Gently, Jamie turned Bliss around to face him. He was unbuttoning her coat—and avoiding her eyes—when he said, “I was only teasin’ earlier, love, when I told you to be in bed and ready. I’d never take you unless you were willin’.”

Bliss was touched. She was also tired and overwhelmed. Her eyes brimmed with unaccustomed tears—she was not one to cry easily or often. “The trouble is,” she whispered, “you can so easily make me willing, Mr. McKenna.”

Jamie smiled sadly and planted a soft kiss on her forehead. “How you flatter me, Duchess,” he scolded, sliding her coat back off her shoulders and down her arms. It fell, forgotten, to the floor. “You’ve never been with a man, have you?”

He made the words sound almost like a reprimand and, however foolishly, Bliss wished for a moment that she could lay claim to at least one scandalous assignation. Since she couldn’t, she simply shook her head.

“Saints be praised,” Jamie said under his breath, and then he began unfastening the buttons of Bliss’s prim shirtwaist. She stood powerless, speechless, as he pulled the blouse free of her skirt. Only a moment later, she was standing before him in her thin camisole.

He paused to caress her breasts, first one and then the other, his touch making Bliss’s blood surge hotly through her veins and causing her nipples to harden and turn dark.

“A-are you going to h-have me?” she whispered as he removed her good tweed skirt, which was closely followed by her petticoat.

Jamie bent his head to taste the tender skin at the place where Bliss’s neck and shoulder met, chuckling at the shiver and soft moan she could not suppress. “I mean to teach you pleasure,” he said in a low, hoarse voice. “As to the other, Duchess—that decision belongs to you.”

Bliss’s heart beat faster when she felt the worn ribbons at the front of her camisole give way to Jamie’s fingers, and heat washed over her in crushing waves as she was bared to him for the first time.

Chapter 6

BLISS HAD NO MEMORY OF WALKING OR BEING CARRIED TO THE bed; instead, she felt as though she had been hurled there by a hurricane wind. There was no breath in her lungs, and her eyes and ears perceived only dimly, so dazed was she by the power this man had over her.

A delighted whimper broke from Bliss as Jamie stretched out beside her and continued to caress her breast. A strange, compelling heat was building within her, gathering strength with every pass of Jamie’s skillful fingers. She was certain that the loving could get no better than this, certain that she would explode at any moment.

It was just then that he bent his head and encircled one taut, puckered nipple with the tip of his tongue, surprising Bliss with a new joy. She gasped, entangling her fingers in his tarnished-gold hair, and arched her back.