Bella's ivory thighs looked plumper in a position of repose and he adored caressing them above her stocking tops. He adored, too, the petulant look on Bella's face while she permitted his tentative caresses, keeping her face strained away from his own.

'There were faces all about her like pale petals when she fell', Easton said.

'What?' Bella asked in an irritated tone. 'You can't work me up; you know you mustn't. No, don't!' she insisted, face still averted, while he sought simultaneously to reach her mouth with his. Her thighs clamped together, trapping his errant fingers in the course of their insinuating journey towards her nest. Withdrawing them in the slow manner of drawing a cork from a bottle, Easton tickled the plump Venus mound that her split drawers revealed, but received no response. Bella lay placid but cautious. Her tongue was Mary's tongue-or she wished it had been.

'She might come up', Bella said suddenly, referring to Letitia.

'No', Easton replied. This time he seized her chin and brought her full lips to just touch his own so that they mumbled together, words tickling against words.

'Might', Bella said as though she were conceding the possibility of his victory over her. As he shifted closer, so she felt the hugeness of his weapon thrumming through his trousers against her stockinged legs. Her eyes half closed at the intimate touch.

'We are on the brink. Are we not often, always, on the brink? Come, darling, part your legs. Love is a fluttering of wings, a body leaning closer in the dark', Easton murmured, misquoting a Roman poet whose name he had forgotten.