Her hands found their way to his neck, and something sparked in his chest. This was what he'd been uncertain of, and there was a rush of relief when he recognized it. He'd known that he could perform all of the requisite actions to make love to her, because he'd done it before; young men with money did not escape their early twenties without at least one trip to a brothel. What he'd been unsure of was whether it would excite him. The first time he'd been with a woman he'd certainly thought it was exciting, but with the benefit of hindsight he thought it was mostly his nerves about doing something for the first time coming through. That experience couldn't hold a candle to the first time he'd found himself up against a wall in the back corner of the men's retiring room at a party. He'd worried that any subsequent relationship with a woman would be similarly dulled, but this was — nice. Not perfect, because her inexperience was apparent despite her enthusiasm, but pleasant, and the spark was there to be nurtured into something more with time.

(Maybe things would have been simpler if it hadn't been; that certainly would have given him a clearer conscious when it came to Leonid Fisk. And it wasn't as though she would be disappointed, if the spark wasn't there — she had no basis for comparison, so as long as he was kind and attentive and kept his extramarital relationship far from her purview he could certainly make her happy. He could have carried on just as he had been, if he wasn't at all attracted to her. Now the idea of doing so made him feel vaguely guilty towards both parties, as though he might be betraying them both).

"Belle," he returned, pushing these thoughts from his mind for the moment. He let one hand wander down to her breast and leaned in to kiss the back edge of her jaw, then her neck just below her ear. "Let your hair down. We can blame the rain."

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