With a groan, Jamie slipped beneath the covers to take the tender confection between his lips and flick at it with the tip of his tongue.

Bliss whimpered, arching her neck and entangling her fingers in Jamie’s hair as he teased her. Meanwhile, he smoothed away her drawers; it seemed that they’d dissolved into thin air, so easily did he remove them.

She wanted him to take her, then and there, she needed him so badly, but Bliss knew that Jamie would exact the last measure of response from her before giving her complete satisfaction. She wanted vengeance, and when Jamie was poised above her but still withholding himself, she began scooting downward.

She felt the beggar’s badge touch her cheek, warm from its contact with Jamie’s chest, and she kissed her way through coarse down to tease a masculine nipple with her tongue.

Jamie moaned as she repaid him for some of the sweet torment he’d put her through, stiffened as she slid lower and lower beneath him, kissing the taut expanse of his belly. His powerful arms, holding his torso up off the bed, trembled with the effort of remaining in that position.

A primitive groan of triumph and surrender escaped him as Bliss found what she sought. She teased him until he was wild with the need of her, until he was pleading in hoarse, senseless words, and then she progressed back up over his belly and his chest to kiss the underside of his chin.

With a surge of newfound strength, and of passion, Jamie entered Bliss in one powerful motion of his hips. Now, it was her turn to know that tender torment she had subjected him to earlier.

Her fingers grasped frantically at the muscular expanse of his back in an effort to hold him as he withdrew slowly, slowly, until he was barely inside her. “Please,” she whispered.

Her reward was another deep and magnificent stroke, followed by the inevitable, excruciating withdrawal. Again and again, he lunged and withdrew, hovering for long seconds on the brink of leaving Bliss, then delving far inside her again. She was near delirium when Jamie finally permitted her the ecstasy he had been taunting her with, and she was like a wild creature, flinging her head back and forth on the pillow, hurling her hips at him, crying out as glory exploded within and all around her. The light was white and dazzling, like fire sparked by the friction of angels’ wings.

Now Jamie’s pace grew more rapid as he too felt the sweet heat of angelfire. Bliss soothed him with whispers and with her hands, at the same time purposely driving him toward madness, sheathing him in rippling velvet.

In the shattering, seemingly endless moments of his release, Bliss once again found his nipple with her mouth and enjoyed him ruthlessly as he trembled upon her, her name like a war cry on his lips.

When he collapsed beside her, gasping so greedily for air that Bliss feared he would die, she whispered, “Jamie, I love you!”