Games of Pleasure by Julia Ross

equal measure?
    â€œIs lovemaking a duel?” he said at one point, his eyes dazed, his voice jagged.
    The last few candles guttered on the table, casting untrustworthy shadows.
    She lifted her head from his shoulder, aware of the slow stroke of his fingertips down her flank. No man had ever touched her like that before—as if he found her more beautiful than life. Just that one simple caress moved her more profoundly than she could fathom.
    â€œWhy a duel?”
    His gaze shone as dark as the ocean at midnight. “Because the result may be death, perhaps.”
    â€œLa petite mort?”
    â€œNo,” he said, smiling up into her eyes while candlelight glimmered deceptively over the planes of his face. “Not just the little death of climax, but the death of the soul, of the person who once existed.”
    Goose bumps spread over her skin as if winter had eased into the room. “You’re wounded so seriously by a little lovemaking, my lord?”
    He laughed and rolled her onto her back, then took her chin in his thumb and forefinger, playing softly with her lower lip. “I am slain, sweetheart. I’ll never be the same again.”
    Another candle flickered out as he lowered his head to kiss her again, burning away the cold.
    Yet something very deep, something frangible and precarious, seemed to crack in her heart. Had she made a terrible mistake to think that she could pay her debt to him this way and have done? Of course, nothing that had happened between them would harm him. She knew men. She knew how they really viewed sex, whatever flowery phrases they might use at the time. She knew that he’d be glad enough never to see her again, once she told him the truth.
    But for now he was warm and vital and here. Morning was many hours away. Miracle kissed back, ravishing his mouth as she ran her hands down his spine to cup his strong buttocks and pull his body into the core of her heat.
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    SHE woke later to reach for him and knew a moment of stark panic when she thought he had gone. But he had only left their bed to throw open the shutters and stand silhouetted against the night sky. A faint glow gleamed along the outline of a muscled arm and the firm shapes of his naked shoulder and back: a silver glimmer that highlighted the beauty of his young male body, careless and certain in its magnificence.
    As if he sensed the instant she was awake, he turned and strode back to the bed. He slipped between the sheets, then cradled her once again in his arms. Miracle relaxed into his embrace and leaned her head against his shoulder. Her palm lay over his heart. She felt mesmerized by the steady pulse of his strong life.
    The rain had stopped. Framed by the open shutters, a handful of stars hung in a velvet sky. She gazed up at a hazy yellow sphere, as if her mind floated in a haven of peace, as if his embrace were a fairy-tale harbor of safety reached after a long and perilous journey.
    â€œThat must be Jupiter,” she said.
    â€œYou know the planets?” His voice breathed husky and warm against her ear.
    â€œJupiter takes eleven years, three hundred and thirteen days, eight hours, thirty-five minutes, and four seconds to revolve around the sun.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œI was almost exactly that age when I first learned it, so I remembered.”
    His fingers smoothed over her hair, feather-soft strokes at the temple. “You read books about astronomy before you were twelve?”
    â€œNo, but I saw the sky through a telescope and was told all about it. Jupiter has four moons. Saturn has seven. To learn about the stars was like a revelation to me, a miracle. Before that the sky was just a spangled quilt holding down the earth. Afterward it was as if I could lose myself in that huge infinity whenever I needed to.”
    â€œDo you still wish to lose yourself?”
    She sat up, but his hand only slid down to rest loosely on her hip, his fingers dark