Her eyelashes were silky against her cheeks, which were stained scarlet. She hadn’t looked up since he removed her chemise. He reached out and delicately touched her face. “Gabby? After stealing glances at me whenever you thought I wasn’t looking, now you won’t look at me at all?”

When she didn’t answer, he tried teasing her again. “After all your demands for a rational explanation?”

“There’s nothing rational about this,” she whispered, stung into lifting dusky eyes to his face. “I never, ever thought to be naked like this, so indecent—” She broke off, unable to express the shameless way they were behaving.

“There’s no indecency here,” Quill replied, walking a step closer so that he was just before her. “The dark is for thieves and vagabonds, Gabby. You are my wife. I would celebrate you in the light.”

Gabby bit her lip. Despite herself, her body was turning to liquid fire, a slow betrayal, a bending to his ideas. To be truthful, in the firelight his body didn’t seem sinful. Not the beauty of his muscled shoulders or lean hips. His body should be celebrated too, she thought, so beautiful it was, and so hard-won.

Quill picked up her hand and placed it just to the side of his manhood. “You see, Gabby? We fit together, like a hand and a glove.”

Gabby shuddered. Her fingers trembled, but didn’t fall away from his curls.

And then…silently, without outward sign, she succumbed. The shame that was catching her in the back of the throat fell away. She gave in to the pleading in Quill’s eyes, to the brave leanness of his injured body. To his delight, she tentatively touched him with a finger.

His flesh leapt at her touch and she drew back instantly. “Did that hurt?”

Quill grabbed her hand and put it squarely on him. Surges of heat raced down the backs of his legs. He was at the limits of his self-control.

“Gabby,” he said hoarsely. “This will hurt, but only at first. Come here.” He opened his arms.

And his wife, his brave wife, with one nervous swallow wound her arms around his neck and brought her luscious body against his.

Quill kissed her neck, little trailing kisses that sat innocently on her skin and sent messages through her body. He swept a hand down her back, brushing aside tangled curls, curving around her naked bottom.

Gabby closed her eyes, and it was like being in the dark. She concentrated on his hands, how he had picked her up and was walking, skin to skin. She kept her eyes closed as he gently lay her on the bed. In the velvety darkness behind her eyelids, there was nothing indecent about her husband’s lips as they trailed down her neck, leaving a murmur of pleasure behind. His lips reached her breast, and the murmur turned to a whisper that spoke throughout her body.