“Penelope.”

Her eyes drifted open. “Yes?”

“How much have you had to drink?”

She shook her head. “I am not in my cups. It seems I drank just enough to find the courage to ask for what I want.”

She’d had too much, then. He knew it, even as her words sent desire lancing through him, “And what is it you want, darling?”

She met his gaze head-on. “I want my wedding night.”

So simple, so direct. So irresistible. He took her lips again knowing he shouldn’t, and kissed her as though they had all the time in the world, as though he was not dying to be a part of her. To be inside her. To make her his. He sucked her full lower lip between his teeth, licking and stroking with his tongue until she moaned her pleasure at the back of her throat.

He released her mouth, kissing across her cheek, whispering, “Say my name.”

“Michael,” she said without hesitation, the word trembling at his ear, sending a shaft of pleasure straight through him.

“No. Bourne.” He took the lobe of one ear into his mouth and worried it before releasing her and saying, “Say it.”

“Bourne,” she shifted, pressing against him, asking for more. “Please.”

“There will be no turning back after this,” he promised, his lips at her temple, hands reveling in her softness.

Her blue eyes opened, unbelievably light in the darkness, and she whispered, “Why would you think I would turn back?”

He stilled at the question, at the honest confusion in her words. It was the drink talking. It had to be. It was inconceivable to think that she did not understand what he meant. That she did not see that he was nothing like the men who had courted her before.

“I’m not the man you had planned to marry.” He should confront her with Tommy. But he did not want another man’s name spoken in this moment. In this place.

She was already making him weak.

She smiled, small and perhaps sad. “You are the man I married nonetheless. I know that you don’t care about me, Michael. I know that you only married me for Falconwell. But it’s rather too late to look back, isn’t it? We are married. And I wish to have a wedding night. I deserve it, I think, after all these years. Please. If you don’t mind too much.”

His hands moved to the collar of her nightgown, and, with a mighty tug, he rent the clothing in two. She gasped at the movement, her eyes going wide. “You ruined it.” Bourne groaned at the wonder in the words. At the pleasure there.

He wanted to ruin more than the linen.

He brushed the night rail down her arms until it pooled at her knees, leaving her pale and naked in the candlelight. The too-dim candlelight. He wanted to see every inch of her . . . to watch the way her pulse raced at his touch, the way she quivered as he stroked the insides of her thighs, the way she clenched around him as he entered her.

As he claimed her.

He eased her back onto the fur, aching at the way she sighed as her back rubbed against the soft mink, as she learned the sheer decadence of skin against fur. He leaned over her, claiming her mouth until her hands were tangled in his hair, and she was pressing up against him. Only then did he lift his lips from hers and whisper, “I’m going to make love to you on this fur. You’re going to feel it against every inch of you. And the pleasure I give you will be more than you’ve ever imagined. You will cry my name as it comes.”

He left her then, removing his clothes, carefully arranging them in a neat pile on a chair nearby before returning to the bed to find that she had covered herself, one hand across her br**sts, the other pressed to the triangle of curls that hid her most private parts. He stretched out on his side next to her, one hand propping up his head, the other smoothing over the soft swell of her thigh, up over the curve of her hip, across her rounded stomach. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, her breath coming in harsh little bursts, and Bourne could not help himself. He leaned down, licking the curve of one ear, nibbling at the lobe before asking, “Never hide from me.”

She shook her head then, blue eyes wide. “I can’t. I can’t just . . . lie here. Bare.”

He nipped her earlobe again. “I didn’t say anything about just lying there, darling.” He lifted the hand that was covering her br**sts and slipped one finger into his mouth, licking the pad delicately before scraping it gently between his teeth.

“Oh . . .” She sighed, her gaze rapt on his lips. “You’re very good at that.”

He slowly extracted the finger and leaned down to kiss her, long and lush. “It’s not the only thing I am good at.”

Her eyelids flickered at the erotic promise in the words, and she said, softly, “I imagine you have had much more practice than I have.”

It did not matter that he had been with other women in that moment. All he wanted was to learn Penelope. To be the one to show her pleasure. To be the one to teach her to take it for herself. “Show me where you want me,” he whispered.

She blushed, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “I couldn’t.”

He returned her finger to his mouth, sucking carefully until her blue eyes opened, finding him, ethereal in the candlelight. She watched the movement of his lips, and the moment was so intense, he thought he might spend there and then. “Show me. Say, ‘Please, Bourne,’ and show me.”

Courage flared in her eyes then, and he watched with keen pleasure as that finger, the one he’d made love to, trailed along her breast, circling the puckered, straining tip of it. He swiped the back of one hand across his lips as he watched the movement, as she tempted him beyond belief.