Bliss pushed Jamie’s battered leather hat away so that she could plunge the fingers of both hands into his rich, brown-sugar hair and moaned as he drew away from her lips to attend one swollen nipple. Meanwhile, with his other hand, he was lifting her skirts.

Jamie wanted to draw their lovemaking out to excruciating lengths, but Bliss would not permit that. Her need of him was too desperate and too great.

She opened his belt and then the buttons of his trousers, freeing him to her caress. He drew in a harsh breath as she stroked him, then whispered, “You win, Duchess. You win.”

In one forceful thrust he had entered her, and Bliss did not allow him his usual lingering retreats; her hands clasped his buttocks, and each time he would have withdrawn from her, she drove him back to the very core of her. He seemed, in fact, to be touching her soul.

All the same, it was Bliss setting the pace, and she loved the joyous triumph of that. Her release came in a series of sweet, rippling waves, while Jamie’s, occurring moments later, was almost brutal in its intensity, buckling his powerful body as though it were no more than a leaf in the wind.

He sank to cover Bliss’s lips with his own, but he was breathing too hard to kiss her properly, and he finally raised his head in glorious defeat. She hadn’t realized she was crying until she saw the fact reflected in his eyes.

“Duchess—”

She was shaking her head wildly from side to side. “Don’t say anything, Jamie,” she pleaded. “Please, don’t.”

He honored her request, giving her the distance she needed, turning away to adjust his clothing so that she could straighten hers in private.

Finally, she felt ready to speak. “I love you, Jamie,” she said, to the broad expanse of his back. He turned, slowly, to face her. “But I won’t share you with Peony Ryan or anyone else, and I won’t sit in this house waiting for you to put your boots under my bed.” She held up her left hand, and the beautiful emerald, with its circlet of diamonds, twinkled in the light. “If I’m going to wear this ring, I want to be a real wife, not a mistress.”

Jamie looked baffled. He retrieved his hat and put it on, and Bliss knew that he was stalling. “I’m not sure I know what you mean by that, Duchess,” he said quietly. “You’ve been me wife, in every sense of the word, for some time now. And I’ve explained about Peony again and again—”

Bliss shook her head, her throat so constricted that she could barely speak. Everything, everything depended on Jamie’s understanding. “I’ve been your lover, not your wife. Once your needs were satisfied, you were willing to pat me on the head and put me back on the shelf until the next time.”

She saw his jaw clamp down tight before he looked away from her and said, “There are places where a woman doesn’t belong.”