“A simple little draught of what?” he asked, his eyelids low over his eyes as he bathed her in a look so seductive, she felt her skin tingle with excitement. His hands started those marvelous, familiar little fires all over her person, turning the skin tingles into a raging inferno. She looked down. How had he managed to take off her dressing gown without her knowing it?

“I’ll tell you if you tell me what the draught is,” he said and began nibbling on her nape. “Is it something good for me? Something to improve my stamina? Something to bring the wellspring of vigor and manliness bubbling forth? Is it”—he traced the outside of her ear while she moaned softly—“something that will allow me to pleasure you all night long without a break?”

“Oh, yes,” Gillian said, her mind refusing to consider anything but that one attractive thought. Noble’s face hovered before her, his breath mingling with her breath, his lips so close she could feel the heat from his mouth.

“Then I shall take it, my lovely wife. And then I shall introduce you to yet another item on my list, and once you’ve shouted my name out to the heavens at least four times, then I shall tell you my secret.”

Secrets. His name, making her shout it. Four times!

Noble tossed back the brandy with one quick movement, then scooped Gillian up and carried her to bed.

“And now, my little kumquat, I shall kiss you silly, then proceed to item number eight on the list.”

“Item number eight?” she gasped as his lips nibbled a path beneath her breasts. “Number eight? Didn’t that involve two lemon wedges and a pot of strawberry jam?”

“What a good memory you have,” he said as his mouth made ever-narrowing circles around her breasts. Gillian felt her nipples harden to pebbles as his breath steamed over them.

“You would think,” he said, his tongue snaking out to quickly lick a pert little nipple, “that if I were to breathe warm air on this little morsel, it would lose its wrinkles.”

He breathed hot, steamy air over her wet nipple. Gillian’s back arched as her hands kneaded the muscles in his shoulders.

“But I find that the opposite is true. How very curious.”

“Yes, how very curious indeed, my lord.” Gillian gave up trying to talk, or breathe for that matter. She just existed, one big, quivering mound of flesh whose sole purpose in life was to give pleasure to Noble. As he was exploring the strange phenomenon of nipple physics with her other breast, Gillian gathered her wits long enough to let her fingers roam over the muscled bulges of his shoulders and back, down over the silky skin on his behind, and lower, to that part of him he enjoyed having squeezed ever so lightly. She squeezed. He moaned against her breast. She squeezed again. He reared up, his eyes flashing silver, and with one hand spread her legs and entered her with a deep thrust.