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Nate’s arms were still locked around her. He turned his head and kissed her forehead where it lay on his shoulder. His skin was dewed with perspiration and his heart thundered beneath her cheek. “Someday I’ll show you how to tie a sailor so he can’t get free…but not tonight.” Her rope, still knotted around one of his wrists, trailed down her spine as he stroked her hair, and Angelique smiled in spite of herself.

“You were not at my mercy, then. We must start all over again.”

“Christ, no,” Nate said with feeling. “I was completely helpless. Powerless to resist you. Like clay in your hands. If you start over, I shall lose consciousness on the spot. I didn’t promise to allow that.”

“You said I could do what I wished with you.”

“Oh dear.” His breath warmed her cheek. He was laughing at her, the scoundrel. “Was that not what you wished to happen?”

“No,” she said tranquilly. Now was not a moment for silly arguments. “But it was near enough.”

He chuckled, then rose to his feet, holding her bottom securely in his hands even when she squeaked in alarm and threw her arms around his neck. The chair clattered to the floor behind him as he strode toward the bed. “I shall try to do better, madame,” he told her, pressing her back onto the mattress while keeping her legs around his hips. “But not tied to a chair. You may guide my hands as you wish”—he cupped her breast with a suggestive look, stroking her nipple with his thumb—“but I’ll be damned if you’re going to tie me up again.”

He was still inside her. She could feel him growing hard again. Angelique squeezed her intimate muscles around him, meeting his gaze with pure challenge, and he caught his breath. His eyes half closed as she did it again, and then he focused on her face.

“You minx,” he whispered. “As if you need a rope to hold me prisoner.” He began moving, just a gentle roll of his hips against her, but enough to make her gasp and squirm.

He held her there, moving in her with maddening lack of dispatch. His hands covered every inch of her, with skill and devotion until she was almost sobbing from the sensations. As the tension knotted tighter in her belly and she writhed toward release, she found herself begging. “Please,” she gasped, trying to raise her hips to meet his harder and faster. “Please, Nate…”

“Command me,” he rasped, maintaining his infuriatingly slow rhythm.

“Harder,” she gasped. Obligingly he drove into her harder, making her back arch off the bed. Angelique threw back her head and cupped her own breasts, her breath burning her throat. “Touch me,” she whispered, her voice almost drowned by the squeak of the bed ropes. His fingers plunged into the slick, wet folds at the top of her thighs, circling and pressing on that brilliantly sensitive nub of flesh, and she almost expired. If she’d had any breath at all left in her body, she would have screamed.

“Do you trust me?” Agonizingly, he slowed almost to a stop. Her eyes flew open and she cursed violently in French, that he could do this to her, bring her to this razor-sharp edge of pleasure and then stop— “Do you?” he demanded again.

Mutely she nodded. Anything, to make him continue. His teeth flashed for a second in a primitive grin, then he pulled away. With a quick yank, he flipped her over onto her stomach, leaving her half on the bed, her bottom in the air and her toes touching the floor. He pressed first one foot, then the other, between her feet, sliding them apart. He splayed one hand across her lower back, and with the other guided himself back into her. With her hips angled down, he drove hard into her, seeming to rake across something raw inside her, behind her belly. At the same time he reached beneath her and stroked her hard, in time with his increasingly powerful strokes.

She gave in at once; there was no denying his mastery of her body. She bowed her head and let the climax overtake her, rolling through her in waves that made her writhe and shake and muffle her cries in the coverlet. Nate’s fingers dug into her hips, holding her to him as she convulsed, and then he gave a low growling cry and pulsed within her.

Afterward it was the crackling of the fire that first penetrated the daze into which she’d fallen. It was a peaceful, comforting sound, reminding her of quiet days spent sewing by the hearth, with Mélanie bringing her cups of lemon-mint tea. Which was a very odd thing to think of as she lay slumped over her bed with cool air drifting over her bare back and a confounding, infuriating, irresistible man between her legs.

In her right mind, she would be disgusted with herself for letting things get this far out of hand. She hadn’t wanted to let him affect her this way. It was dangerous, not just to their work but to her own peace. She couldn’t afford to start daydreaming of any future beyond the next few days.

Unfortunately she was far from her right mind tonight. Nothing seemed more right than being where she was at this moment, and so she lay there letting her thoughts roam, while a silly smile curved her mouth.

* * *

Nate was glad she didn’t move or say anything. That last climax had drained the life from him, it seemed; he had to blink to see straight when he finally opened his eyes. She was still and quiet beneath him, her hips gently curved under his palms, her slim waist rising to her rib cage, where he could just make out the swell of her breast as she lay sprawled facedown on the bed, her arms thrown wide to clutch at the covers. Her dark curls ran riot over her pale back and the side of her face. All he could see was her profile, serene and perfect, with a blissful smile on her lips.

He was doomed.

Nate had never been a romantic, sighing over a succession of ladies. Enough women liked him as he was that he saw no reason to change his ways, to court, to pursue. If any woman he’d dallied with ever expected more from him…he was sorry for her, because he never intended more. His mother had scolded him more than once about his ability to collect hearts without giving his own, and Nate had just laughed. He wasn’t that sort, he told her.

Tonight he realized it hadn’t been him. No other woman had ever drawn him the way Angelique did, nor fascinated him as she did, and none of them had ever been so hard to hold. He was quite sure that in the morning, she would try to be her normal cool, efficient self. There was a hard shell around her, and he wasn’t such a fool to think that two nights together—even two nights of such scorching passion as these—would be enough to melt her resistance.

That meant it would be up to him to convince her they were meant to be together, not just for however many days he had left in England but forever. Without her, he’d end up one of those sad old men, alone and unhappy, who whiled away his life at the local tavern. He would have to win her, by stealth, by charm, by force of the raw physical attraction that drew them to each other like magnets.

Tomorrow he would think more of how to do it. Tonight he just wanted to fall asleep with her in his arms and not think at all.

He eased back, shuddering a little as he slipped from the tight grip of her body. She moaned and stretched, arching her back again, and his cock twitched instinctively in response. She really was a witch, if she could stir a response from him now, when his legs felt as though they’d been at sea for months and aftershocks of pleasure still crackled through his bones. He rolled his palm across the smooth curve of her bottom, feeling the firm muscle beneath her skin. She wasn’t soft and round like other ladies. At first glance she was almost thin, but that fragile-looking exterior hid a lithe, well-toned creature who was neither weak nor soft. He shook his head, amused at himself for even comparing her to other women.

He braced his hands on the mattress on either side of her and leaned down. “And now to bed,” he murmured, blowing a gentle puff of air across her cheek. Her nose wrinkled, and he had to laugh at the innocent sweetness of it. He raised her to her feet, slipping his arm about her waist when she swayed. “Don’t worry,” he said in amusement as he reached out to flip back the covers on the bed. “I won’t let you fall.”

She turned in his grip, draping one arm over his shoulder. “How kind of you,” she purred. Nate had barely a second to register alarm before she hooked her foot around his calf and jerked, shoving with that arm placed, not so lovingly after all, around his neck. He toppled onto the mattress, caught so off guard he couldn’t even brace himself. Like a cat she was on him, her knee on his back and her hands beside his head.

“I command tonight,” she whispered against his ear. Then she laughed and sank down on top of him. “And I say we go to bed now,” she finished in an easy, slumberous voice.

Against the cool sheets of her bed, with her warm weight covering him, Nate grinned. Oh yes, he was doomed—and God save his wicked soul, he exulted in it.