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As I wish to feel you. Taste you. Kiss you.

He inhaled, drawing in the essence of her. Warmth, sunlight… Completion. Closing his eyes, he let the scent of her wash through him. Like the summer sun, her being burned through the tangle of his restraint. Singed him with a need. He pressed closer. His torso brushed her back. His groin nudged her bottom.

Ah, God! To touch you like this, after so very long!

“Dominic,” she gasped. Her spine arched, an attempt to sever the intimate contact. Yet, the movement forced her supple body to glide against his, fluid and tantalizing, like sunlight skimming over water.

Intense, consuming heat flooded through him, focusing where their bodies touched. He could hardly breathe. He stared down at the crown of her head, mesmerized by her shining gold hair that led his gaze down, again, to her bosom.

How perfect her breasts had felt in his palm. Warm. Ripe.

He dipped his head and kissed her hair.

A sigh wrenched from her. “Stop.”

“Why?”

“Please.” No more than a whisper, ragged with anguish and… desire.

Dominic clamped his jaw against the voices inside his head urging him to heed her plea. She was married. Forbidden. Yet, she herself had denied any commitment to her husband, and Dominic must know what she kept from him. Chivalry had its place in the ways between men and women, but he’d been patient long enough.

He removed his hand covering hers. How he missed her skin’s warmth—but only for a moment. When she uncurled her fingers and they slipped from the door handle, he placed his hands upon the curve of her hips. Her gown’s coarse fabric—very different from the clothes she’d worn in the meadow that summer—grazed his palms.

Anticipation rippled through him. I care not that you are dressed in commoner’s garb. I know the delicate silk of your naked skin. I have caressed it. Tasted it. Kissed the sun-warmed patch below your⁠—

“Nay!” she cried, as if attuned to his wanton cravings. She twisted in his hold, darting sideways faster than he imagined possible.

Her hands curled at her sides, she stood several steps away. Her eyes glittered, not with fury, but passion.

“Come back, Gisela,” he whispered.

“Do not touch me again.” A sobbed plea.

A lie.

“I must,” he answered, closing the space between them. “No longer can I deny myself.”

She stepped backward. “Nay! To touch me⁠—”

“—’Tis all I have wanted to do since I first saw you in the stable.”

“’Tis dangerous! I will not allow you.”

“Aye, Gisela, you will.” He closed the last paces separating them.

The backs of her thighs hit the sewing table. She flinched. “Oh, God,” she said, looking frantically for a place to run.

Dominic stepped in front of her. He took her face in his hands and gently, but firmly, tipped it up.

Her eyes huge and wet, she stared up at him, tears glistening like rainwater on her face. Her hands came up to clutch his arms.

Lowering his voice to a husky rasp, he said, “Never will I regret wanting to kiss you. Or, for desiring you as I did years ago.”

Moisture brimmed along her lashes. “Dominic⁠—”

“You are mine, Gisela. You always will be.”

“Walk away,” she said on a sob. “Forget me.”