the sofa, deftly slipping the buttons from their moorings. She tensed at first, but made no move to stop him. And when he went to slide the sleeves down her arms, she leaned forwards, helping him speed the process.
‘And now your gown, I think.’
She sucked in a sharp breath as he reached behind her for the tapes that held the bodice fast. She blushed and he could see a pulse beating wildly in her throat. And her eyes darted away, looking anywhere but at him as he slid the loosened gown from her shoulders.
If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she had no experience with this sort of thing at all.
Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps her seduction and ruin at such a young age had put her off men altogether. He’d already discovered she wasn’t being kept by that Frenchman, but was it too much to hope that after that one youthful indiscretion she’d had nobody else?
Her hands went up to her bodice when he went to bare her breasts. And that little show of reluctance made her seem so shy and nervous that he could almost believe he meant something special to her. Whatever had happened to her in her past, whatever had driven her to come to him tonight, she clearly wasn’t finding this easy. She didn’t seem to be the kind of woman who changed her lovers with as much ease as she changed her gown. She didn’t seem to know how to flirt, or tease, or arouse. The fact that she’d got herself here at all made him feel as though she was taking a chance on him, in a way she’d never done with any other man.
And something hot and primitive and possessive surged up within him as he leaned forwards to place a kiss on the pulse that beat so wildly in her neck. For a moment, he felt like a conqueror.
But then he went cold inside.
By God, she was dangerous. All he had to do was get a glimpse of that milky skin and his wits had gone wandering. He was building up a picture in his head of someone he’d once wanted her to be, not looking at the reality of where they both were now.
‘Don’t move,’ he grated, drawing back. He had to get things in perspective. ‘Stay exactly as you are, so I can capture that dazed look before it fades,’ he said, dashing back to his stool and grabbing hold of a pencil as though it was a lifeline.
* * *
Amethyst couldn’t believe it. He’d started to undress her, had her practically swooning with desire and then he’d darted away and started drawing her again.
When he finally deigned to speak to her again, it was to make a complaint.
‘You are frowning again.’
‘You would frown,’ she retorted, ‘if someone half-undressed you, then shot across the room to do something more interesting instead.’
He smiled in comprehension.
‘My apologies. Had I known you were so impatient to share my bed I would have tumbled you first and sketched you in the afterglow.’
He set his sketching pad aside and got to his feet.
‘In fact, I think that would probably be for the best.’ He stalked slowly towards the sofa. ‘I have a feeling you will be a much more co-operative subject once I’ve released you from all that tension you’re carrying around with you.’
* * *
Harcourt smiled a wicked smile, then leaned down and scooped her into his arms. She let go of her bodice, briefly, to balance herself in his arms, and the material made an attempt to slide all the way down to her waist, revealing more of herself than anybody had seen since she was about ten years old. Mortified, she grabbed at it again, just as he swung her sideways to manoeuvre through a narrow doorway and into yet another room. His bedroom. Her gaze fixed on the bed, which was in the very centre of the room. The sloping ceilings made that the only sensible place to put it, if he didn’t want to brain himself every time he got in or out of it.
She swallowed nervously as he laid her on it, but he didn’t give her time to express any last-minute qualms by following her down and showering her cheeks, her neck, her shoulders with brief, tantalising little kisses. They had the effect of stopping the breath in her throat so that she was incapable of speech. Not that she could think of anything to say at such a moment. Except she was making breathy little moans and squirming all over the counterpane, which expressed exactly what she felt far more clearly, to her way of thinking.
She didn’t want to protest at all when he went to pull her bodice down again, because he was making little noises expressing his own delight too. And then he proceeded to make her feel as though she was made of some delicious substance, the way he licked, and nibbled at her breasts, before swirling his tongue round her nipples. She had never, in all her life, experienced anything so indescribably wonderful.
When he moved off her, quite suddenly, she wished she’d been bold enough to put her arms round his neck, instead of clutching at the covers, so that she could have held him in place and made him carry on doing what he’d been doing.
But he’d only stood up from the bed to yank his shirt off over his head, slip off his shoes and remove his breeches.
She supposed she ought to avert her gaze, but he didn’t seem to mind her looking, so why shouldn’t she look? Anyway, she didn’t think she could have prevented herself. He was so very much more pleasingly put together than all those cold marble statues she’d glimpsed that day in the Louvre. In fact, the sight of her first naked, adult, flesh-and-blood male just about stole the breath from her lungs.
But before she could catch much more than a glimpse, he was back on the bed beside her, determined to dispense with her clothes.
If he’d paused to stare at her, once he’d got her naked, she didn’t think she could have coped with it. But he seemed far more interested in touching and tasting what he was uncovering. And his blatant hunger for everything about her put paid to most of her shyness. Besides, his caresses and kisses were making it just about impossible to think at all. He was reducing her to a molten mass of delightful sensation which drowned out intellect. There was no longer any place on that bed for shyness, or hesitancy, or logic.
She was reacting to his caresses with instincts as old as time, her hips straining towards him, telling both him and her that they were ready for the act she knew almost nothing about.
When he came over her and nudged her legs apart with his own, she found herself flexing up towards him in a way that must have been purely instinctive, because she had certainly never imagined herself doing anything so...unseemly.
And then he began to prod at her.
And then there was a searing pain.
‘Ow!’
He pushed into her again.
‘Ow, ow, owww!’
All the pleasure had gone. Instead of wanting to flex up towards him, she cringed away from the painful invasion.
‘Stop it,’ she cried, getting her hands between them and pushing at his chest. ‘You’re hurting and I don’t like it!’ How could she ever have thought this was a good idea? It was horrible.
‘Stop it, stop it, stop it!’
* * *
‘What the devil?’ He pulled
