As he searched her face, he wondered at his good fortune. Lady Julienne La Coeur. Julienne, so lovely, laying in one of his beds, bare from the waist up, her rich blonde hair spilling around her creamy shoulders, her dark eyes staring at him with such desire. He was so damn desperate to fuck her, he thought he would burst with it, but the small portion of his mind not presently between his legs wondered why the beautiful, socially esteemed diamond would be so eager to spread her legs for a bastard like him. With a muffled curse, Lucien leapt from the bed.

He looked around wildly. “Is this a trap?” he bit out. “Is your brother hiding somewhere, waiting to jump out and catch me compromising you?”

“Beg your pardon?” She looked genuinely confused.

“What are you doing? Lying in bed naked? Giving yourself to me so easily?”

A frown marred the smooth area between her brows. “I was sleeping,” she answered crossly. “I didn’t ask you to come in here. I didn’t even want to spend the night here. You insisted.” Julienne rubbed her forehead, pulling the sheet up once again to cover herself. “Get out,” she said coldly.

His hands clenched into fists.

“Leave, Mr. Remington. Before I take up your suggestion to scream.”

He watched in amazement as she threw herself into the pillows and turned her back to him. It would damage her more than him to be caught, but why else would she offer herself?

“This is fantastic,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.

She gave a disdainful little grunt and punched the pillow.

Lucien wandered around the room, looking behind the thick sapphire velvet drapes and dropping to his knees to look under the bed. Finding no one lurking in the room, Lucien strode to both doors and locked them. He shrugged out of his waistcoat.

Julienne sat up again. “You’re mad if you believe I would allow you to touch me now!”

Lucien yanked his shirt out of his trousers and drew it over his head. He smiled grimly when she gasped at the sight of his chest. He knew he was considered too muscled, the result of many hours spent engaged in fencing and pugilism. But the glimmer in her eyes wasn’t fear or revulsion. It was desire.

“Why me?” he asked.

She rolled back onto her side. “Go away.”

“Why me?” he repeated.

“Why do you find it so hard to believe?” she mumbled into the pillow. “Women throw themselves at you all the time. Why should I be any different?”

He moved toward the bed. “Am I something to boast to your friends about?”

Julienne tucked tighter into the pillows, pulling the sheet with her. “As if I would ever tell anyone that I’d succumbed to your charms. Which I won’t!” she added hastily. “Succumb, that is. Now, please leave!”

“What if I spread the tale?” he asked. “What if I tell every member of my club that I rode between your thighs? That I ruined you, and you screamed with pleasure while I did it?” His mouth curved in a predatory smile. “And you will scream with pleasure.”

She snorted. “I’ll do no such thing.”

“What if I tell everyone, Julienne?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know me well enough to say that.”

“You don’t know me well either. For if you did, you wouldn’t be so fearful of my intentions.”

Turning away, Lucien stared into the dying fire. “You are distraught over your brother.”

“I am,” she admitted, her clear voice telling him as she faced him again. “I will have to bail him out of this mess, just as I’ve always done.”

He sighed. “If I touch you, you’ll be ruined, and the marriage you require to save your brother will be jeopardized.”

“I’m aware of that. My actions tonight were foolish at best, but I knew the possible consequences and I weighed them carefully. I’d planned to sit in a quiet corner and observe. I wanted to watch you in your element, a place where the rules are completely yours and you are not bound by the strictures that suppress you in Society. It is unfortunate that Ridgely chose my table to share, but not unexpected.”

“Lady Julienne. If you’d been found out—”

“The scandal would have destroyed all chances of an advantageous marriage, I know. But perhaps that would be best for Montrose. I don’t care much for the thought of being a sacrifice on the matrimonial altar. Facing the consequences of our actions is the best way to learn responsibility, but I am to blame for shielding him too well. As for this moment, is it so wrong to want the pleasure other women experience? Is it so terrible to steal a little passion in a life that will be bereft of it? There are ways . . . ways to . . . ways that would leave me a virgin—”

Lucien turned in stunned amazement. “How would you know of such ‘ways’?”

She flushed from the top of her breasts to her hairline. “I read . . . things.”

“You read ‘things’?” His eyes widened. “Erotica?”

Julienne’s hair was a golden curtain around her. With her bared shoulders and flushed face, she looked every bit the wanton seductress and nothing like the genteel virgin he knew her to be.

And yet it was the unabashed tilt to her chin and the defiance so evident in her silence that most affected him. An innocent who wasn’t quite so innocent. His cock had been aching before. Now the throbbing was downright painful.

Her beauty was what had first caught his eye, her voluptuous figure had kept his attention, but her smile, warm and open, was what obsessed him. Women did not look at him with such sweet interest. They either shot daggers at him for being what he was, or invited him to their beds with seductive glances. When Julienne had first seen him across the Milton’s crowded ballroom, she’d smiled so beautifully that he’d found it difficult to breathe. He’d wanted her instantly, wanted to discover what it was she saw that lit up her eyes with such warm regard.

But now that he had her in his grasp, he found there was more to his interest than mere carnal gratification. He was startled to realize he liked her, liked that she was unconventional and bold, as well as beautiful and kind.

Abruptly—regretfully—he realized he couldn’t take her. Doing so would destroy her, and he could never do that.

“No.” He gave a wry smile. “It’s not wrong to want passion. And I’m deeply flattered that you want to discover it with me.”

Her smile was so brilliant, it made his chest tight.

Lucien ran a hand through his hair. “I enjoy a good debauch as much as any man, Julienne. But sometimes I wish for the finer things in life, the softer things, pure and innocent like you are.”

“I’m not so innocent as all that. If you knew the thoughts I have about you—”

“Hush. Don’t say any more. I’m having a hard enough time being honorable as it is.”

“I rather like you dishonorable, if you don’t mind.”

He arched a brow and grinned. She was a minx. He never would have guessed. “Haven’t you been warned about men like me?”

“Yes.” Her lips curved. “But therein lies the problem.”

He shook his head.

“You see,” she continued, her voice lowering. “Being around you makes me ache. The way you look at me makes me ache, much more so than when I read Hugh’s books. I’m a grown woman. Allow me to worry about the consequences.”

Lucien groaned low in his chest, a sound filled with defeat and the death of good intentions. He was only a man, an extremely lustful man, with the woman he wanted most offering liberties he shouldn’t accept. But would. He couldn’t turn away the chance to touch her, to hold her, just once.

“I’ll take care of that, sweetheart,” he said softly as he approached her. “I’ll make the ache go away.”

He placed one knee on the bed and then stretched out beside her, clenching his teeth as she rolled and pressed her breasts into his chest. She tilted back her head, offering up her lips, and he claimed them, his tongue sweeping into the sweet recesses of her mouth. Her response stunned him, her eagerness obvious, and he could hardly bear it. He shook with the effort to slow down, to be gentle, when the fire in his blood urged him to hurry.

His hand caressed her shoulder and then moved down to her breast, finding her nipple as he ravished her mouth. He tugged gently with his fingers, loving how she melted against him, completely responsive and unreserved. Pulling her body to drape over his, Lucien caressed the curve of her derriere, kneading the firm flesh until she squirmed.

“Please,” she gasped, pulling her lips from his. Her legs spread in silent invitation.

Lucien buried his face in her throat to hide his smile. Julienne was so innocent and yet so wanton. So perfect.

He slid his hands between her thighs, one finger finding the slick opening that betrayed her desire. He slid through the cream, testing her, before sliding just a tiny bit inside. She moaned and instinctively pressed her hips downward, away from the pressure and onto his erection. Lucien groaned along with her.

This wouldn’t do. If she did that again, he wouldn’t have the presence of mind to keep from plunging his aching cock straight through her maidenhead.

Julienne whimpered when he gripped her waist, pulling her higher over his body so that her breasts hung in his face and the crisp curls of her sex rested safely against his stomach. He held her slight weight easily above him, admiring the sight of her. Her eyes closed, she arched her back, presenting her breasts, while her golden hair drifted around her shoulders.

Lucien was captivated.

Lifting his head, he pressed a reverent kiss to a puckered nipple. Julienne’s soft cry encouraged him to go further. He teased her with licks of his tongue before suckling the taut peak into his mouth, intoxicated by the scent and taste of her skin. She arched into him, rubbing her sex along the muscled ridges of his stomach. She repeated the movement again. Then again. Julienne was riding herself against him, her nipple held firmly in his mouth, and he was on fire, every nerve ending vibrantly attuned to the woman he pleasured.

“Please,” she begged. “I need . . . more . . .”

He knew what she craved. To be filled with him, stretched by him, and ridden to orgasm with his cock stroking deeply inside her. But he would not do that. Could not. There was nothing about him that was honorable, but he’d make the effort. For her.

“Patience, love,” he murmured, releasing her breast. “I will attend to you.”

He rolled her over, capturing her other nipple with his mouth while his hand caressed the length of her body and dipped between her thighs. To his delight, she opened her legs eagerly, and he caressed her lips with soft, gentle swirls, pinching them together, then moving his fingers across the hard, swollen nub in matching cadence to his suction on her breast. Her lithe body began to undulate next to his, and he threw a leg across her hips, grinding his erection into her thigh, his body seeking a relief that would be denied to him.

It was a hell of a time to find his conscience.

Impatient, Julienne arched into his hand. Lucien obliged by venturing a finger inside her again, softly stroking. He pulled out with exquisite slowness, then pressed forward again. With a patience that surprised him, he took his time, loving her gently until her body welcomed his touch with a rush of moisture. She breathed his name, and he was nearly lost.

Lucien released her breast, afraid of hurting her as his jaw clenched with the effort to retain his control. His finger, slick with her cream, slipped out, and then he entered her with two fingers. He fucked her faster now, pulling back to watch her face as she struggled against her approaching orgasm, her skin flushed, her nipples tight and hard. Despite her virginal state, she was so aroused that he had no trouble pleasing her, his fingers twisting and rubbing, constantly changing tempo and direction, to keep her on the edge. Julienne writhed, her fingernails digging into his arm, marking him on the outside as she’d marked him on the inside. Her knees fell outward, opening her cunt completely, and then her hips began to move with him, rising and falling to meet his thrusts.

“Don’t fight it, sweet,” he coaxed softly as her head began to thrash, her skin so hot it burned his. “Just allow it to happen.”

The room was quiet except for the harsh sounds of their breathing and the slick sucking noises that accompanied the pumping of his fingers. Julienne turned blindly toward him, her lips parted with panting breaths, and he thrust his tongue between them, loving the taste of her. When she stiffened beneath him, he pulled away, pinning her down with his leg as she arched and cried out his name, shivering beneath him. She held his fingers so tightly in her orgasm, he could barely move them, but he managed it anyway, drawing out her pleasure. He was stunned watching her, never having seen anything so beautiful in his life.

And he would never be allowed to see it again.

Lucien was torn between masculine satisfaction and utter, wrenching despair.

Julienne opened her eyes and wondered if she’d fainted. She felt boneless, languid with warmth. As she realized the heat came from Lucien, her mouth curved with pleasure. She snuggled closer, and then stilled at the sound of his harshly indrawn breath and the feel of his erection against her thigh. She looked at him in dismay. He was suffering, and she’d been too sated to notice.

He rose to his elbow and looked down at her, his face drawn tight. “I have to go.”

She lowered her eyes to the hard ridge of his cock. Reaching down, she brushed the outline with a shy, tentative stroke of her fingers. It jerked beneath her touch.

He pushed her hand away with a curse, then caught it back and kissed her fingertips to soften his rejection. “You mustn’t touch me, Julienne.”

“But I’d like to,” she insisted. Her heart swelled, filled with tenderness for him. “That was so wonderful . . . what you did . . .”