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sip of champagne.
    Returning to the table, Johnny struck a sulphur match, set the candles aflame, then turned out the gaslight chandelier overhead, casting the intimate room into soft romantic candlelight.
    “Better?” he inquired softly, looking down at her.
    “Perfect,” Nevada replied.
    Dropping back into his chair, Johnny corrected her. “Not quite perfect.”
    “It’s not?”
    “No. You’re too far away.” He pushed his chair back from the table. “Come here, darlin’.”
    Nevada felt her pulse speed. Quickly she took a big gulp of champagne, rose, and circled the table. When she stood directly before him Johnny smiled up at her, slowly put his hands to her small waist, and felt his fingers overlap in back, his thumbs touch in front. Grinning, he languidly slid one thumb down until it rested atop the small indentation of her naval.
    “God, you’re a tiny little thing,” he said, his black eyes warming with desire.
    “God, you’re a great big thing,” Nevada retorted saucily, her naturally impudent spirit enhanced by the champagne she’d consumed.
    Johnny Roulette loved it. Laughing heartily, he pulled her between his spread knees, wrapped his arms tightly around her, and pressed his face into the softness of her satin-draped bosom.
    Deeply inhaling her sweet fragrance, he said into the softness beneath his cheek, “That I am, sweetheart.” He lifted his head, boldly kissed the bare swell of her breast above the shimmering blue satin bodice, and Nevada trembled. His warm lips against the bare flesh, he said, “I don’t know …” He inclined his dark head toward a closed interior door. “What I have in mind may be impossible for us.”
    Weak and dizzy from the wine and the man and shocked at the frightening heat his lips were spreading through her entire body, Nevada had no idea what he was talking about. But she was certain that nothing was impossible for Johnny Roulette and her. So she said breathlessly, looking with wonder down upon the dark head bent to her, “We can do anything we set our minds to.”
    That brought more liquored laughter from Johnny. Giving her bare bosom one last kiss, he lifted his head, gently urged her down to sit on his left knee, and laced his long fingers around her waist. “Baby, it’s our bodies I’m talking about. I’m twice your size.”
    “What difference does that make?” asked Nevada, totally baffled.
    “None. You’re right, it makes no difference,” said Johnny. “I’ve never objected to a female assuming the superior position.” And he promptly envisioned this tiny raven-haired charmer in bed, gloriously naked and seated astride him. “Matter of fact, it might be fun for you to be the dominant one right from the beginning.” Grinning, he reached up, plucked a tiny blue satin bow from Nevada’s dark curls, looked at it intently for a minute, and dropped it on the table. “Kiss me, Nevada.”
    Nevada stared at him. Superior? Dominant ? What in blazes was he talking about? He was not making a great deal of sense but his full sensual lips beneath that sleek black mustache certainly were tempting. She had wanted to kiss this big handsome man since the first moment she saw him.
    And after all, it wasn’t as though she had never been kissed before. Why, only last winter she had been kissed by Jimmy Bradford, the young hand her daddy had hired temporarily, and before that she had been kissed by a planter’s son, Harry Douglas, when she and her papa had delivered racehorses to the Douglas plantation below Baton Rouge.
    But they had both kissed her.
    Was Johnny Roulette bashful? Was that why he was asking her to kiss him? He seemed so confident, so sure of himself. Could it possibly be that this big handsome man did not know how to kiss?
    Touched, Nevada swallowed hard, put her fingers into the thick wavy hair at the sides of Johnny’s head, and lowered her tightly closed lips to his.

5

    Johnny Roulette did know how to kiss.
    Nevada found out that