He doesn’t look at me and I feel stupid hovering by his door, so I start to wander around the bedroom, trying to still my frantic pulse. It’s a good thing that it’s an interesting room, otherwise my deliberate study would seem silly.

Even Alan’s bedroom is something I find weird and demands a certain amount of mental analysis. It looks like something from a nineteenth century English manor, elegant to the point of being almost a touch prissy. There’s an antique mahogany king-sized bed facing the fireplace; floral wingback chairs with pillows positioned before the hearth; and high-tech conveniences camouflaged in antique furniture. There’s a Monet on the wall; tall, polished sterling silver candlesticks; crystal; and fine, leather-bound, first edition books of classic literature. I sink down before a small, mahogany table where I find a stack of newspaper: Barons; the New York Times; the Washington Post; and the Daily Telegraph.

The warmth of the fire surrounds me like a caress, but I am quaking like a leaf. I wasn’t sure what Alan expected after he walked out of the kitchen. It would have been logical to assume that I would leave. But he knew I’d follow him. I don’t know why he’s ignoring me now. I look at the lit candlesticks—he wanted me to follow him.

I bite my lower lip and stare at my knotted fingers. I stayed alone in the kitchen for what seemed like ages, and now that I’ve done exactly what he expected me to do, nothing.

I struggle for something to say to break the silence. “You do have seven bedrooms. I counted them twice. But there are seven only if I include yours.”

He folds the Journal, tosses it on the table and fixes those penetrating, mesmerizing eyes on me. “Is this the room you want?” he asks, his voice gentle. “I meant it when I said you could have any room. It doesn’t have to be my room for you to stay.”

Does he not want me in his room? A ragged breath forces its way from deep in my lungs. “Do you want me to go?” I murmur.

“Of course not. I want you here.” His voice is husky and his eyes are wandering in a leisurely hold that is tender and oddly comforting. “But I’m not going to fuck you, Chrissie. I want so very much to make love to you.”

His gaze is intense, and the effect of his words travels through me. His precise tone, his odd phrasing; it should have made me laugh from nothing else but the weirdness of it. Instead, I want to cry because that statement reveals a lot of what he sees inside of me.

“Can we turn the lights out?” I whisper.

He crosses the room and stands in front of me, staring down into my eyes. “If you want, but I undressed you last night. I’ve seen you nude. I saw every part of you. Everything.”

I flush…everything?... what is he trying to tell me? Then the lights flip off and there is only the sweetly forgiving glow of firelight, and Alan is lifting me from the floor.

He is surprisingly strong, and he carries me with so little effort that it makes me feel fragile and beautiful and weightless. Tentatively, I touch my lips to the warm flesh of his neck, the taste of him running through my veins like fire, my blood pumping all through my body. But I get only a fast taste of him before he eases me down on the bed. I think he’s going to cover me with his body, but he doesn’t; he settles on his hip in a relaxed arrangement of long body parts beside me.

Every move he makes is with such exquisite, slow grace, but his eyes are smoky with eager desire. I take the initiative and curl into his chest to kiss him, wanting him to feel my own urgency, but he changes the flow of the current so subtly, it takes a moment for me to realize he is slowing me, calming me with his mouth, moving me where he wants. I want to melt into him, into the play of his fingers, the feel of his lips, but he holds the space between us.

His mouth leaves mine in a slow disconnect, and agony shoots up my center. He opens his eyes. The corners of his mouth lift in a diffused, sort of blurred smile.

“What do you like, Chrissie?” he whispers and leans down to kiss the inside of my thigh, hidden by my dress.

He hovers over me, watching my shifting emotions as I squirm with need. What do I like? I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. He is so seductive I realize that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t want to do with him.

“Everything,” I breathe and he answers me with a soft, raspy laugh.

Then one of my legs is in his hands. He’s slipping off my shoe, a kiss on the ankle, a gentle return of my flesh to the mattress, and then the other leg, surrounded by his touch, air hitting toes, lips touching ankle.

“You have no idea how beautiful you are,” he says softly. His hands are on my sundress. “Why can’t you see it? Why are you so unaware of your own beauty?”

Cold air surrounds my flesh. My dress is gone. My breath hitches, excitement and fear, knotted-bands running through my senses. I can’t look away from him. He is staring at me naked beneath him, seeing every inch of my flesh, and all I can do is watch him look at me.

His fingers are fluttering along my thigh, tracing and touching everywhere, and his other hand is on my breasts, and he is kissing me: my mouth, my neck, the rise of my breasts, the swell, the nipple, my belly, my navel. My skin is burning. Every move is patient, deliberate and potent.

Oh…it is getting stronger. It is getting wonderfully worse. I want to touch him. He begins to move slowly up my body with his kisses, and my nipples harden beneath the play of his mouth and fingers. I can feel his breathing, ragged and hard, and yet I’m bathed in that exquisite slowness of his moves. He is drawing me into him.

I want to melt into this slowness, hover in this deliciously wet and aching anticipation.

“How do you want to come?” His fingers gently tease me and then he cups my sex. “My hand or my mouth?”

I’ve never done any of this. I don’t know what I want. I want to hover in this as long as I can, and yet my body is demanding completion. His hand or his mouth?

Through the dim, flickering light I hear more laughter.

“I’m going to take your silence as my choice.”

He eases back and gently opens my legs. His fingers float up the inside of my legs, my thighs. He hovers. I squirm with need. A kiss on my ankle. A touch behind my knee. I am going to climb out of my skin and climax before his mouth ever touches me. He kisses the inside of my thigh. Lightly. A light breath. My fingers curl around the sheets. Another kiss higher. A light breath. A kiss on the top of my pelvis. I tense and he kisses lower, lighter, feather-light.

My head moves on the pillow. My hips begin to move. He steadies them with his fingers. And then his mouth is there, in a knowing rhythm of tongue and fingers and kisses and touch. And I am quaking and moaning, being seduced to the edge, and then pulled back, over and over again. It is not me controlling my body. It is not me stopping the delicious pleasure that is repeatedly stirred. It is him. He is coaxing me there and pulling it away, deliberately.

“Oh… please,” I beg. I want him to finish me. The building is painful and demanding and I want it. I want it now. What is he doing to me?

“Don’t fight, Chrissie. Stop fighting your body and come alive,” he murmurs, before the work of his mouth and fingers devour me, this time guiding me straight on the path, knowing exactly where he is taking me. My legs stiffen. My back arches. I don’t even recognize the panting groans in the room. Every part of me releases into his touch and mouth. A complete, slow event all on its own.

His mouth closes over mine, swallowing my breaths as he covers my body. I’m still quaking as I feel the head of his erection at the entrance of my femaleness. He is moving slowly, touching me ever so slightly in there, teasing me to drive me mad. But the pounding urge to feel him inside is overpowering. I arch up, pushing him deep inside of me, then a rip and a burn that makes me cry out.