She was doing a lot more than warming him, but Reeve couldn’t think of a way to withdraw without getting out from underneath the blankets, and he wasn’t about to do that. Even chivalry, he reflected, has its limits.

“Maggie, stop it,” he pleaded hoarsely. And then, unable to help himself, he exploded with another thunderous sneeze.

Maggie snuggled closer, trying to share her warmth, and Reeve was so moved by the ingenuous charity of the motion that his throat thickened into an impassible knot, making it impossible for him to warn her.

Her hand moved along his hip in a circling motion, hesitated, and then progressed to his left buttock. His manhood ached, taut and hard, and he groaned.

Maggie’s hand came back to his hip, and then she was massaging his thigh, at times coming perilously close to the part of him that most needed, most craved touching.

Reeve could bear no more, and he grasped Maggie’s wrist in his hand to stop the sweet torment.

“Don’t you want me to touch you?” she whispered, sounding puzzled and hurt.

“Believe me, Maggie,” Reeve breathed, “I do.”

“Then why did you grab my hand like that?”

“It was your interest I was looking after, Yank, and not my own. If you’d kept that up much longer, I’d have finished what we started earlier.”

He could sense her surprise, her wonder, and again he was filled with a tenderness so all-encompassing as to be painful.

“You mean there’s more? We didn’t—we didn’t do everything?”

A low, startled laugh erupted from Reeve’s throat. “You thought that was everything?” he asked in a hoarse whisper when he was able to speak coherently.

He heard the tears gathering in her throat before he reached up with a gentle hand and felt them on her face. “You did think that was everything,” he said gently, answering his own question.

Maggie’s forehead was tucked against his chest; then he felt her nod and his fingers delved into the damp, tangled hair at the back of her head. Unable to resist her for another moment, Reeve made her lift her face for his kiss.

It betrayed all his hunger, that kiss, a hunger he’d never felt for any other woman, Loretta included. God, even weeks of lonely nights on board a whaler had never driven him to a need like this.

His tongue sought admittance; Maggie opened for it, greeted it with her own shy sparring. His groan echoed in her mouth and he shifted, so that he lay above her, his elbows keeping his full weight from resting upon her.

Reeve’s mind spun like a child’s boat on a stormy sea. Some instinct made Maggie part her legs for him and he rested between them, allowing his shaft to press its throbbing length into the flesh of her belly.