Get hold of your damned self, bucko. Show the lady some consideration. Stephen palmed Abigail’s breasts and she ceased sucking on his earlobe. His next foray was to trace the curve of her hip and stroke his hands over her bum. She sighed, her breath breezing past his ear.

She liked to be petted. Thank the heavenly powers, Stephen could work with that.

“Let’s get comfortable, shall we?” He elbow-walked himself over the cushions so the sofa could serve as a proper bed and tugged Abigail down beside him. “There’s a quilt…” He hooked the blanket with his good foot and dragged it up within reach. “Wouldn’t want you taking a chill.”

He’d no sooner arranged the quilt than Abigail had a knee resting on his thighs and a hand drifting across the hair of his chest. She was gently pinning him down—as if he might totter off to do a spot of naked accounting when she wasn’t looking?

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now we get to know each other. I’m ticklish.” He took her hand and placed it right beneath his ribs. “I suspect most people are, but you can reduce me to begging if you tickle me here. What about you?”

“I won’t tickle you if you don’t want me to.”

“Good to know.” She sounded in complete earnest, and Stephen’s desire ebbed the tiniest bit. He tried again. “I like to sleep with a window open on even the most bitter nights. If a window is locked, I can’t crawl out of it.” He’d never told that to anybody. Duncan hadn’t remarked it in all their travels, probably considering a cracked window just one more among numerous eccentricities.

“I sleep with a window open in summer, I suppose.”

The lady who’d been so eager to get Stephen into bed had retreated somewhere behind a locked window. Why?

“Abigail, what’s wrong?”

Her hand remained right where it was, no happy explorations to the south. “Nothing. I like that you use my name.”

Stephen plumbed the depths of that admission and came up with a few possible insights, none of them reflecting well on the late Lord Champlain.

“I like that we are to become lovers, Abigail.” He wrapped his arms around her and wrestled her over him. “Kiss me, please.”

She obliged, and by slow degrees and sweet caresses, he felt the passion rising in her once more. Her breasts were sensitive, and he’d just graduated from teasing her nipples with his fingers to indulging that same pleasure with his mouth when she gave his cock another delicious caress with her sex.

“Whenever you please,” he said, lifting his hips to move with her. “You choose the moment, Abigail.”

She sat back, and he died a little, though the chance to behold her was lovely.