She smiled at him. “We’re going to cover her drawing room in them for next year’s Trent ball. The theme is—”

Giles caught Yasmin in his arms, his mouth crashing down on hers.

In moments, Yasmin felt tender and hot, her whole being shamelessly focusing on enticing him to do more than kiss her.

Touch her. Stroke her.

“Do you know what I thought about in bed last night?” Yasmin asked, tearing her mouth away from his.

Giles’s eyes opened, reluctantly, she thought, but they were blazing. Her breath hitched.

“You, when we were on the settee in the drawing room, when you held me, with one hand,” she said, her voice uncertain. She was being frightfully bold.

“I held you here,” Giles said. His right hand slipped under her skirts and cupped her between her legs.

It felt so good that she dropped her head back against his shoulder. The deep well of longing in his eyes made her blood burn hotter. She could feel a flush rising in her cheeks and her breasts, the whole of her skin prickling to life.

“Shall I just hold you?” he asked, his voice low and teasing, like someone with a sense of humor. “Or?” His fingers flexed, once, and she bit back a moan. “Tell me how it feels,” he crooned and flexed his fingers again. “What should I do next, Mina?”

“Mina? You called me that before.”

His eyes were heavy lidded. “When I am in my bed, alone at night, I think of you as Mina. It’s your name, and it’s almost ‘mine.’”

They were kissing again, but all the time his fingers were holding her tight, until she found herself rocking against his hold, trying to make pleasure thrum through her body.

In the back of her mind, a voice was reminding her that she didn’t want the messy part. But this part . . .

This part was not messy. This part was enthralling. Giles was whispering, his voice gravelly and low in her ear, calling her Mina, saying that he loved the sounds she made, the little whimpers, that it was all he could think about, in bed and out.

All of a sudden, he pulled away, moving his hand, pulling her skirt over her knees, picking her up like a rag doll, and placing her on the opposite seat.

“No,” she gasped.

“We have arrived.” Thankfully, Giles didn’t look unmoved, or she would have had to murder him. Slashes of color made his cheekbones look even more prominent.

Carson greeted them at the door.

“My fiancée isn’t well,” Giles said coolly. “I shall escort her upstairs.”

A bolt of embarrassment went through Yasmin, but when she glanced at Carson, his face looked concerned and respectful. Not as if she were a hussy, but as if she were a countess whose husband loved her and had brought her home early from a dinner party.

Loved her?

She pushed the idea away.

Theirs was not a mere convenient arrangement, but not a love match either. Giles hadn’t even given her a betrothal ring, after all. He’d scarcely wooed her; one moment they were grappling on the settee and the next, they were secretly betrothed.