Barham smiled, nodded, the genial host. He’d been studying Lydia, what he could see of her. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting your new lady.”

Ro smiled at him, the cat with the cream. “Indeed, old son. You haven’t. But I’m sure you won’t mind if we delay the introductions.” He lifted his hips, jigging Lydia. “We’re rather absorbed at the moment.”

Barham’s smile was the definition of lecherous, but Ro knew he wouldn’t object; this, after all, was the principal purpose of his “revels.”

“Oh, indeed. Do continue.” Barham half turned toward the door. “Join us when you’re free-breakfast will be available in the dining room shortly. No doubt you’ll both wish to recoup your energies for the evening’s games.”

Ro let his smile widen, more overtly sexual. “Indubitably. We’ll join you there.”

Barham saluted and walked to the door.

Ro didn’t wait for him to leave, but drew Lydia’s face back to his, covered her lips, and plunged back into her mouth, into the hot, forbidden delight, eager-even desperate-for every last taste for her, before his excuse for kissing her disappeared.

Reaching the door, Barham paused, watching.

Taking one hand from Lydia’s face, Ro spread his palm over her silk-clad side, gripping, then he slid his hand around, over her back, intending to pretend to unravel the knot securing her laces-only to discover that the laces he’d so carefully double-knotted, being of corded silk, slithered and gave at the lightest touch. The knot unraveled, the laces loosened and eased; the back of her gown parted, gaped…he had to follow through and slide his hand beneath the silk, to feel her skin-a hotter silk-against his palm, to caress, to possess…to make it and her his.

Barham went out and shut the door.

Ro told himself to take his hand out of her gown, to break the kiss and sit up-to help her up from her blatantly suggestive position astride his hips, with not even the silk skirts between them to shield the hot, tender skin of her inner thighs from his trousers.

He told himself, and kept repeating the message, increasingly stridently-but his body failed to comply.

His body was all hers, caught, trapped in a web of sexual hunger stronger and more powerful than any he’d previously known.

But this was Lydia.

It took immense effort to force himself to draw back from the kiss, force himself to gasp, his voice gravelly and low, “He’s gone. We can stop.”

Lifting his lids, heavy and weighted, he focused on her face, only inches from his. His hand was still caressing her naked back, which courtesy of those slippery laces was steadily becoming more naked.

Her lids rose a little, just enough for her to stare dazedly at him. She wet her lips; her gaze dropped to his mouth. “I don’t want to stop.”

But they had to. “Lydia-”

“No. Don’t argue.” She leaned in and brushed her lips, swollen and shining, over his. “Just kiss me and show me-I want to know.”

More an order than a plea; Ro struggled against the promptings of his baser self, only too eager to suggest that if she wanted to, then it would only be gentlemanly to oblige.

He knew his baser self all too well and didn’t trust it.

But before he could gather his wits enough to form any cogent argument, she framed his face and kissed him again, this time more deeply, more alluringly-more determinedly sirenlike than before.

Under the heat of that kiss, the deliberate if innocent warmth behind it, the resolution he’d assembled started to melt…he pressed back, shifted, broke the kiss. Tried to sit up, but she was leaning over him, her forearms resting on his chest; to sit up he would have to grip her and set her back, but his hand was spread over her naked back-gripping didn’t help. He dragged in a breath. “We’ve got Tab’s letter-we should leave.”

He inwardly cursed; his voice was hoarse, the words more suggestion than directive.

“Not yet.” She pressed down more firmly across his hips, all soft warmth and sleek, silken heat, the promise of a fiery haven between her thighs blatantly explicit; he had to swallow a groan. He was aroused to the point of pain; when he’d jigged her, he’d clearly made her aware of that, and now she was curious.

He could read that in her face.

Lydia looked down at him, and knew beyond question that here, now, was the time. The only time for her-the only chance she might ever have to know, to experience, what she’d dreamed of for years.

Innocent dreams originally, progressively less so, but now…after reading all Tabitha had written in her letter, all her younger sister had described in minute and glowing detail, she couldn’t live any longer without knowing, without experiencing it all herself.

Here, with Ro, the only man she could imagine being intimate with.

Now, in this room where they knew they would be private, with her in this dress specifically designed for the purpose, designed to arouse and then facilitate the culmination.

Now, when he was momentarily, at least, thinking along similar lines.

And their unusual position gave her some chance of capitalizing on that, of persuading him and overriding his innate honor, his resistance.

“We can leave…in a little while.” Of its own accord, her voice had lowered to a sultry murmur. Rising up just a fraction, she held his gaze, and slowly, deliberately, took advantage of the loosened laces at her back; crossing her arms over her breasts, putting each hand to the opposite shoulder, she slowly, smoothly pushed the small lacy sleeves of the gown down her arms…if she wanted to succeed, drastic actions were necessary. She had to be bold; fortune favored the brave.

His eyes widened, the gray gleaming silver below his long lashes. Beneath her, between her thighs, she felt him react.

Slowly she pushed the sleeves down, then released them and drew her forearms and hands free, let the bodice slump into folds about her waist. She didn’t look down at her breasts, fully exposed to his fixed silvery gaze; instead she watched him, watched the silver in his eyes heat, watched the planes of his face shift, hardening, becoming more sharp-edged, watched his jaw slowly clench.

He drew a long, slow, tight breath.

Before he could speak, she murmured, still sultry and low, “Don’t try to tell me that you don’t like what you see.” She shifted, pressed down just a little more, provocatively brushing the rigid line of his erection with her lower belly, the movement displaying her breasts, moving them closer to his face. She felt like a wanton. The hard bulge pressing up beneath the junction of her thighs hardened even more, felt even more like hot marble, even through the fabric of his trousers.

His eyes fixed on her breasts, he swallowed, then licked his lips. “Lydia…”

Ro couldn’t believe what was happening. Nor could he believe the effort it cost him to lift his eyes from the fabulous ivory mounds presented so blatantly for his delectation. One part of him was frankly amazed he managed it at all. His hand was still trapped against her silken back-held there by the tactile sensation he couldn’t bring himself to lose. The other had fallen from her face as she’d moved; it now gripped her waist, but weakly. His arms, his body, seemed to have lost all strength, all ability to act as he kept trying to.

He gritted his teeth, tried to keep his eyes on hers. “We can’t do this.”

Her big blue eyes opened wide. “Why not?”

His jaw was going to crack. “Because…” He hesitated for only an instant, frantically searching for suitable phrases, but she smiled understandingly and helped.

“Because I’m not the sort of lady you customarily engage in such activities as this with?”

He nodded. “Precisely.” Thank God she’d grasped that critical point. “That is the reason in a nutshell.”

Unfortunately she didn’t react to that reason in the way he’d hoped. Pressing his coat wide, sliding the buttons of his waistcoat free, she pushed the halves aside; setting her hands, palms flat, to his lower chest, to the fine linen of his shirt, she ran them slowly upward, pressing down, patently savoring all she could feel.