He closed his eyes, allowing pure sensation to wash over him. His wife’s innocent lips were bringing him unimaginable pleasure. It shot through him with electric intensity, and at the same time bathed him in a warm, contented glow. He felt . . .

Happy.

Now there was something he wasn’t used to experiencing in the throes of passion. Excitement, yes. Desire, of course. But happiness?

And then it hit him. It wasn’t that Iris was falling in love with him. He was falling in love with Iris.

“Stop!” he cried, the word wrenching itself from his throat. He could not let her do this.

She backed away, looking up at him with bewilderment. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” he said quickly, moving away from her before he changed his mind and gave in to the harsh need raging through his body. She had not hurt him. Far from it. But he was going to hurt her. It was inevitable. Every single thing he’d done since that moment he’d first seen her at her family’s musicale . . .

It had all been leading to one moment.

How could he let her give of herself so intimately when he knew what was about to happen?

She would hate him. And then she would hate herself for having done this, for having all but serviced him.

“Was I doing it wrong?” she asked, her pale blue eyes steady on his.

Good God, she was direct. He’d thought that was what he loved so much about her, but right now it was killing him.

“No,” he said. “You weren’t . . . that is to say . . .” He could not tell her that she’d been so utterly perfect, he thought he might lose his mind. She’d made him feel things he’d never imagined possible. The touch of her lips, her tongue . . . the soft whisper of her breath . . . It had been transcendent. He had been clenching the sheets beneath him just to keep himself from flipping her over and burying himself inside her warmth.

He forced himself to sit up. It was easier to think that way, or maybe it just put a little more space between them. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to figure out what to say. She was staring at him like a lost little bird, waiting with an almost preternatural stillness.

He pulled the sheet up, covering his arousal. There was no reason he could not tell her the truth now, no reason except his own cowardice. But he did not want to. Was it so very weak of him to want just a few more days of her good opinion?

“I don’t expect you to do such a thing,” he finally said. It was the worst sort of evasion, but he didn’t know what else to say.

She regarded him with a blank stare, followed by a soft furrowing of her brow. “I don’t understand.”