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She was too riveted by his half-naked body to understand his question for a moment. Her eyes flew to his, and she shook her head. “I don’t want to wait.”

He chuckled, leaned forward, and brushed a kiss on her lips.

When Fiennes’s breeches were off, followed by his smalls, Ella suddenly remembered that she understood little more than the bare mechanics, and those only due to growing up around livestock, in the country. Her mother had never broached the subject, of course.

“You’re a virgin,” Fiennes said, his eyes searching hers.

“Of course, I am!”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it,” he said, standing still so that she could eat him with her eyes, gobbling up the way his thighs bulged with muscle, the swell of his calves, his broad, powerful feet.

That other part of him, which stood proud and tall, almost reaching his bellybutton.

“I do not agree with the mores that insist on virginity,” Fiennes said. “Your cousin is not a virgin and had I not met you, I would have agreeably married her.”

Ella’s eyes flew to his face. “How do you know?” Her voice came out in a horrified squeak.

He laughed. “We never even kissed. The first night in the theater box, Fulvia made it clear she understood the connotations of ‘grappling’ with a man. At the ball, she played an experienced young woman, until she took on the role of Juliet and played a desirous maiden.”

Ella blinked, pushing away the disorienting conviction that she hadn’t known anyone in her family. Her uncle was violent, her aunt adulterous, her cousin lusty. Being this unobservant couldn’t be put down to her ban on Unkind Thoughts.

“You were a working woman,” Fiennes said, stepping close to her and tipping up her chin. “Living in the attic, working as an unpaid housekeeper. You didn’t have time to analyze your relatives.”

“I didn’t live in the attic when we were in the country,” she told him. “Are you going to read my mind for the whole of our life together?”

“God willing.” Fiennes caught her up and laid her gently on the bed, stretching himself beside her. “It’s surprisingly erotic to be naked while you are clothed.”

Ella rolled to her side and edged closer to him. His tongue stroked into her mouth.

“I am your family now,” he muttered sometime later, when she was as naked as he, her nipples cherry red from his kisses. He was braced on his elbows above her, feverishly kissing her mouth.

“All right,” Ella said, more interested in tracing the swell of muscles on his back. She was memorizing the way they swooped down to his lean waist.

“I mean it. I can read your eyes, Ella. You can read mine.”

She could.

At this moment, for example, Fiennes was desperate with desire, yet afraid to hurt her. With a surge of bravery, she moved so that his shaft notched against her softest part. “In that case, what am I thinking?” she whispered.

A moment of utter silence was broken by a rough sound that broke from his throat as he sank inside her.

Ella let her eyes tell him that she didn’t feel pain, but pleasure.

“You will know if I even think of adultery,” he whispered roughly. “Not that I would ever dream of such a thing. I know you, Fenella St. Trevelyon. You are mine, and I am yours.”

His hips moved slowly.

“Read my expression,” Ella suggested.

He studied her face. Then he smiled and surged forward in a strong stroke. Another, another, another, hard and deep, raw and fierce.

Hours later, she collapsed on top of him, exhausted by three orgasms and a whole new favorite activity.

Just before she fell asleep, she heard him whisper one word. “Mine.”

Ella wasn’t the only person who needed a family. A mother who hid in her chamber didn’t sound like a very loving parent.

She raised her head and smiled down at Fiennes’s heavy-lidded eyes.