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It was not precisely the word to describe Etienne's present disposition. His eyes shone with a green and glowing fire.

"Let's see," she said glancing down at his distended erection and then back up to his face, "if I had decided after all, to say… experiment… as a virgin, titillated by the sight of you, how exactly would I place that very large…" Daisy smiled, swaying gently, so her warmth and dampness slid over his skin. "Could you help me," she added, coy and teasing, when she knew he couldn't, "… or at least give me directions?"

He shut his eyes briefly against his throbbing ache of desire.

"Untie me," he repeated very quietly. "The games are over."

"Don't you like to be bound?" Daisy's voice was light.

His was not. "No," he said.

"Did the women you entertained in this bed like it?" She shouldn't have asked, but the words were there suddenly when she thought of all the newly filled containers of perfumes and oils and unguents in a bed a century old and she couldn't stop them, even while she thought: How could it matter in any event if there had been a thousand?

"I don't want to fight," the Duc said, steeling himself against the intensity of his passion. "Now, please, untie me."

"How many?" she asked, driven by feelings she couldn't control.

And his temper showed at last. "A thousand," he said, as if he could read her mind.

She slapped him.

In a galvanic surge of power his right arm snapped free and then his left, tearing the welded gold rings from their moorings inside the chambers behind the hammered gold doors. Reaching down in a single powerful lunge, tumbling Daisy aside, his hands closed over the silk ropes stretching between his ankles and the fluted decorative footboard and with a strength augmented by fury, he wrenched the fastenings from the metal of the bed. In a flashing second more, Daisy was flat on her back, covered with the weight of his body. "And now," the Duc said very quietly, "we'll begin on a thousand and one."

She struggled against his weight and strength while he swiftly slid first one of his wrists and then the other through the detached silk cords, kicking his feet loose from the trailing ropes.

Reaching out, his fingers closed on a silk cord and he yanked it from its spooled compartment, unreeling its length in a sweep of braided azure. Effortlessly brushing aside her fiery defense, he lifted Daisy the scant inches necessary to slide the blue tie under her, looped it swiftly around her waist, knotted it with a jerk of his wrist and pulled another rope spinning loose from its reel to repeat his procedure in lightning seconds with a second cord of persimmon silk.

"There now," he said, lifting his weight completely free, moving back on his heels to survey her lying trussed where he had so recently lain. His smile was pleasant when he added, "I wouldn't move too much. Those slip knots tighten under pressure."

"Untie me, damn… you!" Daisy vehemently protested. But her voice caught at the last as the rope cut sharply into her waist.

"Relax, darling," Etienne softly suggested, slipping his finger under the knot to ease the restraining loop. "I wouldn't want to leave marks."

"The voice of authority speaking?" Daisy's icy voice matched the chill in her eyes.

"Only in terms of breaking polo ponies, darling, despite your insinuations." His smile was angelic. "I'm careful with their skin too. Although," he added, reaching out to touch her, "yours is—" He caught her raking fingers just short of his face, her second hand intercepted with equal ease, his voice unruffled as he finished, "more precious."

With deft speed and a cheerfully facile apology, her wrists were tied together with one of the ropes the Duc had torn from the bed. Loosely attaching them to the silk cords binding her waist, he quietly said, his voice like velvet, "Now then, why don't we familiarize you more intimately with the Sultan's toys. For educational purposes only," he added in a whisper, taking a dildo of exquisite aquamarine glass imbedded with spun-gold threads from a leather case lined in blue velvet. "Or what was it you said? For… practice?"

"I'm sorry I didn't untie you when you asked."

He grinned. "Is that the attorney negotiating? Look at the color next to your skin," he went on, placing the sleek glittering glass on her stomach, ignoring her overture, smarting though he wouldn't admit it, over her remark about Absarokee equivalents of the Sultan's aquamarine toy. "This one's larger too. You might enjoy it more."

"I don't like this." Her dark brows were drawn into a scowl.

"You will. This has the endorsement of a great number of harem beauties."

"And your lovers too?"

"I wonder if this would be an appropriate time to discuss those young men you've introduced to pleasure. Although personally, I've always preferred leaving the instruction of virgin females to their husbands. Tell me, do you find a young man's eagerness enough to compensate for his lack of experience?" His words were uttered with a mildness contrary to the heat of his temper when he thought of Daisy with other men.

"Eagerness has its charms." She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing the truth.

"How does it compare with this," he murmured, sliding the glass dildo down her stomach, over her painted labia with exquisite deliberation… so anticipation of its penetration was tantalizingly prolonged, "… in terms of charm." The smooth rounded glass invaded slightly, the pressure of the Duc's hand slight. Daisy inched backward but he followed relentlessly. The sea-green cylinder glided into her heated wet interior, sleekly, easily… deeply despite her small squirming protest.

"I'd suggest restricting your movements to a minimum, darling. This hand-blown glass is fragile," he quietly advised.

Daisy instantly calmed.

"You see. Anyone can be tamed." His smile was smug as he pressed the dildo upward a fraction more, forcing her heated passage wider.

And she felt her muscles contract with shimmering sensation, felt the slick lubricant of desire flow, oozing profusely in cool minute drops down her thighs, felt the heat of desire flare higher—inundating her body with peaking pleasure. She shouldn't be responding to the Duc's insolent invasion and domination; she should ignore somehow the rapturous feeling engendered by the Sultan's Venetian toy. But she couldn't and he knew it, damn him. Because all the women before couldn't ignore it either.

"Damn you," she whispered.

But she didn't say stop, he noted, easing the green glass out slightly to test her interest, wanting too to command her body's response. As if it broadened his authority over her life.

"No…" she moaned very low in her throat, closing her legs around his hand, raising her hips to follow the sensation of pleasure eluding her.

"No, you don't want this or no… what? Tell me," he whispered, pressing for an answer with a perverse, ungovernable resentment for all the men in her past who had garnered this same tempestuous response.

"I want…" she hesitated, weighing her nonexistent alternatives. She could deplore the women in his past or envy them or hate them but she hadn't Etienne's restraint. "… I want… you," she softly implored.

"For someone who likes to play teasing games…" He slid the dildo back in, the green glass coated with the pearly essence of her need.

"I'm sorry… Lord, Etienne, I'm dying… please let me feel you…" Her dark eyes lifted to his. "I'm begging."

He was pouring oil into a small brazier.

Her eyes opened wider. "What are you doing?"

Striking a match, he lit the oil. "Taking off your paint." Covering the shallow vessel, he put out the flame, then pouring a few drops into his palm, he rubbed his hands together. With glistening fingertips he massaged her nipples, smoothing the oil with sensuous pressure over their rouged tips.

She squirmed against the bewitching enchantment, rapture. racing downward to the distended quivering flesh surrounding the Sultan's impaled toy.

"Careful," he cautioned. "Lie still."

And she quivered under his hands, so close to orgasm with the dildo pressed deep inside her, all she felt was fire racing through her blood.

His hands moved downward to spread warmed oil over her rouged pouty labia, smoothing the soft tissue against the hard green glass. She shuddered as a hot inexpressible urgency built inside her. Wiping away the scarlet paint with a linen towel, he bent his head and ran his tongue over the taut flesh encircling the harem toy.

And with a gasping incoherent cry, she climaxed.

Lifting his head, he raised himself so his face was close to hers. "Are you satisfied?"

Her lashes came up slowly, sensuality vivid in the darkness of her eyes. "No," she whispered, the pulsing between her legs strong, steady, urgent still.

"No? You climaxed."

"I want you," she whispered, her pulse pounding in her ears, wanton need still at fever pitch.

"In here?" His fingers stroked her slick pouting lips, sliding over the stretched tender flesh, catching the pearly fluid discern able on the verdant glass.

She nodded, a shiver of uncontrollable desire vibrating through her body as he touched his fingertip to his mouth, licking away a drop of her essence.

He gazed at her for a moment over his raised hand, his expression shuttered. While he might deplore his need for her, he couldn't ignore the intensity of his feelings. He was as much in thrall to her as she was to the passion driving her impulses.

The sensation was lust, pure and simple, he recognized with a sybarite's experience, but more as well for Daisy filled his mind and senses, overwhelming the ordinary rhythm of his life so completely he'd lost touch with the measured order of his existence.

His hands moved toward her, closing over her shoulders as if she were his rightful possession, his frustration evident in the cool pressure of his fingers and palms as they drifted down her shoulders and breasts. He stopped his progress to test the weight of her full breasts for a moment against some personal vetting before continuing his journey downward, cupping her tied hands briefly before slipping his hands between her legs. For an infinitesimal moment he paused with his palms hard on her thighs, as if debating who was in fact most overcome. She saw the minute grimace, unveiled only briefly before he abruptly extracted the glass dildo, tossed it aside, and untied the knots at her wrists and waist without comment.

The feel of his hands subtly altered, a new tenderness replacing the previous repressed violence. Etienne's fingers drifted over Daisy's face and throat and shoulders as though none of the explosive violence had occurred, as though he hadn't ruptured metal welding, or artfully exacted his revenge for her teasing games, as though the sweet and pastoral harmony of the shepherds and shepherdesses on the walls and ceiling were echoed in their hindered and difficult relationship. His mouth followed moments later where his hands had led, his lips and tongue tasting her as if in appreciation. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry for everything; I'm sorry for the women too," he apologized, kissing her eyelids gently, "because it angers you."

His tone was wrenching in its heartfelt sorrow, his need utterly exposed.

When Daisy gazed up at him in sudden wonderment at the simple apology, he softly added, "You're the first I've ever loved."

A captivating sudden joy shone from the darkness of her eyes, his words vindication to her unreasoning immoderate jealousies. "I'm deep in love myself," she softly whispered and reaching up, she kissed him on the finely drawn curve of his mouth. "And. I'll try," she went on in a small voice, her smile playful, happiness gloriously exultant, "not to hit you again."

The Duc sighed, his nostrils flaring gently. "We could both develop some moderation." His smile was kind; he understood her jealousy with his own so new and alarming. "I'm mad for you, Daisy," he whispered, light-headed with desire, stroking the smoothness of her thigh. It was no excuse for his behavior, but an explanation perhaps.

His hand was large, warm, and the gentle pressure he exerted traveled back on pathways of sensation to her brain and fingertips and toes and deep inside to the trembling center of her being. Daisy arched up against his hand and body, her arms sliding around his neck, her mouth reaching up for his.

When he slid gently inside her, his eyes shut briefly as her sweetness closed around him. He no longer had control over his existence. This strange, beautiful woman from a culture as different from his as day was from night, held his life in her hands.

My world is forever changed, Daisy thought, by my compelling need for this man who with a touch or a simple look upsets the placid reasonableness of my life. Desire infused her mind, blazing hot, overcoming sense and sensibility alike. It only mattered they were together and they held each other in blissful content, moving in a sensuous lazy rhythm of seductive arousal, the afternoon sun golden on the shepherds and shepherdesses, and on the Duc and his lady. They spoke in kisses and smiles, they touched with a heated magic, they loved each other with a completeness neither had understood existed. Their lips met, and their hearts—and in the end, with something that could only be called violence, they found a common melting point in paradise.