“Because the act of love is not civilized. It’s nature at its purest, most basic form. Primal and wild. You ought to understand a little, if you’ve ever . . .” She could all but hear his eyebrows shooting up. “Wait. Don’t tell me you haven’t. You, the woman of science, who can recite the logarithm that defines the precise shape of an ammonite’s shell. Don’t tell me you don’t understand the workings of your own body.”
“I’m not telling you anything.” Her breath grew shaky.
“Surely it can’t be,” he said, his hand stealing over her thigh, “that this intrepid explorer of underwater caverns hasn’t explored her own little cove?”
Through the bedsheet, he touched her. There. Between the legs. White sensation arced through the darkness. A tiny gasp escaped her, but she quickly sealed her lips.
“Did you say something?”
She shook her head. Her heart drummed in her chest.
“Hm. I think you do understand pleasure.” His touch moved in a devious circle. “But only the hushed, secret kind. You’ve always been surrounded, haven’t you? By sisters, servants. Did you stroke yourself this way? Clamping that jaw tight, turning your head to the pillow to be very, very quiet?”
His fingertips made gentle sweeps, feathering over her intimate places in strokes so light they might have been excused as incidental, unintentional. But she knew better, and her body did, too. Her ni**les drew to tight puckers, and dampness gathered between her thighs.
The forbidden, unexpected nature of his touch was almost more arousing than the physical contact.
A man was touching her, there.
Colin was touching her, there.
This couldn’t be happening. She could not be allowing this to happen.
But it was happening, and she was allowing it, and—sweet heaven, it was marvelous. Through the layers of her shift and the bed linens, he drew a single fingertip up her inner thigh, and her breath caught.
“Colin—”
“No, no. If I’m wrong, don’t tell me. I’m enjoying this idea far too much. The little scientist, conducting quiet surveys beneath her night rail. Or in the bath, perhaps. Curious fingers wandering, exploring. Chasing that pleasure ’round and ’round as it builds . . . and builds.” His voice was dark, decadent. “Until the crisis shudders through you in perfect, devastating silence.”
He gently cupped her mons and groaned a little. “By God, Min. A man’s erotic imagination is powerful indeed. But I think that is the single most arousing image I’ve ever entertained.”
“But . . . but you’re wrong. Mostly.”
He paused. “Mostly?”
Good heavens, what had possessed her to add that word? This entire discussion was too mortifying to be believed. Had she conducted her own explorations? Yes. Had those furtive moments ever amounted to a shadow of the exhilaration she felt right now, with him? God, no.
She’d never felt anything like this. Evidently, she was both a naughty girl and a poor scientist. A failure, all around.
“I think we need another lesson, Min.”
His words sent a thrill racing through her. “You do?”
“Yes.” He stroked his hand up to her belly. “Yes, you need to understand this. The wildness of it. How good it can be, when it’s raw and lusty and loud.” He flipped his hand, tracing the backs of his fingers just under the curve of her breast. “You need to know what you deserve from a man. Or you’ll end up in some passionless marriage. Tethered to an ancient, dusty geologist whose ideas might inspire your admiration, but whose touch will never, ever make you writhe and moan and scream.”
His touch slowed, then drew to a halt on her breastbone.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“With what?”
“With your body. With your pleasure.”
He said it so baldly. She didn’t know how to respond. She’d already trusted him with her safety and her possessions. She might even trust him with her virtue. But she knew she could never trust this man with her heart. And didn’t that organ come part and parcel with her body?
But she wanted, needed his touch so badly. Her lips and tongue were clumsy with desire. She couldn’t make herself say no.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “Close your eyes, and think of him.”
She closed her eyes. “Think of whom?”
“Of him, whoever he is. Sir Alisdair Kent. Or the fairy-tale prince. You must dream of someone. All young ladies do.”
She supposed they did. All girls had a dream suitor, and Minerva was no different.
But most of them never had this chance, to lie next to him in the flesh. This was happening to her. Because—though she tried not to indulge in fanciful dreams—when she did give in and imagine herself feeling safe and adored in the arms of a handsome, charming, unattainable man . . .
That man looked a great deal like Colin.
She hated admitting it, even to herself. And the idea that he might suspect . . . that was too miserable to contemplate.
She felt the bed shifting. And then she felt his weight settle atop her. An entire man’s worth of heat and muscle stretched over her body, with only a linen bedsheet to separate them.
She tensed. Everywhere.
“Hush,” he murmured, gently but insistently spreading her legs to accommodate the breadth of his hips. “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you. I won’t lift this sheet. You’re safe beneath it. Just keep your eyes closed and your lips parted. And learn how this should feel.”
Learn how this should feel. Shouldn’t this feel tender and romantic?
Shouldn’t lovemaking feel like love?
But this wasn’t love. It was a diversion, a lesson. Just another elaborate pretense.
Her body’s reaction, however, was real. Her limbs were restless beneath his. She was breathing so hard, she grew dizzy and faint.
He cupped her breast through the linen, circling his touch around its widest circumference before spiraling inward, toward the rapidly hardening peak.
“A good lover,” he murmured, planting hot kisses just beneath her ear, “will take time for you. He will always put your pleasure before his own. He will make you free to experience, free to touch. Free to ask for whatever it is your body craves.”
His touch grazed her nipple. Just lightly, like the pass of a feather. The sensation was startling, exquisite.
“Did you like that?” he asked. “Do you want more?”
Yes. Yes, and yes, please.