He fitted his mouth to hers in a kiss so warm and coaxing that every rational thought vanished from her mind. Fisting his large hands in her hair, he urged her back against the wall of the entrance hall and entered her with his tongue, feasting leisurely until Annabelle was light-headed and dizzy, her fingers clutching the fabric of his coat sleeves. Gradually his mouth shifted away from hers, and he bit softly at the delicate silk of her throat. He murmured things that shocked her, expressing himself not in flowery phrases, but with the raw simplicity of a man whose lust for her knew no limits. “I have no self-control where you’re concerned. Every minute that I’m not with you, all I can think about is being inside you. I hate everything that keeps you separate from me.”

He reached behind her to pull hard at the back of her dress, and she gasped as she felt the plackets of buttons give way, bits of carved ivory scattering everywhere. Smothering the sound with his mouth, Simon tugged the dress from her arms and deliberately stepped on the hem of her gown. The much-abused garment ripped and dropped to the floor. He pulled her against his body, grasping her wrist and guiding it to his loins. Annabelle inhaled deeply as her fingers molded over the heavy breadth of his erection, and her eyes half closed. “I want to make you scream and claw and faint in my arms,” he whispered, his masculine bristle scraping against her skin. “I need to touch you everywhere, inside and outside, as far as I can reach—” He broke off and seized her lips with insistent pressure, suddenly reckless in his desire, as if the taste of her was an exotic stimulant that drove him to frenzy. She was vaguely aware of him fumbling in the pocket of his coat, and then something nicking at the knots of her corset…he had cut them with his knife, she realized, feeling the confining stays release their squeezing pressure around her ribs and waist.

Comprehending that she was about to be ravished in the entrance of her family home, Annabelle stumbled back from him, smiling and shivering. Even in his moments of highest arousal, Simon had always seemed to be governing himself, placing careful restraints on his passion. She had never feared that he would be less than gentle with her…until now. He looked almost savage, his face darkened with an unfamiliar flush. Her heart began to beat in painful thumps, and she moistened her dry lips. The nervous flick of her tongue drew his attention sharply, and he stared at her mouth with startling intensity.

“My bedroom…” she managed to say, turning toward the stairs. She began to ascend the flight with quivery legs. After the first few steps, she felt Simon come up behind her swiftly, catching and turning her in his muscular arms. Before she could make a sound, he lifted her and carried her up the rest of the stairs with almost frightening ease.

He took her to the bedroom, where the sight of his dark form was startling among the pale, timeworn ruffles and tattered lace and the framed needlework samplers that had been sewn by her own childish hands. Undressing her roughly, Simon laid her among the bed linens, which were smooth and slightly stale from having gone unused for so long. His clothes quickly joined her son the floor, then his body slid over hers. She countered his urgency with unequivocal willingness, her arms spreading to hold him, her legs parting easily at his slightest touch. He thrust into her, filling her with a low, thick slide, and she gasped and strained with the effort to accommodate him. Once he had joined her, he became gentler, his urgency transforming into ravaging intensity. It seemed that every part of him had been designed to pleasure her, the satin reaches of hard muscle, the thick fleece that rubbed gently over the tips of her br**sts, the scent and taste that drugged her senses.

Overwhelmed by the devastating intimacy, Annabelle felt tears come to her eyes, and Simon comforted her with soft murmurs even as he pushed deeper, longer, taking more of her than she thought was possible to give. His mouth brushed over hers, absorbing her erratic breaths, as he moved in lush, gauging thrusts that caused all her muscles to tighten and strain. She sobbed against his lips, begging wordlessly for him to relieve her. Relenting at last, he quickened his pace and drove her to a piercing cl**ax, their joining raw and exalted and astonishing in its potency.

Minutes later, as Annabelle lay bonelessly over his body, her cheek nestled on his shoulder, she tried to sort through the bewilderment of her senses. She had never been so satiated, every nerve glazed with pleasure. And yet she had perceived something new in their lovemaking…an unattained height that loomed even beyond what they had just experienced…some unrealized possibility that hovered just out of reach. A feeling…a wish…a tantalizing something that had no name. Closing her eyes, Annabelle basked in the closeness of their bodies, while the elusive promise haunted the air like some benevolent spirit.

Increasingly curious about the project that demanded so much of her husband’s attention, Annabelle asked Simon if she could visit the locomotive works, only to meet with refusals, diversions, and assorted tactics to keep her from going to the site. Realizing that for some reason Simon did not want to take her to the place, she became increasingly determined. “Just a short visit,” she insisted one evening. “All I want is one glimpse of it. I won’t touch anything. For heaven’s sake, after listening to you discuss the locomotive works so often, aren’t I entitled to see it?

“It’s too dangerous,” Simon replied flatly. “A woman has no business going into a place full of heavy machinery and thousand-pound vats of boiling hell-broth—”

“You’ve been telling me for weeks how safe it is, and how there is absolutely no reason for me to worry when you go there…and now you’re saying that it’s dangerous?”