“I shan’t tell you all of it, as it’s private. But I did decide that twenty-five was quite old enough, after Imogen pointed out that Rafe fit nearly every item I had written down.”

“Someday, I would love to see that list,” he said, his eyes gleaming with amusement. “But now the night grows toward dawn and your sisters will be wondering where I’ve taken you.”

Josie shrugged. Her skin was prickling all over and she was acutely aware that the two of them were alone, both half-clothed. “Imogen has presumably left with Rafe on their wedding trip,” she said. “Tess has gone home with Felton, and Annabel had already left the ball when I encountered you. She has a new baby and she misses him after a mere half hour, or so she says.”

“Motherhood takes some women like that,” he said. “Like an illness.”

He took a step closer and tipped up her chin. “You have beautiful skin, Josie, did you know that?”

“It’s my best feature,” she muttered, mesmerized by his eyes. They were looking at her in such a way, as if…as if…

His hand cupped the back of her neck and fingers curled into her hair. “Your hair is beautiful too.”

“Brown,” she said, trying to break the spell of his liquid voice.

“Bronzed in the sunlight,” he corrected her. “There was one afternoon on the way to Scotland when you sat in the carriage window and the sun played with your hair for hours: it was all bronzed deep tones, bewitching and soft.”

Josie knew she would never feel the same about her hair.

Then he bent closer. This is it, Josie thought. She knew what to expect, of course. She’d seen Lucius Felton brush kisses onto Tess’s mouth. She’d seen the Earl of Ardmore drop kisses onto Annabel’s hair, and her shoulder, and wherever the poor deluded man could drop a kiss. She’d even come around the corner of the corridor once and seen Imogen in Rafe’s arms, and he was kissing her, and their bodies were touching.

But it wasn’t at all what she thought.

Mayne’s mouth didn’t brush her adoringly, the way Felton’s had Tess. Instead his mouth came down on her like a crushing weight, hard and demanding. She had no idea what was being demanded, and had to stop herself from struggling. No wonder Mayne’s affairs lasted only two weeks, she thought dimly. The man doesn’t know how to kiss!

He was probably as bad at the whole of bedding as he was at this.

But it would never do to make him feel bad, not when he’d been so kind as to try to—whatever it was he was trying to do. Give her her first kiss so that she could walk better, and if that wasn’t a stupid notion, she’d never heard one.

The hand he had in her hair did feel rather nice, as if he was coaxing her to do something, to do what? His tongue too…he was running his tongue along her lips. A strange thing to do. Josie filed it away in her mind as yet another substantial reason why the Earl of Mayne had remained unmarried until the ancient age of thirty-five.

And then suddenly it all changed.

How or why, Josie didn’t know.

All of a sudden, she could smell him. He smelled wonderful, a spicy male soapy smell. She looked up at him and his eyes were heavy, and suddenly she could feel his thumb rubbing against her neck, and it all felt very queer. As if—As if she’d just taken off her corset.

“That’s my girl,” he said against her mouth. His voice was dark as the room, dark as a wine god’s own purr. She opened her lips to answer him. And that was the biggest surprise of all. Because in one smooth movement he pulled her up and against his body, and at the same moment his tongue came into her mouth.

She went rigid with surprise. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t hygienic. Surely it wasn’t—

But she lost the thought in a haze of sensual feelings, because somehow her arms were around his neck and curled in his hair. And those breasts that she so despised were pressed against his chest and it felt exquisite, like torture and pleasure at once. And he was in her mouth, speaking to her without words, his hands holding her tight so that she couldn’t move back. Except she didn’t want to. All she wanted was to be crushed against his big, solid body, feeling small and sensual, and all the things she never felt.

Which was exactly what he meant her to feel.

As if the thought and the truth of it came in the same moment, a pulse of liquid flame swept over her body, weakening her knees, making her feel as if she couldn’t stand without him. He was driving into her mouth, fierce, demanding strokes, and she knew why women wept when he left them.

As if he could read her thoughts, he pulled back and stared at her. His eyes had darkened, or perhaps the room had darkened. They didn’t look blue anymore but black, and for a second she thought she heard the breath rasp in his chest.

“Well,” he said finally. “Josephine Essex, that was your first kiss.”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She just stared at him, arms around his neck, her mind a dark, muddled place of desire—aye, she was not so stupid as to not recognize it. Then she took her arms down, and fought to regain her mind as well.

There was something odd in his eyes. “Was it acceptable?” That growling purr was gone from his voice now.

“Absolutely,” she said, her hands trembling as they tightened the knot of his dressing gown at her waist. “Will”—she cleared her throat—“Will I be able to walk correctly now?”

“I hope so, Josie.” He said it almost as if it were a prayer. “I-I believe so.”

She managed a little smile at that. “You have a lot of faith in your powers of seduction, Lord Mayne. I suppose it comes from years of practice.”

“One is always capable of being surprised,” he said, rather obscurely. And then backed away. “Let’s see if I’ve made an ass of myself, shall we?”

So she turned away from him and walked to the opposite wall. He hadn’t made an ass of himself. She could feel it in every movement of her legs, in the brush of her breasts against his dressing gown. When she turned around to walk to him, she was ready.

She stopped for a moment, in the pleasure of performance. Smiled at him, at the beauty of his eyes, and the way his hair, even now, looked as if it had come from the hands of a master. He looked a bit pole-axed, so she smiled again.

These smiles were a world away from the grimaces she’d used as masks in the last weeks of the season. She could feel the plumpness of her bottom lip, the smile in her eyes, as if she were seeing herself from the outside.

And then she started to walk toward him. Plump full hips curved naturally, beautifully, to a waist marked by a man’s silk sash. Her breasts swelled above, and for the first time in her life she knew that they were right for her body: balancing her hips, carrying themselves proudly, beautiful in their generosity.

“Not quite,” he said. “Watch me again.”

She thought she saw what he meant this time. Even in the absurdity of that muscled body, and the frail pink gown, she could see that he was slightly rolling from the hips. Rather than walking the way she normally did, by putting one leg briskly in front of the other, Mayne was swaying forward. There was a swing in his gait, a promise, a ridiculous promise given the bursting fabric—but she saw what he meant.

He was on the other side of the little turret room. “Again,” he commanded.