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“Alys.” He said her name with reverence, and at last looked up. “Have you lost your senses?”

“Mayhap,” she replied, cradling his chin with her hands again, only a breath away from her bare belly. “But I swear I will become fully crazed if you do not smile at the woman who loves you.”

And that, it seemed, was the proper thing to say. For like the sun’s sudden rise over the horizon, spilling light as if a pair of shutters had been thrown wide, Robin’s face transformed. He smiled at her. The gleam she was used to seeing in his gaze had returned, and the roguish grin, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “I should be even more a fool than I already am to ignore such a threat.”

Then he looked away from her face and moved out of her grip, back onto his haunches, catching her hands in his. She felt the weight of his gaze over her naked torso, saw the flash of hunger in his expression and then the wicked glint of humor back in his eyes. He surged to his feet and scooped her up in his arms as if she were no more than a goose-feather pillow.

As he strode across the room to one of the pallets, he kissed her. Nay, ’twas not a kiss so much as a nibbling . . . a gentle taste of her upper lip, playing it tenderly between his teeth, slipping a sleek tongue up and under it and then fully into her mouth. “You have the most beautiful mouth,” he said against her. “ ’Tis like a juicy plum and I have dreamt on it for too many nights.”

She was lowered onto something soft, but she hardly noticed, for he stood before her and pulled his tunic off, then his shirt, and at last she saw the fine form of his lean, muscled legs . . . and the bulge between them . . . fully outlined by his braies.

Robin’s chest was fine, with wide shoulders that narrowed to a long, lean torso the color of sun-warmed honey. She’d seen bare male bodies many times as a healer, even some as well formed and muscular as this one . . . but none had made her catch her breath or wish to taste them until now. He recognized her expression, and for a moment, the cocky outlaw was back. He stilled and fisted his hands, flexing his arms in front of her so that his upper arms tightened into sleek ropes of muscle and his chest bulged.

Catching her eye, he smiled wickedly. “Aye, you like that, do you?” Then the brashness faded, replaced by something hot and liquid. “Not nearly as much as I do, Alys. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about you, my love.”

“I thought you were the one who was dying,” she said, reaching up to touch those sleek muscles. “Allan did not say who had been injured. He just told me ‘he’ needed me.”

“And so you worried that it was my deathbed you were to visit?” He moved his elegant hands to cover her uplifted breasts. “So beautiful.”

No man had touched her breasts before, and Alys was unprepared for the rush of pleasure and the instant tightening of her nipples. He sat before her, brushing the lightest of fingertips over their hard points, watching her, smiling at her shudders and the surprised gasps as her skin heated. Sharp little twinges zipped down into her belly and beyond, her body gathering up and her insides squirming in an unfamiliar way.

“Alys,” he breathed, then bent forward to cover her mouth again. She felt him smiling against her, his lips curved in pure delight and laughter. He pulled up a bit to whisper, “I cannot believe you are here. I have been miserable, thinking never to see you again. Or taste you.” Then he moved closer again, his tongue thrusting deeply into her mouth, tangling with hers for a long time.

She closed her eyes as the room began to tilt and shift, and flowed into him, into this slick world of tremors and heat and skin against skin. He lifted away after a long time. “I could kiss you all day,” he murmured, once again sliding his tongue over and around her upper lip. “But there are other things to do. And I find that I am hungry.”

Robin smiled down at her. His eyes were warm and delighted, and he moved away from her, down, down along her torso, his fingers at last settling over her bare thighs. She still wore her hose, but the cotton stockings ended near the tops of her legs . . . and left bare that full and hot place between her legs. “ ’ Tis long past time for me to break my fast.”

Alys didn’t know what he meant until he gently guided her knees apart. She gasped in surprise and at first resisted, but when he lifted his face and gave her that smile, she allowed him to part her legs.

“Ah,” he said . . . but it was more of a groan. A low, deep, back-of-the-throat groan. And then he lowered his face down to her quim, which had never been so . . . opened and exposed and . . . Oh.