“Simon!” she exclaimed. “That sounds horrible.”

“It's enchanting.”

“Distorted.”

“Desirable.”

She grimaced, but somehow she laughed at the same time. “Clearly, you have no knowledge of the standards of female beauty.”

He arched a brow. “As pertains to you, my standards are the only ones that count any longer.”

For a moment she was speechless, then she collapsed against him, a torrent of laughter shaking both of their bodies. “Oh, Simon,” she gasped, “you sounded so fierce. So wonderfully, perfectly, absurdly fierce.”

“Absurd?” he echoed. “Are you calling me absurd?”

Her lips tightened to prevent another giggle, but they weren't entirely successful.

“It's almost as bad as being called impotent,” he grumbled.

Daphne was instantly serious. “Oh, Simon, You know I didn't…” She gave up trying to explain, and instead just said, “I'm so sorry about that.”

“Don't be.” He waved off her apology. “Your mother I may have to kill, but you have nothing to apologize for.”

A horrified giggle escaped her lips. “Mother did try her best, and if I hadn't been confused because you said—”

“Oh, so now it's all my fault?” he said with mock outrage. But then his expression grew sly, seductive. He moved closer, angling his body so that she had to arch backwards. “I suppose I'll just have to work doubly hard to prove my capabilities.”

One of his hands slid to the small of her back, supporting her as he lowered her onto the bed. Daphne felt the breath leave her body as she looked up into his intensely blue eyes. The world seemed somehow different when one was lying down. Darker, more dangerous. And all the more thrilling because Simon was looming above her, filling her vision.

And in that moment, as he slowly closed the distance between them, he became her entire world.

This time his kiss wasn't light. He didn't tickle; he devoured. He didn't tease; he possessed.

His hands slipped under her, cradling her derrière, pressing it up against his arousal. “Tonight,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and hot in her ear, “I will make you mine.”

Daphne's breath started coming faster and faster, each little gasp of air impossibly loud to her ears. Simon was so close, every inch of him covering her intimately. She'd imagined this night a thousand times since that moment in Regent's Park when he'd said he would marry her, but it had never occurred to her that the sheer weight of his body on hers would be so thrilling. He was large and hard and exquisitely muscled; there was no way she could escape his seductive onslaught, even if she'd wanted to.

How strange it was to feel such titillating joy at being so powerless. He could do with her whatever he desired—and she wanted to let him.

But when his body shuddered, and his lips tried to say her name but didn't get beyond “D-D-Daph—” she realized that she possessed her own kind of control. He wanted her so much he couldn't breathe, needed her so badly he couldn't speak.

And somehow, as she reveled in her newfound strength, she found that her body seemed to know what to do. Her hips arched up to meet his, and as his hands pushed her skirts up over her waist, her legs snaked around his, pulling him ever closer to the cradle of her femininity.

“My God, Daphne,” Simon gasped, hauling his shaking body up on his elbows. “I want to—I can't—”

Daphne grabbed at his back, trying to pull him back down to her. The air felt cool where his body had just been.

“I can't go slow,” he grunted.

“I don't care.”

“I do.” His eyes burned with wicked intention. “We seem to be getting ahead of ourselves.”

Daphne just stared at him, trying to catch her breath. He'd sat up, and his eyes were raking across her body as one of his hands slid up the length of her leg to her knee.

“First of all,” he murmured, “we need to do something about all of your clothes.”

Daphne gasped with shock as he stood, pulling her to her feet along with him. Her legs were weak, her balance nonexistent, but he held her upright, his hands bunching her skirts around her waist. He whispered in her ear, “It's difficult to strip you naked when you're lying down.”

One of his hands found the curve of her buttocks, and started massaging her in a circular motion. “The question,” he mused, “is do I push the dress up, or pull it down?”

Daphne prayed that he wasn't expecting her to actually answer his question, because she couldn't make a sound.

“Or,” he said slowly, one finger slipping under the ribboned bodice of her dress, “both?”

And then, before she had even a moment to react, he'd pushed her dress down so that the entire garment encircled her waist. Her legs were bare, and were it not for her thin silk chemise, she would have been completely naked.

“Now this is a surprise,” Simon murmured, palming one of her breasts through the silk. “Not an entirely unwelcome one, of course. Silk is never as soft as skin, but it does have its advantages.”

Daphne's breath fled as she watched him slide the silk slowly from side to side, the sweet friction causing her nipples to pucker and harden.

“I had no idea,” Daphne whispered, her every breath sliding hot and moist across her lips.

Simon went to work on her other breast. “No idea of what?”

“That you were so wicked.”

He smiled, slow and full of the devil. His lips moved to her ear, whispering, “You were my best friend's sister. Utterly forbidden. What was I to do?”