He laughed. “You are too perfect,” he said, and as she took a deep breath to argue the semantics of that, he lowered himself to kiss her into a hot, urgent silence.

She felt anxiety rising again as she imagined what might happen next. But he kissed her face and whispered silliness and soon she was giggling, squirming with delight beneath him, forgetting everything but the loveliness of him and the rightness of their being together. Then he straightened so he was kneeling between her legs, drawing them wider with firm hands, pushing up her knees, and Cecilia caught her breath. Her bunched dress protected her from an immodest view, but he could see everything.

Egads. Really, they ought to address this sort of thing in etiquette class. Cecilia had to restrain herself from pulling down her dress and begging his pardon again. Her sense of vulnerability, and his clear mastery of the situation, presented an affront to all her piratic sensibilities—and yet were at the same time utterly arousing. She had never guessed being unshielded to another person would thrill her so. If only he would not actually look.

He did not look. He held her gaze with a cool serenity while he began to unbutton his trousers. As the last fastening came free and he slipped the garment down his hips, Cecilia closed her eyes and thought of England.

Lush, flowering England laid open to the gasping, caressing winds.

And then he was moving into her once more, not his fingers this time, and she could have wept for the feeling of it—so right, so perfect, as if all her life she’d suffered an emptiness only this man could fill. It ached a little, stretching her despite the earlier work of his fingers, but somehow that was part of the wondrousness. Ned hooked his hands around her thighs, lifting them over his hips and moving in deeper as he lowered himself onto his elbows. Her eyes flung open at a shock of sensation. He caught her gaze, and they stared at each other entranced as their bodies came together, their spirits already there.

“You’re fully ruined now,” he murmured, smiling wryly.

“No,” she breathed. “I was ruined the moment I laid eyes on you. Utterly ruined for everything else, evermore.”

“Told you so.”

“Fiend.” She frowned with mocking severity.

“Rake?” he suggested.

“Oh, yes, please.”

His smile tumbled. He moved back, then slid in slow and deep again, and they disappeared together into their own secret universe.

Damn, Cecilia thought as she rocked against his thrusting body. I love him.

His heart was going to break. Ned knew it, but could do nothing about it. His longing for her blistered him, even though he was inside her body. He wanted to see her naked. He wanted to kiss her breasts and navel and every other inch of her. He wanted to pour her tea in the morning while she read him amusing stories from the newspaper.