She hummed in her throat as he stroked her breasts. “You can do that,” she murmured. “I don’t mind at all. But I was saying. We had a system. No, he had a system, I was just there. He would put on classical music. Chopin, always the same sonata. I sometimes still get a tick in my eye when I hear it. He would close the door, lock it, lest a wandering servant be shocked by the goings-on, though the staff would hardly have business in there at ten forty-five in the evening. It was mostly always at ten forty-five.”

“So he was a creature of habit.” Michael flipped open buttons and found her flesh.

“Umm. No, you don’t.” She sat up again. “You’re trying to distract me. He would turn off the lights, get into bed. He would kiss me three times. Not two, not four, but three times. Then he would—”

“I don’t think I want a play-by-play here of Ridgeway’s style in the sack.”

“In the marital bed, please. Well, we’ll just skip right along, then, since it isn’t very interesting anyway. At eleven-oh-five, he would wish me a pleasant night and go to sleep.”

“The twenty-minute special, huh?”

“You could set your clock by it. Oh, Michael.” She stretched her arms up, giving him tempting glimpses of soft white swells. “I thought it was me. I thought that was just the way it was, had to be. But it isn’t, it wasn’t, it doesn’t.”

She cupped her breasts in her hands, let her eyes close. “It’s never predictable with you. I never know what you’ll do, where you’ll touch me next, or how. And it’s never proper. It’s so wonderfully improper. The things you do with your hands, with your mouth on me.” She dropped her hands to his chest. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to discover, at thirty, that you have a sex drive?”

“No.” He couldn’t help but smile at her. She was so beautifully drunk. “I found mine at sixteen and never lost sight of it.”

She laughed, flinging her head back and making his teeth ache with the need to bite into that slim white throat. “Oh, but this is better. Has to be. It’s like finding Seraphina’s dowry. Somehow you know it’s there, somewhere, or hope it is. And then when you find it, after all that time, all that wondering, it’s so sweet.”

“Since you found that elusive sex drive”—his hands slid up her torso—“why don’t we put it to use?”

“I’m going to make you sweat.” She eased down again, scraped her teeth over his jaw. “You might even beg.”

“Now you’re getting cocky.”