Jamie took a long time pleasuring Bliss; the fire was burning low in the grate, the lamps had gone out, and the room was full of shifting moon shadows when he could no longer deny himself full satisfaction.

“Are you sure?” he asked raggedly, and Bliss, floating dazed in a state of exhausted contentment, nodded her head.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh yes.”

She felt the startling size and power of him at the portal of her womanhood and knew only the vaguest flash of fear.

Jamie trembled with restraint as he entered her, giving Bliss more and more of him as she urged him nearer, her hands moving fitfully from his buttocks to the small of his back. Her name fell from his lips over and over again, in a low, frantic whisper.

When he passed the barrier nature had set in place, Bliss gasped and tensed her body, and Jamie was instantly still. His mouth hovered over her own, then strayed to her jawline and the tender place underneath her ear. “There’s no ’urry, then, is there?” he muttered, and Bliss didn’t know whether he was reassuring her or himself.

As the discomfort subsided, Bliss began to feel the same fevered excitement as before, when Jamie had pleased her so relentlessly, so sweetly. By instinct, she began to move beneath her husband and he rose and fell in perfect rhythm with the pace she set.

She was caught unaware when the balance of power shifted to Jamie. Without warning, he was in command, and he guided Bliss skillfully, inexorably, toward a peak they had never scaled together before. They reached the summit at precisely the same instant, their moist bodies straining for the most complete union possible, ragged cries of triumph torn from their throats.

When the last joint tremor had subsided, Jamie rolled, gasping, onto his back and groaned aloud. Bliss knew without asking that the pain, from which he’d had a short surcease, had descended upon him again.

She was filled with tenderness and all the emotions of a young woman who has given not only her heart, but her body, to one very special man. Raising herself on one elbow, she stroked his fleecy chest with the palm of her hand and placed a gentle kiss on his forehead.

Jamie clasped her fingers with an abruptness that startled her. Holding her hand in his, he rasped, “I’m sorry, Duchess. God in heaven, I’m so sorry.”

Bliss was crushed. He was apologizing for making love to her? She had so hoped that she’d pleased him, despite her inexperience, and thus dispensed with all his myriad doubts, but now reality was dawning. Merciless, glaring reality.

Her father had repeatedly warned her that men were utterly without honor when it came to such things. Jamie had assuaged his own needs because the opportunity had been so brashly presented, and taking was not the same thing as caring.

Not at all.

Realizing what she’d done, Bliss gave a wail of despair and grief.