While kissing her mouth, he unfastened the hooks and laces of her simple dress, sliding it down to the floor. His lips moved down her neck and along the top of her shoulders and she loosened his shirt, her palms gliding up over his skin before pulling it off over his head. She kissed his bare chest and the hard muscles of his stomach. Their breathing grew faster. Their fingers franticly pulled open and pushed down clothes. Their desire now was unstoppable. Lifting Kerensa up off her feet Clem dropped her gently across the bed. Kerensa let out an intense cry of pleasure, a moan of released emotion. Clem wept in absolute bliss, in total joyfulness. His flesh was on her flesh, and inside her flesh, and his heart was over her heart. She was in his arms, clinging to his back, keeping perfect time with his rhythm, matching his passion and his tenderness. At the right moment he lifted her up round the waist to go even deeper into her. Clem took his lips away from hers and looked down at her. She had her eyes shut, her face torn with pleasure, the pleasure he was giving her.

Their last moan came at the same breathtaking instant, their bodies convulsing, shuddering again and again with rapturous release and completion.

He lay down beside her, their limbs in a tangled warm embrace, his face next to hers on the bedcover. Panting, swallowing to regain their breath, they smiled and smiled into each other eyes.

‘My love,’ Clem gasped, his voice grazing his throat, ‘my precious, dear love, are you all right?’

She caressed his hot damp face and kissed his moist lips. ‘Oh, yes, my beloved. Are you?’

He kissed her back. ‘I’ve never been so happy. For the first time in my life I feel I am really alive.’

He held her close. So this was what it was like to make love to Kerensa. To make love with total self-giving. So many times he had tried to imagine how it would be with her. It was like drinking from the sweetest cup. Knowing the joy of the entire world.

He moved his head on to her breast. ‘I don’t want this night to end.’

‘It never will because we’ll never forget it.’

She stroked his soft hair, ran delicate fingertips down the centre of his back. She closed her eyes to the immeasurably exquisite sensations of his warm breath as it fanned over her perfectly moulded shape. To have Clem make love to her, who by first right and conscience should have been the man she made holy vows to, felt as right as her claim to put breath in her lungs.

His hands began to give devotion to her again and she gave herself over to worship him back.

Nineteen

Luke and Jack were down in Porthcarne before first light.