“While I’m sure they are extremely practical,” he said, his hands busy unravelling, “I prefer it when your hair is loose. I like to feel it flowing over my hands, winding me in its web.”

“So I’m a spider?”

He kissed my forehead, his lips just brushing the skin. “Arachne was a beautiful woman, turned into a spider for boasting and being right about it. You never boast, my love. Perhaps you should.”

“It’s not in my nature.”

“Then I shall boast for you. I’m lucky to get you, sweetheart.”

I laughed. “So you keep telling me.”

He finished undoing the braids and thrust his fingers into my hair, combing them through the locks to untangle them. “Much better.” He looked down at my face. “And if I keep telling you, you might believe it one day.”

“I’ll do my best. I have to promise to obey you soon, don’t I?”

He grinned. “So you do.”

Lifting up on one elbow, he leaned over me, and smoothed the hair back from my face. He’d brought a branch of candles in with him, and it stood on the nightstand by the bed, casting a light on his gleaming hair and his fine-drawn features. Looking intently down at me he said, “This is almost enough. Almost.” He bent his head to kiss me.

What began as a gentle kiss of welcome soon deepened into something more, his tongue reaching into my mouth, his desire searing through my entire body. I arched and felt his hands on me, pulling up my voluminous nightgown.

Eagerly I helped him, undoing the little buttons at the cuffs and neck, sitting up so he could pull it off over my head. Casting it aside, heedless of where it fell, he gazed at me, only me.

He touched my breast, traced the swell below and then cupped it, testing its weight. I closed my eyes and drew a breath. I was so sensitive to his touch.

“Every time,” he murmured, “every time I touch you it feels like a miracle. That you want me, that you, so lovely, could have lain like Sleeping Beauty, waiting for me.” He kissed the nipple, pushing with his hand to take more into his mouth.

His tongue curved, caressing me, and I touched his back, partly for support, partly for the sheer joy of contact. His touch made me weak and soft, his need for me made me want to give him everything without stint.

He drew back, only to fold his arms around me and seek my mouth with his. He gave me a long, penetrating kiss, his hands smoothing, caressing, rousing my body to a peak of need.

He smelled like no one else. Under the citrus perfume he preferred lurked an even sharper edge. Him. I’d know him anywhere now, in the dark, the light, in the middle of a crowded ballroom by scent alone. He surrounded me with his essence, held me fast, held me close. I moved my hands over the muscles of his back, feeling his reined-in athletic strength.

When he broke the kiss he was smiling. “I love you.” He laid me down and moved over me to enter me.

When I opened my mouth to cry out, he covered it with his own, taking up the kiss he’d broken earlier, plunging into me with two parts of his body, tongue and hard, driving erection. I broke apart. My peak came quickly, taking me by surprise, raging through my body. I screamed and he swallowed my cries.

He held me down when I jerked, unable to control my body’s reaction to his loving, then pulled me against him to drive harder, closer. This loving had no gentleness about it. The teasing earlier in the evening had driven us both to this, serving as courtship and foreplay, making our bodies hungry for each other.

My peak came and went, driven by him, no quarter given, none asked for. He lifted his mouth from mine, gasping for breath, never stopping that demanding rhythm that had become the centre of my existence.

Before I knew it I was in the middle of another climax, coming up hard on the heels of the last. I arched my back, but Richard held on, his hands on my hips holding me tight and close. There were no words; not for this primitive drive powering both of us on. My heart pounded in time to his thrusts, to my drive, and I ceased to care about anything else.

Climax built on climax, rising to a fiery apex that somehow, Richard managed to sustain for me. I’d thought something this rarefied was impossible to keep up for long, but I lingered there, cried out. It was as well I was out of breath, or I might have roused the household, but what emerged wasn’t the lusty shout I imagined but a half stifled, breathless whimper.

At the same time Richard fell over my body and buried his face in the pillow beside me to hide his own cry of fulfilment. I felt his body pulse and jerk as he’d made mine do earlier, and then we lay still, the only sound our breathing, harsh and ragged.

Turning his head on the pillow, still inside me, he laughed shakily. “Every time.” I could only smile and lift my hand to cup his cheek and we stayed like that for a while, until he found enough strength to slide to one side of me. “Thank you, sweetheart. Why on earth didn’t we do this earlier, when I first came to Devonshire?”

“I can’t think,” I replied. “Unless we were both trying to be good.”

He