“He knew how to touch her, how hard to thrust, when to roll his hips, when and how to angle himself so she could not only feel him inside her, but rubbing against her clitoris, brushing, sensitizing. The fiend knew how to make her agony last, how to suspend it until he would allow her to reach out for it and surrender.”

“Black would trust her with his secrets. He would protect hers. But did she trust him with her heart? Could she?She thought of Wendell, and no longer felt any remorse for her feelings. She did not love him. Her heart had been taken two years ago, by a stranger she thought she had conjured up in the atmosphere of her imagination.He had asked her to trust him—and there was only one way she knew how. She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out the crimson gown.No regrets. No seduction. No scandal. Only love.”

“[Jane] “You know how I feel about you. About what we share. I did not mean it in such a way.”“No?” he whispered wickedly, his gaze finding hers, latching on with strength and determination. “I don‟t believe you. I think you had better show me, Jane.” She kissed him, slow, lazily, her lips moving over his mouth, slowly winding, becoming deeper, sensual, and then slowly her tongue penetrated his mouth, touching his tongue, flicking around the tip of his. He groaned, wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed her up against his bulging phallus that felt so large and hard. Her core ached, needing that deep inside her.”

“I am Kian.” “Mercy ” she replied. Swallowing hard she forced her gaze away from him. She was being too bold in her perusal but she could not stop looking at him. “Kindness ” he whispered. Their eyes locked and Mercy felt a jolt of some foreign but not unwelcome sensation pierce her. “I could use some of you”he said thoughtfully as his cool gaze devoured her. “Most definitely I could use you.”He rose and walked around the pond perusing her body as he came to stand beside her. “The milk of human kindness how sweet the taste.”He actually licked his lips and Mercy shivered her core heating and wetting. Then he lowered himself until they were eye to eye. “I believe I could drink you dry.”

“Tilting her face back, he looked into her eyes. They were unfocused, unable to settle on his face. And the same terrifying feeling stole over him once again. An acute fear—a final, painful realization—that her world was one of utter blackness. At last he realized the magnitudeof her blindness. He couldn’t imagine never seeing her again.It was like a death, the inevitable conclusion when someone was gone. Why it should hit him now, after all these years, he could not fathom, but it was there, and finally he understood her private hell. He’d told her he would die without sight. Selfish, arrogant bastard, concernedwith his own needs, his own perversions to watchhimself pleasure her, to study her as she accepted him, to watch their bodies joined. How carelessly he had said that, not thinking of Elizabeth and what she would die for. What she wanted in this life.”

“No, by God, you’ve accused me of coldness, but howcan you, when you can feel how hot my body is againstyours? You’ve said I have none of the red-blooded passionof my sex, but you don’t know. You,” he gasped, pressingagainst her with a hard thrust of his hips, “you will know it—the depth of my passion. But you will.”

“She saw how he was staring at it, the bright red hue beneath her bonnet. She could not bear to see the way he was looking at her—right through her—without seeing her. He did not see a woman. He did not see Jane, the woman he had been so passionate with two days before. He saw… Jane swallowed hard and lookedaway, hating the weakness of her spirit. She was more than this, a wilting flower. She was stronger than this. But damn it, this hurt.It hurt because he was the man responsible for making her burn. For making her feel like a woman. It hurt because it had been a trick. An illusion. And it hurt most of all because he did not see her, the woman she was behind the unfashionable spectacles and garish hair.”