“Char, I can’t—”

“Don’t you remember?” she cooed, her hands working feverishly to free him from the confines of his shirt. “You promised to show me how to conduct a ravishment in a chair. I’m still curious as to the exact logistics of it all—assuming I’m correct in believing your erected instrument will function upside down, not that I’ve had any experience with upside-down instruments, you understand, but since your instrument appears to be straining your breech buttons, I gather you are pleased with the thought of being ravished in this chair. Therefore, I have faith that you’ll make a most satisfying explanation of where the legs and such go.”

Dare kissed the wits—those remaining—right out of her head before pulling his lips from hers and kissing a hot trail down her neck. “I can’t do this, wife. I can’t…I don’t know that I can…you can’t want…”

“Oh, but I do,” she corrected, nipping his jaw as her fingers fumbled with the tightly strained cloth at his groin. “You cannot possibly imagine how much I want you, Dare.”

“You deserve better than a half-man with a scarred face and a useless arm,” he groaned into her bare shoulder as she released the last button on his breeches, pushing aside the material to take his hardness into her hands.

“I deserve you.” She smiled, then gently removed his eye patch. He moved then, tried to stop her, his face twisted with anguish as the fingers of his good hand dug into her wrist. “Men! I’ll never understand you. Such a fuss over a few scars.”

His jaw tightened as she kissed the line of damaged skin that ran down the side of his face, moving upward until she reached his closed eyelid.

“No.”

The word was spoken on a half sob, only one word, but so filled with pain that it brought tears to her eyes. Tenderly she pressed a kiss to the slack eyelid. How could he imagine that something so inconsequential as the loss of an eye could diminish her love for him? “Yes. Until you realize that your injuries don’t matter to me, yes.” She kissed his eyelid again, and once again until he turned his head so he could look at her.

His eye was burning bright with the fever of desire, glittering with love and passion, but tinged with wariness, as if bracing himself for a blow. She smiled, and kissed the eyelid over his whole eye as well. “From their eyelids as they glanced dripped love,” she quoted.

Dare opened his eye, puzzled. She smiled. “That is from one of those musty Greek men Papa was forever fussing over. I don’t remember which one—Iliad, I think his name was—but I do remember Papa reading him aloud to us. Mr. Iliad wasn’t very interesting until he started talking about pouring sweet dew on tongues.”

His lips curled ever so slightly. “I believe the gentleman in question was Hesiod, not Homer.”

She leaned forward against him, pinning the rampant parts of him between them, cupping his face in her hands. “Does it really matter who said it?” she asked between little kisses to his cheeks and jaw. “Does anything matter but the fact that you’re my husband, and I love you, and I want you to show me how the armchair ravishment you so temptingly teased me with a few months ago is managed?”