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felt the hard length of him penetrate her again in one smooth thrust. His hands slid beneath her buttocks, lifting her into him.
    Merlin's body answered with a surge of excitement. She knew what to expect now, knew where the deepening rhythm led. It was as wondrous as any discovery she had ever made. In her intensity she abandoned shyness, the wing design forgotten along with the rest of the world. When he kissed her, she kissed him back. His tongue swept into her mouth, and his arms tightened around her, drawing her with him as he rolled onto his back.
    He took longer this time. Much longer. He pulled the blouse and camisole off her and caressed her shoulders and neck and breasts. Over and over, Merlin trembled on the verge of that lightning explosion. She worked clumsily at his shirt buttons and tugged at his cravat, baring the smooth, hard muscle of his chest and throat. A faint sheen of perspiration turned his skin to shadowed marble in the deep twilight.
    He pulled her down until she could taste the salt of excitement on him. “Merlin.” His voice was breathless at the base of her throat, his hands sending sparks from her breasts to her belly. Suddenly he clasped her to him hard and rolled atop her again. She heard her name in broken, whispered repetition, and then it was lost in a low moan, in his fingers gripping her arms and his face buried in her hair.
    She thought for a wild moment that they might die of this, that the breath would never return to her lungs and the exquisite agony would burn her to ashes. But she lived through the climax, through the burst of lightning and the long fall, and a moment later felt his thrust, prolonged and shuddering, and a sound from deep in his throat that had no meaning beyond ecstasy.
    The daylight faded, and with the last of it, Ransom's illusions. He lay with his arms around her, staring at the deep shadow of her hair against the pillow. He felt, for a few moments, suspended: hung between the brittle heights of elation and the strangling, sickening swamp of horror.
    It was a peculiar experience, as if he saw himself—a man, with a woman, lying sated on a bed in the gathering dark. He knew himself content. He knew happiness; that much was left of the wild tide of emotion that had swept him to this moment. He knew that the quiet rise and fall of her breasts beneath his hand gave him pleasure. Simple pleasure, heart-deep. A satisfaction he had never in his life felt so completely.
    But that was the man on the bed. The man who had taken a woman as if he owned her, when he did not. Who had just violated every sense of decency and honor Ransom had upheld for a lifetime. The man lay there, in possession of an innocence still lovely in destruction—able to feel the smooth curve of her arm, to smell the warm scent of dust and love on her skin.
    Ransom hated that man. Betrayal burned through his veins, turned to raw anguish as the last moment of unreality passed and he became that man.
    "No,” he groaned in helpless fury. The crime was committed; he had done it. He had—the man who should have protected her. His duty, his morality, his honor as a gentleman...
    She turned toward him, and in the deep dusk he could see just enough to know that she smiled. Remorse gutted him. He wanted to howl with it. He laid his head back and covered his face, pressing his fingers into his skull until he ached with the strain of holding back his cry of rage.
    "Mr. Duke,” she whispered, and touched his arm.
    He grunted, unable to command his tongue.
    "Mr. Duke,” she said, a little louder. “I know I don't get out much, but really...” There was a tone of wonder in her voice. “I don't believe I've ever met anyone quite like you."
    Ransom began to laugh. He laughed until the bed shook with it, until she sat up and began to make ineffectual attempts to relieve him—little fluttering pats on his back and singsong “There nows,” as if he were weeping instead.
    And he wanted to weep. He could not