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He brought up his hands to cup the back of her head, plunging greedily into her honied mouth as his tongue dipped between her lips over and over in a carnal dance, a seduction, an erotic invitation.

“God, I want you,” he muttered, words erupting in a husky growl. “I want to throw you on a couch and rip off your dress. I want to kiss you for hours, licking my way down your body.”

Leonora—and most other ladies, for that matter—would have fainted at his hunger to bed her, let alone his frank expression of desire.

Not Torie. Her inarticulate gasp encouraged him to deepen the kiss, turn it hotter, rougher, less gentlemanly. It turned to a possessive statement, a silent way of informing her that now she was his. She was his.

“May I unbutton your gloves?” he asked hoarsely.

She nodded, and he slowly peeled them back and then kissed every bare finger before pushing back his coat and flattening her palms against his linen shirt. “I am not wearing a waistcoat,” he told her. “Just in case I was lucky enough to feel your touch.”

When he finally pulled back from that kiss, Torie’s hands were roaming his chest, leaving trails of fire in their wake.

She let out a low, breathy sigh as his hands slid around her head to frame her face while he waited for her to meet his eyes. Long lashes finally swept up. “We’ll be incredible in bed,” he told her, low and deep. “I’ll work you until we’re both covered with sweat, and then I’ll lick your sweat from your body. You’ll ride me until you’re panting and my heart is about to burst from my chest.”

“Dom!” Torie sounded outraged, but her eyes betrayed fascination. She didn’t squeal and run from the room.

“No one has called me Dom since my sister died.” He loved hearing the name on Torie’s lips.

“You said . . . Those things you just said were vastly improper.” Torie kept her voice steady, but an aching undertone betrayed her.

“You are no lady,” he said, nipping her lower lip.

“I am,” she retorted, slinging her arms around his neck and, to his infinite delight, nipping him back. “I know everything about being a lady. How to curtsy, how to giggle, how to paint roses.”

“Ladies kiss by pursing up their lips as if they were hiding a treasure behind their teeth.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I kiss like a man?” He loved her wry tone.

“You kiss like a woman.” He put his hands around her waist, allowing his thumbs to caress the generous swell of her breasts. “No stays? No whalebone?”

“These new French dresses are worn with a little corset.” She blinked. “Surely ladies’ undergarments are on the Prohibited List?”

“Miraculously, they haven’t come up in conversation yet. I thought you weren’t wearing stays yesterday.” He knew his smile was wolfish, but on the other hand, she liked his dimples.

“I don’t wear one while painting,” Torie confessed. “No one can see under my pinafore.”

Jesus. Lust coursed down his limbs, sanity lost.

“I shall put a couch in your painting studio in our home,” he promised hoarsely. “I’ll come back from the House of Lords at luncheon just to see you. Throw you on your back and wrench up your gown.”

Torie bit her lip.

“Watch you sprawl before me, laughing. Push your legs apart and lick you, because I’m so hungry for you that I’ve had a cockstand all morning.”

She made a stifled sound, somewhere between a gasp and a laugh. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

Dominic nodded, seeing an opening for a question he’d wanted to ask. Torie couldn’t read; her mother was long dead; her sister had fled. “What do you know about copulation?”

She frowned.

“About ‘having’ in the Biblical sense?” he amended.

Her eyelashes fluttered, but being Torie, she didn’t gasp with ladylike horror at the question. Instead, she met his eyes with her clear gaze. “I’ve watched animals . . . rabbits.”

If he grinned this often, it might become a habit. “How do rabbits mate?”

“The male rabbit grips his mate’s throat with his teeth,” Torie said primly, but her eyes were dancing.