And then it happened, that fiery explosion ignited at the very essence of her womanhood and fanning out to pound at her hips, tingle in her breasts, and make the hair at the nape of her neck, sodden as it was, stand on end. Her hands were not enough to quiet the long, low cry of release that escaped her; Maggie wrenched the pillow from beneath her head and clasped it over her face.

Slowly, Reeve lowered her shivering hips back to the bed; reluctantly, he rolled his tongue around that sensitive nubbin of flesh once more before withdrawing.

Maggie lay trembling, too shaken and too embarrassed to come out from under the pillow. “Oh, Lord,” she moaned, “what have I done?”

She felt Reeve rise off the bed, heard his rueful chuckle and then his answer. “Nothing that’ll do you any lasting harm,” he said. “I, on the other hand, may never be the same.”

The brogue was gone. Even as Maggie noted that fact, she wondered why she cared and pressed the pillow down harder.

Before she knew it, the pillow was snatched away, and landed with a soft thump on the other side of the wagon somewhere. “You won’t undo what’s happened by smothering yourself,” Reeve pointed out.

Maggie sat bolt upright, forgetting her mortification and the delicious, sated feeling possessing her body in a disturbing realization that while she might as well have been blind for all she could make out in that pitlike darkness, Reeve had been able to see. “You must have the eyes of a cat!”

Reeve laughed, but the sound was harsh somehow, as though he might be suffering pain of some sort. “The pillow slip is white, Maggie. Besides, you struck me with it when you pulled it out from under your head to—”

Maggie wailed with embarrassment and wriggled underneath the covers. If the pillow slip showed white in the darkness, her skin probably did too.

“You saw me!” she accused him through the blankets.

“I did more than see you, my love,” Reeve responded. She was once again conscious of the rain; it grew louder.

Maggie tore the blankets from over her face, forgetting that her body might glow in the gloom like a pale light. “You’re leaving me alone?” she hissed.

“If I don’t, Yank, we’ll both be sorry,” Reeve answered, and then there was a splashing sound as he leapt down from the wagon. The driving thrum of the rain was muffled a little when he closed the canvas curtain.