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As if he’d ruin her. One didn’t ruin a gorgeous mare with champion lines and a pedigree, didn’t spoil her fine high step or dainty mouth with rough handling.

One didn’t manhandle one’s hunting hound with the best nose and the finest instincts.

And one didn’t break the spirit of a proud, intelligent woman, nor despoil an innocent who’d never been awakened to pleasure.

Well, some men did. But Hew wasn’t one of them.

He touched the side of her cheek, thumbing the corner of her mouth as he lifted his head. “Easy,” he murmured. “Easy.”

Her eyes flipped open, and her lips turned downward. “I’m doing it wrong.”

He let his smile break free. Molten silver ran through his veins, like the ore buried in the Welsh hills. She was here in his arms. They had all night. And he could make her want him. Not whatever he represented, freedom, ruination, a thumb of the nose to his brother or hers. Him .

He hoped.

“There’s nothing wrong, sidan , but what you don’t like. So you must tell me what you do .”

He stroked the lines of her face as if he were a sculptor tracing a shape in his clay.

Her broad brow and the elegant arch to her eyebrows.

That bold nose. The round curve of her cheekbone, the delicate arrow of her chin.

He traced the shape of her earlobe, and her eyes fluttered closed.

Her breath whispered across her lips, and he touched those, too, her skin so soft beneath the coarse pads of his fingers.

He’d been handling stone and iron for so long.

He’d forgotten what it was like to touch a woman.

She opened her eyes. “You don’t want to kiss me,” she said, doubt swelling her tone.

“I do want to kiss you,” he murmured, tugging at her full lower lip. “But do you down a whipped syllabub all in one go when the glass is placed before you? No. You savor it.”

He pressed a kiss above each eyebrow, then to her temple, then cheekbone, each slide of his lips slow and deliberate. She tasted like a syllabub, rich cream with a heady wine within it. He progressed down the smooth line of her cheek, toward her mouth, and her breath came faster.

“I eat the syllabub all at once,” she confessed. “I adore whipped cream.”

He loosed the chuckle. Delight strained at his chest. What a pleasure for it to be delight breaking free, and not the raging beast he had lived with so long.

“Then,” he murmured against the crease of her lips, “you must learn to savor.”

She turned her head slightly, meeting his mouth, her lips parting beneath his, and the roar rose up in him. Arousal, yes, and triumph, yes. And the delight, such imaginable sweetness. Being allowed to touch Anne Sutton, kiss Anne Sutton, was the greatest gift he’d been given in his life.

This time, she relaxed and opened to him.

This time, she tipped up her chin so he could slant his mouth across hers and capture her lips fully.

The small sound she made in the back of her throat brought a surge of blood to his groin.

He wanted her now, immediately, and he also wanted to kiss her for hours.

Her mouth fit his perfectly, answering his question with a breathless yes.

The storm cartwheeled outside, the thunder like an attacking army, the lightning the crack of cannon fire, and he stood inside this room on the fringe of the dancing candlelight with a whole new universe in his arms, knowing he’d entered a perfect moment and wanting it never to end.

She broke the kiss and pulled her head back to look up at him. He could fall and drown in the deep wells of her eyes, such a deep blue, hazy with passion. For him. He’d done this to her.

He’d moved his hands from her shoulders to her back of her head, fingers clenched in her masses of hair.

Her hands moved too, creeping up the back of his neck and stroking lightly, her fingers sending a lick of fire down his spine.

He enjoyed the blaze of arousal, the full, heavy strain in his groin.

It felt good to want, to know his body could still feel lust and crave release.

Could still want to couple with a woman, after the sensations he’d been living with for the past weeks and months.

She swallowed, and he watched the flutter of skin at her throat. A pink blush rose across the top of her chest as his gaze dipped downward.

“Are you feeling this too?”

He brought his eyes back to meet hers. He smiled. “Yes, cyw .”

“I want to savor,” she whispered. Then she proceeded to outline his face with kisses as he’d done hers.

Those lovely, soft lips skimming his forehead.

His temple. His breath grew ragged. It wasn’t just the brush of her lips, but all of her.

The silken locks of hair that wisped against his face.

The delicate tickle of her eyelashes against his ear.

The elegant slope of her back as he dragged his hand down the long, sleek curve of her.

She didn’t stop at his jaw but trailed kisses down his neck, the base of his throat. Darted out her tongue to lick his collarbone, as if she were tasting him, and his restraint snapped. With a growl he yanked her to him and captured her mouth again.

She chuckled, her lips pulling away in a smile. “You like that.”

He liked her . Too much. She was delicious, and he couldn’t get enough.

He plunged his tongue into her mouth, too hungry for her to make a gentle probe first, to ask courteously.

He licked into her mouth, tasting sugar and violets and clove.

She gave a small whimper, clinging to his shoulders as her head tilted back before his onslaught, and he wanted to roar again at the satisfaction, but he also wanted to drink deep of her, to taste as much as he could.

She was the most maddening bliss, a mind-blotting haze of need and pleasure.

She was paradise in the shape of a woman.

He kissed her for minutes, perhaps hours, feeling no need to rush, while the storm blew and howled and banged around them, pounding like the blood in his head, in his groin.

He wanted this for always, Anne Sutton warm and pliant in his arms. He could hold the rampant need at bay to keep her like this, soft, innocent, trusting.

But she was restless too, seeking the culmination of her desire, even if she didn’t have a name for it. She leaned against his chest, conforming her body to his, but when she fit her belly against his groin, she went still.

His cockstand was unmistakable, stiff and proud, prodding into her waist above her hip.

Her eyes snapped open.

“That is what you do to me, Anne.” The words came slurred and thick. He felt drugged with arousal, with her kisses. He brushed a knuckle along her throat as she swallowed hard. “That tells you what I am feeling for you.”

“And that is …” She licked her lips. “The instrument of my ruination.”

His laugh disappeared into a groan at his body’s response to the image that rose to mind. He dropped his forehead to hers, fighting the animal in him. The beast that wanted to lift her shift and take her now. One stroke, two, and he’d be spent. He was that hard for her.

“Yes,” he said. Growled. “That is the instrument that I will put inside you. In your cunny. And then I will stroke you, hard and fast and deep, bringing you pleasure until you scream my name at your climax.”

Her eyes flared wide, and her breath caught. “Oh,” she said.

“But first.” He fisted his hands in her shift, tugging lightly at the delicate material, pulling it taut over her breasts. Lord in heaven, her beautiful breasts. He loved the blush that spread over them when he described what he wanted to do to her.

“I want to kiss more of you. May I, Anne?”

“Oh.” Her breath stuttered again. “You … you may.”

He pulled her toward him and swept an arm beneath her knees, lifting her.

She was light as a blossom. She fastened her mouth to his, plunging her hands into his hair as he carried her to the high, four-poster bed.

Her need, her surrender, heated his blood like a furnace used for smelting iron.

She gave a little squeak when her bottom hit the mattress, the feathers giving way beneath her.

Hew grabbed the hem of her shift, prepared to yank it over her head, but she shyly pressed her hands to the top of her thighs.

“I don’t—I’m not—” A blush bloomed on her cheeks.

Such an innocent, so shy. He must be careful with her. “Shall I blow out the candle?”

She nodded quickly. “Yes, please.”

The candle left a faint curl of smoke and the scent of sulphur as he whuffed it out.

A shame, not to be able to see her luscious body.

But he could examine her with his hands and mouth, map every inch of her that way.

Hew stretched out on the bed, drawing her beside him, and captured her mouth again.

He kissed her until her limbs turned liquid, until her hands left his neck and ventured down his shoulders, his arms. She stroked the muscle flexing beneath his shirt and, with a muffled sound from the back of her throat, wriggled closer.

She wanted him.

He let his hands roam, too. Stroking her lovely throat, the flare of her collarbones, the smooth span of skin beneath. He cupped a breast through the fabric of her shift, and she moaned in surprise as he flicked at the hardening nipple.

“Good?” he murmured.

She pressed her forehead to his shoulder, as if embarrassed to admit her body’s own want, and nodded.

So innocent. An odd tenderness warred with the triumphal beast. Hew hadn’t forgotten his own initiation, long ago, at the hands of a Morgan relation, some buxom cousin come to lodge for the summer and with a mind to sample the local fare during her stay.

He remembered how wondrous pleasure could feel, that first time with someone, and he wanted Anne to know that.

Whatever happened, he wanted her to have this: the knowledge of the bliss her own beautiful body could bring to her, and to another.