sliding her hands underneath to press against his naked back while with his thumbs he hooked the low neckline of her muslin dress beneath her breasts and took them in his hands, rolling her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. With his mouth he found the racing pulse at the base of her throat.
Somewhere sanity was trying to attract his attention. And another thought occurred to him too.
'Sweetheart.' He lifted his head and looked down into her face. 'Are you a virgin?'
Perhaps she was not if there had been that passionate interlude with Kit Butler. If she was not . . .
'Lift your arms.'
He lifted them, and his shirt was off over his head and sailing over the edge of the bed to land in a heap with his coat and waistcoat.
'Are you a virgin?'
'Don't you dare stop.' With one hand she pulled his face back down to hers. With the other she fumbled at the flap of his pantaloons.
He took it that the answer was yes. If it had been no, she would have said so and dispensed with his scruples. His bare chest came down onto her bosom and he pressed his tongue into her mouth. She sucked it deep.
'Let me do this,' he whispered a few moments later, moving off her and undoing his buttons himself.
But she helped him remove the pantaloons after he had pulled off his Hessian boots and stockings. He drew her dress down her body, taking undergarments with it. Sanity, he half realized after he had pulled off her silk stockings too, had been stripped away with their clothes.
They came together again with fierce passion. If she was a virgin-and he would wager she was-there was no shrinking self-consciousness in her for either her own nakedness or his. But then he had known that being in bed with Freyja would be akin to lying with a pile of explosives with the fuses lit.
When he touched her between her legs, she opened to him, feverish and urgent. She was hot and wet and ready. He was hard and throbbing with need. He rolled fully on top of her, pushed her legs wide with his own, slid his hands beneath her to lift and tilt her, and mounted her.
She was a virgin. She was small and tight, and there was a barrier to impede his progress. She was also hot and wet, and her inner muscles were contracting about him and her hands were pressing down on his buttocks while her feet pushed her up from the bed. He pressed inward, heard her involuntary cry as he broke through, and embedded himself fully in her.
He might have taken her slowly and carefully after that, but she would have none of it. She was hot and fierce with passion, and he, God help him, felt an answering hunger that needed no further encouragement.
What followed was more like a wrestling match than lovemaking. He had no idea how long it lasted. He only knew that somehow he held on to some measure of control until she cried out and shuddered into a powerful release. Then he plunged toward his own pleasure and allowed his seed to spill into her.
They were both slick with perspiration, he discovered moments or minutes later-he had become strangely unaware of time-though the fire in the hearth had died down. They were also panting as if they had run ten miles apiece into a stiff wind. He lifted his head and looked down at her in the dim lamplight.
Her hair was in wild, wavy disarray about her head and shoulders. She was flushed. Her lips were parted, her eyes heavy-lidded.
'Well, sweetheart,' he said, 'if we were not in a scrape before, we certainly are now.'
CHAPTER XIII
Freyja's legs were trembling as she dressed. So were her hands as she fumbled with her hairpins, dragging them all out and trying to tame and rearrange her hair without benefit of either a mirror or a comb. She was very thankful that Joshua had dressed faster than she and was at the moment kneeling at the hearth, cleaning out the remains of their fire and building a new one.
Glancing at him, she had a stomach-churning feeling of knowledge.
Gracious heavens, that splendid male body had just been naked and . . .
Well, never mind.
'This,' she said in a firmly practical voice, 'was all my fault.'
He came to his feet and turned toward her, his eyes laughing, though there was a certain grimness about his mouth.
'Will you put a further dent in my self-esteem, then?' he asked her. 'Have I just been seduced, Free?'
'You would not have done it,' she said, 'if I had not insisted. I will never blame you. It was all my fault.'
Don't stop. Don't you dare stop.
How excruciatingly humiliating.
'If that were a bird's nest,' he said, nodding toward her hair, which she was holding on top of her head while she jabbed in hairpins to keep it in place, 'it would be impressive indeed. But I would guess it is meant to be an elegant coiffure?'
He came closer, batted her hands away, and then, when the hair came cascading down about her shoulders again, he sat her down on the end of the bed and played lady's maid with surprisingly deft fingers.
'It was a mutual outpouring of lust, Freyja,' he said. 'It was mutually satisfying too, though I cannot see that I did not hurt you rather badly. I daresay you would rather be stretched on the rack than admit to that, though, and so I will not ask. You do agree, I suppose, that we are now in a very serious scrape indeed.'
'If you mean,' she said, holding still as he anchored her hair in place with the pins, 'that we are now obliged to marry, then of course you are speaking nonsense. Don't you dare propose marriage to me. I am five and twenty years old, and I imagine you are older. Why should we not go to bed with each other if we wish? I thought it was remarkably pleasant.'
'Pleasant.' He chuckled softly and stood back to admire his handiwork. 'Remarkably chic, even if I do say so myself. Pleasant, sweetheart? You certainly know how to wound a man where it hurts. But I can answer your question in one word. Why should we not bed each other if we wish? Babies! They have an annoying and
