He'd fallen asleep smiling and awoken with the same smile. Now he smacked her bottom lightly. "Mignonne, come up."

Juliana raised her head and turned on her belly to look up at him. "Why?" She pushed her hair away from her face and gave him a quizzical smile.

"Because you are about to unman me," he replied.

Juliana reversed herself neatly and stretched her body over his, her mouth nuzzling the hollow of his throat, her loins moving sinuously over his. "Better?" she mumbled against his pulse.

With a lazy twist of his hips he entered her as she lay above him. He watched the surprise dawn in her eyes, to be followed immediately by a wondering pleasure. "This is different."

He nodded. "If you kneel up, you'll find it's even more so."

Juliana pushed herself onto her knees. She gasped at the changed sensation and slowly circled her body around the hard, impaling shaft. She touched his erect nipples with a feathery fingertip, searching his face for his response, chuckling when he groaned with pleasure.

"Does it feel good when I do this, sir?" She rose on her knees, then slowly sank down again, arching her back as she grasped her ankles with her hands. His flesh pressed against her body's sheath, and she suddenly lost interest in Tarquin's reaction as a wave of glorious sensation broke over her. She cried out, her body arched like a bow, the near unbearable tension building in ever tightening circles.

Tarquin lay still, knowing she needed no help from him to reach this peak. He watched her through half-closed eyes, reveling in the innocent candor of her joy. And when she cried out again, he grasped her hips and held her tightly as she rocked on his thighs with each succeeding wave of her climax.

"But what happened to you?" she gasped when she could finally speak, tears of joy glistening in her eyes. "Did I leave you behind?"

"Not for long," he promised softly. The exquisitely sensitized core of her body lay open for his touch, and he played delicately upon her as Juliana moved herself over and around him, her tongue caught between her teeth as she concentrated on her lover's pleasure, her own ever present but taking secondary importance. But when he drove upward with another almost leisurely twist, she was surprised yet again by the rushing, heated flood of ecstasy that dissolved muscle and sinew like butter in the sun.

He gripped her hips, his fingers biting deep into the rich curves, holding her as if she were his only anchor to reality in the storm-tossed sea of sensual bliss. And when it was over and he became aware of the lines and contours of his body on the mattress, of the dust motes in the ray of sun creeping through the curtains, he drew her down to lie along his length, his hand stroking over her damp back, his flesh diminishing slowly within her.

What was it about this woman that she could so transport him? Make him forget everything but the glories of their joining? What was it that made him want to protect her, to make her happy? He was thirty-two, affianced from childhood to a perfect match-a woman who would be his wife but who would not object to his mistresses. A woman who knew the rules of their society. A woman he wanted to marry. So why, then, did the prospect suddenly seem drab? When he thought of the well-ordered years ahead, he felt dull and depressed. But why? He and Lydia were two grown people who knew what each expected of the other. His marriage would follow the rules of all successful relationships. He gave people what they expected from his money, position, and influence, and he made sure he received what he was due in his turn.

It had always worked before, but it wasn't working with Juliana. He was convinced that another woman in her position would have jumped at the chance of a tide and a comfortable settlement for life. But not Juliana. She wasn't interested in what he had to offer; she seemed to want something more. She wanted something from him. Something far deeper than mere material offerings. And the thought stirred him, filled him with a restless excitement, was the source of this sudden impatience with his carefully laid-out future.

And holding this long, luscious body, feeling her jade gaze on his face, fiery tendrils of hair tickling his nose, he understood deep at his core that he lacked something fundamental to his happiness. He held it in his arms, but he couldn't grasp it and make it his. He didn't know how to. It was embodied in Juliana's unusual, tempestuous, forthright spirit, and he didn't know how to capture it. He didn't understand Juliana's rules.

He pulled himself up sharply. Juliana was a novelty, he told himself as she slept the brief sleep of satiation on his breast. He was confusing his fascination with her novelty with something deeper and unnameable. She was young and fresh. Her spirit amused him, her passion touched him. Her courage and resolution moved him. With luck she would be the mother of his child. In the best of all possible worlds she would remain his mistress as she mothered his child. There was no place-no need-for deeper, unnameable emotions.

Juliana stirred and opened her eyes. She kissed his neck sleepily. "I forgot to mention that George Ridge was in the tavern last night."

His hand stilled on her back. "Good God! What in heaven's name made you forget such a thing?"

"There was so much else to worry about," she said, sitting up, brushing hair out of her eyes. "And then I got so wobbly, and everything else went out of my head."

"I suppose it's understandable." He reached lazily for one full breast, cupping it in his palm, a fingertip circling the nipple. "Did he see you?"

"He could hardly miss me when I was standing on the table with a rope around my neck." She drew back from his caressing hand with a shiver, saying abruptly, "I don't seem to feel like being touched."

Tarquin dropped his hand immediately, his expression suddenly drawn with anger. "Lucien will pay in full measure for what he did to you," he promised savagely. "When he comes back to the house, he will pay." He stood up abruptly and strode to the window, staring out into the bright morning.

Juliana looked at his rigid, averted back and shivered slightly at the powerful anger she sensed. She wasn't to know how much of it was directed at himself. "I'll get over it," she said. "It was only a passing moment just then." She sat hunched on the bed, her arms crossed protectively over her breasts. "It all came back . . . the cockfight, and the wife-selling before, and the gin-"

"Gin?" he exclaimed, swinging back to the room, diverted from his bitter self-reproach. "Lucien permitted you to drink gin?"

"He forced it on me. I didn't know what it was." Her eyes flashed with her ever-ready temper.

Tarquin silently added it to the score he would settle with his cousin and said calmly, "Let's return to George Ridge. He recognized you?"

Juliana nodded, accepting the change of subject as an apology of some kind. "Enough to bid five hundred pounds for me."

Tarquin frowned. He stood beside the bed, his hands on his hips, his air as self-possessed as if he was fully dressed instead of starkly, and most beautifully, naked. "What did you do?"

"Nothing," she said somewhat absently, now thoroughly distracted by the sight of him, her eyes dwelling on the spare frame, the play of muscle, the lean, sinewy length of thigh. His sex was quiescent, but as her eyes lingered on the soft flesh, it flickered and rose beneath the intent gaze as if responding to an unspoken wish.

Tarquin appeared unaware. "What do you mean, you did nothing? You must have responded in some way."

Juliana reached forward to touch him, her tongue peeping from between her lips, a little frown of concentration on her brow.

Tarquin stepped back, observing with a smile, "I think I'd better don a chamber robe if we're to have a sensible discussion here." He turned to pick up his robe from the chaise longue. Juliana's gaze feasted on his lean back, the cluster of dark hair in the small of his back, and the dark trail that led downward to vanish in the cleft between the taut buttocks. Her fingers itched to slide between his thighs, and in another moment she would have sprung from the bed, but he slung the robe around his shoulders, thrusting his arms into the sleeves, and turned back to the bed, tying the girdle firmly at his waist.