“Make yourself feel better,” Val murmured. “Find relief. Use me.”

She made a few tentative passes over him, and Val sensed she was torn between relief and increased arousal.

“Trust me.” He urged her along him again. “You feel so good to me, Ellen. Just move on me a little.”

He bit her nipple, lightly, then bit and suckled at the same time, and Ellen’s body began to move with its own momentum. She arched, and he nipped her again so her nipple stayed in his mouth as her chest heaved up, and she let out a half groan, half sigh. There was frustration in that sound, and Val heard it.

“Let me help you.” Val anchored her to him, his arm a tight band low on her back to keep her close to him as she moved more and more strongly. And then, just there, where all the sensations of pleasure and torment should focus for her, Val worked a hand between them and brushed a thumb across her wet flesh.

“No.” She tried to shrink away, but Val’s arm trapped her against him, and his hips arched up to increase the pressure against her sex.

“Valentine,” she whispered. “Oh, God, Valentine…”

He could feel her body seizing, and bucked up hard against her, holding her tightly to him and aching with his own need to spend. He stroked over her again and again, until she was shaking and clinging to him, then crying softly against his neck.

“It’s too much,” she finally murmured dazedly. “It’s so much too much, and I never knew…”

It had been too much, Val silently agreed. He hadn’t intended that her orgasm be so… violent, but she’d resisted the pleasure, and he’d forced it on her, and he wanted nothing so much as to do it again and again until they were both sore and spent and mindless with it.

Until she’d been compensated for five years of marital frustration and five years of wasted widowhood.

“Just let me hold you. Take a moment to gather your wits.”

“I will never have wits again,” Ellen muttered, curling up more closely on his chest. “I don’t even believe wits exist at this point. What on earth did you do to me, Valentine Windham? That was different from what happened at the stream. You are an awful, awful man.”

There was such affection in her tone, such pleased, bewildered exasperation, that Val felt the very opposite of awful. “I didn’t mean to be so rough with you. You are a lady.”

“I was rough with you,” Ellen countered. “I became a beast.”

“An awful beast.”

“God above.” Ellen’s sigh breezed over Val’s heart. “I was awful, wasn’t I?”

She sounded so proud, Val hugged her tightly, odd feelings coursing up from his chest. “A tigress pouncing on her prey could not have produced more awe in me than you did.” He nuzzled her neck. “You have got such a mouth on you.”

Her tongue flicked out and Val flinched away.

“For shame,” he scolded. But when she merely nuzzled lazily at his neck, he stroked his hand over the back of her head in an easy rhythm. “Insatiable tigress.”

“Mmm.”

He let her find simple comfort in his arms for long minutes, because it appeased some need he had as well, to hold her, pet her, and stay close even as his own arousal still hummed through his body. He couldn’t go at her like that again, not so soon, and maybe not ever.

No matter she was pleased as punch with herself and he with her. On a sigh, she turned her head so her ear was above his heart.

“Does this mean I’m wicked?” she asked, appallingly serious.

“It means you are passionate,” Val corrected her, tipping her chin up and holding her gaze. “Passionate is a good thing, Ellen. It is the antithesis of being asleep in the midst of life.”

“Asleep.” She sounded as if she understood his use of the term and frowned at him. “I was falling asleep, you know, before you came. It hurt too much to stay awake.”

“And right now,” Val observed with dry humor, “not much of anything hurts, does it? And a nap sounds just the thing?”

“Hmm.” Ellen curled down again so he couldn’t see her face. “Is that why men like swiving so much? It puts one in charity with the universe?”

“Or one’s little corner of it. But there’s much to like about it.”

“Really?” Ellen stacked her hands and rested her chin on the back of them to survey him like the feline he’d compared her to. “Like what?”

“To see you overcome with pleasure. I have never beheld anything as lovely.”

He saw the wind drop abruptly from her sails.

“It felt lovely,” she admitted, closing her eyes. “You made me feel lovely.”

“No,” Val said firmly. “You are lovely, and you allowed yourself to see it and feel it and know it for a few moments.” He believed that with every fiber of his being.

“I want to be under you again,” she announced. “Please.”

She wanted sheltering and comforting, and Val could not have denied her one thing at that moment. If she’d asked for his right hand, he would have passed it along to her without a word.

“Are you going to cry?” Val asked quietly as he rolled them and obligingly crouched over her. She scooted down until her cheek was against his heart and she could wrap both arms and legs around him.

“I might. I don’t understand it.”

He held her tighter without being asked, and she clung to him more closely. “I am your friend, Ellen,” Val murmured, stroking her hair.

“And my lover,” Ellen reminded him, stretching up to kiss his throat. She reached around to stroke his nape, and beneath him, Val felt their sheer bodily intimacy calming her. She shifted and caressed him with her sex, and he didn’t for an instant mistake the invitation.

“You’re sure? I can see to myself, if you’re not.”

“I want you inside me. Please.”

“I want to be inside you, but you have to trust me on this, Ellen.”

“Trust you?” She licked his chest as if it were smeared with the brandy glaze from a hot apple tart.

“No dragging me back to your cave by my hair, hungry tigress,” Val teased, but his tone was serious. “I could hurt you if I’m not careful, and I will not be responsible for that.”

“I’ll try to behave, but you won’t hurt me.”

“Depend upon it,” he growled, shifting down to meet her eyes. “But recall you are to pinch me if you think I’m even getting close to the near occasion, right?”

“And on your… arse”—she managed the word—“doesn’t count, because in certain moods, you like that.”

“You were paying attention.”

She smoothed her hands up his chest. “And I expect in certain other moods you like to be pinched here.” She tested his nipples gently and was rewarded with a groan and closed eyes.

“Love it.” Which was a small revelation to him. “Adore it, but you said you’d behave.”

“I am behaving.” Ellen blinked up at him and pushed his hair back from his forehead. “You are stalling, though, Valentine. Make love to me, please.”

“Yes, love.” He lowered his forehead to hers, and the enormity of the moment threatened to overwhelm him. He wanted her desperately, and she was willing and even eager.

“Valentine…” Ellen singsonged his name as she lifted her hips, just grazing the tip of his cock with her sex. He didn’t flinch away but pressed minutely forward.

“Kiss me, Ellen,” he instructed sternly. “Now.”

Oh, ye bloody blue blazes… He teased and nibbled and flirted with her mouth as his hips teased and flirted his cock against her sex. She twined her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, and let him manage as she rubbed her tongue over his and her breasts against his chest.

“Valentine, please…”

“Patience.” But to his own ears, his voice had a hoarse, distracted note to it, as if he were concentrating just as hard as she was.

And then, like an answer to a craving, the broad head of his erection was more than just teasing her, it was gently, so gently, pushing against her wet heat. Ellen shifted restlessly, maybe trying to impale herself on him, but Val went still and lifted his face from hers.