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“Absolutely not!” She could just imagine Mrs. Thyme’s reaction to that. Special licenses were only for disreputable unions. “My aunt is considering a Christmas wedding.”

He shook his head. “We’re calling the banns this Sunday.”

She probably should complain, except Silvester was sliding down the bed, pulling up her nightdress as he went. “What are you doing?” Stella demanded, raising her head and gaping down at him.

“Kissing you.”

She was going to protest: of course she was going to protest, but she didn’t have time to formulate the words. Silvester nudged her legs apart and settled himself there while she was still trying to get over the erotic sensation of his callused hands touching her inner thighs.

“I don’t—”

He blew on her most intimate part, and she broke off with a gasp.

“You’re exquisite,” Silvester breathed.

“It’s dark. You can’t see me,” Stella objected.

“I don’t need to see you. You’re soft. You smell like honey and flowers.” He licked her inner thigh. “Hello,” he crooned, pushing her legs a little farther apart and dropping his head between her legs. “I don’t need to see you to lick every delicate petal.”

Stella slapped her hands over her eyes and let her hips arch toward him, asking silently for more. Begging for the broad finger that slipped inside her. The second finger that joined it. The relentless rasp of his tongue that tingled down her legs.

His pumping fingers made her shake, made pleading sounds tumble from her lips, turned her from a thinking human being into a mindless, raging fire. Sensation swept down her legs, swamped her body.

Stella opened her mouth to scream just as one of Silvester’s hands covered her lips. Heat ripped through her, curling her toes. Just as she calmed, he did something with his fingers, together with a lick and a gentle bite, and the sensation raged down her legs once again.

Afterward she lay flat, panting. Silvester yanked down her nightgown, shifted up, and even in the dim light and without her glasses, she saw his triumphant grin. “I win,” he whispered against her lips.

Stella thought about responding to that blatant provocation, but what was the point? If he thought she cared whether he won this particular game, he was out of his mind.

“I don’t mind losing,” she managed, shocked to hear the rasp in her voice.

He braced himself over her, his eyes sparkling with piratical pleasure. “You can win at chess, and I will win at this.”

Stella’s eyes shifted down. She couldn’t see the front of his breeches, but when she put her hand down and cupped him . . . He threw back his head, leaving the cords of his powerful neck visible in the moonlight.

“Perhaps we should drop the idea of mastery in the bedchamber,” she suggested, tightening her hand into a caress. “We could both win.”

Silvester rolled off the bed and stood up. Stella had the sudden conviction that Silvester didn’t know how to live without competing. Without winning.

“You’re not marrying me because I can beat you at chess, are you?” she asked.

“Don’t be a fool,” he growled, not something that the elegant Duke of Huntington would say.

Stella couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Polite society could keep their oh-so-perfect duke as long as she got the shamelessly unsaintlike man standing at her bedside, looking at her with a burning intensity that suggested he might beat a nightly thoroughfare over her uncle’s greenhouse and through her window if she didn’t stop him.

“You may not come to my bedchamber again,” she said, making that into an order. He didn’t have to obey her always, but if their marriage was to be successful, he had to listen to her sometimes.

“First banns this Sunday,” he growled. “Marriage after the third week of banns.”

“That will cause a scandal,” Stella murmured, not caring much, but feeling she ought to point it out.

Silvester shrugged. He bent down and kissed her, then headed for the window. “Goodbye, fiancée,” he said, satisfaction palpable in his voice.

Damn it.

The bullfroggish duke had got what he wanted again.

Chapter Twenty-Five