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“Nay,” she breathed, her head listing back. “Wait!”

He blew on her neck and was rewarded by her gasp. Her hand fluttered, a feeble attempt to stop his sensual barrage. Resisting a grin, he caught her fingers and kissed them before pressing little kisses along her bodice’s edge. He savored her soft, scented skin that obliterated all but the pleasure of her.

He nibbled a path back up to her mouth. Ravenous, seeking, her lips meshed with his. He kissed her with matching fervor. When a pleasured purr rumbled in her throat, he skimmed his other hand down over her shoulder to her bodice. Sliding his finger between the fabric and her skin, he touched the upper swell of her breast with his fingertip.

She tensed. With a strangled cry, she drew back.

Panic widened her eyes. Her breaths sharpened with urgency. His heart constricted, compassion and tenderness melding with his desire. Did she hesitate because they’d been apart so long? Did she believe, somehow, that she no longer measured up to the young maiden he had loved? That he wouldn’t find her pleasing?

In his eagerness, he hadn’t wooed her enough to vanquish her unease. To show how much she still meant to him. He lifted his fingers away, then squeezed her hand still entwined with his. “’Tis all right, Gisela.”

She shook her head, her hair spilling over her shoulder. “We should not be kissing or… caressing.” Shifting her bottom on the table, she tried to scoot sideways.

He didn’t budge. Resisting a grin, he noted she could not escape him unless she slid backward on the table. In that instance, he would simply grab her skirts and yank her forward again.

Shoving her free hand to his chest, she said, “Please move aside.”

“What happens here, now, is between us.” He softened each word. “Only us.”

“You do not understand.”

How distressed she sounded. Her tone was vastly different from the dulcet coaxing with which she’d seduced him in the meadow. However, he sensed that passionate lover still lived on, in her thoughts, memories, and secret dreams.

“No matter what happened while we were apart, our feelings are still true,” he murmured. “You cannot deny that.”

She gnawed her lip. Her fingertips pressed into his tunic. How close her hand was to catching the linen on his necklace pressed against his skin.

Anguish shivered across her face. Again, she pushed at him.

“Touching you,” he said quietly, “is merely acknowledging what is true.”

“Nay, touching me is wrong.”

“Why?” How he loved her skin’s luscious softness. Of their own initiative, his fingers moved in lazy circles against her flesh, as though he traced a flower’s petals.

She trembled. “Dominic.”

“You are mine, Sweet Daisy.”

“But—”

“Mine. Then, now, and forever.”

While he spoke, he skimmed his hand down over her bodice. His mind flooded with the delicious memory of her breast molded to his palm. A groan of intense longing burned inside him.

He cupped her breast.

His thumb met a hard ridge beneath the fabric.

Shock plowed through him. At the same moment, a gasp tore from her. She recoiled, her body so rigid, she might have been stabbed in the back.

He wrenched his hand away, staring at his palm. Blood pounded hard at his temple.

What had he felt?

Merciful God, what?

A scar? Surely not. Yet, he well knew of such wounds. While on crusade, he’d tended injured knights, even stitched their skin closed to encourage healing. He’d helped Geoffrey survive near-mortal wounds that now were only scars.