He brushed a finger over her cheek. "All you have to do is ride," he softly said. "I'll do the rest."

Wistful hope shone in her eyes. "You make it sound possible."

"We'll ride out later and survey the countryside."

"There's still my mother." Cold reality intervened.

"I have friends at the consulate in Trieste. They can help her to freedom."

Her spirits lifted again. "Do you answer everyone's prayers or only mine?" A new lightness infused her voice; he made the daunting odds seem feasible.

"Just yours, darling," he roguishly murmured. "Ask me for… anything."

Her mouth quirked in a faint smile. "Are you flirting with me?"

He grinned. "I didn't know I had to with your husband's schedule. You're available to me twice a day with or without seduction."

"How quickly you've changed your mind." Playful, arch, she gazed up at him with a mischievous light in her eyes.

"The incentive turned out to beirresistible," he finished in a husky whisper.

"I return the compliment, but you already know that, don't you? Actually, I find myself extremely pleased," she went on in a lush contralto, "that my husband found you for me. Don't be alarmed," she hastily interjected, his sudden apprehension obvious. "I'm not interested in permanence any more than you."

Relief flickered across his face, although he was courteous enough to say, "I'm not alarmed."

"Just cautious," she supportively corrected, sliding her arms around his neck and smiling up at him. "I don't blame you. They all want to be married, don't they?"

"I never ask," he briefly replied, and then intent on changing the subject, he dropped back on the bed, pulling her with him. Rolling over her a flashing moment later, he said, hushed and low, "Does our morning schedule have a time limit or can I fuck you all day?"

"Just to reassure you, Crewe," she silkily murmured, aware of his evasion, "I'm only interested in your enormous cock; I don't need your title or money."

He softly chuckled. "A woman after my own heart."

"Do you have one?"

"On occasion."

"Does it permit you to indulge me now?" Her green gaze was bewitching. "Youdid promise me as many times as I want," she purred.

"At your service, Your Highness." He was already easing himself between her legs, nudging her thighs wider, pulling her dimity robe off so his heated flesh touched hers. "You're nicely wet for me," he murmured moments later, his fingers sliding over her pouty vulva.

"And you're always nicely hard, aren't you?" she pleasantly observed, his erection hot against her skin. "I'm so glad you came to visit me."

He laughed at this curious reversal of motive and impulse. "It turns out I am, too, with sweet, eager cunt like yours to enjoy."

"While I have a virtuoso rake to enjoy."

"We're here to please you, ma'am. Although you may have to beg me the first time as payback for last night," he teased, lightly brushing her sleek, pulsing labia with the swollen crest of his penis.

"Under the circumstances, I'm definitely not averse to begging," she breathed, needful, sensual urgency a constant with the Marquis of Crewe unclothed and aroused before her. She lifted her hips to more readily accommodate him.

"Tell me how much you want this," he murmured, inserting the tip of his penis the merest fraction, the pressure on her swollen tissue exquisite.

"I want you wildly, madly, feverishly," she whispered, moving her hips in a lush, sensuous undulation, enticing him in.

"Don't be shy," he sardonically murmured, smiling, and he guided himself into her drenched passage, his degree of lust as irrepressible. Adjusting her hips minutely, he penetrated slowly so they both felt the tremulous friction, the reluctant yielding as his huge cock stretched her, invaded her, forced her pulsing tissue wider.

All feeling was suddenly concentrated in the heated core of her body, the unspeakable flux and flow as he began moving a heady, breath-held delirium. There were degrees and more glorious degrees, she feverishly reflected, dissolving, dizzy with intoxicating pleasure.

How fuckable she was, he thought, plunging into her soft body, an intense, primordial satisfaction bombarding his senses fathomless, inchoate, different. Unbridled in her desires, lushly demanding, she was as selfishly intemperate as he.

In a slow thrust and withdrawal, he plunged deeper and deeper in an unrestrained rhythm that only partially satisfied his inexplicable craving. And she met him in her own wild, carnal urgency. It seemed as though they were completely alone in this strange bedroom and manor house, in the world and universe, all else displaced by raw, turbulent desire. Crying out, she clutched at him, drawing him closer, deeper, greedy, wanton, and suddenly he found himself thinking that a woman of such flagrant appetites had men in her past. Brushing his hair back from his face, as though an unobstructed view were required, his gaze narrowed on the flushed, passionate woman beneath him. "You do like fucking, don't you," he murmured, harsh and low, images of a crowd of amorphous men invading his consciousness.

Whimpering, impaled, she couldn't respond, could barely think beyond the delirious echoing mantra equating the marquis's hard erection with paradise, waves of carnal heat pulsing and throbbing through her vagina in a mindless, frenzied rhythm, orgasm, seconds, moments, away.

Suddenly resentful of her fierce abandon, he withdrew marginally and, frantic, she cried out, grasped him more tightly.

"No," he roughly breathed, holding himself motionless in mid-passage, rankled, wondering how many other men had brought her to this point of sexual hysteria.

Her hips arched high to draw him in, her fingers bit into his lower back.

"Fuckingno." Stung, maddened by an unnatural jealousy, he resisted her tenacious grip.

"Yes," she imperiously cried, panting, ravenous. The throbbing between her legs echoed in her brain and body, in every cell and tissue and coursing vein, her climax beginning to shudder on the fringes of her mind. "Damn you," she breathed, willful, commanding, the strength in her hands astonishing. "Give it to me."

She shouldn't have used those words.

They struck a perverse emotion, base prerogatives, untamed urges coming to the fore. "You want it?" he whispered, driven by powerful impulse. And teeth bared, vicious, he drove into her, unrestrained, merciless, giving her what she wantedwhat he wantedthis hot, hot, burning hot princess who made him forget everything but lust and debauch and burying his cock hilt-deep inside her.

She was panting, her climax so close, the peaking pleasure had begun flowing, that first runnel of rapture racing, leaping, swelling an instant later, bearing her to an orgasm so torrid and blissful, her high-pitched scream brought the guards to attention.

The marquis's climax was only seconds behind, and as the last vestiges of her cry died away, he abruptly withdrew and came on her stomach.

"No… no," she panted, her gaze still half-lidded. "You can't…"

It was too late, and rolling away, he lay sprawled on his back, eyes shut, breathless, inexplicably angry.

She lunged at him. "You can't do this to me!" she screamed, pummeling him wildly.

His eyes snapped open at the first blow, and, catching her fists in a brutal grip, he shoved her away. "I'm not… a pawn in your game." His breathing was labored, his body sweat-shined, his steely grasp hard like his eyes.

"This isn't a game," she said through clenched teeth, trying to shake his hands off. "It's not negotiable."

His hold only tightened. "I don't care what it is. Find some other man to"he drew in a deep breath to stabilize his breathing and temper"do what you want. I won't."

Poised on her knees beside him, prisoner in his grip, she raged, "You don't realize how necessary this isfor me. How can I make you understand?"

"You can't." All he could think of was her eager, untrammeled passionof all the men who had been where he'd been, when it shouldn't matter, when it had never mattered before. "Are you always so fucking enthusiastic?" he growled.

She went motionless. "You are bothered by that?"

"Maybe I am."

"Maybe I don't care," she hotly replied, struggling to pull free of his grasp.

"Answer me." His fingers were crushing.

"What do you want me to say? No? No, then. I was a virgin when I met you. Like all the other women you fuck," she snapped, as temperamental as he, as moody, as sullen. As troubled by disquieting feelings. "That's your specialty, is it?" she sarcastically went on. "Fucking innocent maids. Strange. Rumor has it you like adultery bestall those society belles whose husbands don't satisfy them flock around you in droves. What's your record for a night? Eight?" she waspishly noted. "Or was it ten. I forget the dossier figures." Tantrumish, she glared at him. "So don't lecture me on morality," she said, testy and thin-skinned. "You don't qualify as a critic."

His rising temper was almost visible as her sarcasm escalated, and when she finished, he curtly said, "I prefer quiet women."

"Shall I tell you what kind of men I prefer?" she insolently returned. "We could compare the best of our repertoires. I've always found that men who"

Her words were cut short by his fingers pressed hard against her mouth. "Why don't I tell you instead what I want from you," he said, rude and glowering. "Stop that or I'll break your wrist," he gruffly added, warding off her blow with his shoulder, his grip viselike on her other hand. "Maybe I'll tieyou to the bed this time," he brusquely said, restive under incomprehensible emotion, unsated lust flaring at the sight of her still pinked with passion telling him of other men. What had they done to her and she to them? he wondered, his erection swelling. How often did she respond like she had with him? Why did he feel this overwhelming need to possess her?

There were no answers, nothing simplistic to explain the inexplicable. "You wanted numberless orgasms, didn't you?" he murmured, shifting into a seated position in a smooth flow of muscle, flipping her over on her stomach. "Let's see what we can do about that," he went on, moody, insult in his tone, raising her to her knees with effortless strength.

"Stay," he ordered as he would to a recalcitrant pet, slapping her bottom as she tried to escape, holding her securely around the waist while he moved into position behind her. His grip was pitiless, his fingers leaving marks on her pale skin. "You never even need stimulation, do you?" he silkily murmured. "How convenient," he sardonically went on, her dew-wet cleft tantalizingly available, the pink curve of her bottom provocatively raised to meet him. And, resentful of his stark craving for her, he thrust forward without preliminaries, gliding in too easily, he thought with chafing displeasureher vagina slick again with the sweet liquid of desire.

She shouldn't respond to such brute disdain, she querulously reflected, and while her intellect understood the ruinous barbarism of his actions, a molten heat dissolved through her body, the feel of himgloriously large, exquisite, the delectably forceful friction of his penetration sending fevered tremors coursing through her senses. She shivered at the heated rush, moved backward in greedy, shameless longing, slavish to the pleasure he provoked, an orgasmic flutter already pulsating deep inside her. She gasped, whimpered, the aching pressure flaring, quickly reaching tinder point as though he had to no more than enter her and she climaxed.

His savage rhythm continued unrestrained, each stroke driven by the entire force of his lower body throughout her orgasmic spasms and beyond, unrelenting, powerful, and within seconds she was crying out again in violent climax. Raw sensation tore through her mind and body and senses over and over again as the Marquis of Crewe gave vent to his moody need for submission. He rode her with a reckless disregard for everything but his own inexcusable need to assert himself, to master this woman who challenged his susceptibility to feeling.

"No more, no more…" she panted after numberless orgasms, her body over sensitized, ravished. "Please… no more…"

Her soft appeals finally pierced the mindless fury of his discontent and an enigmatic satisfaction pervaded his mind as he allowed himself his own climax outside her body, the soft curve of her lower back alternative to her fertile interior. Then his hands gentled on her, and he felt the silken texture of her skin as if for the first time and in a voice pitched low, filled with grace and charm, he whispered, "I'm sorry."