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‘My mother used to do this for Pa when he’d had a long day. He always said it was the only thing that did any good.’

He didn’t resist when she gently took hold of his wrist and pulled it towards her. For a moment she wasn’t sure her nerve would hold, but she managed to lay his arm across her lap and began to press her thumbs along the taut line of muscle underneath.

His skin was warm under her fingers. He’d rolled up his sleeve and she felt the impressive strength of his forearm, the sinew barely shifting as she massaged it. She thought she heard him make a soft noise but a swift glance at his shadowy face revealed nothing, only that his eyes were still fixed on her as if blind to everything else in the room.

Her breathing seemed to have become shallow, her chest rising and falling more quickly as she traced firm circles from the crook of his elbow back to his wrist. She could feel his gaze on her, a sensation of heat spreading over her scalp; it was a warm night but the temperature had little to do with the sparks stirring inside her—instead Jacob being responsible for whatever was happening under her skin.

‘You don’t have to do this.’

He sounded strained. It might have been the tender spots she was pressing on that lent such an edge to his voice, but a shudder ran through her to wonder if it could have been caused by something else entirely.

‘I know,’ she mumbled. ‘I want to.’

There was a loaded pause in which the night seemed to crowd in around her. The darkness was oppressive, or perhaps it was the strange heaviness in the atmosphere that was so suffocating, but either way Jacob’s next words shattered the tension like a stone thrown through a pane of glass.

‘Is there anything else you want to do?’

Unbidden, her eyes flew to his face. Had he read her mind? Had he somehow seen her innermost thoughts and then voiced them, inviting her to give in to the insistent desire to kiss him that flooded her, now they were so close? There was nothing to stop her—his leading question was permission more than query—and when his fingers lightly grazed her knee she knew there was only one answer she could give.

To hell with restraint.

Lifting one knee, she swung herself over to straddle Jacob’s lap at the same moment he reached out for her with both hands. He pulled her against his chest and she let herself be captured, winding her arms around his neck as he craned up to seek her mouth. Their lips met with a blind passion that took her breath away, her mind spinning into emptiness as Jacob’s tongue found hers and traced it, each deft flick heating her blood another scalding degree.

It didn’t matter that the room was dark. She didn’t need to see; even with her eyes closed she knew exactly where to touch Jacob to make him groan into her mouth, her fingers delving down the back of his collar to caress his neck. Working round to the front, she loosened the buttons and dipped inside to run her fingers over the firm muscle of his chest, the combination of coarse hair and burning skin something she hadn’t realised just how much she’d missed.

Jacob’s hands moved over her ceaselessly, tempting and teasing until she could hardly stand it. It was as though he didn’t know where to touch her first, insatiable in his determination to possess every inch of her again, and her bones turned to water as he skimmed over her ribs, sweeping across the curve of her hips and down to find the hem of her nightgown rucked up across her thighs.

He drew back, his lips trailing from her mouth up to the shell of her ear. ‘May I?’

Her writhe was confirmation enough. She couldn’t speak while instinctive pleasure rendered her senseless, although her gasp as he tugged her nightdress over her head made him smile against her neck.

He wasn’t amused for long, however.

‘Meg…’

His voice was little more than a rasp as he looked at her, barely lit by the moonlight struggling between the curtains, and in the dim glow Meg revelled in his blank awe. He stared at her as though he’d never seen such beauty and it made shyness impossible, even when his eyes travelled lower to admire the parts of her usually hidden away.

‘Jacob. You’re staring.’

‘I’ve good reason to.’

Something was pressing hard against her inner thigh. She might still have been a maiden, but she wasn’t entirely innocent, and it was her turn to smile as she shifted very deliberately on his lap, delighting in the guttural grunt torn from his throat.

‘Meg…’ Jacob rasped her name a second time, now with even greater urgency. Both of his hands were on her hips, gripping tightly, while his thumbs stroked stirring patterns over her bare skin. A feeling had begun to simmer inside her, a kind of curious craving she knew had only one remedy, and all of a sudden she wanted that remedy more than anything in the world.

Leaning forward, she kissed him again, cupping his face between her palms. One of his hands had started venturing further down and she sighed a moan as gentle fingertips found somewhere previously unexplored, sparks flying in the wake of each soft stroke. She was barely breathing and every sense seemed to have abandoned her but the ability to feel, her insides liquifying when he whispered in her ear once more.

‘Shall we move to the bed?’

Meg shuddered, clinging to his shoulders to hold herself upright. They were warm and broad and it occurred to her that she very much wanted to see them without a shirt again, the image of them gleaming in the sunshine only adding fuel to the fire that raged in every nerve.

‘No.’ She nibbled his earlobe, thrilled by his shiver in response. ‘Why waste time when there’s a perfectly good floor just here?’

Chapter Seven

Jacob didn’t want to move.

Meg lay in the crook of his arm, one hand on his chest and her dark hair fanned out around them. The floorboards under his back should have been uncomfortable, but he couldn’t seem to feel them as he looked down at her, committing her sleeping face to memory on his first morning as a truly married man.