“My water is getting cold!” Bliss wailed.

One of Jamie’s shoulders lifted in a halfhearted shrug. “Don’t think I’m not sympathetic,” he said.

It was quite clear that he wasn’t.

Bliss’s annoyance was unbounded. She scrambled off the bed, dragging her blanket along, stomped over to the bathtub, and summarily climbed in, underclothes and all.

With a great, furious splash, she sat down, sending water surging over both sides of the tub to pool on the floor. Some of it poured onto the hearth and sizzled as it was consumed by the fire blazing there.

Jamie stared at her in wonder for a moment, then strode toward her, taking the blanket from her, flinging it aside. He took her hand and drew her to her feet, and Bliss didn’t resist him.

Her camisole was drenched, and she knew it revealed her high, full breasts, but she did not cover herself. The hungry look in Jamie’s eyes met some elemental need within her, and she was powerless against the primitive things she was feeling.

One of his hands strayed out to touch her breast, the thumb caressing a thinly veiled nipple. Bliss stood motionless, knowing that she should resist but unable to do so. She whispered Jamie’s name and suddenly, cruelly, the spell was broken.

He withdrew as though her flesh had burned him and stormed out of the room, slamming the door as he went. Stricken and confused, weary to the point of exhaustion, Bliss wept as she peeled away her sodden underthings and tossed them aside.

She made short work of her bath and then, still feeling wounded but unable to cry anymore, she crept into bed like a wounded creature seeking refuge, snuggled down deep, and drew the covers up over her head. She was sound asleep in an instant.

Hours later, when the room was filled with the shadows of early evening, Bliss awakened, raising herself on one elbow. Jamie lay beside her, sprawled out on his stomach, the covers reaching only as high as his waist.

Bliss drew in her breath at the sight of the scars crisscrossing his back and then reached out, with a trembling finger, to trace the path of a mark that reached from his right shoulder blade to his left hip. Feeling sick all the way to the core of her soul, she counted.

The disfigurement could only have been caused by the lash. Twelve times Jamie had felt it slicing into his flesh ...

Bliss squeezed her eyes shut and raised one hand to her mouth to suppress a moan of horror and of shared pain, and at that moment, Jamie awakened and rolled over onto his back. His blue eyes read her expression accurately and a wall seemed to rise up between them, invisible but real.

“Jamie,” Bliss whispered brokenly, and all her feelings were contained in that single utterance.

He shifted his gaze to the ceiling and Bliss, realizing that her breasts were bare, lifted the covers to her throat. She couldn’t help noticing the medallion he wore around his neck, affixed to a strip of weathered, discolored rawhide.