“Go,” she commanded, ignoring her conviction that he would knock on her door on the morrow.

“As you wish,” he said, amiably enough. He came over and kissed her with the brisk efficiency that she’d seen from husbands leaving their wives for the day.

“Lord Wilde is not who you want in a husband,” Alaric said, with a grin. “He doesn’t exist. I am precisely who you want, Evie. But I know it will take you some time to accept it, and I will wait for you.”

He turned and was out of the room, the door closed quietly behind him, before Willa could open her mouth to reply.

Which was just as well.

She was afraid she would have agreed with him. Or disagreed, if only to say that she wouldn’t need much time at all.

That she wanted Alaric Wilde now, here, forever.