Most country inns cultivate romance with pretty decor and candlelit dinners.

Not so at Auberge aux Nuits de Rêves, an unusual inn in Ste. Agathe des Monts. Here, clients are encouraged to skip the fancy foreplay and get right down to intimacy.

This inn is designed to stimulate your sex life through fantasies about being history's most renowned couples - Napoleon and Josephine, Caesar and Cleopatra, or even Bill and Monica. Those torrid twosomes were driven by passion, lust or love and all had sizzling affairs. Now you can, too.

Nuits de Rêves is an unassuming cottage, seemingly a typical country inn. It is a large 1950s pale yellow house on a quiet residential street. Out back, its lawn reaches down to the shore of Lac des Sables, Ste. Agathe's focal point for sports and family events. However, the conventional facade disguises an eight-room pleasure palace with themed love nests, each a hotbed of erotic fantasy.

Take the Tarzan and Jane suite, for example. You are correct if you imagine that you are going to have a swinging time. This hotel room is decorated to look like a hot, steamy jungle hut, complete with a leopard-print bedspread, a straw-thatched ceiling and artificial tropical plants. Ropes hang from the rafters, probably so that a macho guy can climb the ersatz jungle vines and swoop down to capture his Jane.

There is more swinging in the Eros and Psyche suite, a tribute to the antics of the Greek god of love and his paramour. This room has a hammock, described on the Auberge's website as a "love swing." Load the DVD player with an erotic film like Love Elixir or Double Pleasure, and you are good to go. The Romeo and Juliette room has less suggestive decor, perhaps to reflect the chaste affair of Shakespeare's two young lovers. It is designed to look like an Elizabethan castle, complete with stone walls, tapestry-covered chairs and wrought-iron beds.

Auberge aux Nuits de Rêves sounds a little unorthodox, but it is mainstream enough to have been recognized by Quebec Tourism as the Laurentians' top inn in 2009. All of the rooms have double air-jet bathtubs, flat-screen televisions and fireplaces - six of them are wood-burning, if you like your hot romance traditional.

"Our theme is cocooning for a couple," said Christian Simon, who owns the Nuit de Rêves with his wife, Carol McCann. "It's a place where two people can rediscover themselves intimately. People run all week and they come here to break their routines.

"If they are not in love when they arrive, they will be when they leave."

For the morning after the big night, Simon delivers a full breakfast to your room. It's all cooked to order and you have a restaurant-style choice of eggs and bacon, crepes or French toast, with fresh fruit and coffee.

Nuit de Rêves also has a boutique with wares like bubble bath and sea salts as well as a choice of adult games and sex toys. Says Simon: "Exxx-citation is a variation on Snakes and Ladders and Questions de Sexe is a little like Jeopardy, with an exciting 'daily double.' "

One of Nuits de Rêves's rooms, the Bill and Monica Suite, has a sofa-bed for a third guest. That means you can bring a friend and play at being Bill, Monica and Hillary. Here, a threesome might not be a crowd.

IF YOU GO

Ste. Agathe is about one hour and 10 minutes from Montreal via Highway 15 north to Exit 86.

Auberge aux Nuits de Rêves: 888-326-5042, www.reve.ca, Ste. Agathe des Monts. Not recommended for children.

Price: Most weekends and holidays require a two-night stay. Rate for one night's lodging with a full breakfast, $159-209, for two, per night.

Fantasy Package: adds adult film rental, sparkling cider and rose petals for the bath, $201-251 for two.

Spa Package: adds to the B&B rate a visit to Spa Ofuro in Morin Heights, and two 30-minute massages.

Cocooning Package: a two-night deal, Sun.-Thurs., with a choice of dinner at Restaurant Girard, Spa Ofuro or a massage.