Leo stood in the doorway, tugging off his gloves casually, as if he had all the time in the world. Catherine went dry-mouthed as she watched him. She needed him. She needed to be held and comforted, and he knew it. If she allowed him into her hotel suite, there was no question as to what would happen next.

She started as the sound of voices came from the end of the long hallway. Reaching out hastily, she grabbed the lapels of Leo’s coat, pulled him across the threshold, and closed them both safely inside the room. “Hush,” she whispered.

Leo braced his hands on either side of her, caging her against the door. “You know how to keep me quiet.”

The voices became louder as people advanced further along the hallway.

Smiling into her tense face, Leo began in a perfectly audible tone, “Marks, I wonder if—”

She drew in an exasperated breath and crammed her mouth against his, anything to shut him up. Leo fell obligingly silent, kissing her with bold and avid pleasure. Even through the elegant layers of his clothes, she could feel the heat and hardness of him. Desperately she fumbled with his clothes, pushing her hands beneath his coat where his body heat had collected.

She moaned, the sound catching between their lips. His tongue went deep, and she felt corresponding twinges of pleasure low in her stomach. Her legs lost their strength, her balance eroding. Her spectacles became dislodged, catching between their faces. Leo reached up to remove them carefully. He slipped them into his pocket. With deliberate slowness, he put the key in the door and locked it from the inside. Catherine stood mutely, torn between desire and caution.

In the silence, Leo went to light a lamp. A rasp, as a match was struck … a glow, as the wick kindled. Catherine blinked owlishly at the shadow-crossed room, at the large dark shape of him before her. She ached for him, her body clenching on intimate emptiness. A tremor went through her as she thought of how he had filled her, the sweet heaviness of him inside her.

Blindly she turned to face away from him, offering access to the row of hooks that fastened the back of her dress. The fabric tightened across her breasts as he grasped the dress at the back. There was a series of deft tugs, the garment loosening, slipping lower. She felt his mouth brush the tender nape of her neck, a whisk of exciting warmth. He pushed the gown to her waist and over her hips. She moved to help him, stepping out of the heap of layered pink silk, kicking off her slippers. Turning her around again, Leo unhooked her corset, pausing to kiss each of her shoulders in turn.

“Take down your hair.” The touch of his breath on her skin made her shiver.

Catherine obeyed, pulling the pins from her chignon, collecting them in a little bundle. After setting them on the dressing table, she went to the bed and climbed onto the mattress, waiting tensely as he undressed. She couldn’t help wishing she had her spectacles back as she stared at the intriguing, hazy shape of him, the play of light and shadow on his skin.

“Don’t squint so hard, love. You’ll strain your eyes.”

“I can’t see you.”

He approached her, every line of his body replete with masculine grace. “Can you see me at this distance?”

She contemplated him thoroughly. “Certain parts.”

Leo gave a husky laugh, crawling onto the bed, over her, bracing his weight on his arms. The tips of her breasts hardened beneath the light veil of her chemise. Their stomachs pressed together, the erect shape of him caught exquisitely against the corresponding notch of her body.

“What about now?” Leo whispered. “Am I close enough?”

“Almost,” she managed to say, staring into his face, taking in every breathtaking detail. She had to force out words between uneven breaths. “But not quite…”

Leo bent to take her lips, locking his mouth over hers in a blaze of sensation. She lost herself in it, a kiss that was at once giving and demanding. He searched her gently, meeting the shy advances of her own tongue. She tasted inside his mouth for the first time, and felt the jolt of his response.

With a ragged sound, Leo reached for the hem of her chemise. Pulling the garment upward, he helped Catherine to lift it over her head. He untied the tapes of her drawers with torturous slowness, running his fingers along the loosening waist, easing the thin muslin fabric down her hips. Her garters and stockings soon followed, leaving her completely exposed.

Murmuring his name, Catherine twined her arms around his neck and tried to draw him over her again. She arched into him, gasping with delight at the varied textures of him, roughness and silk, smoothness and steel.

He brought his mouth to her ear, his lips toying with the soft lobe before he whispered, “Cat. I’m going to kiss all the way down your body and up again. And I want you to lie perfectly still and let me do as I please. You can do that, can’t you?”

“No,” she said earnestly, “I really don’t think so.”

Leo averted his face for a moment. When he looked back at her, his eyes were sparkling with amusement. “That was actually a rhetorical question.”

“A rhetorical question has an obvious answer,” she argued, “and what you’re asking is not—” She broke off, unable to speak or think as she felt him nibble and lick at a sensitive part of her neck. His mouth was hot and silken, the flat of his tongue like velvet. He worked his way along her arm, pausing at the hollows of her inner arm and wrist, caressing the pulse that beat visibly in the fragile skin. Every inch of her body prickled with awareness of him and what he was doing.

His mouth wandered back along her arm to the side of her breast, the trail of his mouth leaving her skin flushed and damp. He kissed all around the rosy peak without touching it, until she felt a whimper climb in her throat. “My lord, please, ” she gasped, sliding her hands into his hair, trying to guide him.

He resisted, grasping her wrists and pulling them to her sides. “Don’t move,” he reminded her gently. “Or do you want me to start over?”

She closed her eyes and lay with aggrieved stillness, her chest heaving. Leo had the gall to laugh softly, his mouth returning to nuzzle the undercurve of her breast. A cry escaped her when she felt his lips brush against the gathered crest. Slowly his mouth opened and sealed over her, and he began to suckle. Heat writhed in her stomach, and her hips lifted from the mattress. His hand settled on her taut abdomen, rubbing in a soothing circle, pressing her back down.

It was impossible to lie motionless as Leo tormented her, arousing her skillfully but providing no relief. Impossible to endure … but he wouldn’t allow otherwise. He made his way down to her stomach, licking and blowing lightly into the hollow of her navel. She was weak and perspiring, wet at the roots of her hair, her body racked with delight that verged on pain.

His mouth glided across the vulnerable softness of her groin to her inner thighs, his tongue playing gently on either side … everywhere except the wet pulsing center.

“Leo,” she panted. “This … is not very nice of you.”

“I know,” he said. “Move your legs apart.”

She obeyed with a shudder, letting him guide her, opening her body in ever more revealing positions. He used his mouth in ways that infuriated and aroused her … nibbling along her thigh, investigating the ticklish hollows behind her knees, stringing kisses around her ankles, sucking lazily on her toes. She swallowed back a supplicating moan, and another, impatience thumping through her body.

After an eternity, Leo had finally progressed all the way back to her neck. Catherine parted her thighs, dying for him to take her, but instead he rolled her to her stomach. She whimpered in frustration.

“Impatient wench.” Leo’s hand smoothed over her bottom and slipped between her thighs. “There, will this satisfy you for now?” She felt him parting her swollen flesh. Her body stiffened in bliss as his fingers entered her, slipping into the wetness. He held them there, deep and flexing, while he kissed along her spine. She found herself grinding against his hand, gasping in pleasure. Closer … closer … and yet the climax shimmered just out of reach.

Finally Leo turned her to her back again, his features hard and sweat-misted, and it was only then that she realized he had been torturing himself as well as her. He pinned her arms over her head and spread her legs. For an instant she knew a flare of panic at her own helplessness, seeing his powerful body above hers. But then he entered her in a hard, slick plunge, and the fear vanished in a flood of pleasure. He slipped his free arm beneath her neck. Her eyes closed, and her head lolled as he bent to kiss her throat.

She was nothing but feeling, heat coming through her in waves, stronger and stronger as he took her with slow, luscious drives. He rolled his hips with each forward pitch, repeating the movement until she went crimson and whimpered in a last burst of release. And he stayed with her, riding every drawn-out spasm until she was limp and quiet. Murmuring to her, he coaxed her to wrap one leg around his waist, and he lifted her other leg until it hooked over his shoulder. The position opened her, changed the angle between them, so that when he thrust again, it caressed a new place inside her. Another rush of pleasure started, surging so high and fast that she could hardly breathe. She lay still beneath him, her legs trembling as she took him more deeply than she had thought possible. She was propelled into another climax, strong and dizzying, but before the last tremors had faded, he withdrew abruptly to take his own release, his sex throbbing viciously against her stomach.

“Oh, Cat,” he said after a while, still over her, his hands gripped in the bedclothes.

She turned her face until her lips brushed the rim of his ear. The erotic perfume of sex and damp skin filled her nostrils. Her palm went to his back, smoothing over the taut surface, and she felt him shiver in pleasure at the gentle scratch of her nails. How remarkable it was to lie with a man, feeling him soften inside her as their pulses slowed. What an astonishing assimilation of flesh and moisture and sensation, the lingering twinges and pulses in the places they pressed together.

Leo lifted his head and looked down at her. “Marks,” he said, his voice uneven, “you are not a perfect woman.”

“I’m aware of that,” she said.

“You have an evil temper, you’re as blind as a mole, you’re a deplorable poet, and frankly, your French accent could use some work.” Supporting himself on his elbows, Leo took her face in his hands. “But when I put those things together with the rest of you, it makes you into the most perfectly imperfect woman I’ve ever known.”

Absurdly pleased, she smiled up into his face.

“You are beautiful beyond words,” Leo went on. “You are kind, amusing, and passionate. You also have a keen intellect, but I’m willing to overlook that.”

Her smile faded. “Are you leading to another marriage proposal?”

His gaze was intent. “I have a special license from the Archbishop’s Court of Faculties. We could wed at any church, whenever we please. We could be married by morning, if you say yes.”

Catherine turned her face away from his, pressing a frown into the mattress. She owed him an answer—she owed him honesty. “I’m not certain I’ll ever be able to say yes to that.”

Leo was very still. “Do you mean only when I propose, or if any man did?”

“Any man,” she admitted. “It’s only that with you, it’s very difficult to refuse.”

“Well, that’s encouraging,” he said, although his tone conveyed the opposite.

Leo left the bed and went to get a damp cloth for her. Returning, he stood beside the bed and watched her. “Think of it this way,” he said. “Marriage would change hardly anything between us, except that we would end our arguments in a much more satisfying way. And of course I would have extensive legal rights over your body, your property, and all your individual freedoms, but I don’t see what’s so alarming about that.”

His quip almost made Catherine smile again, despite her encroaching despair. Finishing her ablutions, she set the cloth on the bedside table and pulled the bed linens up to her breasts. “I wish people were like the clocks and mechanisms that Harry is so clever at constructing. Then I could have whatever is wrong with me repaired. As it is, though, I have some parts that aren’t working properly.”

Leo sat on the side of the bed, his gaze holding hers. He extended a muscular arm and caught the back of her neck in his hand, and held her steady. His mouth possessed hers roughly, until her head swam and her heart pounded. Lifting his head, he said, “I adore all of your parts exactly as they are.” He drew back and touched her taut jawline, his fingers gentle. “Can you at least admit that you’re fond of me?”

Catherine swallowed against the soft caress. “I … it’s obvious that I am.”

“Then say it,” he urged, stroking the side of her throat.

“Why must I say something if it’s obvious?”

But he persisted, damn him, seeming to understand how difficult it was for her. “It’s only a few words.” His thumb brushed the hard, anxious pulse at the base of her neck. “Don’t be afraid.”

“Please, I can’t—”

“Say it.”

Catherine couldn’t look at him. She went hot and cold. Taking a deep breath, she managed a shaking whisper. “I’m f-fond of you.”

“There,” Leo murmured, beginning to draw her close. “Was that so bad?”

Her body was wrenched with the longing to huddle against his inviting chest. But instead she put her arms between them, preserving a crucial distance. “It makes no difference,” she forced herself to say. “In fact, it makes it worse.”

His arms loosened. He gave her a quizzical glance. “Worse?”

“Yes, because I can never give you anything more than that. And regardless of what you claim to the contrary, you’ll want the kind of marriage your sisters have. The way Amelia is with Cam, the devotion and intimacy … you’ll want that too.”

“I don’t want intimacy with Cam.”

“Don’t joke about it,” she said wretchedly. “This is serious.”

“I’m sorry,” came his quiet reply. “Sometimes serious conversations make me uncomfortable, and I tend to resort to humor as a result.” He paused. “I understand what you’re trying to tell me. But what if I say that attraction and fondness would be enough?”

“I wouldn’t believe you. Because I know how unhappy you would become, seeing your sisters’ marriages, remembering how devoted your parents were to each other, and knowing that ours was a counterfeit by comparison. A parody.”

“What makes you so certain that we won’t come to care for each other?”

“I just am. I’ve looked inside my heart, and it’s not there. That’s what I meant before. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust anyone enough to love them. Even you.”

Leo’s face was expressionless, but she sensed something dark lurking beneath his self-control, something that hinted of anger, or exasperation. “It’s not that you’re unable,” he said. “It’s that you don’t want to.” He released her carefully and went to retrieve his discarded clothes. As he dressed, he spoke in a voice that chilled her with its pleasant blandness. “I have to leave.”

“You’re angry.”

“No. But if I stay, I’ll end up making love to you and proposing to you repeatedly, until morning. And even my tolerance for rejection has its limits.”

Words of regret and self-reproach hovered on her lips. But she held them back, sensing that it would only infuriate him. Leo was hardly a man to fear a challenge. But he was beginning to comprehend that he could do nothing with the challenge she presented, some inexplicable quandary that couldn’t be solved.

After dressing and shrugging into his coat, Leo returned to the bedside. “Don’t try to predict what you’re capable of,” he murmured, sliding his fingers beneath her chin. He bent to press his lips to her forehead, and added, “You may surprise yourself.” Going to the door, he opened it and glanced up and down the hallway. He glanced at Catherine over his shoulder. “Lock the door when I leave.”

“Good night,” she said with difficulty. “And … I’m sorry, my lord. I wish I were different. I wish I could—” She stopped and shook her head miserably.

Pausing a bit longer, Leo gave her a look of amusement edged with warning. “You’re going to lose this battle, Cat. And despite yourself, you’re going to be very happy in defeat.”