“It’s unwise - they’ll see us,” she says, somewhat breathlessly, since he’s just shoved her up against the wall with more force than was perhaps intended, but then, he’s never been one to take it slow, not when they can have this instead, the risk and the thrill of it slamming through his bloodstream with every heartbeat.

“Let them watch,” he says, his lips at her throat, hands tangled in her skirts, “or are you ashamed of me, my sweet sister?”

She laughs, low in her throat and delicious, the way she never laughs for the other men who vie for her, tripping over themselves in their haste; only for him does she laugh like this, the real Susan revealed in words pressed to his ear: “Never, never, never.”