A command.

Her blood turned to warm honey and she melted beneath him. Deliciousness that made her cling to his broad shoulders. Steel in his voice, steel in the solid muscle beneath her hands. How his strength had always drawn her. Tempted her. Yet now it was hers to touch. All she had to do was let his strength envelop her and give in to his protection.

Freddy's image grew fuzzy.

James lowered his head. His lips pressed hers, soft-firm and oh, so luscious.

His weight bore down on her, his long, tall body hard, warm. Solid. Real.

His tongue thrust against hers, hot and wet. Heavens! His mouth tasted of something she couldn't quite name but reminded her of sweet peach brandy with a bite of ginger.

Eager for more, she met each caress of his tongue with strokes of her own. He responded by giving her ever more lush, fiery thrusts. His heart pounded against hers. Yet she discerned the slight trembling of his body, which told her how he still was holding back.

His erection throbbed within her. At the reminder of how they were joined, how he filled her to the point of stretching, she started. This time, the sensation held a pleasurable edge. Exquisitely so. Her flesh clenched around him. Oh, and wasn't that even more pleasurable? A thrill of anticipation raced through her.

He groaned and his shaft throbbed again.

His invasion of her flesh no longer felt so strange. He was quite welcome. Her hips arched up, of their own volition. Her flesh clenched him harder, a convulsive little wave of spasms.

He groaned and rocked his hips.

Such a slight movement but fire raced through her cunny and lit her whole being. She gasped in surprise. In wonder.

He rocked against her again and she arched to meet his thrusts.

Oh, oh, the weight of his body on hers, the taste of his mouth, the stretching of her inner walls, the impatient pressure of his crown against the mouth of her womb, all of it his taking of her-all of it felt good, so good.

He tore his mouth from hers.

She cried out softly with a sudden sense of loss.

He shifted his body. He pulled back then thrust, more firmly than before. The slick friction of his cock within her channel was so delicious that she cried out again. His pelvis brushed her mons, brushed her straining, erect nub.

Sunny cried out more sharply and clutched his shoulders. She arched her hips, greedily seeking more contact between her nub and his lower abdomen.

He put a hand under her chin, holding it steadily. "Open your eyes."

She complied.

A thick lock of inky black hair fell over his broad forehead. His gaze seared into her like a pair of blue flames.

Real. He was real.

There was no room for anything or anyone else. For the first time in three years, Freddy left her.

James withdrew then thrust harder this time, his girth stretching her, making her aware of her lingering soreness. She didn't care. It was so glorious. She cried out, clutching his shoulders and jerking her hips up to meet his.

He groaned, more deeply, harshly. He withdrew and thrust and withdrew and thrust, faster, faster, harder, harder until he collapsed on her, his breaths blowing harshly against her neck. "You're so hot, so wet." He paused then made a sound like a raspy hiss. "So tight."

His rod throbbed within her.

She clenched him, learning with each thrust, each passing moment, how to accentuate the natural reaction of her flesh, how to enjoy his body more.

He drew his breath in between his clenched teeth.

She hugged his flesh again with her sex.

"God," he said, his tone gritty and harsh. Then he exhaled, loudly. "Fuck."

Pure joy filled her and she laughed and grasped his shoulders.

More! She wrapped her legs about his waist.

He inhaled. The sharp sound cut the air.

Oh God, she wanted more of him. She wanted to be as close to him as she could get. She tightened her legs about him. The steel of his buttocks tensed between her thighs. She squeezed his cock more fervently than ever.

He uttered a harsh groan.

She arched her hips, grinding herself. "Please, please!"

He gave her a series of rapid, wrenching thrusts. Their force rocked her. Her soreness increased to rawness. A sweet pain. Sweetness flooded her whole being, a sort of melting. Melting into him. It was grand. The grandest thing she'd ever known.

He pulled back.

She tensed with the expectation of the next hard thrust. He kept pulling back, all the way back, until his flesh left hers, leaving a hollow, aching emptiness.

"James," she said, between frantic pants for breath. He placed his erection against her belly and pumped. Hot wetness jetted onto her flesh.

"Catriona!" he softly growled her name.

At the sound of her name, spoken with such passion, happiness welled within her.

She still did not feel Freddy's presence.

James collapsed against her and then breathed raggedly against her ear. He dragged several strands of hair off her face, and in doing so, brushed her cheek with his fingertips. "Oh, Christ, Catriona."

Having washed and dressed, James lounged on the bed with his hands braced behind his head. His muscles felt like ballast, as though he were slowly sinking into the featherbed. Languor. Not unpleasant, just something he wasn't accustomed to. It was his way to be up with the dawn and to be about his business shortly thereafter.

Sunny had needed to sleep, so he had let her, but now she was behind the screen, sloshing about as she washed herself.

He remembered the warmth of her form in his arms as he'd held her in bed. He'd held her all morning. It had proved too seductive, the softness of her ample buttocks against his loins had kept his cock half-erect. He had closed his eyes against the ever-brightening light of morning and allowed himself to drift into a half-dreaming state, a pleasurable, sensual place he'd never quite been before. He would either fuck a woman or get up from the bed and put his feelings aside.

Never had he purposely wallowed in the sweet longing.

Yet it was almost ten now.

They were waiting for the baggage cart to catch up with them from yesterday, to bring them both fresh clothes, as well as shoes and stockings for her.

The sense of repletion that had been with him since waking further relaxed him. He couldn't recall having had such a powerful sexual release since he'd been in his early twenties. Now that he had come fully awake, he also couldn't remember ever feeling so-he frowned, searching for the right word-emotionally dissatisfied after a carnal encounter. He hadn't been able to bring her to completion. The magnitude of his own climax, the intensity of his physical enjoyment, only increased his sense of dissatisfaction with the situation. It was more than a normal sense of dissatisfaction from wondering if perhaps he had not applied the correct techniques to arouse her properly. No, it was a type of empathy he was feeling. For the first time in his life, he felt a woman's disappointment as keenly as if it had been his own.

This whole time, he'd been watching her.

She stood before the washstand, drawing a silver-backed brush through her hair, making vigorous strokes and shaking her head whilst tilting it back. The morning sunlight streamed through a slight part in the curtains and made the medium-brown tresses glisten like gold. He ought to have left her alone, given her privacy for her toilet. The truth was, he was enjoying the sight of her. With the light shining through the thin chemise, every gorgeous curve of her body was illuminated.

He couldn't call her Sunny, not now. Sunny was the girl who had presumably grown up into the perfect lady. A lady beyond reproach. It hurt too much now to even think of her as Sunny. It confused his heart.

The girl he had loved was gone. Forever.

From this moment forth, she would be Catriona.

Catriona with the lush, sensual body; Catriona, a vision straight from a man's most erotic dreams.

She was not beyond reproach.

She had made mistakes in life and been all too human. Not simply human. Woman. More woman than lady.

A woman with wants, needs. Hunger.

Aside from stunning lust, he wasn't completely sure what he felt for Catriona, except that last night he'd experienced a consuming sympathy for her distress over her past mistakes, and this had elicited a tenderness that he'd never known with any other bedmate. It had added a confusing piquancy to their joining, as had her virginity.

He had never taken any woman's maidenhead. Seducing virgins and ruining them, ah, but that had been Freddy's forte, hadn't it?

James had always believed that if he took any woman's innocence, she would be the woman he would marry. Yes, he had plotted to seduce Sunny into giving him herself that night years ago in the Blayne garden. To coerce her into giving him her hand in marriage.

That had been wrong, very wrong.

That had ended in disaster.

He had lost her to Freddy.

Catriona stood in the window, seemingly unaware of how completely the rays of sun illuminated her form. How utterly seductive any man would find her pose.

His erection throbbed against the confines of his trousers. Despite his release the previous night, the pleasure of admiring her charms displayed so enticingly had gone from enjoyable to painful.

He resisted the urge to grasp his cock and give it a squeeze, even though the pressure was fast becoming unbearable.

He couldn't take her again, not today. He must give her newly breached body a chance to recover. He plucked the top sheet from the bed. "Catriona."

She turned, her leaf-green eyes distant, her gold-brown hair a cloud about her shoulders. He reached out a hand to her. "Come here."

He motioned to beside him on the bed. She approached slowly, giving him a stunning view of her pink nipples that strained against the thin cloth, and of the dark shadowing at the apex of her legs. He picked up both corners of the sheet, intending to wrap it about her shoulders once she sat.

She knelt before him and cast her eyes down.

He caught his breath.

She crawled on her knees between his spread legs then pressed her cheek against his thigh.

His heart rate accelerated. His attention riveted on the way her hair shone against the dark blue of his trousers, the tresses more shimmering gold than brown. Her breasts swelled generously above the low neckline of the gossamer chemise.

She put her hand to the inside of his thigh and caressed the superfine wool. Her expression grew intent. Sensual pleasure showed in every aspect of her features.

Nothing coy from Catriona.

Yet her actions were completely artless. Natural. Utterly lacking in anything coarse.

With her fingers inches from his erection, the beat of his heart centered in his loins, his cock jerked mightily, straining painfully against his fall. Fluid gushed from the tip, wetting his linen. He grasped her wrist and pressed her hand to his leg, stopping her further progress.

She jerked her head up and he found himself gazing into wide pools of verdant green, sparkling with desire.

"We can't." He could barely utter the words, everything in his being was so opposed to the admission.

Her mouth fell slightly open. He tightened his hold on her hand, fighting an urge to lean forward and put his mouth over hers.

"Do you regret last night?" she asked, her voice small like a girl's.

What could he say? He couldn't say he felt no regrets. Nor could he say he would take it all back.

With Sunny, he could never have expressed the full measure of his sexual tastes. When he had thought of marrying her, all those years ago, he had expected to hold back, to treat her like a lady at all times, even in the bedchamber in the begetting of his sons. He had expected that his respect and love for her would have enabled his desires to mature into a more pure sort of carnal expression.

Now, he knew better. He wasn't likely to mature out of his sexual tastes. They were too central a part of him. That had made the idea of sexual relations with Sunny problematic, whether she was his wife or not.

But Catriona was an entire other matter.

He let go of her hand and put his hand under her chin, holding her like that. "We can't for at least a day. You'll be too sore. And riding in the carriage would only make it all the more intolerable."

She released a lengthy sigh. "Things ended last night just when it had become most enjoyable."

Images and impressions flooded his memory. The smell of her sweat and her arousal, her soft breasts pressing his chest, the pebbled nipples against his tongue, the velvet slick heat of her clenching him so tight.

Her lips, so pliant, so warm, crushed beneath his. He hadn't even realized that he'd bent forward or that he had plunged his hand into her hair, tilting her head to suit him.

Her gasp muffled against his mouth, at the slight parting of her lips, he thrust his tongue between them. Honeyed wine. Sweetness like he'd never known. He plunged deeper. God, he'd never get enough. His other hand had found her breast, slowly, gently crushing the softness, his thumb finding the hardening nipple.

Her body trembled. A moan vibrated deep in her throat, a tremor of the most exquisite pleasure.

He wanted-needed-to put his hands to her shoulders. To gently press her down to the floor and thrust his cock into her slick, hot depths. She would squeeze him so fervently.

His erection jerked. A gush of fluid erupted from the tip.

No.

He would not fall on her like an animal. He would not lose control. Calling on every ounce of self-discipline he possessed, he tore his mouth from hers and let go of that glorious breast.

"James?" She touched the sides of his face, trying to pull him back.