Well, the Countess of Bridlingham certainly looked a little different now to how she was the last time he saw her at a garden party somewhere, he mused. Back then she was nibbling crustless cucumber sandwiches and sipping lemonade, while holding court over her small circle of sycophantic lady friends. And glowering at him from a distance, because he'd once called her "a mean-tempered baggage".

Two of the men knelt on the bed and felt their way across the sheet toward her, while she lay cringing with her eyes tightly shut. As he watched, they removed her drawers, but left her stockings in place. They parted her legs and still she lay like a slab of meat on a butcher's table.

The third man moved between her thighs and began stroking them, his hands sweeping gradually toward her vulva. She seemed frozen, a dead thing. Didn't look as if she was enjoying it. Or feeling anything much at all, except mild disgust for the indignity to which she'd been reduced. As the first two men proceeded to lick and fondle her breasts, their colleague did the same below the triangle of dark pubic hair. His head disappeared from view.

Finally the countess opened her eyes, stared up at the ceiling and parted her lips, but she remained silent and rigid.

Mason felt Rowena moving beside him. He reached out and put his arm around her waist, before she might slip away. She was warm, breathing softly. A woman awake, alive, intelligent and sensual—very different to her client.

Inside the neighboring room, the men turned the countess over onto her belly. She looked ready to protest, but then must have remembered her necessary silence. Probably the first time she'd ever had to shut up, he mused. The third man still licked her pussy, but now worked his way up between her dimpled cheeks too. Up and down he went, diligently working to make her moist and ready.

He would like to have seen them spank her, but that did not seem to be on their agenda. They worked quickly, efficiently to prepare her for penetration, wasting little time on foreplay.

Mason turned away from the peephole and looked at Rowena.

"They don't cater for her pleasure much," he whispered.

"She's there to conceive, not to be pleasured," she whispered back.

"Don't these women ever get enjoyment from it?"

"Some do. Often against their intentions." There was a sudden twinkle in her eye. He'd never seen it before, and it drew him in —away from the scene through the peephole.

"You mean as you did?" He hoped she referred to her adventures with him, no one else. Again he'd looked around and seen no sign of Mr. Grey. She could not have been very fond of her deceased husband to keep nothing as a reminder, not even in her bedchamber.

Thinking she might push away, he tightened his arm around her. "Well, woman? Did you know pleasure with me?"

She considered his lips before she replied, "Hmm."

"Would it kill you to give me a yes or a no?"

Just then, from the other room, the countess finally exhaled a high-pitched cry. Rowena nudged him aside to look in on the action. He moved behind her.

From the grunting and squeaking now proceeding beyond the wall, he guessed the starchy countess was getting a firm rutting. His own arousal mounted rapidly, but that was caused by Rowena's scent and her closeness, not by what he'd witnessed. He felt his heart racing, as it would in the midst of a polo match, with the air rushing by his face. Slowly he brushed his hand against the bustle of her gown, picturing the firm curve of her buttocks beneath. How he loved making those cheeks blush and tremble.

"Rowena," he whispered, "you have a gorgeous arse. A perfect arse, all pert and round and...delicious."

She was shaking, he realized. He stepped back, wondering if he was about to get slapped again, but when she turned to face him, letting the silhouette fall over the peephole, she was chuckling, trying not to let the sound out.

"Is it me you missed, Radcliffe, or my arse?" she managed hoarsely, the odd spark still twinkling in her rich brown eyes.

He scratched his chin. "Both." It was getting hard for him to breathe suddenly, for her eyes were gleaming with wanton mischief and he knew she was sexually aroused. As she leaned back against the writing desk, her spine arched, pushing her breasts up and her bottom out. She licked her lips and he remembered how she'd sucked his cock with that mouth—an expert at it, shockingly enough. "I missed your mouth too," he replied. "I didn't realize how much I'd missed it, until you crept into my room while I was asleep at Roscommon's house and milked my cock dry with those rosy lips."

She had the gall to look innocent. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, yes you bloody well do."

Blink, blink, blink, went her long lashes. "You must have been dreaming, Radcliffe."

"Then I was dreaming while awake." He raised his hand to cup her cheek and then stroked his thumb across her lower lip, exerting pressure until she opened her mouth slightly. He ran the tip of his broad thumb across her teeth. "Because I was inside you. I wanted to make it last forever. It felt too good. But you made me come. Wickedly, brazenly, you forced me to orgasm."

"As you did to me, many times." She flushed.

He chuckled, low. "Aha, a confession of guilt at last."

Apparently she decided not to argue any further. With a shrug, she whispered, "I wanted to get my own back on you."

"No woman has ever had the upper hand with me before."

"I suppose," she paused, looking up at him, her velvety pupils enlarged, "you'd like to spank me for making you spend against your will."

Mason swallowed, watching the tip of her pink tongue sweep out again across the lower lip. "What do you think, woman?" he growled crossly.