Incredulous, she stared at him. "I beg your pardon?"

"Call me cynical," he said gruffly.

"Some people have principles," she replied hotly. "Some people are discriminating about their bed partners," she added, each word trenchant with affront. "Some people don't sleep with everyone who crosses their path, present company excepted, of course."

His sudden smile dazzled, like a glorious rainbow after the storm. "You don't say."

"I do-most emphatically." She refused to smile. "So I hope we're finished with your jealousy."

He jerked back, apprehension flaring in his eyes. "I'm not jealous."

Sensing that the equation of lust or fascination or whatever term best described their extraordinary attraction was suddenly more equable, Alex's mood altered. "Well then," she said amiably, her mouth curving in amusement, "that should make everything so much easier."

Not about to acknowledge anything so outre as jealousy, Sam dipped his head and spoke with similar casualness. "By way of explanation, when I saw you posing last night, I wanted to carry you off and make love to you for a thousand years or so. Nothing excessive, you understand," he said with a deprecating lift of his hand. "You just have that effect on me."

"I understand completely," she agreed, the degree of excess he incited beyond comprehension.

"Does that understanding extend to, say, a more physical harmony? I apologize in advance for my licentious impulses, but you're irresistible."

"You have a certain compelling charm as well," she told him, her gaze dropping to his seemingly indefatigable erection.

He'd seen that look a thousand times. But Miss Ionides was more of an enigma than most, so when he spoke he was conciliatory in the extreme. "Does that mean you might be willing to spread your legs forme?"

"When you ask so nicely…" She slowly opened her legs. "I'd be delighted."

"We'd both be delighted," he said with feeling. Leaning forward, he grasped her around the waist, lifted her to the center of the table, eased her thighs slightly wider with his palms. "Now, that's even more delightful," he approved, his gaze focused on her sweet, damp cleft. "Do you masturbate?"

"Good God, Ranelagh." Leaning back on her hands, she quirked one brow. "You certainly ask a lot of questions. Isn't it enough that we simply enjoy ourselves tonight?"

"Do you?"

She surveyed him for a critical moment. "Sometimes, if you must know."

"Would you like to now?"

"Why should I, when I have you?"

"Because then I could watch."

Her lashes half lowered over her eyes. "I thought you weren't a voyeur?"

"I was planning on participating."

His smile was intriguing, along with the rest of him. "So I'd have you to look forward to-afterward," she observed pleasantly.

"Without question."

"One can hardly refuse such gallantry."

He almost said something impertinent but caught himself in time. Miss Ionides didn't respond to orders, although she responded to just about anything else. In the interests of future satisfaction, he was polite. "That would be for you to decide."

She grinned. "You're not taking any chances, are you?"

"Not a one," he replied with a flashing smile. "And whenever you want to stop, you just let me know."

"Because you can go all night?"

"Because I'm interested in pleasing you," he said, unutterably well mannered.

She laughed. "You really are good, Ranelagh."

"We try, ma'am," he replied silkily.

"And with enormous success, I don't doubt."

He wasn't about to answer that. "Later on, let me know." He traced his fingertip up the warmth of her inner thigh, reaching out with his other hand to lift his hairbrush from the dresser top. "I'm always open to suggestions."

She was about to answer, when the pad of his finger touched the nub of her clitoris and a frisson of pleasure refocused her attention. With extreme delicacy, he caressed the silken tissue, over and around, up and down, in a slow, delectable massage, while she leaned back and felt the rapture travel upward and outward in rippling waves. He was painstakingly subtle, his fondling leisured, controlled, as though he understood the finite degrees of bewitchment and female arousal. As though he might have done this once or twice before and after a time, in answer to her softly undulating hips and breathy pleas, he slipped his fingers inside her honeyed warmth and explored the sweet paradise that kept his cock standing stiff.

In very short order, she was quivering under his hands, her swollen tissue weighty with blood, her senses aflame. Aching for consummation, for his primed cock and consummate skill, she turned more demanding. "I want you now," she said as a spoiled heiress might.

He refused, although with infinite politeness. He knew better now. "Let's try this first," he suggested, taking up the teakwood hairbrush, twisting the handle and lifting it away.

"You said-you didn't-have women here." Her breath was gone, lost to lust.

"This is for hiding diamonds." He held out the teak handle so she could see its hollowed core. "It's African, and I don't have women here. It's virgin."

For a flashing moment, she debated his honesty, but frenzied, nearly dizzy for wanting him, her next ravenous pulse beat vanquished unnecessary thought.

"Why don't we see how you like something virgin." The faint curve of his mouth was more a grimace than a smile. "There's a novelty…" Not sure she was listening any longer, not sure himself why her sexual experience seemed to matter so, he turned his attention to an activity sure to please them both. Slipping the smooth wooden tip of the brush handle into her pouty slit, he slid the polished wood around the verge of her throbbing labia with exquisite finesse until she lifted her hips, reaching for more. "Not just yet," he whispered, smoothing his hand over her hip as though gentling a skittish filly. "I want you wetter…"

"Sam!" Half-whimper, half-plea, she tried to brush his hand away.

"Hush, darling," he soothed, his voice velvety, holding her still. "Don't move and I'll give you more."

She instantly quieted, and his erection surged higher, submission a powerful aphrodisiac. He chided himself briefly for such uncharitable impulses, but she was lying before him in all her opulent womanhood, predaceous in her desires, and charity didn't stand a chance against primal lust.

He slid the makeshift dildo in a calculated two inches, and stopped. "More?" he inquired gently, driven by some inexplicable need for sovereignty over her.

Her lashes lifted, and the smoldering heat in her eyes was potent answer.

"You look ready," he whispered, spreading the swollen flesh of her labia with his fingers, pushing the teak handle two inches deeper.

She softly moaned as her tissue slowly yielded to the pressure of his invasion, gently arched her back at the delicious flood of rapture. He could deliver nirvana on cue, she blissfully thought, basking in a warm, gossamer ecstasy. "I might have to bring you home," she breathed. "You're so much better at this than I."

This wasn't the place to mention the extent of his practice. He bent to kiss her instead, brushing her lush mouth with his, burying the wooden handle the last providential measure into her welcoming flesh, inhaling her rapturous cry as he held it solidly in place. Then, lifting his mouth away, he gently ran his fingers over her labia, closing her pouty lips over the lodged handle.

She whimpered at the slight pressure of his fingers, her tissue stretched, filled, crammed to surfeit, the resulting jolt to her fevered senses almost too much to bear. But the continuing massage, no matter how delicate, drove the dildo deeper, brought her passions, raging and overwrought, near orgasmic, she rocked against the stunning delirium.

His palm was pressed hard against her wet cunt. She was eager, frenzied, hungry for sex, and for the first time in his life he felt an overwhelming urge to keep a woman. He didn't question his motives, self-indulgent too long; he only understood he wanted her-preferably in bondage to his whims. And all the fairy tales of women imprisoned in towers or cottages deep in the woods suddenly took on a licentious cast. The fact that he wished to keep her for himself alone, available and in rut, didn't bear close scrutiny, so he ground his hand against her flaming cunt instead, replacing disquieting thoughts with the familiar constant in his life-sex.

Her breathy scream exploded in the shadowed room, and she melted under his hand. Quickly catching her as she slipped backward, he gathered her in his arms, holding her close as her last shuddering spasms died away. He glanced at the clock, anticipating the remainder of the night with pleasure, fairytale images of the delectable Miss Ionides as his personal bond servant a decidedly lascivious fantasy. When she stirred in his arms a moment later, when her eyelids fluttered open, he said, "You can come again… soon… and then, if you're very good… next time-"

"I'll let you have sex with me," she whispered.

He leaned back, astonishment in his gaze. "You'll let me?"

Postcoital now, returned to the world, she smiled, sat up, and caught her breath. Her rising had stirred the dildo, stimulating already overstimulated nerves, and quickly reaching down, she moved to extract it.

He caught her hand. "I don't think you understand."

"You don't understand," she countered softly, shaking his hand off.

"What? About you wanting cock?"

"About this propensity of yours for supremacy."

"Or yours."

They gazed at each other for a charged moment, these two people familiar only with compliance.

"You don't stand a chance, sweetheart," he drawled gently. "Because you want to come again."

"And you don't?"

"Not with the same, shall we say, greediness."

"We can't all be libertines," she said with a sniff.

"Nor would I want you to be," he returned softly. "Except when your ready passion is conveniently mine."

"I don't find it currently convenient."

"I might disagree," he replied with despicable calmness.

"That's your prerogative, of course." She reached for the dildo again, only to find herself curtailed by Sam's firm grasp.

"Why don't we see?" Forcing her back down onto the table, he rested his hand directly above her mons. It was a light, skimming touch for a brief moment before he exerted a tempered pressure on an especially sensitive portion of her already oversensitized anatomy, bringing it into contact with the submerged dildo.

She tried not to gasp at the searing jolt, but he knew how prone that particular area was to arousal. He wasn't surprised at her sudden stillness. "Feeling a little something?" he asked impudently, massaging her susceptible flesh lightly into the unyielding dildo, watching with a knowing competence as she speedily came to fever point. This particular neat-handed skill was the result of a long-ago liaison with a celebrated French actress who had a fancy for young men, and it was always effective.

In fact it was a headlong rush to orgasm, and he took note of the unmistakable evidence of the lady's readiness in the creamy fluid issuing from her insatiable cunt. The liquid oozed in pearly rivulets down her thighs, and he was relatively sure there was no longer any question whether her passions were currently involved.

"Do you want to come?" he inquired with unabashed insolence. "All you have to do is ask."

She heard his voice through a wall of insensibility; sheer will lifted her lashes. "Go to hell."

He shouldn't care; he shouldn't insist. On an intellectual level, he disapproved of submission. "Tell me," he said.

He was leaning over her, the scent of his hair sweet in the air, his bronze skin even darker in the shadows, the powerful muscles of his arms taut as he waited for her answer. Thick black hair dusted his forearms and fingers, his virility mesmerizing. Her gaze dropped to the engorged beauty of his upthrust erection, and ultimate temptation lured and seduced. Perhaps he'd been right when he'd said she needed a man like him. Perhaps he was right about everything.

"What do I have to do to have you?" Her voice was strong, not needy, her gaze direct.

He raised his brows and flexed his wrist. "Instead of this?"

She shuddered at the riveting pleasure.

"Why not both?" he suggested softly.

"Together?" Shock registered in the blurted-out word.

"You decide."

"No… no," she said quickly, the look in his eyes wolfish, hungry. An instant later, she wondered if she'd imagined the wicked gleam, because his dark eyes were alight with laughter.