“No caresses?” The heightened color beneath his cheekbones might have been a blush in a less worldly man. “You mean you just want me to…?”

In reply, Esmerelda leaned against the door and delicately averted her face, slanting him a demure look from beneath her lashes. “You may commence.”

His heated gaze flicked up and down her before he patted the inviting softness of the bed. “Don’t you think we’d be more comfortable over here?”

“Most certainly,” she admitted with a regretful sigh. “But I fear reclining might put us on far too familiar terms for a mere business transaction.”

As Billy sauntered toward her, the speculative gleam in his eyes made her wonder if she’d overplayed her hand. She wasn’t sure she could stop herself from squealing in alarm if he gathered her skirt and petticoats and tossed them over her head.

But he simply leaned down, without touching her, and murmured, “Can I at least take your hair down… ma’am?”

Esmerelda closed her eyes and swallowed, the whiskey-scented warmth of his breath melting her resolve. “Well, I suppose removing a few hairpins wouldn’t hurt. Sir,” she hastened to add.

He stood with his lips a whisper away from hers while his ringers sifted through her hair—searching for, plucking out, and discarding pins until her silky mane came tumbling around their faces. Her nipples stiffened against the thin silk faille of her basque, straining toward the remembered delight of his touch. Glittering so near to her own, his heavy-lidded eyes looked very green indeed.

He splayed one hand against the door behind her, cocking his knee so that the slightest move in any direction would situate it firmly between her thighs. “I still think you ought to take off those fancy gloves. I’d hate to wrinkle them, sweetheart.”

“Miss Fine,” she breathlessly corrected, touching a finger to his parted lips.

He startled her by catching the fingertip of her glove between his teeth and tugging, peeling the supple kid from her smooth skin in one deft motion.

Before she could protest, he had captured her hand in his own. “No endearments, angel,” he murmured, the smoky timbre of his voice sending a restless shiver through her. He stroked the inside of her wrist with his thumb, making the pulse that beat just beneath her delicate skin flutter with anticipation. “No caresses.” He brought her naked palm to his mouth. “No kisses.” As he touched the tip of his tongue to the center of her palm, Esmerelda closed her eyes, biting back a moan.

When she opened them, Billy’s eyes had darkened with need. Esmerelda knew then that the game was done. His trump hadn’t turned out to be his superior strength or even his seductive charms, but the unspoken question in his eyes. A question he was giving her every right to answer with a resounding no, even if it made him crazy.

Unable to resist his grudging gallantry, Esmerelda curled her hand around his nape and pressed her lips to his, inviting him to collect his winnings. As their tongues touched, tasted, then entwined, he groaned into her mouth, the sound nearly as intoxicating as the whiskey on his breath.

Billy cupped her face between his hands and kissed her until the roaring in her ears drowned out the voice of reason she had heeded her entire life. She could not have pinpointed the moment when her own want became need and need desperation. She only knew that suddenly she was jerking off her other glove, tugging his shirt open, raking her fingernails though the crisp coils of his chest hair. When she inadvertently grazed his bandage, it took an extraordinary act of will to drag her mouth away from his.

“Your wound?” she whispered, gasping as he lowered his mouth to her throat, tearing at the tiny buttons of her bodice with his teeth.

“I don’t need a nurse,” he rasped. “I need a woman. I need you.”

As if to prove his words, he cupped his hands around the backs of her legs—lifting her, spreading her, pressing her to the door, pressing himself to the tender mound between her thighs. Esmerelda gasped at the shivery pulse of need spawned by his shameless demand. She might be an innocent, but she wasn’t a fool. She knew what he wanted to do to her just as surely as she knew she was going to let him.

“This is wrong,” she moaned, licking the smooth golden skin over his collarbone. He tasted wonderful— sweet and salty and masculine all at the same time.

“I know,” he muttered, sending the last of her poor beleaguered buttons plinking to the floor.

“We’re n-not even married.”

“I’ll marry you in the morning,” he growled, sinking his teeth into her freshly bared throat.

For a timeless moment, Esmerelda forgot to blink, forgot to breathe. “Was that a proposal?” she croaked, craning her neck in a vain attempt to see his face.

“No. Hell, I don’t know.” Curling one muscled arm beneath her hips to hold her in place, he used his other hand to tug down her chemise, then slowly lifted his gaze from her breasts to her face, looking nearly as stunned as she did. “Yeah, I reckon it was.”

“But you told me you weren’t looking for a wife.”

“I wasn’t,” he replied, bending to flick her nipple with the tip of his tongue.

She squirmed with delight as he suckled her, gently at first, then hard enough to make her womb contract with longing. Coiling her fingers in his hair, she struggled to remember the words he’d uttered her first day in Calamity. “Are you saying,” she bit off between broken gasps, “that you’d marry me just so you can poke me without paying?”

“Oh, I’ll pay” he said grimly. “You’ll have a lifetime to see that I do.”

“No!” Before those skillful lips of his could close around her other breast, sapping her of strength, Esmerelda wrenched herself from his arms and staggered halfway across the room. She clutched her bodice together as if it were the tatters of her pride.

Jasper would have followed, laughing cruelly at her pitiful attempts at resistance before he bore her back on the bed. Billy could only face her, breathing hard, his shirt hanging open and his hands resting on his lean hips.

“If that don’t beat all!” he exclaimed.“ After three months of living in a brothel, I thought I understood women. Then you had to come to Calamity!” He raked a hand through his hair, leaving it as wild as the look in his eyes. “Let me get this straight—you were going to let me take you to bed a minute ago, but now that I’ve offered to do right by you, you don’t want me.”

Esmerelda could set her chin to keep it from quivering, but she could do nothing to stop the tears from trickling down her cheeks. “Of course I want you. But I have my pride, Mr. Darling. And I could never let a man marry me simply because he wants to take me to bed.”

At the sight of her tears, the last trace of anger fled Billy’s face, leaving it raw with vulnerability. He took one step toward her, then when she didn’t bolt, dared another. His voice deepened to a hoarse rasp. “Would you want a man to marry you because he couldn’t live another day without you? Because he aches so hard every time he looks at you, he’s afraid he might just up and die?” Billy stretched out his hand, brushing a single tear from her cheek as if it were a droplet of dew. “Would you want a man to marry you because he loved you?”

Rendered mute by the despairing tenderness in his eyes, Esmerelda could only nod.

Billy set his jaw, looking no less grim than he had before. “Hell, Horace is right downstairs. If that’s what you want, I’ll marry you now.”

She frowned in confusion. “I thought Mr. Stumpelmeyer was a banker.”

“He is. He’s also mayor, postmaster, and justice of the peace.” Looking even more determined than he had when he’d dragged her into the room, Billy grabbed her hand and started for the door. Esmerelda hung back, laughing through her tears.

When he swung around, looking utterly baffled, she shook her head and said, “You don’t have to marry me tonight, Billy. Morning will come soon enough.”

He scooped her up in his arms, his eyes going smoky with promise. “Oh, no, angel. Morning will come too soon.”

As Billy laid her back on the bed and began to gently unhook, unlace, and undress her, Esmerelda sighed her agreement. She was stirred beyond measure when those legendary hands of his trembled against her bare flesh. Being naked in Billy’s bed, in Billy’s arms, was a naughty delight she couldn’t have conceived of in her wildest dreams.

When she’d been old enough to dream about being in a man’s bed and young enough to believe those dreams might still come true, she had envisioned some faceless husband clumsily shoving her nightgown up to her waist. She had imagined him climbing on top of her, his breathing harsh in the darkness, and quickly dispensing with the mysterious act that was to be his pleasure and her duty.

She had never imagined a man like Billy Darling straddling her naked body, his golden grace even more striking in the pool of lamplight. Her breath quickened as he shrugged out of his shirt and reached for the buttons of his trousers. Although her first instinct was to burrow beneath the quilt to smother a shriek of nervous laughter, curiosity kept her riveted. Her mouth went dry when the fabric parted to reveal that his arousal was just as long and golden as the rest of him.

She stretched out her hand, daring only to brush her fingertips across its velvety tip in a butterfly’s caress.

“Find what you’re looking for, Duchess?” he drawled, deliberately echoing the words he’d said to her during his bath at the ranch. Only this time his jibe was punctuated by a hoarse groan.

Esmerelda snatched her hand back, mortified by her boldness. “Am I hurting you?”

He recaptured her hand and folded her fingers firmly around him. “You’re killing me.”

Encouraged by his rapturous expression, she tenderly traced the length and thickness of him before giving him a wide-eyed look. “And Virgil dares to call you his little brother?”

Although his teeth were gritted, Billy still managed a cocky grin. “Why do you think Jasper was always so darned jealous of me?”

Sobering, Esmerelda reached up to gently cup his face between her hands. “Because you were everything fine and decent that he never tried to be.”

A strange expression crossed Billy’s face—half pleasure, half pain. “And you, Duchess,” he said, lowering himself into her arms, “are everything I ever wanted.” Kicking away his trousers, he pressed his mouth to her ear. “Remember in the barn that night, when I told you it sure would be nice if you’d let me put my mouth everywhere you let me touch you?”

How could she forget? A delicious shudder raked her, born of both memory and anticipation. But no amount of anticipation could prepare her for the tender shock of Billy’s lips gliding down her body, leaving a trail of pleasure wherever they went. He cupped her buttocks in his hands and lifted her to his mouth, drinking from her forbidden sweetness like a man who’d been wandering in the desert all his life and had suddenly come upon a fresh spring bubbling out of the sand.

She whimpered a protest, moaned a denial, but her instinctive shyness melted beneath the hot, sweet flame of his tongue flickering over her. She tugged helplessly at the wheaten silk of his hair as ripples of delight fanned out from her womb to engulf her entire being. She might have been able to endure that exquisite torture if he hadn’t begun to probe her throbbing core with one of those long, large-knuckled fingers of his. She cried out, pulsing to rapture against his mouth.

When Esmerelda drifted back down to earth, Billy was there, softly kissing her mouth while he laved his rigid length in the rich cream he’d coaxed from her pleasure-sated body. The sensation sent delicious little aftershocks through her. So delicious that she almost didn’t notice when he stopped rubbing against her and started easing his way into her.

He must have felt her stiffen. He must have heard her squeak.

Holding his body in ruthless check, he peered down into her face. She forced a smile, hoping he would mistake her agonized whimper for one of pleasure.

“What are you doing, sweetheart?” He looked even more distressed than she felt.

“I’m not crying,” she blurted out, bravely trying to sniffle back a sniffle. “I know how you hate to see me cry.”

“Does it hurt?” he gently asked.

She nodded, chewing on her lower lip in an effort not to burst into tears.

“Well, then you just go ahead and bawl all you want, honey, and I’ll see what I can do to make it nicer for you.”

As he’d proved in the past, Billy was a man of his word. Esmerelda barely had time to work up a heartfelt sob before the stabbing pain began to give way to languid pleasure.