Still, Piers said nothing.

“If I choose to give it to you, can you guarantee that no child will result?”

“No,” he said. “This house doesn’t have all the amenities one might desire.”

There was a thread of amusement in his voice that woke a smile in her eyes. “What if there is a child?”

“We’ll marry,” he stated.

She nodded, feeling terribly shy.

Piers pulled her down onto his chest. “I think we should investigate exactly what we’re proposing to do.” His lips settled on hers, aggressive and delicious. “After all,” she heard him say a few moments later, his voice muffled by the way his lips were skating over her skin, “where there is a chance of marriage, one must proceed with care. Deliberation. Make absolutely sure that neither of us has the slightest qualm.”

She arched against him, not interested in careful thought. She couldn’t even concentrate on touching all that skin she had been furtively ogling. She felt inebriated, drunk, as if brandy were pouring through her veins and pooling between her thighs.

She wanted more.

In fact, the only thing she was really interested in was pressed against her thigh. Piers was still talking, in that sardonic kind of way that she found irritating. So she slipped her hand down by her leg and grabbed.

He went abruptly silent. He felt hot and smooth in her palm, pulsing with life, and far too large.

He eased back. “You’re holding me like a prize cucumber that you’re planning to pick.” But something in his voice indicated that he wasn’t as blasé as he sounded.

She let her fingers ease, slide up and down, the way he had been doing. A broken moan came from his lips. It was fascinating the way his skin moved . . . her fingers tightened again. Piers’s head fell back.

He was soft and hard at the same time, an odd combination that her body understood better than she did. She curled her fingers more tightly and stroked him again. The feeling of it made her shudder, and the breath caught in his throat, emerging in a strangled moan.

Desire lanced through her again, making her breathless, exhilarated. “I think this will suffice,” she whispered, letting him go and pulling his body toward her. “I have no doubts.”

“Suffice?” He was laughing again, but she was too busy tasting his neck, running her tongue up that strong column, and incidentally, bumping her hips against his.

“Come on,” she said, trying to pull him on top of her.

“We should be slow,” he whispered, his tongue sliding across her lips while his fingers did the same thing below. “You’re a virgin. You may well have an impediment inside. You must have heard about the pain caused by losing one’s virginity.”

Linnet hardly heard him, so entranced was she by how he was stroking her. Still, what she wanted wasn’t strokes or caresses or even sweet kisses. So she pulled hard at his shoulders. “Now,” she said fiercely.

She felt him there, and arched toward him instinctively.

“Slow,” he whispered.

She didn’t want slow. She felt a deep hunger for heat, and rush, and possession. The feeling was so intense that she couldn’t find words, just sobbed once, against his shoulders.

He knew . . . somehow he knew what she was thinking. A strong hand lifted her hip higher, fingers biting into her curves, and then he said into her curls, “You’re sure?”

Linnet didn’t bother answering, just growled in his ear as if she’d lost the ability to speak.

Apparently he knew how to interpret that because he came to her, in a smooth ferocious rush, with a twist of his hips and a lunge.

“Pain?” he said a second later, his lips on her cheeks.

It wasn’t pain. She felt stretched, occupied, possessed . . . delirious.

Linnet arched her hips, took him deeper. “Could you—” She lost her breath as he shifted, sending cascades of fiery sensation down her legs.

“I can stop,” Piers gasped. “Wait for you to adjust. Your body will accommodate me, if you give it a moment.” His voice was deeper than she’d ever heard it.

Linnet hardly heard him. She was arching again, trying to get back the sensation, the fire. It felt good but . . . She clutched his shoulders. “Is that it?” Then she realized how her comment sounded. “It’s very nice. Really. Very—” Her voice cut off when his hips shifted.

He was laughing again, a kind of deep, breathless laughter. His elbows were just by her ear so she could feel his body shaking . . . She opened her eyes and stared at him, annoyed.

“I don’t think laughing is appropriate.”

“Mmmmm,” he said, reaching down and nipping her lip. The motion of his body made another ripple of sensation spread from her middle to the very ends of her toes. Her eyes started to close again.

“Are you feeling comfortable?” he asked her.

Really, was this all there was? She was comfortable. This couldn’t be all there was.

“Quite comfortable,” she said, tilting her neck to kiss his chin.

“In that case, do you suppose I could start to move?”

“Move? Move where?” Instinctively she clutched his shoulders. She might be slightly disappointed by the act, but she definitely didn’t want him to go anywhere. “Is it over already?”

He dropped his head into the curve of her shoulder, but she could hear the snort of laughter.

“Stop laughing at me!” she ordered, thinking that maybe she would just shove him off, before he had a chance to leave. That would show him. She pulled up her knees, bracing her feet on the bed, and the breath caught in her throat. Pleasure spread out like slow liquid ripples, right down her legs.

Piers’s breath sounded harsh in her ears. Without another word, he reached back and pushed her left knee up.

“Oh,” she breathed, understanding his silent command and winding her legs around his hips. It brought the two of them closer, shifted him somehow so he was even deeper inside her. She liked it. Even more after she wiggled a little, adjusting so that they were a perfect fit.

“This is very nice,” she said, kissing his chin. “I like it.”

“I’m going to have to move now,” he said, between clenched teeth. “The pause for virgin accommodation is over.”

“All right,” she said, disappointed, letting her legs uncurl. It felt so good. She was throbbing all over.

He pulled back. The sense of loss was dizzying. Her flesh instinctively clung to him, mourning. And then he thrust forward again.

A sob flew from her lips, and her legs flew back around his hips. Her body arched to meet his. “What—” she managed.

He didn’t answer. Instead he pulled back to thrust, and thrust again.

Linnet clung to him as if she were a limpet and he a rock, letting the wild pleasure of his ride echo through every bone in her body.

She could hear herself whimper, hear the harsh sound of Piers’s breath in her ear. Slowly, slowly, a sort of incandescent heat was building in her body, making her toes curl and her fingernails dig into his shoulders.

“Linnet,” Piers growled, pausing. His voice sounded so unlike himself, his controlled, observant self, that she pulled him even closer, dropping kisses on his shoulder, his neck, his chin.

“We need to—”