“I am all in favor of doing naughty things when no one is looking,” she said, her fingers tiptoeing over his shoulders.

“Very well, then,” he said.

It was a huge relief actually. He was already aroused to the point of discomfort.

He straightened up and slid his hands beneath her, lifting her fully onto the bed, and turning her so that she lay along it instead of across. He peeled back the covers to the foot of the bed and lay down on his side, half over her, his head propped on one hand.

Her hands lay palm-down on the mattress.

He cupped her chin with one hand and kissed her as his hand moved downward, between her breasts, over her flat stomach, over the mound below, and between her legs. She was warm and moist there. He found her opening and pressed two fingers a little way inside her.

“Mmm.” That deep sound in her throat again.

He rolled on top of her, spread her legs wide with his own, slid his hands beneath her to hold her firm, found the opening again, and thrust his full length deep into her.

There was the shock of heat, wetness, tight muscles, soft woman.

He imposed control on his breathing, on his bodily reactions. The time of greatest enjoyment had come—at last—and he would not rush its conclusion, even with the encouragement she had given and his own driving need. He held still and noticed the almost rigid tension of her body only gradually relaxing. He waited for her.

The Duchess of Dunbarton.

Hannah.

He had a sudden mental image of her as he had seen her in the park that afternoon when he had been with Stephen and Monty.

Her arms wrapped loosely about his waist. Her legs lifted from the bed one at a time to twine about his. Heat radiated from her.

He lifted his head and looked down into her face.

Her eyes were in shadow. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth.

“The finish line is in sight,” he murmured, “though it is still some distance off.”

She had nothing to say. Her eyes closed, and he felt her clench hard about him.

He withdrew from her, heard her wordless murmur of protest, and pressed inward hard and deep again. And he repeated the motion until the rhythm matched his heartbeat and his whole being seemed immersed in the wet heat at the heart of her.

She was exquisite.

It was exquisite.

But it—the sex—could not be enjoyed without the awareness of who was giving him such pleasure. And she was clever to the end. Instead of the skilled moves he had expected—and had thought he wanted—she lay open and receptive and almost passive.

He had steeled himself for long endurance during foreplay and had been reprieved—though he would have enjoyed every moment of it if she had not reprieved him. He used the unexpended energy and control on the real play, the intercourse, the sex with the woman who would be his mistress for the next few months.

He played long and hard and deep in her until thought was gone and only the pounding pleasure-pain of thrust and withdrawal remained, and the woman’s open receptiveness.

Hannah’s receptiveness.

She was hot and slick with sweat and the juices of sex. Her breathing was labored.

And then even endurance went, and the ache of physical need broke the bonds of his control. His hands went beneath her again and held her while he plunged faster and harder and then pressed deeper than deep and held and … released into her. Spilled into her.

He felt all the tension drain from his body as he relaxed down onto her. She had her head turned on his shoulder, her face away from him. She held him with her arms and legs—and he felt her gradually relax with him.

He drew free of her, felt the coolness of the air against his damp body, and reached down to pull the bedcovers up over them. He turned his head to look at her. Her hair was damp and in a riot of curls. Her eyes were blue again in the candlelight and were gazing back into his.

“I was quite right about you,” she said.

“Is that good?” he asked her. “Or is it bad?”

“To be perfectly honest,” she said, “I was not right. You are far better than I expected, Mr. Huxtable.”

“Constantine,” he said. “Con to most people.”

“I shall always call you Constantine,” she said. “Why shorten a perfectly wonderful name? And you have passed the audition with flying colors. You have the part for a lengthy spell.”

Lengthy?

“Until the summer, that is,” she said. “Until I go home to Kent to stay and you go to wherever it is you live in Gloucestershire.”

“How do you know,” he said, “that you have passed the audition?”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Don’t be foolish, Constantine,” she said.

And it struck him that he was not certain she had climaxed with him. She certainly had not done so before or after him.

Had she? Climaxed, that was?

And what did it mean if she had not? That he had failed her? Her words indicated quite the contrary. That for her even sex was a matter of power and control, then? Oh, and some enjoyment too. She had certainly enjoyed herself.

He would prefer to know, though, that she had enjoyed herself to completion. He would not ask her, however.

“I shall put you to the test again later,” he said. “For now you have exhausted me, Duchess, and I need to recoup my strength.”

“Hannah,” she said. “My name is Hannah.”

“Yes, I know,” he said, rolling onto his back and setting the back of one hand over his eyes. “Duchess.”

He was not going to get too close to her. Which was a somewhat absurd thought under the circumstances.

He was not going to get emotionally close.

She was not going to control him.

That was something that was not going to happen.

He really was exhausted. Pleasantly so. He stretched luxuriously beneath the covers. He could feel her body heat along his right side. He could smell her—a mingling of expensive perfume and sweat. An erotically pleasant smell.

He drifted off to sleep.

And woke up an indeterminate amount of time later to find the bed empty beside him, the curtains drawn back from the window, and the Duchess of Dunbarton, clothed only in his white shirt and her white-blond hair, sitting on the wide window ledge, her legs drawn up before her, her arms wrapped about herself, gazing out through the window.

Fortunately—very fortunately—the candles had all burned themselves out. She would have made a very interesting window ornament to anyone glancing up from the street below, even clad in his shirt.

The fact that the candles had burned out, of course, meant that he must have slept most of the night. Though he could see when he gazed into the corner that the tapers were still fairly long.

She had had the good sense to snuff them, then, before taking up her place in the window.

“Anything interesting going on out there?” he asked, linking his hands behind his head.

She turned her head to look at him.

“No, nothing at all,” she said. “Just as there is not in here.”

Well. He had walked straight into that one.