When his tongue traced a line across her closed lips and then tried to snake between them, Christiana gave in with a sigh and opened to him . . . and was lost. Suddenly, her body was on fire, her back arching, hips pressing forward to grind herself against his growing hardness, and her arms went up to allow her fingers to run through his hair.

When she then clutched at the strands to urge him to deepen the kiss even further, Richard’s response was to release what sounded almost like a growl into her mouth. Christiana shivered in response and then moaned as his hands dropped away from her face to begin traveling over her body. One hand dropped to her bottom, urging her more tightly against him. The other slid to her breast, squeezing her through her gown and she gasped and twisted in his hold, pressing her breast more firmly into his touch and rubbing against his lower body with unfettered desire.

This was not the reaction she’d feared on meeting him, but it was still a damned good thing she’d met him in private, Christiana decided as the hand at her breast began to tug impatiently at the neckline of her gown to free her breast. Had they met in the parlor with everyone there, she wouldn’t have been able to reach down between them and squeeze his now rock hard manhood through his trousers as she now did.

Richard’s reaction to the touch was startling. Tearing his mouth from hers on a curse, he muttered, “I have to be inside you. Now.”

Despite her confusion over the state of her marriage and identity of her husband, Christiana panted a breathless “Yes,” and then gasped and clutched at him as he picked her up by the waist, carried her to the bed and tumbled them both onto it.

Richard was immediately kissing her again. Christiana kissed him back. However, it was now more of an automatic response without the earlier passion behind it, she was a bit distracted by whatever it was she’d landed on in the bed. It was hard and had hit right at the base of her spine so that her back was arched unpleasantly over it. She felt like she was lying across two small logs and it was really killing the passion that had so quickly stirred.

Turning her head to the side, she managed to tear her mouth from his and muttered, “Richard.”

“Yes.” The word was slightly muffled and distorted as his lips trailed down her neck.

“There’s something—Oh,” Christiana gasped with a start as he suddenly tugged her bodice down and latched onto the nipple he revealed. When he began to suckle and draw on it, she bit her lip and closed her eyes against the firestorm that set off inside her, but after the first shock of pleasure even that wasn’t enough to fully distract her from her discomfort. Frowning, Christiana reached to feel what she lay on, hoping she might be able to tug it out from under herself, but whatever she lay on was under the covers and extended out to the side away from her.