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the Shenandoah Valley.
    “Make love to me like you never have before,” she whispered to him as his left hand cupped, stroked the other breast.
    “Like never before?”
    “Now, Jonah—now,” she growled the words, insistent as she tightened herself around him, thrust herself up toward him, arching her back as he planted himself more firmly into her heatedness.
    It drove him near crazy when she did that, never ashamed was Gritta of asking for what it was she wanted. She was so unlike what his mother had told him he was to expect of a woman on that morning before the preacher joined the young couple. So unlike what even his father had already confessed a man had right to expect of a wife and her duties to her sworn husband.
    So this felt like that second time their wedding night, all over again: her crying out in pleasure as he hurled himself against her, frantically gripping her, holding her for fear their damp, sweaty bodies would slip loose and fly asunder when what he hungered for most right now was to melt together with her as one and never be apart. He was fearful with the savageness of their lovemaking that he would fling himself free of her: lose her again, if only for a moment.
    That fear was something he could almost taste. Like the salty sting of the sweat he bent to lick from the crevice between her breasts.
    Yet Gritta stayed with him, rocking with a fury that drove him ever higher.
    “Let me feel you explode inside me, Jonah—please,” she begged at his ear, biting it tenderly, her fingers rakingthe back of his neck. “I want to feel your heat,” she moaned.
    There was no more holding back once she did that to him. It was one command he had never been able to deny. Whereas he had spent a life of choosing what orders to obey, Jonah Hook was helpless when his woman demanded his immediate compliance.
    The release came like a long-awaited volcanic shock quaking the entire Shenandoah Valley. Tingling from his belly down through his thighs, Jonah exploded in a growing crescendo of thrusts as he sought to plant himself deeper and deeper into her body—wanting never to free himself of this moistness, this heat, this joy of ultimate togetherness with her.
    Then as he lay there atop Gritta, his breath slowing raggedly, for the first time sensing the sweat pouring from his own body and hearing at his temples his own heart hammering like it wanted free of its cage, Jonah marveled at what he had found with this woman—marveled that they had seen their special bond through the long years of his search to reclaim her.
    The breeze of that evening felt good on his cheek as he snuggled closer to her, listening for the beat of her own heart, the slowing of her own breathing, the last of the whimpers in the back of her throat as the crescendo washed from her in eddying waves.
    Gritta trembled beneath him like a frightened animal again, like she always did as he pulled his softened flesh from her. He drew the woman into his arms and brought her against him as he rolled onto his back. The breeze felt good and clean and cool and dry.
    A sky above their bed hung dusted with more stars than he had ever recalled seeing over the Shenandoah before.
    Jonah blinked, and blinked again. Drinking deep of the air as the Big Dipper whirled silently overhead.
    The sky. The air.
    Different somehow.
    The coarse wool blanket beneath his hand startled him. Not the soft, years-worn goose-down comforter whereon he had made love to her.
    As he sat upright, he trembled like a wet dog with distemper, the sweat on his brow and face and chest gone quickly cold and stale now in the breeze. Jonah drank deep of the night air. Only one place smelled like this—the high plains. Sage. But more than sage.
    Wildness. Unfettered wildness.
    He swallowed hard, near choking on disappointment.
    “Goddamn,” Jonah muttered, his head sinking backward in an arc atop his shoulders as he clamped his eyes shut angrily, cursing the dream that had come to haunt him