The words sent a shiver through Georgiana, and she closed her eyes against the image of him sinful and sweet between her thighs. “Something equally wonderful.”

She was losing her balance, and she leaned back on her hands, not sure of what to do. Not sure she wanted this. And, at the same time, utterly certain she wanted this. Those wicked fingers moved again, but they did not have to push. She opened for him, granting him access even as he promised devastation.

He had told her he would be in control, and so he was.

She was wide open for him now, and his fingers played at the dark patch of hair that covered the most secret part of her. He looked up. “Are you equally as wet?”

The words thrummed through her, more devastating than the touch that matched them as he parted the delicate folds of her sex with infinite gentleness, dipping a single finger inside. They groaned together at the movement, at the sensation that rocketed through her. “More,” he said, the word full of marvel as he stroked her in that dark, wonderful place. “I’m going to taste you here,” he went on. “I’m going to taste you and touch you until you come and your screams fill this room, with only the water and the sky as witness.”

The words weakened her even as they gave her strength, and he slid one hand up her torso to her chest, pressing her back against the warm tile, until she lay flat, her legs dangling over the edge of the pool.

“You’re mine,” he said, dark and full of sin. “My lady.”

She ached at the honorific. At the truth in it. “I am,” she whispered. Dear God, she was. She was his in every way he wanted her. In any way.

And then he was parting her folds, and his mouth was on the heart of her, and she did cry out at the immense, nearly unbearable pleasure of his tongue, stroking and swirling and doing all manner of terrible, glorious things. Her hands, which she hadn’t known what to do with mere minutes earlier, found him, threading into his beautiful blond hair as he moved against her, tasting her wet heat with magnificent movements that threatened to rob her of breath and sanity.

She groaned at the immensity of the pleasure he gave her, lifting against him, boldly asking for more even as he gave it. She rocked against him, loving the feel of him, the sound of him, the way he held her open, wide, and growled “My lady,” the words a lick of pleasure through her.

His lady.

His.

She would never feel anything like this. Never give herself in any way close to this ever again.

And then he was there, at the swollen, aching place where she wanted him most, circling and licking and sucking, sending pleasure rocketing through her until she could not bear it any longer, and her fingers clenched in his hair and she rocked against him. In response, he grasped her hips, holding her firm as she rode out her pleasure, calling his name in the darkness again and again and again until it was no longer his name, but a benediction.

And then she did scream, just as he promised, it was in view of none but the stars high above – beyond the glass ceiling that caught the sound and sent it echoing around them both, the only two people in all of London. In all the world.

He stayed with her as she returned to the moment, his lips soft and full at the curve of her thigh, his tongue tracing circles there, slow and languid, as though they could slow her rioting pulse.

She opened her eyes in the stunning room, made orange in the light of the fires behind her and within her, and realized that there was nothing ridiculous about this place – it suited him. A glorious temple to this man who wielded pleasure like power.

And perhaps it was power.

It was certainly more dangerous than anything she’d ever faced before now. He was too much. And not enough. She could never have him, and somehow, in this moment, she knew that she would never stop wanting him.

He would ruin her, as surely as she had been ruined the last time a man had touched her.

She stiffened at the thought, and he felt the change in her. Lifted his lips. “And there it is,” he said, the words cooler than she would have expected. Cooler than she would have liked. “Memory returns.”

She hated that he so easily understood her. She sat up, pulling her feet from the water, her knees to her chest. Wrapping her arms about her. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He raised a brow. “You know precisely what I mean. If you didn’t, you would have reentered the pool instead of leaving it.”

She smiled. “Would you not prefer a bed?”

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t bring her here. Not now.”

“Who?”

“Anna. Don’t offer me her false smile and her falser words. I’m not —”

When he did not finish, she asked, “You’re not what?”

He swore, soft and furious, and swam backward, distancing himself from her. From the moment. “I’m not Chase. I don’t want her. I want you.”

“We are one and the same,” she said.

“Don’t insult me. Don’t lie to me. Save your lies for your owner.” He spat the word, and she heard the anger in it. The hurt.

When she had invented Chase years earlier, she’d never imagined she’d have to play such a delicate, difficult game as this one. She stood, following him down the pool, to the place where they’d entered. Where they’d begun this night. The place to which they could not return. He came out of the water, opened a nearby cabinet. Gave her a thick length of Egyptian cotton. She wrapped it about herself, searching for the right words.

Settling on, “Duncan, he doesn’t own me.”

She couldn’t see his face any longer. He was the backlit one now, when every word she spoke was a lie. His words came from his great, looming shadow, inches from her, the frustration in his voice clear as crystal. “Of course he does. You are at his whim. He gives you a package, you deliver it. He tells you to marry, you do so.”