She gulped. “Even though—”

One thought was going through Yasmin’s mind: he wanted to marry her, even though he knew she wasn’t a virgin. Even though he thought the condom was hers, which would suggest she was sleeping with men willy-nilly. It wasn’t hers, and Hippolyte had been her only lover. Yet Giles was willing to marry her, thinking that.

He truly didn’t care if she had a scandalous past.

It was such a delightful thought that it made her head swim. He hovered over her, eyes blazing, waiting, and Yasmin opened her mouth without consciously making a decision and said the only thing she could say.

“I’ll marry you, Giles. I will marry you.”

She reached up and put her arms around his neck. His mouth came down, claiming hers. Did she ever dislike kisses?

He licked inside her mouth slowly, his hands gliding over her body, molding the light silk of her gown to every curve. His intimacies kept surprising her, if delightfully. His fingers ran over her breasts, slid around the inner curve of her thigh, slid under her garments and ran down the crease of her bottom.

“You startle like a virgin, Yasmin,” Giles said. Before she could answer, his head reared back. “That was an extraordinarily rude thing to say. I apologize.” He kissed her fiercely until Yasmin let out a helpless whimper.

“May I touch you here?” His voice was dark and sweet as his hand paused on her knee.

“Ye-es,” she breathed, her legs easing open.

“I love that,” he rumbled in her ear. “I love your plump thighs, Yasmin. You’ve driven me mad in the last months. Watching you dance with other men. Watching you bend over. Sometimes I thought if you fidgeted and dropped that damn fan one more time, I would snatch you into my arms and to hell with the audience.”

Yasmin almost giggled. Why on earth would he care if she bent over? But sensations were going through her body like streaks of heat, fogging her mind. He was kissing her again, and all the time his hand was sliding up her thigh until his fingers slipped under her silk underclothes and touched her—there.

“Are you . . . ?” she gasped.

“Touching you between your legs,” he whispered, when she didn’t finish the question.

He tapped her with a finger, and she startled. “What do you call this in French?”

“Parties intimes,” she whispered.

“That’s a very proper-sounding phrase.”

“Foufes or foufoune.” Her voice was a thread of sound.

His fingers brushed her again. The caress was rough but soft at the same time, or she was soft and wet . . . Her thoughts trailed off because he was crooning something about her pretty foufoune, saying in a low rasp how wonderful she felt, and frankly, she didn’t—

She didn’t feel like complaining. Or stopping him.

“We are getting married,” Giles said as if he heard her thinking. “You agreed, and I won’t let you change your mind.”