“I—Honestly I don’t know.” She spoke quickly. “But I think you should unhook my gown while you are here. Then you may go back to your seat.”

Leam grinned. This woman beguiled with her very breath.

“Ye think A’ll win the next trick?”

“Of course.”

“Whaur be the confidence in yer game nou?”

“In my shoes on that chair, I daresay. Unbutton me, please.”

He spread his hand across her back, then his other around her shoulder, and drew her to him, brushing his cheek against her satin hair.

“Or we coud say ye’ve already lost the trick.”

She seemed to hold her breath. “That would not be playing fairly. Again.”

He set his fingers to the top button and pried it loose. Then the next and the next. The gown gaped beneath her fall of hair. With all his might Leam resisted sweeping the tresses aside to touch her.

“That should be sufficient.” She spoke very quietly, standing still as a statue. “I can unfasten the remainder should I have need.”

He backed away from the woman with her gown hanging open and her hair tumbling in glorious abandon over her shoulders. He nearly fell over his chair.

He lowered himself gingerly. She sat down and took up her hand again. He produced another unbeatable card.

Watching her silently unfasten the remaining buttons, he dared not speak, or move, or breathe. She stood and peeled the sleeves down her arms without any attempt at seduction, seducing him beyond his imaginings. She pushed the gown over her sweetly curved hips, stepped out of it, and laid it on the chair.

“I am thoroughly weary of it anyway.”

His throat was tight. “’Tis a fine dress, lass.”

“I thought you didn’t like it.”

She was beyond exquisite, from her blushing cheeks to the delicately ruffled hem of the petticoat that revealed a hint of slender ankle.

“A’m a lout tae hae suggested it.”

She grinned and finally lifted her gaze to him.

Would that she had not.

Excitement animated her eyes, and hunger he had only dreamed. He dealt. She reached for her hand, but a glance at his cards told him he’d already won. He deposited them face up, stood, and moved around the table. Wrapping his hands around her shoulders he drew her against him. She sighed, her lashes fluttering.

“I can remove it myself.” The words barely sounded from her parted lips, lips that Leam could write ten odes to and another dozen sonnets. If she would but open her eyes again he could compose an epic in verse to their raincloud depths alone. She was hot against him, the soft touch of her silk undergarment on his skin like fire.

“As ye wish.” He brushed the backs of his fingers across the laces binding the thin silk across her breasts. Through the fabric the deep cleft between showed like an invitation to heaven. She inhaled, tightening the fabric.

“Or perhaps you can,” she whispered.

The laces came undone beneath his hands, the fabric gathered, the garment discarded. He held her arms above her head and brushed his body up hers, hearing her pull in breaths and feeling her fullness with his skin. Her head fell back.

“Tell me this is not real,” she whispered. “Tell me this is my imagination.”

He drew her arms down to her sides and buried his face in her hair.

“Aye. An mine.” He set his hands on her waist and the stiff barrier of stays between him and perfect woman. He squeezed. “Except for the whalebone.”

“You haven’t won it yet.”

“A will.” His fingers worked at the corset’s lacing up her back.

“You don’t know that.”

He drew back and something made him speak, something unwise and impetuous as youth.

“Ye dae.”

Her mouth worked, but no sound came forth. Then finally, “This is not typical, is it? I mean to say, this—this between us, so swift and—and unsuitable.”

He touched her chin, lifting her face so that she must meet his gaze.

“Yer nae a typical lass.”

“That is not an answer to my question.” She looked so direct once more, sincere amid her quivering. “I haven’t done this, you know. You might imagine I had because of—” He captured her exquisite mouth beneath his and she ceased speaking, as he wished because he wanted to know nothing of what she had or had not done. He wanted only to feel her wanting him.

But the kiss was merely the slightest caress, the borrowing of her lips for a moment. He deepened it, urging her lips apart, and she gave him what she had earlier in the day, her sweet tongue and the hot, damp insides of her beauty. He kissed her until she clung to him with both hands on his shoulders, fingertips pressing into his skin, until he was weak with need and very hard. Then he slid his hand up and cupped a perfect breast.

She moaned, a soft utterance of pleasure and invitation. His fingertips smoothed upward, brushing her skin and she was like cream, silken and smooth and beautifully full. He swept his thumb beneath corset and shift.

She gasped, then: “Yes.” The barest whisper.

Gently he stroked, teasing. She was beauty in his hands, tight as he could wish and swollen with pleasure. Her breaths came stuttered, her body responding with sublime feminine eagerness to his touch, little movements revealing her need, and Leam could not catch his breath. Beneath her hands his muscles hardened, his entire body. Good God, it hadn’t been that long since he’d been with a woman that he should feel this burn, this blinding urge to drag her shift to her waist and her to the floor and get inside her without delay. He was finally the barbarian he’d pretended to society for years, ravenous for a woman and intent upon making her his.

She slipped her hands down his chest, moaning softly, and he plunged into her mouth. She was a lady yet he was treating her like a whore. It mattered little what rumor claimed. Kitty Savege was nothing of the sort. Her touch of eager hesitation and sighs of sweet innocence gone astray told him so.

He mustn’t do this.

He broke the kiss. She allowed it, not seizing him as she had earlier in the day, not pulling him close again. Instead she trembled and looked up at him through thick lashes.

His hands gripped her shoulders, his brow pressed to hers. He forced out words.

“Kitty, lass, we’d best be saying guid nicht.”

Her breaths came in soft, jagged pants, tickling his chin.

“I daresay we had best.” The tip of her tongue passed along her lower lip. Leam sucked back a groan. By God, he wanted to taste her unto eternity. To lick every inch of her mouth and throat, her beautiful breasts, the palms of her hands, and her hot womanhood.

“But— No.” She said upon a little choke. “What I mean to say is—What are you doing?” Her voice quivered. “Are you merely teasing me?”

“A’m slowing it down for ye, lass.” What was he saying? There was no it, and he didn’t want any slowing down. He wanted to haul her up to his bed and do to her everything he’d been imagining. And more. Plenty more. Then he wanted to leave her in this little village and return to Scotland and sanity.

Her hands dropped. She backed away.

“Well, then. Good night, my lord.” She gathered up her garments, held them to her middle as though they were a fur muff and she was strolling through the park, and hurried up the stair in nothing but her shift and loosened stays.

Leam swallowed a full five times, hard, like the rock in his trousers. He took a step forward.

He halted.

A few sessions of groping might pass. But anything more would not suit him. His heart had never beat so furiously, swift with sheer warning. He had been down this mistaken path once before, thrown himself headlong into peril that remained unmatched in the following five years he’d spent working for the crown. Peril he had spent those years trying to forget.

He did not want that.

But he wanted her.

He swiped a hand across his face. He was no celibate, by God. He could enjoy a tumble with a beautiful woman without fear. She wanted it, and he would give it to her. He wasn’t the foolish youth who had lost himself so thoroughly to a woman that he became blinded to everything around him, including her. And Kitty Savege might not be a doxy, but she was no virgin to be misled.

Yet he stood, paralyzed, no shoes, no shirt, and staring at nothing, unable to move a single muscle.

Kitty barely made it to her bed. She sank onto it, strewing her garments at her feet and covering her face with her hands.

What horrid, nasty, taunting divinity had provided her with a man who looked and kissed like a god yet seemed to possess an astounding ability to detach himself from an unclothed woman throwing herself at him? Despite her remaining scruples she wanted his touch, his kiss, the sensation of his hot skin and hard muscle beneath her palms. She had tried to win at cards although she ought never to have played. But when he removed his shirt she’d nearly died.

Good heavens, were all men so beautiful beneath their clothing, so perfectly proportioned like Greek statues? It couldn’t be. She felt certain at least ten gentlemen of her acquaintance wore stays and another half dozen purchased buckram padding by the bushel.

Leam Blackwood did not do either, obviously. Everything in his coat was defiantly real man, broadly structured and muscular yet slightly underfleshed, an athletic man who ate perhaps not quite enough.

She had touched that. She had touched him.

It made her weak inside. It made her feel insane.

Why didn’t he want her? Or did he, and he was too decent to take full advantage of her? They called him a flirt. Was this flirting, teasing with kisses and touches until she could think of nothing but him? He said he was slowing it down for her. Why would he do that for a woman of her besmirched reputation? Did it mean he wanted more from her—eventually? As she did. Oh, Lord, as she did. How could that possibly be?

She yanked off her wretchedly confining stays that he had begun to remove yet had not, turned onto her side, and wrapped her arms about her middle.

Why must he be decent? Why must he be even a little bit gentlemanly? She wanted him to be a barbarian, the lout he’d said he was. She wished he had not followed after Emily on the stair to protect her from possible danger. Kitty wished instead that he’d made quick, careless love to her in the parlor, on the sofa, the floor even, wherever rogues had their way with loose women, so that she could revel in being known by a man who could not touch her profoundly. So she could revel in running away from the cold, controlled woman she had come to be.

But if she did, if she took him as her lover, she would be precisely what the gossips of society believed her already.

The door creaked. Her hands jerked away from her face. The panel opened a crack and he came into her bedchamber.

She leaped up.

He was absolutely beautiful, his eyes dark, his jaw firm and hair tousled. A triangle of male flesh was revealed by his shirt, recalling her palms to the taut smoothness of his skin, the texture of dark hair descending in a line to his trousers, the strong beat of his heart.

She shook her head. “But you said—”

“Kitty—”

“I cannot.” The words slipped through her lips.

His chest rose and fell hard. He tilted his head.

“That moment when you—” She gulped in thick breaths. “You said you would slow it down for me, which I believe is an excellent idea. And—and—” She stuttered. “And when Mr. Cox went to follow Emily upstairs, and you were ready to…” Would he understand? She hadn’t really until now.

“Don’t you see? You are no longer a stranger and it changes everything. I know that must make me the greatest wanton this side of—” He moved to her swiftly and covered her mouth with his palm, warm and encompassing and sending her heartbeat flying. He bent his head and spoke above her brow.

“An A’d hae kent this afore.” His voice was low. “A woudae gladly left the bairn tae her fate wi’ him.”

Kitty laughed, muffled against his skin. He released her.

Her tongue stole along the edge of her lips, tasting him there. “You would not have.”

His gaze dipped to her mouth. “Aye, A might have.” It turned quite sober. “Lass, ye dinna know me frae Adam.”

“But I—”

“Than pretend ye dinna.” A note of haste colored his words now, or perhaps desperation, like hers.

His dark eyes shone. “Pretend for the nicht.”