“Hallie, the damned buttons. It’s important to unfasten the damned buttons.”

She said absolutely nothing, looked up at him through the veil of her hair, her eyes so filled with excitement, fear, and lust, he wanted to laugh, then he didn’t because she unbuttoned three buttons in a flash and was kissing his belly, and lower. Her fingertips touched him, stroked him, held him, and he felt her warm breath on his flesh. “Oh God,” he said, and knew it was going to be very close. “You’ve got to let me go, Hallie. No, don’t kiss me, not now, I can’t bear it. Take your hands away.” He didn’t want to, the good Lord knew he didn’t, but he grabbed her beneath her arms and hauled her up, grateful that she’d released him at the last moment. “That’s very nice, really, don’t get me wrong, a man loves for a woman to touch him with her hands and her mouth, rub her cheek over his belly, her hair all tangled, her breath hot, but I can’t take it at this particular moment, Hallie. There are other things now.” He shuddered, gulped down a deep breath. “It’s your turn.”

“You mean there’s a certain order to this business?”

“Not really, but a man doesn’t want to maul, well, never mind that. Trust me.”

“But I want to touch you again, and your taste, Jason, it makes me want-”

“Be quiet. Your words make me see things and start shaking. Close your mouth. I know what’s to be done.” Even as he got her out of her clothes, she touched him, tried to kiss him. “Stand up.” When finally, she was naked, he took a quick step back. He knew she’d be beautiful, hadn’t doubted it for an instant, but the reality of her, the fact that they were here together, married, for God’s sake, and she belonged to him now and forever, made him look at her differently.

“I will try to make you happy, Hallie,” he said, and then there were no more words. He got his breeches off, picked her up and laid her on her back, coming down over her, his mouth on hers, the length of him against her soft flesh.

“Don’t worry about any of this,” he said into her mouth. “Just do what I tell you.”

“What do you want me to do first?”

He shuddered like a palsied man. “Open your legs for me.” She parted her legs, just a bit.

“That’s right, that’s exactly what I wanted you to do. Mayhap a bit more. That’s it.” He wondered how a man could bear this. Pleasure, he thought, drugging pleasure, but she was a virgin, she didn’t understand what all this was going to feel like, even if she knew what happened between Dodger and the mares. He knew he couldn’t simply take her, he had to do things right. His twin had confided in him that he’d mucked up his own wedding night, and when he’d awakened, he was afraid Corrie had left him. “It was an awful feeling,” James had said, shaking with the memory. “If I’d had a sword I would have run myself through. Force yourself to back off. Don’t fall on her and yell like a wild man.”

Jason backed off, came down on his knees between her legs. He held her ankles, slowly pulled her legs farther apart. Her legs quivered. “You are so bloody beautiful.” He was looking at her, between her parted legs, and she was so embarrassed and so excited, both at the same time, that she lay there, staring at him. “Tell me what to do, Jason.”

He never looked up, merely shook his head slowly. “Nothing at all, just let me do what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“First I want to put my mouth on you. If you don’t know what I mean, don’t worry about it, only know that I’m going to make you scream. Yes, I can do it without trembling myself off the bed.” But he didn’t have a chance. Hallie lurched up, knocked him backward and came down on top of him, covering all of him she could manage. He was laughing so hard it gave him a measure of control, thank God.

“Oh my,” she said into his mouth, “tell me what to do, Jason, but be quick about it.”

He sat her upright to straddle his belly, told her not to move, to watch his hands stroke every beautiful inch of her. “Know these are my hands, Hallie. They’ll be on you for the rest of our lives. Ah, the feel of you, the smoothness of your skin. I am a very strong man.” He grinned, pulled her down again. When his tongue was in her mouth, he whispered, “This is how I’m going to be inside you, like my tongue, but first-”

She was frantic when at last he caressed her with his mouth. He’d told her he was going to do this, but she hadn’t been able to grasp the reality of it, what it made her feel, and he knew it, and didn’t stop. When he felt her stiffen, felt her back arch, felt her pulling out his hair, he was a king. Her scream and her shudders, her hands fisting on his arms, her hot breath against his neck, it turned his king’s brain to mush. He drove inside her in the next moment, felt her maidenhead give, felt her jerk of pain. He touched his forehead to hers when he was against her womb. “I know it hurts. I’m sorry. Lie still, let yourself get used to me.”

“It’s hard.”

That was certainly the truth. “I know, but try. It will get better.” She was still holding herself stiff, but when he didn’t move, her body began to ease around him. He felt himself deep inside her. Soon he was moving, slowly.

She lurched up, stared at him, her eyes blind. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod, it’s happening again, Jason. This is too much, simply too much, and surely we will both die of it. Please, don’t stop.”

When he himself yelled above her, feeling that delicious soft body of hers twisting and heaving beneath him, he was glad he hadn’t mucked things up. He’d given her pleasure twice, it was well done of him. And they were both sweating. It was very well done of him.

Hallie lay in the darkness that had finally swallowed up the midsummer day not more than ten minutes earlier, and listened to Jason’s deep, even breathing. He’d fallen over her, given her a silly smile and fallen asleep. She remembered as a child how she’d slept with her father, realized now how careful he’d been to wrap her in her own covers first.

To sleep with a man, to lie naked with a man, to feel him against her, his cooling flesh, the inner heat of him that didn’t lessen, it amazed her. She wondered if Jason was dreaming, and if so, what he was dreaming about right now. About her?

Probably not. She remembered Lady Lydia, now her grandmother-in-law, her veiny old hand lightly patting Hallie’s as she leaned close, smelling like ironed lace and the fresh lemon wax she rubbed into the eagle head of her cane, and whispered, “Jason is a fine young man. Give him what he needs, Hallie.”

“What do you think he needs, Grandmama-in-law?”

“He needs to have his heart rekindled.”

He needed to have his heart rekindled? What did that mean? He needed her to love him?

Was what she felt for him the same as what she’d felt initially for Lord Renfrew? She didn’t think so. This was deeper, richer, more urgent.

Did she love Jason? Well, if it was love she was feeling leaping out of her, she wasn’t about to blurt it out to him. No, she realized, lightly laying her hand on his belly, feeling the muscles tighten unconsciously, what he really needed was to trust again. To trust her. And maybe that would rekindle his heart.

Her new father-in-law approved of her, she knew that, and he’d said as he’d touched his fingertips to her cheek at their wedding breakfast, “Trust is a precious commodity, fragile yet binding once it’s accepted by both the heart and the intellect and has burrowed deep inside. Be yourself, Hallie. All will be well. My son isn’t a dolt.”

“No,” she’d agreed. “He isn’t.” What trust was, she thought now, was an elusive commodity.

It was a meaty goal, this trust and rekindling business, after what this Judith woman had done to him five years before. She snuggled next to him, wondering if it would be all right to wake him up. Why not? He’d told her she could jump him any time. She eased down his body, kissing every inch in her path. When she took him into her mouth, he nearly arched off the bed, fisted her hair in his hands, and groaned like he was in mortal pain.