Would she find Josh as difficult-or as easy-to get over as she had found Kit? She had never lain with Kit.

She stood gazing out at the endless expanse of blue-and-green water as he spread one blanket over the coarse grass above the little cove of a beach to which he had led her. It was indeed more sheltered here. One could almost imagine that it was summer again-a cool summer's day. He set down the other blanket, still folded. Presumably they would cover themselves with it if they were chilly.

Afterward.

She drew a slow breath. It was not too late. He would not force her.

The last time it had been easy. There had been no decision to make. She had been in the throes of an urgent, blind passion occasioned by the pain of the christening party and something he had said to anger her-she could no longer remember what. Today there was too much time for thought.

But one thought pulsed with the beat of her blood. She wanted him. She wanted the memory to take with her into the future. She could no longer think of protecting herself from the sort of pain she had known before with Kit. It was already too late.

She had no wisdom at all, it seemed, in her choice of men to love.

She sat down on the blanket, drew up her knees, and clasped her arms about them, all without looking at him. He came down beside her, sprawled on his side, his head propped on one hand.

"So, sweetheart," he said softly, "why are we here?"

She shrugged her shoulders and kept them hunched. "To see the island?" she said. "To spend some time together?"

"For what end?" he asked her. "Because we are betrothed?"

"But we are not," she said.

"No." He was silent for a while. "Why are we here, Free?"

He was going to make her spell it out, was he? Well, that was fair enough. She had asked to be brought here. She had asked that they come alone. Was she now to act like a wilting violet and expect the man to take charge of the situation? She turned her head to look at him. His eyes were smiling back at her but without either the mockery or the wicked laughter she had expected to see there.

"To make love," she said.

They gazed at each other while the air fairly crackled between them.

"Ah, yes," he said, his voice low. "To make love. We will do it properly, will we, sweetheart, without frenzy, without any haste at all? So that we will both have happy memories of our brief weeks together?"

He sat up and pulled off his Hessian boots and his stockings. He shrugged out of his coat and unbuttoned his waistcoat. Freyja lifted her arms and drew the pins out of her hair. By the time she shook it free, he was pulling his shirt off over his head.

She had hardly had a chance to look at him in the gamekeeper's hut at Alvesley. But his beauty, she discovered now, was not confined to his face. His shoulders, his chest, his arms-all were strongly muscled, beautifully proportioned male perfection. She set one hand on his back and spread her fingers. He was warm and inviting.

"I have wanted this," she admitted, "ever since the last time."

"Can you not do better than that?" he asked her, turning to her, smiling. "I have wanted this since before the last time. I believe it all started in a certain inn room when you were barefoot and wild-haired and furious." He moved his head closer until his lips brushed hers. "You must be by far the most desirable woman I have ever known, Freyja Bedwyn." His tongue stroked lightly back and forth across her lips, causing her to sizzle with sensation from her lips down to her toes.

He unclothed her with hands that were clearly very expert indeed at the task. Then he removed the rest of his own garments while his eyes devoured her and hers devoured him. She lay back on the blanket when they were both naked.

She was afraid then that if she touched him, if she initiated anything, she would spoil it all by being in too much of a hurry, as she had been last time. She wanted to discover if there could be any tenderness to lovemaking as well as soaring passion. She wanted to be able to remember him with tenderness. She wanted to remember him as he looked now, gazing down at her with controlled desire. She spread her hands to the sides, palms down.

"Make love to me," she said.

"Oh, I intend to, sweetheart," he said, bending over her.

His hands went to work on her. He was as expert at making love with his hands, she soon realized, as he had been at unclothing her with them. He knew just where to touch her and how, sometimes with such light fingertips that she felt sensation more than his touch. And he knew how to use his mouth too, kissing her pulse points, suckling her breasts, breathing warmly against her navel and flicking it lightly with his tongue, feathering kisses along her inner thighs, sucking one of her big toes before raising his head and grinning at her.

He took her feet in his hands, massaged them in ways that sent desire coursing through her with a faster beat, and then turned them and moved them upward in such a way that her knees fell open before he set her feet back down on the blanket. He came to kneel between her thighs, lifting her legs over his own. And then he slid one hand down between them.

She was wet and hot-his hand felt cool in contrast.

He knew just how to touch her there too. His fingers moved lightly, knowingly, and he watched what he did while she watched his face-beautiful, heavy-lidded, absorbed in what he was doing. And then he touched her somewhere with his thumb, rubbing it very lightly. She arched upward, crying out, all her carefully preserved control gone, and exploded into shuddering, utterly pleasurable release.

He laughed softly as he lifted her higher into his lap, opened her with his thumbs, and plunged hard into her. She inhaled slowly. There was no pain at all this time, only incredible pleasure as he pressed against walls still throbbing and sensitive from her recent release. She moved her hands to cup his knees.

"I think it is time I made love to you too," she said, gazing at him through half-closed eyelids. "You feel very good, Josh."

"I do indeed." There was laughter in his eyes, but they were passion-heavy too.

Slowly she clenched inner muscles about him and his nostrils flared.

"Almost," he said, "you tempt me to surrender. Almost."

He withdrew to the brink of her and thrust hard inward again and withdrew and thrust again while she parried with pulsing inner muscles and rocking hips. She bared her teeth, feeling the rise of desire once more, and willed herself to match him stroke for stroke for as long as it lasted. She willed it to last forever.

This time it was he who watched her face while she watched what they did together, her eyes observing what her body felt with such sweet, almost painful intensity. It was all almost unbearably erotic.

"Sweetheart," he said at last, his voice husky and breathless, "a gentleman cannot go riding off into the sunset and leave his lady behind. If I concede defeat, will you let go and allow me to follow you?"

She looked up into his eyes, lost her rhythm, her slender hold on control, and was suddenly defenseless against the firm pounding of his body into her sweet pain. She cried out again and shuddered about him.

He was still deep inside her, she realized a few moments later, and still large and rock-hard. She opened her eyes and he smiled into them. He brought his hands to the blanket on either side of her shoulders and shifted his position without withdrawing from her. He came down flat on top of her, covering her from shoulders to toes, his weight bearing her into the ground. He found her mouth with his and kissed her, not deeply, not passionately as she expected, but with infinite tenderness.

And then he set his head beside hers, his face buried in her hair, and moved in her again with long, deep strokes, covering her so that she felt strangely cherished, strangely loved. Sexually sated as she was, it was an extraordinary sensation, emotional more than physical-and yet she was very much in the body too. When he went still, he was tense for a moment and then relaxed all his weight onto her with a deep sigh. She could feel the hot flow of his release deep inside. She wrapped her arms about him, feeling both giver and gifted.

His breathing was labored against her ear. They were both hot and slick with perspiration. Seagulls were crying overhead. There was the eternal, elemental flow and suck of the sea against the sand. There were the smells of salt and sand and ocean. There were sunlight and sun heat and the welcome coolness of the breeze.

The earth slowed beneath them.

Ah, yes, the memory of this would always remain with her. And she would not allow future pain to sully it. She would not.

He reached for the spare blanket as he rolled off her, and she turned onto her side facing away from him as he spread it over them and then slid an arm beneath her neck and curled in behind her.

She gazed at the rocky cliff that formed one side of the cove and at the dark green water beneath it. A white gull was perched on top of a rock, gazing out to sea, opening its beak to cry out. She felt warm, languorous, very aware of every sensation impressing itself upon her memory.

Judging from his breathing, Joshua slept for a while. She was glad. She did not want to talk. Not yet. She did not want to listen to his light teasing or to hear him tell her that they were in a scrape again.

She did not want either to laugh or to fear. She simply wanted to be in this endlessly present moment. And when she must move on into the future-well, then. She would never forget. She would never allow herself to deny that for one glorious afternoon she had been not just in love. She had also loved. Loved with her body and loved with her heart.