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“Are you . . . ?” she gasped.

“Touching you between your legs,” he whispered, when she didn’t finish the question.

He tapped her with a finger, and she startled. “What do you call this in French?”

“Parties intimes,” she whispered.

“That’s a very proper-sounding phrase.”

“Foufes or foufoune.” Her voice was a thread of sound.

His fingers brushed her again. The caress was rough but soft at the same time, or she was soft and wet . . . Her thoughts trailed off because he was crooning something about her pretty foufoune, saying in a low rasp how wonderful she felt, and frankly, she didn’t—

She didn’t feel like complaining. Or stopping him.

“We are getting married,” Giles said as if he heard her thinking. “You agreed, and I won’t let you change your mind.”

“You’re always doing that,” she said, embarrassed by how husky her voice sounded.

“What?” Giles’s eyes were burning as he slipped a broad finger inside her.

It felt so good that Yasmin found herself wiggling, silenced. It was as if they were having two conversations at the same time, one that was silent and made her gasp. The other, conducted in fragments and questions.

“You guess what I’m thinking,” she said in a rush, stopping with an audible gasp because his finger was caressing her. “Giles!”

“Do you like that?” His tongue ran across her lips. “I want to kiss you there, Yasmin. Has a man ever—”

“No!” she exclaimed. She knew about that sort of kissing, though Hippolyte had never offered it. Ladies in the French court had giggled about it, and even though English ladies were far more prim, her friend Cleo had made a laughing remark once.

“You’re hot and wet,” Giles said, his eyes meeting hers with a wicked glint. “May I lick you, Yasmin?”

May he?

May he what?

“Absolutely not,” Yasmin cried. “Someone might enter the room at any moment!”

Giles withdrew his hand from under her skirts and sucked the same finger that had been inside her, a needy moan breaking from his throat. “Your taste is better than any cake. Your fragrance brings me to my knees.”

“I thought you were so proper,” she whispered, fascinated. “You never speak, but now you are speaking so much.”

“I am proper,” Giles said, coming to his feet. He walked away, threading through the tables. He looked over his shoulder. “I speak when I have something to say.”

Yasmin’s legs were throbbing, her heart pounding. It wasn’t that she didn’t recognize erotic desire or, for that matter, know how to satisfy herself. But this felt different.

The door was closed; Giles opened it, stuck his head through, and said something she couldn’t hear. Then he put a hand around the door, pulled out the key, and locked the door from the inside.

She didn’t move. She just lay on the settee, one hand over her head, her legs trembling like the debauched woman she was, allowing herself to feel embarrassingly hot and needy between her legs. Words drifted into her head and dissolved. Mostly she thought about pleasure.

How a woman could reach for pleasure if she wanted it . . . Yasmin wanted it. With this man, and only this man.

Giles returned, standing by the couch and looking down at her before he sank to his knees. “Will you marry me?”

She nodded.

“Will you allow me to make love to you?”

Yasmin felt a pulse deep in her stomach, a flare of emotion that responded to the desire in his eyes. She must have answered silently, because next thing she knew, he was back on the settee, braced on his elbows, kissing her deep and hard, one hand buried in her hair. A desperate sound broke from her throat, and she arched against him.