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“You said the same thing last night when you were bent over a chair,” Giles murmured, his eyes gleaming, his hips flexing up to meet her.

“I liked that too,” Yasmin said, giggling.

He pulled her down and kissed her laughing mouth. “I’ve never imagined anything as wonderful as the sound of your happiness.” Giles dragged his mouth along her cheek, the abrasion of his stubble making her breath catch.

“I can’t help it,” Yasmin gasped. “I feel as if I’m melting, and it’s such a strange feeling, but so . . .” She couldn’t find the right word. “I feel free,” she decided, finally. Heat was building in her limbs, and she couldn’t pay attention to language.

It wasn’t until later that Giles picked up the thread of conversation. “What do you mean by feeling free?”

“I didn’t like kissing.”

“Why not?”

She wrinkled her nose. “A man puts his lips on you, and he thinks you will be overcome by craving for their tongue, and it’s all so unlikely and disgusting!”

“But not with me,” Giles said with deep satisfaction. He wanted to prove it, so he kissed her until she lost her head.

“I’m exhausted,” she murmured sometime later. “I need to sleep.”

“I should leave.”

Her arms tightened. “I wish you wouldn’t. I wish you’d spend the night here and drink hot chocolate in bed with me tomorrow morning.”

Giles dropped a kiss on her mouth. “Soon. We set Lydia’s wedding date, by the way.”

Yasmin blinked at him. “That’s marvelous. Next week?”

He laughed. Laughed.

The sound was still unfamiliar to Yasmin.

“Not quite,” he told her. “Lord Pettigrew, the future Marquess of Chichester, will be married with pomp and ceremony in St. Paul’s Cathedral, which requires preparation. But I have readied the announcement of our betrothal for the London papers. I cannot wait to tell the world that you are mine.” A trace of desperation crossed his face. “Every damn time I watch you dancing with another man I feel as if I’m losing my mind.”

“I can develop a sprained ankle if you wish,” Yasmin said, tracing his bottom lip with a finger.

“What an ass I am,” he said ruefully. “You enjoy dancing, and dance you shall.”

“I wish we could waltz.”

He shook his head. “Lydia will accept reality once she is married. I intend to give her a letter to open when she returns to England after her wedding trip. This time with her is my wedding present. Not that she hasn’t noticed me watching you. She’s still briskly enumerating all your faults.”

Yasmin flinched.

“You do give her cause, the way men fall at your feet.”

She searched for the right answer, couldn’t find it. “I don’t have to dance,” she offered again.

Giles shook his head, then swung out of bed and pulled on his breeches. She watched as he bent over to haul on his boots. Not even the slightest belly fat bulged over his waistband. “Our bodies are so different.”

He glanced at her. “Thank God.”

“I have a rounded tummy,” Yasmin said, pursuing her train of thought.

“It will be more rounded,” Giles said.

She blinked at him.

He bent over the bed, bracing his arms on either side of her head. “Are your courses regular?”