"Two."
She thrust out her bottom lip in a pout and moved toward the table. "I suppose you must be humored."
He was utterly still, his face half in shadow. "It might be wise." He tossed the key on the bed.
"I'm not afraid of you, if that's what you think," she muttered, climbing up on the table.
"I don't think that at all," he said, his dark gaze trained on her as she sat down. "Spread your legs… like you do for Alma-Tadema and Leighton."
"Screw you." There was fury in her gaze.
"Do as you're told."
"We're done," she said briskly, beginning to slide off the table. "Play your games with someone else."
Her feet hadn't touched the floor when he was beside her, his fingers shackling her wrists, holding her in place on the table edge. Leaning close, his dark hair fell forward, framing his face, and his heavy-lidded eyes, redolent with lust, blatantly offered her sex. "Please spread your legs," he said quietly.
She struggled against his hold, moody, disquieted-by his tantalizing virility, by her inability to resist. "You have to apologize first," she said, terse, resentful.
"Tell me if you're sleeping with them."
"Apologize."
A taut silence fell.
The muscles in his shoulders rippled as his grip tightened, his fierce gaze bore into hers for a moment, and then, inhaling deeply, he looked away. A second passed, then two in this sexual standoff-a voiceless, muted contention. Somewhere a clock chimed, and as though some signal had been given, Sam slowly released his breath and met her gaze again. "I apologize," he said, his voice tight as a drum.
"In that case," she ground out, each word mutinous with malcontent, "no, I'm not."
"I don't know if I believe you."
Incredulous, she stared at him. "I beg your pardon?"
"Call me cynical," he said gruffly.
"Some people have principles," she replied hotly. "Some people are discriminating about their bed partners," she added, each word trenchant with affront. "Some people don't sleep with everyone who crosses their path, present company excepted, of course."
His sudden smile dazzled, like a glorious rainbow after the storm. "You don't say."
"I do-most emphatically." She refused to smile. "So I hope we're finished with your jealousy."
He jerked back, apprehension flaring in his eyes. "I'm not jealous."
Sensing that the equation of lust or fascination or whatever term best described their extraordinary attraction was suddenly more equable, Alex's mood altered. "Well then," she said amiably, her mouth curving in amusement, "that should make everything so much easier."
Not about to acknowledge anything so outre as jealousy, Sam dipped his head and spoke with similar casualness. "By way of explanation, when I saw you posing last night, I wanted to carry you off and make love to you for a thousand years or so. Nothing excessive, you understand," he said with a deprecating lift of his hand. "You just have that effect on me."
"I understand completely," she agreed, the degree of excess he incited beyond comprehension.
"Does that understanding extend to, say, a more physical harmony? I apologize in advance for my licentious impulses, but you're irresistible."
"You have a certain compelling charm as well," she told him, her gaze dropping to his seemingly indefatigable erection.
He'd seen that look a thousand times. But Miss Ionides was more of an enigma than most, so when he spoke he was conciliatory in the extreme. "Does that mean you might be willing to spread your legs forme?"
"When you ask so nicely…" She slowly opened her legs. "I'd be delighted."
"We'd both be delighted," he said with feeling. Leaning forward, he grasped her around the waist, lifted her to the center of the table, eased her thighs slightly wider with his palms. "Now, that's even more delightful," he approved, his gaze focused on her sweet, damp cleft. "Do you masturbate?"
"Good God, Ranelagh." Leaning back on her hands, she quirked one brow. "You certainly ask a lot of questions. Isn't it enough that we simply enjoy ourselves tonight?"
"Do you?"
She surveyed him for a critical moment. "Sometimes, if you must know."
"Would you like to now?"
"Why should I, when I have you?"
"Because then I could watch."
Her lashes half lowered over her eyes. "I thought you weren't a voyeur?"
"I was planning on participating."
His smile was intriguing, along with the rest of him. "So I'd have you to look forward to-afterward," she observed pleasantly.
"Without question."
"One can hardly refuse such gallantry."
He almost said something impertinent but caught himself in time. Miss Ionides didn't respond to orders, although she responded to just about anything else. In the interests of future satisfaction, he was polite. "That would be for you to decide."
She grinned. "You're not taking any chances, are you?"
"Not a one," he replied with a flashing smile. "And whenever you want to stop, you just let me know."
"Because you can go all night?"
"Because I'm interested in pleasing you," he said, unutterably well mannered.
She laughed. "You really are good, Ranelagh."
"We try, ma'am," he replied silkily.
"And with enormous success, I don't doubt."
He wasn't about to answer that. "Later on, let me know." He traced his fingertip up the warmth of her inner thigh, reaching out with his other hand to lift his hairbrush from the dresser top. "I'm always open to suggestions."
She was about to answer, when the pad of his finger touched the nub of her clitoris and a frisson of pleasure refocused her attention. With extreme delicacy, he caressed the silken tissue, over and around, up and down, in a slow, delectable massage, while she leaned back and felt the rapture travel upward and outward in rippling waves. He was painstakingly subtle, his fondling leisured, controlled, as though he understood the finite degrees of bewitchment and female arousal. As though he might have done this once or twice before and after a time, in answer to her softly undulating hips and breathy pleas, he slipped his fingers inside her honeyed warmth and explored the sweet paradise that kept his cock standing stiff.
In very short order, she was quivering under his hands, her swollen tissue weighty with blood, her senses aflame. Aching for consummation, for his primed cock and consummate skill, she turned more demanding. "I want you now," she said as a spoiled heiress might.
He refused, although with infinite politeness. He knew better now. "Let's try this first," he suggested, taking up the teakwood hairbrush, twisting the handle and lifting it away.
"You said-you didn't-have women here." Her breath was gone, lost to lust.
"This is for hiding diamonds." He held out the teak handle so she could see its hollowed core. "It's African, and I don't have women here. It's virgin."
For a flashing moment, she debated his honesty, but frenzied, nearly dizzy for wanting him, her next ravenous pulse beat vanquished unnecessary thought.
"Why don't we see how you like something virgin." The faint curve of his mouth was more a grimace than a smile. "There's a novelty…" Not sure she was listening any longer, not sure himself why her sexual experience seemed to matter so, he turned his attention to an activity sure to please them both. Slipping the smooth wooden tip of the brush handle into her pouty slit, he slid the polished wood around the verge of her throbbing labia with exquisite finesse until she lifted her hips, reaching for more. "Not just yet," he whispered, smoothing his hand over her hip as though gentling a skittish filly. "I want you wetter…"
"Sam!" Half-whimper, half-plea, she tried to brush his hand away.
"Hush, darling," he soothed, his voice velvety, holding her still. "Don't move and I'll give you more."
She instantly quieted, and his erection surged higher, submission a powerful aphrodisiac. He chided himself briefly for such uncharitable impulses, but she was lying before him in all her opulent womanhood, predaceous in her desires, and charity didn't stand a chance against primal lust.