“And if I acquit myself in the manner you deserve, my lady, your enthusiasm will soon eclipse my own.” He leaned down, and while she caressed his testes, he undid the ties of her robe and nightgown, though—in aid of his own sanity—he did not push the material aside.

“Come here, Tiberius.” She held out her arms, as if she were inviting him to mount her directly. When he hesitated, she spread her legs. “Come to me.”

“I don’t want to rush—”

She captured his wrist and gave him a stout pull toward her body. “I do want to rush. I want to gallop and soar and feel the wind in my hair, Tiberius. We can hack around the park some other night.”

Because, he concluded, they had many other nights—a lifetime of other nights—to test each other’s paces. He tossed away his robe and covered her body with his own.

“At least permit me some kisses, Hester.”

He gathered she was not inclined to argue. She got a grip on his hair that was coming to feel familiar and fused her mouth to his.

“If you ever cut your hair, Tiberius—” She’d broken off the kiss to take his earlobe into her mouth.

“If you ever cut yours—” The feel of her body beneath him, so very nearly joined to his, had Tye’s voice sounding harsh to his own ears. He got a hand over her breast, teasing her nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

“Tiberius Lamartine Flynn.” Her nails dug into his backside, sending a gratifying jolt of lust to his vitals.

“What’s your middle name?” The question created a pause in the lady’s attempts to wrestle her lover into submission and into her body.

“You want to know that now?” She hooked her ankles at the small of his back and arched her hips into him. “Now, you want to discuss names?”

“I want to know the name of the woman attempting to ravish me.” He scooted his hips back. “The complete name.” The name she’d say when they spoke their vows to each other.

“Wretched, awful man.” She subsided beneath him, going quiet on a sigh. Her hand brushed slowly over his back, then moved down to pet his buttocks. “My complete name—and I am not trying to ravish you, but merely to effect the purpose for which you have arrived to my bed—is Hester Willamette Daniels.”

“Willamette is pretty.”

“It’s odd.” She sighed against his shoulder then closed her teeth gently over his collarbone. “I’m rushing, aren’t I?”

“Trying to; I’m trying not to let you.” He slipped a palm around the back of her head and cradled her face to his shoulder. “You don’t need to get this over with, Hester, like your first jump after a bad fall.”

“What if I don’t like it?”

He was tempted to tell her she’d like it, then show her she’d like it, and hope she did like it. He kissed her cheek, hitched himself up around her, and started making a mental list of the ways Jasper Merrihell was going to regret treating Hester Willamette Daniels Flynn badly.

“I am going to impart to you now a truth, Hester. Attend me closely, please, because in about two minutes, I will be incapable of speech.”

She undulated beneath him, her intimate curls brushing against him low on his belly. “I’m attending you closely, and I cannot imagine you being rendered incapable of speech. Not ever.”

If she kept that up… “Becoming intimate with another this way takes time, Hester. It’s like learning a language shared with only one other person. You must instruct me regarding what pleases you, and I will offer you the same insights regarding myself.”

“This is the trust part, isn’t it?” She punctuated her question with a glancing caress to his nipples.

“It’s trust and pleasure, served together to both of us. And if you don’t like what I’m doing, you tell me to desist.”

“I told Jasper to desist.” She said this very quietly, her face pressed to his throat. “He kept saying ‘in a minute.’ It was a very long minute. He did not hurt me, but he did disappoint me.”

Merriman had hurt her, and when Tye could muster the mental focus, he’d determine a way to hold the man accountable. “If I don’t desist when you ask, you simply grab my testes, and you’ll have my undivided attention.”

“Grab your… your command of Latin has me agog, Spathfoy.”

She was talking vocabulary when what was wanted was reassurance. Tye focused on where their bodies were close but not joined. “What about this? Does this leave you agog?”

He pressed forward, not even an inch, and she went still. “Oh, Tiberius.” She gave a luxurious roll of her spine, as if she’d take him into her body all at once. “Yes, please. That leaves me quite, quite…”

He did it again, not enough to penetrate her sex but enough to tantalize. Her legs closed around his flanks, a snug hold embodying reassurances of its own.

The moment of joining his body to a woman’s was a little interval of tedium, usually. It bridged the gap between preliminaries and escalating pleasure, and yet it required focus and patience.

With Hester sighing and moving beneath him, Tye wanted to prolong their joining in all its aspects. He moved slowly, slowly in the advance-and-retreat rhythm of coitus. He offered her kisses; he offered her an embrace that cradled her close and cherished that closeness at the same time. He shoved his own gratification as far from his awareness as he could, listening instead for the signs that her arousal was gathering steam.

“Tiberius?”

“Here.”

“This is… Oh, God.” She convulsed around him with no more warning than that, bowing up to clutch at him while he resisted the temptation to drive into her faster and harder. When her pleasure subsided, he stilled.

“Are you all right?”

“Uhn.” She drew her foot up the back of his leg.

“When you plan your trousseau, you must add a number of pairs of wool socks, Hester.”

“I’m not planning anything at the moment.” She sounded dreamy and sated, poor dear.

“I’m planning something.”

Against his chest, Tye felt her eyelashes flutter open. “You are the sort of fellow who’s frequently planning something. Maybe you’re planning your journey south.”

“My journey to points south on your body, perhaps.” He started moving again, slowly, but with purpose. “Shall you gallop again, Hester, and feel the wind in your hair?”

“Again?” She lifted her face to peer at him by the waning firelight. “Isn’t it time you sprang your own horses, so to speak?”

“Soon.”

For form’s sake, he pleasured her once more without permitting himself to spend; and because he was a gentleman, he did not labor the point any further. Because he was human and male, he in fact could not labor the point any further.

“Tiberius, can we do this all night?”

The wonder in her tone did his heart good. “Eventually, but because you are inexperienced, to persist much longer would leave you sore.”

And himself dead or committed to an asylum for men who’d suffered excesses of self-restraint.

“Sore?”

“You’re going to want a soaking bath in the morning.”

“I see.”

“Hester?”

She nuzzled his neck, which he took for as much answer as he was going to get. He shifted so his mouth was right near her ear. “Hold me.”

She’d long since caught the knack of moving with him, and closed her arms and legs around him. “You’ll fly with me, Tiberius? Take the last fence with me?”

He’d meant to pull out. Coitus interruptus was a term even the scholars failing their Latin knew before they left public school. The sweet, snug heat of her removed this useful phrase from his vocabulary, though, flung it right out of his mind, tossed it far from his heart.

He thrust steadily, hard and deep, and within moments felt her sex fisting around his cock in great, clutching spasms.

“Tiberius, please.”

She sank her nails into his arse, bit his shoulder, and obliterated his awareness of anything save the soul-deep pleasure of joining her in a shared moment of ecstasy. He gave up his seed into the welcoming depths of her body, gave up his self-restraint, his heart, his all in the act of loving her.