She had the sweetest little tuft of hair there. He would love to touch it. But Bella hadn’t allowed anything like that. “No dirty hands near my treasure,” she’d say, slapping him, though she had let him play with her breasts as much as he liked.

He hadn’t cared very much. It was different with Daisy, though. He wanted to watch her, to feel her desire, as much as he wanted to feel it himself.

“And now you’re beginning to broaden here,” she was saying, caressing his chest.

James looked down at himself. He had no illusions about his body. “I have muscles in my arms, but not in my chest yet, at least, not much. You should see the men who box regularly at Gentleman Jackson’s Saloon.”

“But I like you this way. Some men look like bulls. Their chests and thighs are so thick that a woman would be terrified of being suffocated. I’ve seen them working in the fields. But you . . .” She ran her fingers down his arms. “You’re muscular without being grotesque. Beautiful,” she whispered.

And then she curled up toward him, just enough so that she could dust his arms with kisses. While he was still dazed by the sweetness of it, her mouth danced to his nipple, paused, licked.

A kind of hoarse groan erupted from his chest, and she looked at him with a flash of mischief and desire. She reached up and gave that nipple another lick, and then a little bite.

Lust simmered through James’s limbs and he fell onto her, about as gracefully as a fallen tree. She squealed, but her body was soft and giving under his. “Are you—are you ready, Daisy?” he said in a near stammer.

A tiny frown crinkled her brow. “Can you kiss me again?”

“God, yes.” His cock throbbed against her thigh, but he bent his head. Daisy’s kisses were like no one else’s. Not that he’d kissed many women, because he hadn’t. When he kissed Bella, he was always thinking about burying himself inside her, finding her silky warmth, diving inside, and plunging away. As fast and as furious as he could. “Faster!” she would say.

It was different, kissing Daisy. She was sweet and intoxicating at the same time. When he kissed her, the blood seemed to drain from his head and he forgot about what he was doing . . . about getting there, about moving fast.

With Daisy, it felt as if minutes turned into drops of honey, and he could spend an hour playing with her tongue, nibbling and licking, swallowing the throaty little sounds she made, his fingers wound through hers.

After a while, their fingers slipped apart and hers played a symphony down his shoulders, his back. He managed to position himself so that he was almost where he longed to be. Every time he pushed forward, she gasped. She felt warm and soft.

Finally he simply had to ask her. “I would love to touch you there, Daisy,” he whispered, and then waited, holding his breath, to see if she was as revolted by that idea as Bella had been. “My hands are clean.” His fingers hovered on her stomach.

“Why not?” she whispered back. Her eyes were alive with desire—and laughter. “I do it!”

A sound rose in his chest that was something like a sob as lust and gratitude flooded him at once. And then he was touching her there, and she was just as silky and wet and plump as he had ever imagined. Even better, his touch made her arch against him in a rhythm his body recognized.

“Do you like this?” he asked, his body aflame, more concentrated than he’d ever been in his life.

She twisted up again, a sob in her throat. Her hands clenched his arms.

He tried something else, and it must have been the right thing, because suddenly she felt wetter around his fingers, swollen and even more enticing. He’d like to kiss her there, if she’d let him. Obviously, she liked his touch. Her eyes were squeezed shut, intoxicating whimpers breaking from her lips. Maybe he could convince her that his tongue would be even better.

He rubbed harder and her eyes popped open. She grabbed his hand and pushed it further down. “Too much,” she said, her breath coming in a pant. “That almost hurts.”

“Here?” he breathed. He let his thumb delve lazily, slowly, into her luscious tightness. She was so small it seemed impossible that his tool had been inside her the night before.

A cry broke from her throat. He breached her passage, just barely, again and again, until she arched against him wildly, trembling, crying, her hands gripping his arms so tightly he would have bruises. It was the most fascinating moment of his life: he felt the moment she spasmed around his thumb. It was maddeningly erotic—and he knew instantly that Bella had never felt anything of the sort, at least not with him.

It dawned on him that if Daisy did that when he was inside, it wouldn’t be about how fast he could ride himself to completion, it would be about her pleasure. He would be able to feel all those ripples inside her.

But that was a dim accompaniment to the dizzying thought that now, now he . . . He braced himself over her again and rather awkwardly rubbed himself up and down. She was slick and hot, and the very feel of her made him pant. But he had to keep control. He desperately wanted to feel that for himself, inside.

Her eyes opened again. “That feels good,” she said, the echo of pleasure like a drug in her voice.

Watching her eyes as he slid down and in . . . it was fifty times more exciting than it had been the previous night. Then, he’d been wracked with guilt, too guilty to enjoy himself, too guilty to be there.

Now his heart was pounding so loudly that he couldn’t hear, and his entire existence was concentrated between his legs, on the riptide of lust flooding him. Daisy was tight and incredibly small, but he slid home as if she were home.

He’d never felt anything so good. He wasn’t all the way, or perhaps he was. He didn’t know. Every movement of her hips was a voluptuous invitation. “I think I should start moving,” he whispered. “I mean, I don’t think I can stop myself.”

Giggles burst from her lips. “I wouldn’t know, James. We have to rely on your superior knowledge.”

“I’m starting to think that I don’t have much,” he admitted, bending his head so that he could brush her mouth with his over and over.

“Well, but I don’t know anything,” Daisy told him, “though there is one thing I can tell you . . .”

“What?” he whispered.

“I want this,” she said, arching against him so that he slid the last inch into her cherry-dark sweetness. “More of this, James. You feel so good. You fill me up, and it doesn’t hurt the way it did last night.”

Her words snapped the reins that had held him back. He thrust forward, and then again, and again, long, ferocious drives that made her cry out. James couldn’t think at all, his mind awash with the need to go harder and faster. He had his hands braced on either side of her, his head hanging so that her breath was against his, so he didn’t miss one sobbing cry.

With Bella, he had never tried to control himself. He had thrust furiously, because that’s what they both wanted. But with Daisy, he wanted her to break like that, to shake all over. He wanted to know what it would feel like to be inside her at that moment, more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.

It didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen . . . she twisted beneath him, sobbing in an effort to get there. James could feel his body tightening, knew he couldn’t wait much longer.