His lips stayed in contact with hers, just short of a kiss, just close enough for her to expect it at any moment. ‘Steady…steady,’ he whispered. ‘It’s all right…steady!’ Moving his hand over the full roundness, he kept her lips waiting and her awareness flitting between hand and mouth. Then, as she stilled, he slipped his hand beneath the fabric while claiming her mouth just as a gasp filled her lungs, ready to protest again. The shock turned to a moan of ecstasy and the hand that had grabbed at his wrist slackened its hold, allowing him to explore, softly, slowly, tenderly raking her nipple as his lips nibbled hers. She gave a cry, unaware of its precise meaning. ‘That’s good,’ he whispered. ‘Very good. Now, what else are you going to teach me, eh? About this…?’
Her breathing quailed under his hand that plotted the next unfamiliar warm voyage across the skin of her ribs and stomach, sliding over her hips and making her cry out again with the unbearable suspense of it. ‘No,’ she whispered, meaning yes. Reaching up with her free arm, she slipped her fingers into his hair and pulled his head down to meet hers, her words and needs no longer in unison. His dizzying kiss made her moan with desire, but she heard it only from a distance, like the denials she had voiced since their first meeting, fading at his command.
‘More?’ he said. ‘This is but the beginning.’ His lips moved downwards on a different course over her neck and breast, straying across to her other side to torment her nipple with his tongue and teeth, taking her hand and holding it firmly away as she writhed and arched, pinning her down. ‘Now, my beauty,’ he said, kissing the taut skin, ‘is there something else you wanted to show me? What was it you had in mind, back there, that I haven’t a ghost of a chance of getting? Eh?’ His deep voice vibrated across her lips.
But a slow and exquisite ache that began somewhere in her thighs had now centred in a mysterious place, telling her that things were happening that she could never have dreamed of, that she had started something of which she had never been in control from the start, that he had the power to mould her with his touch. As to what she had meant by her riposte, her mind was a blank as she shook with the impact of her own body’s responses. She was silent and trembling as his teasing hand made a slow and inexorable progress over her breast and stomach, reaching down until it came to rest on the soft mound between her legs. By which time he had claimed her lips once more with a kiss that was intended to make protests difficult, but not impossible.
However, he was more aware than Adorna that some kind of protest was necessary, for although he intended that she should remember this first chastening lesson, there would be far better times and places to continue it when her senses would be clear instead of dulled by wine. Her contrariness had served his purpose well, but she would blame herself as much as him for this memorable episode before she would be tempted to return for more.
‘Well?’ he said, caressing. ‘Have you remembered?’ When she made no answer, he understood that she was already on the verge of surrender and so, to provoke her, he tightened his grip on her wrist and shifted his weight.
‘No…no! Please…don’t!’ Her voice shook itself into a whisper, full of the premonition that, whatever his next move was to be, it was up to her to make him understand that no matter whether this was what he did with other women, he could not do it with her. She could not have said why, having no experience to go on, but the certainty was there.
Instantly, he withdrew his hand, gently pulling her clothes back into their proper place. ‘Shh…shh…all right. I’ve stopped. That’s enough for now, I think.’ Carefully, he swung himself away, easing her upright to rest in his arms until her trembling was under control.
Even in her fuddled and confused state, she could not have denied that the capitulation already begun in the banqueting house was now well under way in the Queen’s garden. But though her fear of being added to his conquests remained as great as ever, he had shown her with appalling ease how close she had come to ignoring every one of her objections. The thought was terrifying.
‘Let me go home,’ she whispered, shakily. ‘You have taken advantage of me, sir.’ She stood, clinging to one of the wooden pillars for support.
He came to stand behind her, his hands beneath her cloak covering her breasts and pulling her back to him, possessively. ‘Oh, no,’ he said into her ear. ‘Oh, no, sweet maid. That I did not, and you know it. If I had truly taken advantage of you, I could have plied you with more wine instead of telling you to stop. I could have taken you into any one of a dozen dark rooms. I could still have you stark naked and on your back right now, if that’s what—’
‘No!’ she panted. ‘That you will never do! Now release me.’ For all its apparent fervour, her plea lacked momentum under his persuasive hands that cleverly drew her mind from resentment towards the breathtaking response of her body. Still tingling from his attentions, she had no will to protest as his wandering hands reinforced his first lesson.
‘You started this, my beauty, and now you’re in it up to your pretty little hocks again, aren’t you. And no guardians to run to.’
‘Master Fowler will…be my…’ Her mouth was taken over by his kiss.
‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘run to your Gentleman Controller as often as you wish, but he’ll never have control of you as I shall. You can stop playing your game of run-and-hide now, Adorna. It’s time to face reality.’ He caught her wrist and swung her round to face him, taking a fistful of her golden hair to tilt her face under his. ‘I want you and I shall have you. Fume and fight as much as you like; your opposition will make my winning and your losing all the sweeter.’
‘Fine words,’ she snarled, ‘from one who makes a secret assignation with no intention of keeping it. If that’s the reality you intend me to face, sir, I’ll stick with my so-called games a while longer, I thank you.’
‘So that’s niggling at you, is it? Well, if I’d thought you’d have accepted my explanation any earlier, I’d have given it to you, though there’s hardly been a good moment for apologies, has there? I was foaling a mare. A first foal. Premature.’
‘And you could not have sent a message?’
His voice softened with an invisible smile. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, I could have. I could have sent your Master Fowler. He was with me in the courtyard when the stable-lad came to tell me that the mare had started. I could have asked him to go to the banqueting house where you’d be waiting for me and tell you not to. Should I have done that, do you think?’
The idea was absurd, she realised that now. He could not have sent anyone with such a message. ‘I was not waiting for you,’ she said, angrily pulling at his grip on her wrist. ‘I went in.’
‘Ah, I see.’ He smiled, releasing her. ‘Then there is no real harm done after all, is there? And no apology needed. Now, anything else before I take you home?’
‘Yes, there is. Have you warned him to stay away from me?’
‘Who? Master Fowler?’ His smile grew into a soft laugh. ‘No, mistress. I do not warn men off. I don’t need to. Our Gentleman Controller will get the message soon enough without any extra help from me. I think you’ve already seen that tonight.’
‘And I think, sir, that the less I remember of this night the happier I shall be. I choose my own friends and I shall choose my own lovers when I’m ready. And you will not be among them. Master Fowler would never have behaved as you have.’
‘In which case, Mistress Adorna Pickering,’ he said, pulling her to him once more, ‘you would not have behaved the way you just have, would you? And that
