He understood what she wasn’t saying. She hadn’t desired those other two louts. She had accommodated them for reasons—the youth because he’d piqued her curiosity and promised her marriage, the scoundrel because he’d promised her a sort of security.

“I am your first lover, then,” he said, “and that terrifies me—and delights me.”

By slow, lovely degrees, lips came closer to lips and breath to breath. The moment etched itself in Tremont’s memory as full of fierce satisfaction and fiercer longing. His body yearned, his soul was enchanted, and all—everything past, present, and future—came right when Matilda kissed him.

She took her time learning his features—a caress here, a stroke of her fingertips there. She explored—with her tongue, with her lips, with her hands—and she considered. When she drew back, Tremont waited, then grasped that he was being invited to reciprocate, and so it went.

A thorough, mutual investigation was punctuated by sighs and smiles, and from Matilda, even a groan or two. For Tremont, sweet sensations gradually subdued the roaring river of his thoughts, and in that magical peace, he, too, surrendered to his first real experience of lovemaking.

The soft weight of Matilda’s breasts against his chest.

The feel of worn linen in his hands at Matilda’s muttered, “I want… The chemise, Marcus. Now. Please.”

The absolute rightness of her beneath him when they rolled and rollicked on the great bed.

The glorious heat of her flesh pressed to his and the sharp intake of her breath when his cock brushed her sex.

“Slowly,” Matilda said. “As slowly as you can.”

The fog of pleasure lifted enough for Tremont to hear a note of reluctance in Matilda’s voice. He mentally spared a curse for the pair of louts and schooled himself to self-restraint. More self-restraint. As much self-restraint as he was capable of, which would be, he vowed, enough to acquaint Matilda with the nearer reaches of frenzy.

She began to move beneath him, to undulate into the slow slide of his hard flesh against her damp sex. She tucked her forehead against his shoulder, locked her ankles at the small of his back, and clutched his bum with delicious firmness.

“Marcus…”

That note of command in her voice could inspire him to keep up the temptation all day, all winter. Over and over again, he flirted with penetration, paused, resumed, and flirted again. He palmed her breast, experimented with caresses and would have indulged in further explorations of precisely how Matilda liked her kisses, except that she yanked the hell out of his hair.

“Marcus. Now.”

“Now?”

Another yank. “On the instant.”

“Hmm.”

As he’d hoped she would, Matilda took the matter—and her lover—in hand. She put him where she wanted him, gloved him with a slow, voluptuous slide of her hips, and appeared intent of galloping off with his much-vaunted self-restraint.

“Matilda, a moment, please.”