In a rare show of feminine uncertainty, she glanced away as if to gather her courage, then she looked up at him with an embarrassed, seductive smile that he might have found irresistible had it not been immediately followed by a line of questioning so outrageous that it violated even his own lax standards of acceptable decorum between the sexes. "What was it about Emily Lathrop that drew you to her bed?"

His instant aversion to that question was completely eclipsed by his negative reaction to her next. "I mean, was there anything she did with you-or for you-or to you, that I do not do when we're in bed together?"

"As a matter of fact," he replied in a lazy drawl, "there was one thing Emily did that I particularly liked."

In her eagerness to discover another woman's secret, Helene overlooked the sarcasm edging his voice. "What did she do that you particularly liked?"

His gaze dropped suggestively to her mouth. "Shall I show you?" he asked, and when she nodded, he bent over her, bracing his hands on either side of her pillow so that his waist and hips were only inches above her head. "You're absolutely certain you wish to take part in a demonstration?" he asked in a deliberately seductive whisper.

Her emphatic nod was playful and inviting enough to take the edge off his annoyance, leaving him caught somewhere between amusement and exasperation. "Show me what she did that you particularly liked," she whispered, sliding her hands up his forearms.

Stephen showed her by putting his right hand firmly over her mouth, startling her with a "demonstration" that matched his smiling explanation: "She refrained from asking me questions like yours about you or anyone else, and that is what I particularly liked."

She gazed back at him, her blue eyes wide with frustrated chagrin, but this time she did not fail to notice the implacable warning in his deceptively mild voice.