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He grabbed a small piece of cloth and rubbed himself dry, and from the soft pale linen, jutted his manhood. She shivered.

“Somehow, the look on your face,” he said without looking up from his task, “makes me think that shiver one of dread, not desire. I object.”

She laughed. “You read me too well, Grant.”

“I like the way you say my name.”

She liked that name for him. It was hard, like him, firm.

But he was only hard of body. Every other bit of him was soft and sweet like a peach. And like a peach, she wished to sink her teeth into him.

“Now what are you thinking?” he asked, and then he laughed. “Will I always have to ask you what you’re thinking, or will you ever tell me? You did quite well the other day in the mews, telling me what you wanted. Where is that Freddy now?”

“That Freddy remains a bit intimidated by the god before her.” Freddy blushed and ducked her head.

“You’ve lain with a man before. You’ve seen the masculine form.”

“Have I?” Her husband had been thin and soft, a man formed by ease, not by labor. Grant had trained his body to fine point, every muscle sculped to do precisely as he desired. Nothing there but muscle. She spoke, though her mouth felt too dry to form words. “I begin to think not. Or you are other than a mere man.”

“You know how to flatter a fellow, Freddy darling.”

He dropped the towel and prowled toward her until his thick muscular thighs hit the edge of the bed.

She merely told the truth. She found her courage and knit it into her bones with clumsy fingers, pulling the firelight about her and banishing the shadows of her brain and of the room.

She met his gaze with her own brand of courage, full of fire and bone, determined. “I wish you to consider my experience … negligible this evening. Let me learn tonight. It has been quite a long time since I’ve been with a man.” Difficult to admit. She crumpled the counterpane in tight fists. “It has been six years.”

His confidence faltered. “So long?”

“My husband did not approve of bedroom activities while I was with child. And he did not approve of … me … after.” She hugged her midsection. She liked herself well enough. Why couldn’t he have? “He did not even wish to try for an heir.”

He towered over her—he standing, she sitting, her hands wrapped round the edge of the mattress—and he cupped her face in his palms, a light touch, possessive too, his eyes gone dark with deep emotion. “If he weren’t dead, Freddy darling, I’d put him six feet under myself.” He snorted. “What a blind fool. And even from the grave he’s sucked the desire right from your eyes. I tell you, I’ll not have him interfering with us. Let us find a distraction.” He pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, and she leaned into the brief caress.

He tugged her up. “Stand, and let me show you how we dress for the circus.”

“Dress?” Dressing had nothing to do with their purpose here this afternoon. But she stood all the same, curious.

“First,” he said, circling her, stopping behind her, and pressing the long, thick, hard ridge of himself she’d seen jutting up toward heaven just seconds ago against her backside. “First, you let your hair down.” He pushed his fingers into her hair and pulled out one pin and then another and laid them gently on a table by the bed. As he plucked each pin free, he spoke softly into her ear, the warm breath a heated tickle. “So soft and silky. Where else are you soft and silky?”

She shivered, and this time it was not from fear.

He kissed the side of her neck, and when her hair fell heavy down her back, he gathered it together in one of his hands and wrapped it round his fist, tugged until she peeped up at the ceiling, and he appeared above her, dropped a kiss from above onto her forehead then her nose then her lips. A sipping, a soft learning of her. She gave him all he needed to know of her with her lips but without words.

Then he released her and undid the tapes of her gown. “After we’ve let our hair down, we divest ourselves of who we are.” The gown sagged as his fingers set her tapes free. It drooped until it pooled at her feet. Then her stays joined it and her chemise. She stood naked but for stockings and shoes.

He kissed the slope of her shoulder, sliding his lips down the length of her, turning her molten, reshaping her under his touch.

“And then?” she whispered.

“Now that our hair is down, and our normal selves have quite melted away, we find a new self, deep in the skin.” He circled her and knelt before her, pressed a kiss right above the curls between her legs. Then he wrapped both hands around her thighs and dragged them down her legs until they bumped against her garters. He untied those and rolled the stockings down inch by delectable inch, making sure to touch as much skin as possible on the way.

Her skin no longer belonged to her. It gave itself fully to Grant, sang for him only.

When he’d pulled her stockings to her feet, he kissed one knee and then the other. “Then, we kick off our old selves in order to find the new, Freddy darling.” He tapped her right foot, shod in a low-heeled slipper. “Off with it.”

She snapped her ankle so that the shoe made a short arc of a flight across the room and landed partly under the bed. Before she could set her toes back to the floor, he captured them in the air, kissed the tips, and released them from the stocking.

He tapped the other foot, and she did the same, and the shoe landed near its mate just before he slipped the final stocking from her foot and pressed his thumb into her arch, sketching its curve in a way that made her reach for his hair and, fingers tangled in silken strands, urge him upward.