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“I asked you what the painting’s name is.” Her tone was teasing—teasing!—and her touch had drifted away from that critical pulse in his groin.

“‘TheTriumphofPeaceandLibertyoverTyranny’—goddamn it Sophie, are you hoping to kill me?” He turned on his left side to face her. Her features were alight with laughter, teeth glowing white in the dim light.

“I don’t want to kill you,” she chuckled, putting a palm to his cheek and urging him nearer. “Not even close.”

It was his turn to laugh, but the sound was choked. How many nights had he thought of her? Imagined, against his will, what it would be like to do this?

Haunted, undoubtedly.

His body covered hers, his right side melding over her left. He wanted to see as much of her as he could, for as long as she would allow it. He took his thumb against the little mole perched above her top lip, feeling the gentle rise against his skin. Character and texture; Sophie had both in spades.

“Call me Rafe again.” His thumb moved to her lips, tracing a slow, meandering pattern. “If you’re to appear in all my dreams, you should at least call me by name.”

Her breath was hot, her voice turning sensual. “Rafe.” His eyes closed of their own volition. She kissed the pad of his thumb and dropped to a whisper. “Rafe.”

He could stand it no longer—he crushed her mouth with his own. He questioned, just for a moment, where his boldness was borne from. How this would end … because it would end.

He found the depression between her lower lip and her chin and stroked it softly. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“I do.”

His thumb stilled and he met her eye. His pulse doubled down. Surely she could hear it in this great, quiet room.

“You’re kissing me.” She took the sides of his face in her hands, and drew him slowly to her lips. Gently, at first, and then she opened to him, sliding her tongue over his. Rafe couldn’t help the sound that came from him, the way another quarter of his body came over her.

“And,” she said quietly, with a seductive edge that made his brow mar, “you’re touching me.”

She plucked his fingers one by one from her jaw and laid them on the clasp of her cloak. If he thought he’d had an erection before, its force was humiliating now, the throbbing ache driving his fingers as he freed the black ribbons at her throat. This was more dream than truth. He might not have trusted his own eyes, the feel of her bared skin as he pushed open the cloak, the twisting agony in his chest as she laid his palm over her breast, had the pair of them not been so very rooted in their roles.

He was still Rafe Balfour. He knew it, because he was taking commands, dimly aware that blind obedience only ever came back to hurt him. No matter that he wanted this desperately, ached all over for even the chance. He felt that reckless longing to the bottom of his lungs. He would give anything to have this, with her. And she knew it. She was playful where he was raw.

“Touch me, Rafe,” she said, and looped her hands around his neck, drawing him in for a deep kiss.

His knee edged between her thighs and they instantly parted. He worked his fingers beneath the stiff neckline of her gown and stays until he’d freed her breast, cupping it in his palm. Could she tell he’d never lain with a woman before? Could he pleasure her still, trusting the pattern of her breaths and the tightness of her brow as his guide? He wanted to make her lost to feeling. If he failed, would she laugh at him?

He spent nearly all his hours around other men, most of them possessing commonplace minds and loose tongues. He wasn’t ignorant about the methods used to pleasure a woman.

He found her nipple with his thumb, the soft peak radiating heat, and she moaned. Yes, you can pleasure her. The realization was gratifying, thrilling, a goal that must be pursued. He lowered himself, ribboning kisses along her jaw and throat, the expanse of her chest, until he was closing his lips over the dark, sensitive peak. The feel of her rendered him senseless.

He tasted her with his tongue, absorbed the thready rhythm of her heart thrumming nearby. Her fingers tore through his hair and clenched, her legs squirming on either side of his thigh. He could not have her in any moment other than this one, he knew. In any sense other than this blissful, borrowed one—

But he could have her now.

Time was elusive. Life ticked by in sensations alone, in private, beatific little questions: Would he kiss her again, there and there? If she bent her knee and offered him her ankle, would he take it? Yes. Oh, yes.

His large hand traced the curve of her calf, and she sighed, scratching her nails against his back. His silk waistcoat was patterned, something gold and rough, and her fingernails caught on the intricate threads.

Her body was growing warm and damp all over, a willing captive. He seemed to be reading her mind, touching her so exactly how she desired to be touched that there was no room left for shame. But when his fingers grazed the inside of her thigh, she yanked his mouth back to hers.

He resisted her kiss but remained millimeters away, his lips brushing hers when he asked, “What?”

Sensation. Maddening sensation. The tease made her even more anxious to taste him again, to drag him more wholly over top of herself. She tried; he resisted.

“Is this not all right?” His fingers had grown stiff at the top of her thigh, his thumb oh-so-close to the garter at the top of her stocking.

“No, it is.” She kissed him and he responded with restraint. His eyes searched hers, and she longed to see the color in them. It was too dark. “I just want you to kiss me while you do it.”

He studied her for another moment. Was their synchrony total? She writhed beneath him. She wasn’t sure she was ready to be seen fully. His touch, she welcomed. The feel of his skin, toughened by hair and muscle, made her ravenous. It was when his gaze had begun following his hand as he slipped beneath the layers of petticoat and skirt … Maybe it was a shred of decorum that leapt within her. She only knew for certain that she wanted his mouth, his beautiful gaze, up here, with her.