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“Well, yes, but it’s just a superstition.”

He threw the blanket on the ground and went back and picked her up. She put her arms around his neck and smiled at him. Rees almost shook his head. Could it be that he was in a dream? Was this his sharp-tongued, hateful wife, the one who called him an animal and made him feel ten times more clumsy and idiotic than anyone else? She had her arms linked around his neck and she was rubbing her lips against his and then she slipped her tongue—

He put her down quickly and started throwing off his clothes. “Be careful, Rees,” Helene cried. “It’s so wet here, and you just threw your coat onto the grass. It’ll be soaked.”

A moment later he stood before her, all that broad, muscular body hers for the taking. Helene had never felt more dainty and feminine in her life. Without speaking, and without taking her gaze from his body, she pulled her morning gown over her head. She had deliberately chosen not to wear a walking costume. Instead, she was wearing one of her light, floating pieces from Madame Rocque.

Rees made a hoarse sound in his throat and sank to his knees in front of her. Helene blinked. What a nice gesture. He had never gone on his knees, even when he asked her to—

The thought was lost in a squeak. “What are you—what—Rees!”

Helene’s whole body contracted down to a small area between her legs. She could do nothing but stand there, weak-kneed, mind blurred. It was a sin, what he was doing. She was sure of that. Some sort of sin, if not a crime. And yet she couldn’t hold onto any particular thought. They drifted into her head and then he would lick her again, sending a racking wave of fire down her legs, and the thought would disappear.

“This isn’t—” she began. He put his hands on her bottom and pulled her closer. The sentence whirled away, lost in a moan.

“I don’t think—” she began again, but his thumb had found its way there too, and now her knees finally did buckle and he lowered her to the ground, kneeling over her, his hand still moving.

“One doesn’t do that to ladies, does one?” she gasped, even as her body writhed under his hand.

“No,” he said briefly.

She closed her eyes and a delicious smile spread across her face, and then she opened her legs even wider. “Good,” she said softly.

“Helene,” Rees said hoarsely, a few moments later. She wasn’t listening. He slid in slowly. He’d thought a lot in the middle of the night, about how to turn Helene-in-Vauxhall into Helene-in-his-bed.

He pushed in, a little way, and she clutched his shoulders.

He pulled out. Slow, that’s what he’d decided to do. Very slow. She was, after all, a very delicate lady. If he just kept everything slow, perhaps she’d feel some pleasure.

So he did. Belying the jokes of his mistress, Rees had full control of his muscled body. He’d just never seen the point of prolonging the experience. But now he propped his elbows on the ground and slid in and out as if he had all day. At first she just lay there the way she had the last time they tried this.

But after a while, she opened her eyes and said, shakily, “Rees, are you almost done?”

“I’m afraid not,” he managed between clenched teeth.

Her hand tentatively touched his back, slid down toward his buttocks and he involuntarily lunged toward her. And was answered by a moan. Her face was growing pink.

He waited, and waited. Her fingers were wandering over his back, caressing every ripple of muscle. She asked him again, gasping, if he were almost done, and he shook his head. And then, as if she didn’t even realize what she was doing, she started moving a little. Tipping her hips up to greet him. Rees let himself go a little harder, thanked by a cry that broke from her lips.

He went a little faster, and even harder…Helene’s breath was coming quickly and her eyes were dazed; she’d stopped caressing him and he could feel her fingernails biting into his shoulders. Then she started turning her head from side to side and straining against him.

“Come, Helene,” he said hoarsely, praying for strength.

Finally, when he couldn’t last any longer, he reared back and slid his hands under her sweetly curved bottom, pulled her toward him and thrust into her with all his strength, a broken groan coming from between his teeth.

And then Helene opened her eyes and looked at him and said, in a tone of the greatest surprise, “Rees?”

Rees knew perfectly well that he was an idiot where women were concerned. But on the other hand, he knew his wife. He’d never seen that particular look on her face, but he knew it.

He pulled her even higher, even harder, and she started shuddering and crying out. Rees closed his eyes in silent thanks, and relinquished his control utterly. They came together with desperate urgency, with rough tenderness, with one last fierce kiss.

Rees remembered, dimly, that his wife didn’t like to be flopped on. So he withdrew, and then rolled over onto his back.

It was only then that he realized they had traveled off the blanket. A cradle of wet flowers felt delicious on his heated back.

“I did lie on a bed of Star of Bethlehems, didn’t I?” Helene said dazedly.

Rees felt a drop of rain on his nose and then one on his cheek. Helene’s slender leg lay next to his, milky white against the green leaves. She had the look of a child who had just experienced her first ice, an astonished, almost blinded look of pure joy. He knew instantly that he would spend the rest of his life trying to give her that particular pleasure.