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She lit up like a firework, the kind that sent off sparks—and those sparks singed any unmarried man in her vicinity. Gentlemen were knocking down her grandfather’s front door, offering marriage, having no idea that every enticing glance was meant for Giles. Was directed at her secret fiancé. Viscount Templeton proposed on one knee, so fervently that Yasmin felt terrible refusing him.

That was the daytime.

At night?

After Lydia was in bed, and her grandfather retired upstairs? A rap on the front door would be answered by a murmured greeting from Carson, and the sound of a man walking quickly up the stairs. Finally Giles would walk into Yasmin’s bedchamber.

Some days she was reading a book. Others she was just out of the bath, pink and damp. Once he appeared when she was still in the bath, and her maid was dismissed with a quick nod. No matter what, the moment their eyes met, her body would flare into life, tingling from head to foot. By the time he was halfway across the room, her heart would be pounding, her thighs clenched.

Then he’d wrap his arms around her, the scent of clean-smelling male as entrancing as the smolder of raw desire in his eyes.

“Mina,” Giles would murmur, and the day suddenly brightened.

The happiest moments were when Giles, unable to stop himself, broke into words. Yasmin would succumb to a hoarse narration that made her feel desired for herself, for her emotions, not for her beauty.

One Friday night, she was curled against his damp shoulder, her fingers tracing patterns in his hair-roughened chest, when Giles said, “I wish you wouldn’t flirt so much, Yasmin. Does that make me a beast?”

She laughed and stretched to kiss his mouth. “There’s no need to worry about me finding another man,” she told him merrily. “I’m so tired after your nightly visits that I’ve stopped breakfasting with my grandfather. Finally, I know why married ladies are allowed to breakfast with a tray in bed. It’s because they didn’t get any sleep!”

“I have no fear of you being unfaithful,” he said, kissing her cheek.

“I don’t flirt if you aren’t in the room,” she confessed. “I can’t help wanting you to look at me, Giles. It’s as if you’re only half-mine. There’s something so delicious about the way you look at me across the ballroom.”

He reached out and crushed her to his chest, kissing her fiercely. “You’re driving me mad, Yasmin. I want you to look only at me.”

Yasmin pulled her head back. “I am looking at you.”

“Please.” He nipped the tender curve where her neck and shoulder met. “I can see that you are having fun, but I fear I might actually do damage to one of those men.”

Yasmin thought about it. “I suppose it’s horridly inappropriate for me to feel rather thrilled by that?”

“Peers cannot engage in fisticuffs on the ballroom floor. If society knew you were my fiancée, men wouldn’t be so overtly lustful.”

“I hope not,” Yasmin said doubtfully. “I think it might be the human condition, Giles. Or the male condition, anyway. For example, Cleo loathes Lord Wade as much as I do. He doesn’t care that she’s married.”

Giles’s eyes narrowed. “The man who ogled you at the market.”

“It’s not the ogling,” Yasmin said. “He brushes against me when he’s walking past. And Cleo as well.”

“I’ll slay him.” There was something about Giles’s tone that promised violence.

“No need,” Yasmin said. “I refuse to dance with him.” She nestled closer. “I’m practicing my countess stare.”

A smile pricked his mouth. “Indeed?”

“It has to be fierce to match yours,” Yasmin pointed out.

“My ancestors were rather dour,” Giles said. “My father told me once that the earls all look so bad-tempered because the smell of linseed and paint is unbearable.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“My father had a particularly acute sense of smell.” He dipped his head and took her nipple into his mouth.

Yasmin gasped as he moved above her, his tool sliding over her wet folds and breaching her as her legs curled around him. He smelled like soap and something indefinable that was him, the unique person whom she loved.

She arched her back, thrusting her breast into his mouth, loving the way it made him start thrusting faster and harder, a muted groan escaping. This time was less frenzied. There was time to run her hand through Giles’s hair, to catch his eyes with hers, to moan into his mouth. When he rolled over, she practiced her new skill of balancing on top of a man.

Her hand clutched the slabs of Giles’s chest. Her hair had fallen down her back, her breasts were held in his hands, his thumbs roughly caressing her nipples. “I love this,” she gasped. “My favorite position.”