Her lids lowered; her eyes gleamed cornflower bright. “Perhaps, in the general way of things, that would be an adequate reason for stopping, for not doing what both of us wish to do.” Her voice remained soft, sirenlike, a whisper of temptation. “But, Ro, I’m a year or so away from being an acknowledged ape leader, and there’s little to no prospect of anything changing that. So…”

Her hands had reached his shoulders. Lifting them to his face, she framed it and leaned close, settling on him, her elbows on his collarbones, resting her glorious breasts, naked, on his shirt-clad chest. Through the fine linen, he felt their warmth, their elemental female bounty, felt everything primitive within him stir.

From a distance of mere inches, she looked into his eyes, searched them. He couldn’t breathe-couldn’t risk even trying to move his hands. If he did, he’d lock his arms around her, lock all that warm and willing female flesh to him-and then he’d be lost. Lost to all reason. Lost to all sane thought.

Lost to her.

He wasn’t sure he already wasn’t.

She held his gaze, and he couldn’t look away, then she quietly stated, “If I’m going to die an old maid, I want this time-at least this one time-for me, with you. Please Ro-don’t make me beg.”

He told himself he was strong-strong enough to withstand this. To withstand even her. The muscle in his jaw shifted, bunched as he tried to find strength enough to say, then do, what he felt he should.

But then she smiled-a gentle, wistful, oh-so-understanding smile-leaned closer still, closing the last inches, and gently, wistfully, kissed him.

“Please, Ro.” She breathed the words over his lips, then drew back just enough to meet his eyes. “For whatever I meant to you all those years ago, when you waltzed with me in the orchard and kissed me…please do this for me here and now. Please…just show me.”

What could he say?

Some inner, wiser part of him inwardly sighed, resignedly, as if this had been inevitable from the start and he should have known.

Should have known that he could never deny her.

That there was no longer any point in doing so, in even trying.

He suddenly saw that not yielding and doing as she wished, giving her all and more than she was asking for, would simply be denying the truth, that truth he’d known for ten long years, and had never been able to escape.

That was the reason he had never wed. Perhaps that was why she, too, had never walked to the altar.

A thought to ponder, but for now, this minute, he had other things to do, other things to which to turn his mind.

“All right.” At his gravelly surrender, a fine frisson of expectation raced through her-like a Thoroughbred waiting for the flag to fall. He finally let his hands, palms burning, grip; he savored the feel of her held poised between his hands, then raised his lips to hers. “As you wish.”

And more.

He kissed her, and let the caress and the heated exchange that grew from it carry that message, make clear his intentions. She shivered, quivered in his arms, but her grasping hands only tightened, fingertips pressing in, trying to grip his muscles, holding him to her. Urging him on.

He needed no urging.

His hands roved her back, learning the texture of her, the supple planes, the indentation of her spine. Then he reached once more for her head, spilling pins and untwisting the knot, letting her long, silky tresses free to fall and slide and writhe over and through his fingers.

Bringing his hands forward, he framed her face, held her still, angling his head as he plundered more deeply, more evocatively, taking as much as he wished, giving her as much as and more than she’d asked for.

Releasing her face, he set his palms to follow the long lines of her throat, down over the swell of her breasts, fingers artfully trailing while he listened to her breath hitch, catch, lungs tightening as he circled her nipples.

He cupped her breasts, took one firm mound in each hand and kneaded, possessed, knowing full well that that wouldn’t be enough, not for her, not now. She gasped through the kiss, then she kissed him-ardent and needy, wanting…

Lowering his hands, he grasped her waist and urged her up, releasing her lips to trail his down her throat, following the line his hands had taken, burning a path to the base of her throat where her pulse galloped and raced, then down over the swell of one swollen, flushed breast to the peak.

He traced a circle about it with his tongue, listened to her frantic breathing, then he opened his mouth, closed it over the tightly furled nubbin, and drew it deep. Suckled as she cried out.

She tried to mute the sound. He drew back enough to growl, “No one can hear. The dining room is at the other end of the house.”

He’d liked the tiny scream, wanted to hear more, set himself assiduously to draw more from her.

Giving more, taking more.

More, far more, than Lydia had expected. More than she’d dreamed.

But no more than she wanted.

One hand fisted in his hair, eyes closed against the sight of him feeding at her breasts, she held him to her and drank in every sensation, let it sink into her parched, deprived senses, felt them swell, burgeon, and flower.

Opening to him, wanting only more. More of all he made her feel.

More of him.

Every tactile sense she possessed felt heightened, alive; her nerves were strung tight, quiveringly taut, twanging at each touch, then waiting, expectation stretching, for the next. Heat flushed beneath her skin, welled, swelled, and washed through her, a seductive fire running down her veins, coalescing low in her belly.

She shifted against him, felt him stiffen, then she felt the silk skirts ruffle and lift; his hand, sliding beneath, found her thigh. From her garter just above her knee he followed the back of her thigh higher, his hot hard palm to her skin, until he found her bottom. He caressed, squeezed gently, explored…distracting her while his other hand also slipped beneath her skirts, long fingers trailing up the inside of her thigh; he reached her curls, stroked, then reached further.

Touched, caressed, then evocatively probed.

She quaked, felt as if she stood at the edge of some precipice waiting to jump, then he suckled more fiercely, his hand shifted between her thighs, and one long finger pressed into her.

What little air she had left in her tight lungs came out in a soft moan, then his finger took up a repetitive rhythm of thrust and retreat that stoked the flames inside her…until they roared.

Until she couldn’t wait any longer.

Releasing his head, she placed her hands on his chest and pushed up. Opening her eyes, she looked down, frantically pushing back her skirts to find the buttons holding the placket of his trousers closed.

With his hands trapped beneath frothy layers of silk skirt and petticoat, he couldn’t retrieve them in time to stop her from slipping the buttons free-but as she did, he swore, gripped her hips and lifted her forward so she straddled him higher across his hips, unbalancing her so she tipped forward and had to put her hands back on his chest to brace herself.

“Ro!” She infused the syllable with all the pent-up pleading in her soul. She knew what she wanted and she wanted it now, wanted no argument-

“Yes, I know.” Ro bit the words out, had no idea if she understood, but there was no reason she should look, and possibly decide to ask questions-such as how could this work?-questions he didn’t have sufficient brain free to deal with. “Just wait a minute…”

She half sobbed with frustration and need, but she was heated and wet, so very ready, and so was he. No point in prolonging the torture.

He positioned the blunt head of his erection against her entrance, raised his hips to nudge a fraction in, as beneath the silk skirts he clamped his hands about her hips, and drew her slowly down.