He enjoyed her at his leisure until she reached a slow, scalding release, and then he pleasured her again, with the same infinite patience. She was still quivering from that, and praying that he would take her now, when he shifted positions so that she was kneeling over him, and he partook of her yet again. In his own time, and his own way, he drove her over the edge of madness for the third time.

Maggie began to plead softly for quarter, but Reeve granted none. Her body was his playground, and he had no qualms about taking what he wanted. And what he wanted, it soon became evident, was to love Maggie until she was totally beyond rebellion. He made her reach climax after climax, until she had lost count, until she couldn’t think or do anything but respond to him, and then, at last, he took her.

Like the lappings of his tongue, the strokes of his manhood were slow, leisurely ones. The pinnacle Maggie reached that time, as Reeve stiffened upon her and groaned at his own gentle pleasure, was the most violent of them all.

He slipped from her with seemingly renewed vigor, climbing back into his filthy clothes and humming an impudent little tune as he put on his boots. Maggie lay still on the bed, too sated and too spent to move, let alone speak.

Just before he left the room, Reeve gave Maggie’s perspiring bottom a little pat and kissed her forehead. “I hope you’ll stage another rebellion soon, Yank. I do enjoy taming my own personal shrew.”

If she’d had the strength, Maggie would have hurled something against the door. As it was, she could only lie there, trying to regain her breath and plotting revenge. She fell asleep in the middle of that, and when she awakened, it was dark outside and she could hear the strange chanting songs of the Aboriginal workers floating on the warm night wind.

She sat up, yawning, and her eyes widened. Reeve was sitting in a tin washtub at the foot of the bed, happily washing away the day’s soot and grime.

Kneeling on the mattress, Maggie wrestled her way out of her tangled dress. Her drawers and camisole had disappeared entirely. With a flouncing motion she got off the bed and wrenched on a white eyelet wrapper. It was scant covering, but it took the arrogant glint from Reeve’s eyes.

“Pity,” he said, soaping a sponge and proceeding to scrub his underarms. “You’ve smudged that lovely thing with soot.”

Maggie looked at herself in the mirror and was appalled to see that much of the blacking had rubbed off Reeve’s body and onto hers while he was making love to her that morning. The pristine white wrapper was now splotched with black, especially in the areas of her breasts and thighs. Embarrassed, she plunked down on the bed and glowered.

“I hate you.”