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B efore she knew it he’d lifted the dress over her head and removed it entirely. He draped it carefully over a chair and then turned her around to face him.

He looked at her and his eyes darkened. There was no trace of the lightness she’d glimpsed in him earlier. It was all focused, burning intensity.

She was perfectly decently clothed in her chemise and the corset, but somehow, Bella felt… exposed. His gaze dropped to her chest. She glanced down. Her breasts looked almost naked, pushed up as they were by her corset. From this angle she could almost see her nipples. Could he?

Leaning against the edge of the high bed, he slowly pulled her between his thighs. “I think we’d better undo that thing,” he murmured. “It looks a bit tight to sleep in.” His voice was quite matter-of-fact, but his eyes… his eyes told a different story.

“Er, no, I’m sure it will be—” she started to mumble, but then his hands were there, reaching for the hooks at the front of her corset. He paused. Bella held her breath.

“So beautiful,” he murmured, and though she knew she was not at all beautiful, in that moment she believed it, believed him. He made her feel beautiful. Very gently, he brushed the back of his fingers across the delicate skin that rose from the constriction of the white linen corset.

She shivered again.

His knuckles slid down, across the linen casing, and she felt her nipples rise, hard and aching to meet them. Back and forth his big knuckles moved, a friction that barely touched her, yet her breasts were on fire.

He bent and kissed the exposed skin and then nibbled his way up her throat to claim her mouth, and as wondrous sensations shimmered through her, she felt suddenly looser, freer.

He’d removed her corset. And then she felt a draft of air against her legs and he pulled back from kissing her a moment and tugged the chemise up… up… and over her head. She folded her arms over her breasts, feeling inadequate, wholly exposed as his dark blue eyes roved hotly over her.

“Don’t be shy; you’re lovely,” he told her, sliding his hands around her waist and drawing her nearer. “Perfect and sweet and lovely.”

A rush of delicious warmth surged through her. She leaned eagerly into him, sliding her hands around his waist, lifting her mouth for his kiss. Blindly, feverishly, she found the hem of his shirt and started to drag it up his body.

“No.” He caught her hands and brought them up to his chest, pressing her palms down flat on the fabric.

She felt hard little nubs under her fingers.

Male nipples. Remembering the pleasure of his caress through the fabric of her corset, she lightly scraped her nails over the tiny bumps.

They hardened and she heard his low growl of pleasure.

He ran his hands down her spine and cupped her bottom. “Ready?”

She nodded, gasping, not sure what he was planning, but willing to go along with it.

He lifted her, and she felt her thighs drag against a thrusting male hardness. He turned and laid her back onto her mother’s high, soft bed. A heavy bulge pushed against the fabric of his undergarments. She was naked to his gaze; she wanted to see him naked, too.

She reached for his shirt again, but he caught her hands and kissed her palms, lingeringly, one at a time.

She shuddered delicately, and her fingers curled involuntarily around his jaw, cupping his face, as if holding the kiss in her hand.

Who knew that the center of your palm could be so sensitive?

He pressed her back on the bed, his mouth devouring her while his big, warm hands slid over her ribs, down her hips, and up again, caressing her in a ceaseless hypnotic rhythm. Wherever he touched her, hot ripples flowed inside her, gathering in a place deep within her.

And all the time she felt the hot, heavy hardness of him pressing at her center.

He cupped her breasts, teasing the nipples with his fingers until she cried out with the frustration of it, not really knowing what she wanted until his hot mouth closed over one breast and sucked, and she gasped, arched, and shuddered violently, clutching his hair and holding him close.

He paused, and her eyes fluttered open. She was dazed, gasping for air, and she saw a gleam of white as he smiled.He was panting, too, and yet he was still almost fully clothed. She wanted to feel him, feel him against her, skin to skin.

“Please,” she heard herself moan. “Please.”

He pulled back. “No… not yet,” he panted thickly. His eyes burning into hers, he unfastened his cotton drawers and kicked them off.

She reached for his shirt. His mouth closed over her other breast, and she almost screamed as a kind of lightning flashed through her.

She grabbed his shoulders and held him tightly, but it wasn’t enough, so she opened her thighs and wrapped them around him.

She writhed beneath him, wanting to get closer, aching for more.

He moaned. Kissing and nipping the soft skin of her stomach, he slowly worked his way down her quivering body until his fingers slid through the hair at the base of her stomach, and between the folds, caressing her there until she could hardly bear it.

She moaned and lifted herself, pushing against his fingers. “Now, Luke, now,” she panted.

And then he parted her and placed his mouth on her and she lost all control.

Her body wasn’t her own. Each time his mouth moved, she quivered and shuddered with helpless pleasure.

It built and built until she thought she would burst, and just when she thought she could stand it no more, he lifted his mouth off her and entered her in one long, smooth thrust.

She panted, pulling him closer, wrapping her legs tighter around him as he thrust into her again and again. With each thrust, deep convulsions racked her, and she didn’t know where she ended and he began as she shattered and screamed and plunged into oblivion.

B ella wasn’t sure how long it was before she drifted back to full awareness. She could tell by the shadows on the curtains that the sun had moved quite a bit, so she must have slept for a while.

Luke had pulled the covers over them both. She lay with her head on his chest, his arm around her.

She stretched, feeling like a very satisfied cat. And laughed.

“What is it?” Luke murmured.

“Mama was wrong,” she said. “It is exactly like animals. I was like a cat in heat there, and you—” She broke off.

“And I?” he prompted. “Though I ought to know better than to ask.”

She smiled and rubbed her cheek against the fabric of his shirt like the cat who ate the cream. “You were a stallion.”

She felt him laugh, rather than heard it, a deep vibration of his chest.

“So, I’ve graduated from being a rat?”

That reminded her. “You did make provision for me in your will, didn’t you?”

“Not a single penny do you receive from me,” he said softly.

But she wasn’t deceived. She lifted her head and looked him in the eye. “But I won’t be dependent on your mother and sister, will I?”

His eyes gleamed. “No.”

“I knew before dinner it was a lie.” She lay back down on his chest and idly twirled a small curl of chest hair that peeked from the neck of his shirt.

He stroked her shoulder. “How did you know?”

“When you told me your mother was a very kind lady, I knew then you were lying.”

“But my mother is a kind lady.”

She could hear the smile in his voice.She tweaked his chest hair.

“Ouch!”

“So, what provision have you made for me?”

“I told you, none.”

She smacked him lightly on the chest.

He kissed her. “I’ll tell you when we get to England.”

“Why not now?”

“Because, my dear, you are a terrible liar, and we don’t want to get Cousin Twice-Removed all het up and murderous again, do we?”

“Tell me or I’ll make you bald in the chest.” She slid her hand inside his undershirt and encountered a patch of hard-ridged skin in the hollow beneath his shoulder. “What is that?”

He jerked her hand away and sat up roughly, spilling her back on the bed. “Nothing,” he said brusquely.

“But—”

“Siesta is over.” He flipped back the bedclothes, pulled on his drawers and breeches, and dragged his shirt on over his head.

“Do you want to stay at Valle Verde and sort out something with your sister, or shall we leave now and kidnap her for her own good?” He grabbed his neckcloth and tied it with deft precision.

Bella sat up, pulling the bedclothes around her, watching her husband pretend nothing had just happened.

What was hidden under that shirt he wouldn’t take off?

He wasn’t shy. When she’d first met him he’d taken off his shirt in the heat.

He had no problem going bare-chested then.

He had a rather beautiful chest, as she recalled.

Was that it? Some hideously ugly war wound he felt he had to hide from her? What kind of a shallow person did he think she was? Did he think she didn’t know that soldiers could be wounded and scarred?

He avoided her gaze andfinished dressing. She could tell by the set of his mouth that he wasn’t going to talk about it.

But she wasn’t going to let it go. She wasn’t going to go through her marriage with a man who slept in his shirt. But now was not the time.

“I’d like to go for a ride later, if Ramón will let us,” she said. “I would like to show you the home of my childhood. I will ask Perlita.”

She glanced at the looking glass on the dressing table and remembered what she’d been doing before Luke had distracted her. She pulled her chemise on and ran across to the dressing table.

“What are you doing?”