She moaned and buried her fingers in his hair.

He cradled her head in place with one hand and reached down to raise the hem of her skirts. His palm slid along the length of her bare thigh all the way to the gentle curves above. He found the valley that divided the luscious hillocks and followed its course to the hot spring that awaited him.

"Hugh."

He stroked her carefully, preparing her for his entry. He wanted her delirious with need so that she would not feel pain, if there was any, when he claimed her. He wanted everything to be perfect.

Thunder shook the skies. The rain was a gray curtain in front of the cavern mouth.

When Hugh fumbled with his undertunic and loosened his braies, Alice raised her head briefly to gaze down at him with passion-clouded eyes. For a few heart-stopping seconds he thought she was going to ask him to halt the lovemaking. He wondered, with an odd sense of detachment, if doing so would kill him on the spot.

"Hugh."

The sound of his name on her lips made his blood pound. Excitement tore through him. She was thoroughly ensnared by their mutual passion, he told himself.

It would be a fine stratagem indeed, if Alice were to believe herself in love.

With a groan he crushed her mouth against his own and moved his hand between her thighs. Her murmurs of longing were sweeter than honeyed dates, more potent than an alchemist's elixir. The more he tasted of her, the more he hungered. Hugh was engulfed with a seemingly insatiable need.

He pulled Alice's skirts up to her waist and eased her legs apart so that she straddled him. The scent of her dewy body filled him with an overpowering eagerness.

He freed himself completely from his braies and probed until he found the plumped, moist petals that hid the entrance to the secret citadel. He entered her with a care that strained his self-mastery to the limit. Her body was impossibly tight around him. It was as though he tried to ease himself through the narrow entrance of a cave passage.

It was as he had thought. She was a virgin.

He must be careful, Hugh told himself. He must not take this keep too quickly.

His jaw clenched with the effort to control his own need.

He stormed the fragile gates slowly, steadily, until both of their bodies were damp with perspiration. Alice's nails bit through the fabric of his undertunic.

"You are well guarded," he whispered hoarsely. "Am I hurting you?"

"Aye, a little."

He closed his eyes, gathering himself, seeking restraint. "I would not have it so. Do you want me to stop?"

"Nay."

Hugh breathed a small sigh of relief. In truth, he had not been certain that he possessed the will to halt what had been begun. "I shall proceed slowly," he promised.

Alice eased aside the neck opening of his undertunic and nibbled gently at his shoulder. "I do not want you to proceed slowly. I would have done with this business quickly."

He groaned. "This is supposed to be a pleasurable task, not one that requires fortitude."

"Will you finish it when I give the command?"

He flexed his hands on her hips. "Mayhap you are right. It would be less painful if it were done swiftly."

"Do it now then." Without warning Alice sank her teeth into his shoulder.

"Blood of the devil." Startled by the small, sharp, and wholly unexpected pain, Hugh instinctively tightened his hold on Alice, sucked in his breath, and surged upward.

Alice gave a muffled squeak but Hugh could not have retreated if he had wished. The last remnants of his self-mastery gave way as surely as the delicate barrier that had guarded Alice's chastity.

Loosed from the bonds that he had used to govern himself for most of his life, Hugh drove deep into Alice. She clenched fiercely around him, snug and hot.

Outside the cave the storm reached its peak. Lightning flashed in the distance. The rain roared on the stony cliffs. The world shrank down to the cavern in which Hugh lay with Alice. Nothing else mattered, he thought. Nothing.

He heard Alice moan softly. He reached his hand down between his own body and hers, found the taut little nubbin of womanly flesh, and stroked.

She tensed and cried out. The delicate shivers rippled through her.

Hugh lifted himself again and again, thrusting deep into the tight passage until the world spun around him. Thunder shook the cliffs as his release rolled through him. It was a release far different from any he had ever known. For the first time in the whole of his thirty years he knew what it was to be consumed by passion. He understood why the poets wanted to give this intense sensation another, more glorious name.

For a brief, fleeting instant, he thought he comprehended at last why they wanted to call it love.

Alice stirred a long while later. She was aware of a distinct soreness between her legs but she felt strangely content. A part of her looked into the future and knew a cautious hope.

She had traveled to a fascinating new land with Hugh this day. Surely the experience that they had just shared would bind them together.

She opened her eyes and found him watching her with an unblinking, shuttered gaze. Some of her joyous anticipation faded. She saw at once that the indications of softness and vulnerability she thought she had discovered in him had already vanished. The dark knight had resumed the mantle of his own legend.

A wistful regret dimmed her newly formed dreams for the future. She told herself she must have patience. Hugh was not the sort of man who would change overnight.

She tried to think of something truly brilliant and fascinating to say, something that a woman in her position, a woman who had just shared a passionate interlude with a legendary knight, might say. Something that would touch his heart. Something magical.

She cleared her throat delicately. "I believe that it has ceased raining, my lord."

"Are you all right?"

So much for finding memorable words. Alice scowled. "Of course. Why wouldn't I be perfectly all right? What a silly question."

His hard mouth kicked up a little at one corner. "It seemed the appropriate thing to ask under the circumstances."

It occurred to Alice that he might not be any more skilled at conversations of this sort than she. The thought warmed her. "Rather like my comment on the rain?"

His expression softened slightly. "Aye." He eased her to a sitting position beside him. He frowned when he saw her wince. "Alice?"

" 'Tis nothing, my lord." She fumbled with her gown.

Before she could get her skirts arranged he reached out to touch her inner thigh. She blushed with embarrassment when he withdrew fingers that were stained with a reddish moisture.

Hugh stared at his hand. "Alice, we must talk."

"About the rain or my health?"

"About marriage."

Alice paused in the act of adjusting her gown. "This is too much, sir. 'Tis one thing to be called Relentless. 'Tis quite another to feel compelled to live up to the title at every single opportunity."

"Alice—"

"How dare you spoil such a pleasant, intimate interlude by returning to our old argument before I have even righted my skirts?"

"A pleasant, intimate interlude? Is that all this was to you?"

She flushed. "Nay, my lord, but I assumed that was likely all it meant to you. Surely you do not intend to tell me that this is the first time you have made love to a woman?" She paused. The possibility that they had shared this experience for the first time together sent a bright shaft of happiness through her. "Or is it?"

His eyes narrowed. " 'Tis the first time I have made love to a woman to whom I am bound by a vow of betrothal."

"Oh." Of course he had been no true virgin, she thought. He was thirty years old. And a man. His honor was not bound up with his chastity. "Well, I do not see that it makes a great deal of difference."