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hijacked the waking dream.
    He was taking her over, controlling her. And yet still he maintained his emotional distance.
    With perfect, impeccable decorum, he suggested, “Perhaps you’d better lie down for a while, Milady?” He let go of her arm but fixed her with his steely blue gaze. “I’ll show Darryl his room and arrange for his things to be unpacked.” He turned to Darryl, “And if you’re hungry, Mrs. Phillips, our housekeeper, will make you a meal.”
    “No! I’m the hostess. I should be looking after Darryl!” Hettie was racked with guilt. Darryl was a stranger in a strange land and she couldn’t just turn him over to someone else straight away. No matter how embarrassed she was or how kind and welcoming Mrs. Phillips was.
    “Thanks, Lady Henrietta…Starr… But it’s all right.” Darryl looked from Hettie to Starr, his smooth, face as calm as if he knew everything about their bizarre arrangement and found it unsurprising. “Please don’t go to any trouble for me. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to lie down for a while myself. I didn’t sleep much last night.”
    “Me neither,” said Hettie, then blushed furiously remembering the reason for her insomnia. Her eyes flicked automatically from man to man, checking for reaction as she quivered like a fawn in the curiously charged atmosphere around them.
    Starr’s face was a handsome, unrevealing mask as usual, but Darryl smiled, his eyes filled with that curious awareness again. He knew why she hadn’t slept, and it was a subject of intense interest to him. His eyes flicked in Starr’s direction for half a second, and it was all Hettie could do not to gasp aloud.
    He knows, the bastard! He knows ! she thought, when she was safe in the privacy of her room and Darryl was in the kind but fussy hands of Mrs. Phillips, the cook and housekeeper, who was Starr’s opposite number and performed all the household duties that he didn’t. Starr himself, faultlessly efficient as ever, was busy with the luggage and the car, and Hettie was glad he was out of the way too. She’d sensed him watching her closely in those last few moments with Darryl, as if monitoring her responses, ticking off the telltale signs of her arousal, and logging the progress of this unexpected new dynamic.
    “Why the hell can’t you be jealous?” she demanded of him in his absence, darting around her room, unable to settle in one place for a second. She wished Starr were with her right now so she could pound her fists against that smooth, golden chest of his in the vain hope that she might force some kind of revelation out of him. Some kind of acknowledgement.
    If you’d just say something, Starr, just give me some kind of sign, I’d send Darryl away this instant. Find someone else to take him in, take care of him…and bloody well educate him!
    Just say something, you blond devil, say something!
    Confused, she threw herself facedown on the bed, trying desperately to calm her whirling thoughts and her surging hormones.
    Last night, on this very same bed, she’d been opened and taken by Starr. Had more sex in a few hours than some women had in a month. But right now, on these fresh crisp sheets and the pristine pink bedspread, she was ready to be taken again. At least that way she and Starr were close, exquisitely joined and intimate, and his body said everything his lack of words didn’t.
    The vision from the car returned again. Herself with her tall, ice god of a servant whose long cock and skillful fingers could thrill her to madness. And the watchful visitor from Italy observing them.
    Moving uneasily, she rubbed her tingling breasts against the counterpane and tried to remember if she’d ever felt like this while Piers was alive. They’d had some wonderful times, but surely she’d never felt as hungry and as sluttish as she did now?
    Maybe I should masturbate? Clear my mind of it all with one huge orgasm. She lifted her hips from the bed, and was just sliding her