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Angelique could barely think, bent over with her palms flat on her bed, paralyzed with desire. He was doing this to torture her. She gathered her wits and stood upright, desperate to recapture some control of the moment, but he pushed her back. He took her hands and placed them back flat on the bed, holding them there a moment with his arms around her, his chest pressed to her back.

“Not tonight,” he breathed. “Tomorrow you can have me, dominate me, do with me what you will. Tonight I take you.” His words rippled across her skin, dark and seductive. Her breath came out in a faint moan at the thought of all he might do to her, and what she could do to him tomorrow.

With quick, sure movement he pulled at her shift, hanging down her thighs below the corset. There was a rip, and the next thing she knew it was gone. He spread his palms over her hips, now bare.

“You tore my chemise,” she gasped, scrabbling for thought as he stroked his hands over her bottom and down her thighs, then back up, shaping and molding her flesh.

He laughed, rough and low. With short, quick movements he unbuckled the sheath strapped around her leg and tossed it away. “Sweetheart, I’ll buy you a new one. Blessed saints, you’re beautiful like this.”

“Faceless?” she flung back, twisting to peer at him over her shoulder.

His face was dark and taut in the lamplight. At her question he grinned, a savage expression that only made her shiver again. “You want me to see your face? You want me to know who it is I’m making love to?” Without waiting for a reply, he flipped her over, pressing her down onto the bed. He loomed over her, his hair falling forward in a rumpled wave to shadow his face. “Did you think I would forget?” He swooped down to kiss her. “Did you fear I don’t know?”

“You don’t know,” she managed to say. “You do not know me. Not really.” He kissed her again, his arms flexing as he lowered himself on top of her. Despite her words, Angelique was reaching for him, clutching at him.

“Not for lack of trying.” He settled his weight between her legs and spread her knees wide. Again he stroked her, smiling his wicked smile at the way she inhaled and how her body arched at his touch. When she reached for him again, he caught her wrist and pinned it to the bed. In frustration she seized his hip, trying to pull him closer. He laughed, then caught that hand and held it, too. Now she was helpless, her arms spread wide and his hips lodged between her thighs. She could feel his erection nudging against her thigh, not inside her the way she wanted. She lifted her hips as a tear leaked from her closed eyes. “Please,” she whimpered.

He was a wicked scoundrel for naming tomorrow her turn. It meant there would be more of this unbearable pleasure tomorrow. She could no longer deny it—she wanted him voraciously.

“Don’t rush this,” he murmured. “Let me worship you.”

She raised her legs around his hips. “Please.”

Nate shuddered. “Open your eyes,” he whispered, his lips brushing hers. “Angel, look at me.” She forced open her eyes, and he finally thrust inside her.

She almost screamed. He seemed to fill her completely and her muscles tightened around him in reflex. That made him shudder and drop his head for a moment. With a leisurely movement he pulled back, then thrust again, so hard and fast her hips rocked off the bed. A slow withdrawal, a hard thrust. Her legs were wrapped around his waist, her arms still pinned flat to the bed by his hands. She writhed under him but couldn’t escape his grip or speed his movements. He was destroying her, scraping away at her control and reducing her to a mass of nerves, defenseless and vulnerable to everything he did. She strained against him, begging for release, and he only slowed further, maddening man.

“Don’t fight me,” he gasped. “Tonight is mine.” Every time he surged into her, he seemed to hit something raw and vital that sent jolts of intense pleasure through her. When she felt her climax finally crest and break inside her, as swift and stunning as if she had fallen off a cliff, Angelique almost wept from the exquisite bliss of it.

Nate felt her spasm around him and instinctively caught his breath, feeling as if he’d been thrown headfirst into the ocean, deep and dark and suffocating. He drove inside her once more, letting the contractions of her climax pull him under, and came with a gasp not unlike that of a drowning man finally surfacing for air.

He stayed where he was until the last aftershock faded away, holding her. Angelique was limp and trembling beneath him, her dark hair tangled about her bare shoulders. One curl lay across her cheek, and he brushed his lips over it, smiling at the silky feel of it against his skin. Wearing little more than her indecently seductive corset, relaxed and disheveled, she was an intoxicating sight—but what Nate loved best was her face, soft and peaceful. Now she wasn’t the sharply beautiful spy with the hard eyes of a courtesan, but just a woman, well sated and beautifully flushed with satisfaction. A woman who wanted him in spite of everything between them. A woman who couldn’t deny her own needs and wants anymore. A woman he was in mortal danger of completely losing his head over...if he hadn’t already.

“I thought you would kill me,” she said faintly. She hadn’t opened her eyes yet.

Nate laughed, even though his heart still thundered and his chest ached with each breath. “You can take your revenge tomorrow night.”

“If I can move.” She sighed, stretching languorously. She ran one stocking-clad foot down the back of his calf, and Nate’s entire body twitched at the soft tickle of her toes on his skin. “I may not leave this bed for a week.”

“An excellent idea.” He felt his eyelids weighing down upon his eyes. “I don’t think I can walk to my own.”

For a moment she didn’t respond. She might have gone to sleep, her breathing soft and deep. Nate sighed inwardly, knowing he was an idiot to have hoped she might want him to stay, especially after what he’d said to her earlier.

In all his life, through every adventure and close call, Nate had never felt the debilitating combination of fear and anger and desire he’d experienced tonight. He wanted to shake her and hold her and then make love to her again and again, until she swore on her mother’s grave that she would never put him through that again. He’d completely lost control of himself, been crude and demanding, and unlike every other lady of his acquaintance, Angelique had replied in kind. There wasn’t another woman in the world like her, and he’d be damned if he’d lose her now.

But going back to his own bed wasn’t the end of things between them, and it was sometimes best to beat a tactical retreat in order to regroup. Things had changed between them now—not everything, but enough. She wanted him, and that was enough, for now. Gently he shifted, thinking to leave without disturbing her too much.

She stirred as he started to rise from the bed. Her hand reached for his. “Stay,” she said quietly, looking up at him with heavy-lidded eyes. “Unless you wish your night to be over so soon.”

And Nate smiled slowly back.

This was more than enough, for now.

Chapter Sixteen

He left her room in the gray hour before dawn the next morning, with a soft kiss on her bare shoulder. She listened to him gather his clothing from the floor where he’d thrown it the night before, and then the empty silence when he was gone.

His night was over.