“Ummmm,” he said, and his breath was warm against the nipple he’d chosen.

Arching her back, Bliss closed her eyes and rested her fingers lightly in Jamie’s hair. As he suckled, she purred in tranquil rapture.

After a delectable interval, Bliss began to feel a new heat in her loins, and she could only imagine what Jamie was feeling. She wanted to raise him to the same fierce level of need and response that she had reached.

She unfastened his belt buckle and the buttons of his trousers, and freed him to caresses that set him to trembling. He drew in a harsh, rasping breath when she tested him in a tentative way, groaned when she became greedy. Jamie submitted as long as he could bear before taking Bliss by the waist and setting her astride him. His eyes, full of passion and challenge, never broke contact with hers as she slowly, proudly admitted him to her body.

Never before had Jamie allowed Bliss to set the pace and tone of their lovemaking for so long, but that day he did. She saw the muscles in his throat move convulsively as she subjected him to sweet torment by rising and falling, rising and falling upon his manhood. She rode his magnificence as though it were a mythical winged steed.

Somewhere high in the clouds, however, Bliss lost her way and was blinded by the mists that surrounded her. Resting her hands on Jamie’s shoulders, she flung back her head and cried out as elation found her and sent her spiraling into an exploding sun. Jamie followed close behind, feasting feverishly on her breast even as his powerful hips were stilled in a final, savage spasm of release.

Bliss rested her head against Jamie’s shoulder, long minutes later, while he set her camisole and dress to rights with slow, soothing motions of his hands. Only when she had been taken care of did he attend to his own clothes.

She wasn’t sure whether he’d said it aloud, or whether his gentleness had told her, but Bliss knew that Jamie loved her. In that time, and that place, at least, he belonged exclusively to her.

She smoothed his rumpled hair with her fingers, smiling through a mist of tears. “It was the smartest thing I ever did, Jamie McKenna, falling asleep in your barn that night.”

“I’d ’ave gladly shared me bed,” he teased, and his eyes danced as he watched her picking straw from her hair.

He stood when Bliss did, and preceded her down the ladder, retrieving his hat and his pitchfork and then standing there grinning at her while she plucked at the straw that seemed to cover her from head to foot.

“How do I look?” she asked, craning her neck to try and peer over her own shoulder.

“Like you’ve just been tumbled in a hayloft,” Jamie answered, without hesitation, and then he went back to his work, whistling in a carefree fashion as he wielded the pitchfork.