“Perhaps… I did enjoy them, but that doesn’t mean I care to repeat the experience this morning. I have work to do, duties to attend to.”

“One of your main duties is pleasing your husband. Come here and please me, duchess.”

Her spine stiffened. “My name is not ‘duchess.’”

“Heather, then. Come here, sweetheart.” His voice dropped to a caress, infused with masculine charm. “Please.”

She eyed him archly. “You can’t possibly be eager to make love again.”

“Oh, yes, I can. I want you, Heather. I want you beneath me, your legs wrapped tight around me as I lie buried hard and deep inside you.”

Every low, husky word stroked her. Almost against her will, Heather rose and went to stand before him.

At the nearness of her luscious, naked body, Sloan began to harden as desire heated his loins. He’d taken her four times last night and again this morning, but it hadn’t been enough. He wanted her still, more powerfully than before. He wanted to make her lose the last of her inhibitions.

Her hesitation just now, however, was not simply due to modesty or ladylike reserve. “Sloan … I’m not certain I can … bear any more just now.”

His hard gaze suddenly softened. “I should have realized you’d be sore.”

He could think of nothing he’d like better than to bury his fingers in that silvery mane and stretch Heather naked on this bed and have her over and over again. But he had to remember the fierce demands he had already made on her body.

Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t employ other methods. He wanted to teach her what it was like to enjoy a man. He wanted to bring out the sensual side of her nature—and drive her mindless with unbearable pleasure at the same time. The woman he wanted in his bed was the incredible lover he’d known in his dreams.

He drew the sheet aside, an invitation for her to join him in bed. “We won’t do anything that hurts you. In fact, I won’t do a thing. You can have all the honors.”

She gazed at him uncertainly, at his body rippling with muscles. The center of his chest was sparsely furred with a silky gold triangle of hair that narrowed over his hard, flat belly to his groin. Her gaze dropped lower. His upthrust sex was already thick and swollen, reaching almost to his navel. That exciting hardness made her blood race.

“I don’t know what to do,” she murmured, her voice holding a strange huskiness.

“Use your imagination.”

Slowly, she climbed onto the bed and knelt naked beside him. His magnificent masculinity no longer shocked her. Instead, it left her tingling with sexual awareness. She wanted to reach out and satisfy her natural curiosity about his body. She actually ached to touch him.