So, in short, in Hot Blooded Creatures: Claire's been helping running the Dearing family estate for years, becoming strong and independent, but now her father has decided to leave it to a distant family relation, and Claire will therefore be married in the summer. To the repulsive Victor Hoskins. Her old friend, ex Naval officer and new stable hand at the estate (Owen Grady) asks her to think about what she wants for a change, and smut ensues. Of course, I suggest you read it, but that's all you really need to know if you don't want to.

This starts almost immediately afterwards and spreads over the next tumultuous months.

She feels so incredibly different but almost painfully aware that nothing seems to have changed at the same time. Like she's smuggling something immensely valuable and under no circumstances can anyone find out.

She feels different inside – like when she looks in the mirror she should look more dramatically altered than just have that stupid wide smile on her face, and if she thinks on the smile for more than two seconds something that's still quite alien tingles between her legs, and she feels like she's hiding the most illicit secret.

She supposes she should feel some sort of guilt, either for the act itself or the fact she can't stop thinking about it, but somehow she can't bring herself to. Because she can't remember the last time anything ever felt this right, and for once she's being completely selfish. Because this is all about her, not about profits in the estate, a good turnover next year, or the Dearing family name. This is about how completely unbelievable she felt, crashing down from that high, a high she hadn't even known was possible, and those never-before-seen feelings; between her thighs, sparking across every inch of skin that brushed with Owen's, and somewhere in her heart.

(and probably about how Owen felt, too. He seemed to enjoy himself).

Last night, she snuck back into the house the back way, through corridors she hadn't used since she was tearing down them with Karen and Owen in their much younger years. She managed to get up to her bedroom without making a sound, avoiding all the creaking floorboards and missing any nighttime wanderers. She locked the door to her room and collapsed between her pillows, that huge stupid smile refusing to leave her face. Owen had been so kind, helping her get all cleaned up and helping her to straighten her clothes (all roughly discarded in the throes of passion) when they were back on her person, so she left the stable cabin looking like the Claire Dearing any member of the estate she might happen upon would know, without suspecting anything had changed.

So it was an invisible scar, almost, everything that had happened. As she eased into her nightgown, remembering the burning of his fingers on every corner of her body, she had sighed. So much had changed, but nothing was a promise, nothing was a future, nothing was certain.

Turns out, it wasn't slipping away as quickly as she'd expected. She woke up, before the sunlight slipping through her window usually woke her, breathing heavily with that strange burning sticky and warm between her legs. Feeling herself flush violently as she fell back into consciousness, the dream played on repeat behind her eyes – Owen pressing her back against the rose trellis again, but this time with his pants around his ankles, his glorious manhood on show, and he's snaking those long, roughened fingers beneath her skirt waistband, into her panties. Sliding against that previous unexplored, barely understood place that's suddenly the most sensitive in her whole body… she hitches a breath, before shaking herself.

Nice young ladies surely should certainly not be thinking like that, let alone dreaming about it. She's always ignored the mumblings of her parents and the senior staff on the Dearing estate, that Owen Grady wasn't 'made of the same cloth as the Dearing family' and 'a bad influence', but she'd never expected his ability to corrupt her to quite this degree.

Quite so deliciously.

She sighs. Despite the sinfully wonderful dream, and the feelings that are stacking up inside her, she has to get on with her day. She has to step back into the shoes that she's still walking around in for a very limited amount of time, and maybe – just maybe – she can make them all regret their decision that she isn't the best to ever run the Dearing estate. And that wonderful, heavenly experience – she has to shut that out of her mind. She has to think about everything else she is, other than this newly awakened young woman with a body burning for one young man.

Because she has no idea what's going to happen.

It takes about two hours of having her 'normal morning' before she comes up with a weak excuse to find an opportunity to see him. Mentioning perhaps slightly too loudly to anyone who might be listening, she decides she's going for a morning ride.

As she walks into the yard, she sees him in the far corner, grooming Gray the headstrong pure black gelding they'd just bought in from the Hammond stud farm. She watches the horse pawing the ground impatiently, still a little temperamental, and smiles to herself. For her first ride in a few years, she'll go with one of the horses a little more calm and gentle. Lex the mare, perhaps.

Her thinking fades when he looks up, having completed Gray's front legs, and when his eyes meet hers everything disintegrates in her mind. Everything changes. That normal day she was going to have, despite the night before, fades into obscurity. Because suddenly, with his eyes on hers, it's as if his hands are all over her body again and his mouth is everywhere and she can feel him inside her…

Her breath hitches, just from a look. And then that tiny half smirk spreads across his face and it's taking all the strength in the world not to jump him right there, in broad daylight, with Zara, the mayor of Jackson's daughter, who keeps her horses on the Dearing estate, just saddling up her stallion yards away. She walks towards him, in her usual business like, no-fuss stride, trying to ignore her heart thumping behind her ears.

There's a tiny moment when they stare at each other, as if both of them daring the other to make the first move, to shatter the already cracking ice, but only a tiny moment.

"I-" she starts at the same time as he says "Miss Dearing" and she lets a little smile grace her lips as she gives him an almost imperceptible nod.

"Miss Dearing, it may be of interest to you to read the veterinarian's report on Rex's lameness…"

There's the tiniest sparkle in his eyes, the tiniest hint for her to pick up on, but she's studying that perfect face down to every last freckle, and she couldn't miss it.

"Certainly." She smiles, hoping the excitement fluttering in her chest doesn't sound so obvious in her voice.

Owen checks the knot attaching Gray's halter to the loop on the yard wall with a tug, and smiles.

"Right this way then."

As she walks right behind him, she feels her legs could give out from under her any moment.

The moment they get into the stable office, shutting the door quietly behind them, he spins to face her, his eyes almost as black as Gray's coat. Her heart thumping in her chest, she takes a small, almost nervous step towards him, and his hand finds its way to cup her chin, straightening her face and forcing her eyes to lock with his.

"I reckon we have about five minutes before Zara sets off…"

Almost breathless, she cuts in, "And she's always at least an hour…"

"Gray has plenty of hay in the yard…"

She raises an eyebrow almost imperceptibly at him, as if to ask him why he still seems to be persuading both her and himself about what he's about to do. He gives her a half smile as he leans towards her, letting her close the gap between them, leaving the ball in her court.

He tastes like she remembers, and his mouth feels as hot and demanding and loving against hers as it did the night before, but there's almost a flicker of mischief there now, because they're fitting in a tryst, of sorts, just a shallow stable brick wall away from the Dearing estate and the daily goings on. The hand on her chin threads up roughly into her hair, and one of her last lucid thoughts is that she doubts Owen has a hairbrush that hasn't been used on a horse's mane or tail around the stables, and she'll look like she's been up to something untoward when she heads outside back into the real world.

He starts to walk her back, though, his mouth never leaving hers, towards the old desk, and suddenly she feels an almost electric jolt zip through her, focusing low in her abdomen. Because in the year before Karen had gotten married, she'd had one novel (if you could even call it that) she'd gotten from one of the workers on the vineyard, and it could only be described as adult and inappropriate, but somehow it had almost been enthralling. And Claire had had a sneak read of it, just opening it somewhere midway through, and she's suddenly remembering what she'd been reading about.

A secretary, and a business owner, doing very illicit things with the secretary sat on the edge of the boss' desk. She flushes a little more as Owen's mouth travels down her throat, unsure if it's the recollection of what she read, what the man's lips can do to her, what else she can imagine using his lips for, or a combination of all of them.

Sure enough, Owen reaches haphazardly behind her and something clatters to the floor, and then she can feel the cold, hard wood of the clear desk behind her, and warm, hard pressure of Owen's arousal against her hip bone. She slides up to be sitting on the desk, gasping in an effort to keep down the moans that are starting to threaten to escape.

"Fucking hell, Claire, you're something else…" he hisses against her collarbone, as she opens her legs and he steps between them. The language doesn't make her shudder anywhere near as much as it did the night before. She snakes her hands down from where they've found themselves around his neck, tracing down his chest, thinking she'll revel in the supple muscles there later, and finding the buttons of his stable breeches. With trembling fingers, she starts slipping the buttons through the rough holes in the fabric, and she feels the hand that isn't threaded in her hair pushing her jodhpurs roughly over her hips, with little success. Laughing, and with an ease she had never envisaged before in a situation quite like this, she pushes him away and start sliding off her jodhpurs and riding boots, quickly followed by her panties. He seems to take the hint in seconds and finishes unbuttoning his pants, and kicking them roughly to a corner of the room, his work boots long discarded.

For a moment, as he steps back towards her, looking almost predatory, she considers herself, naked from the waist down, sat on the stable desk in a little makeshift office, without windows, yes, but with an unlocked door right in front of her. But in that moment, none of that seems to matter. It doesn't seem to mean anything, it certainly doesn't add up to something Claire Dearing does not do in her mind, and as Owen pushes himself against her, his erection pressing against her inner thigh, all thoughts of anything other than flesh and hunger and love vanish.

His kiss is tender, as his fingers trace delicately between her legs, assessing how ready she is for him, and as his fingers slip between her folds with ease, his tongue against hers is somehow more urgent, somehow more demanding. She rocks her hips, almost involuntarily, towards him, begging him in her movements and the sudden ferocity of both their kisses to offer her everything, once again.

Because once he's been inside her once, she's felt somehow empty without him.

"I need you." She gasps, and it's different to I want you, like he's one of those illegal substances that if you smoke you're forever dependent on.

He slides between her legs almost effortlessly, but with the sudden rush of pleasure, that sudden complete feeling, she bites his bottom lip. She feels him chuckle against her, and the slightly metallic taste of blood offers itself for a moment.

And then she's rocking, slowly, and he's pulling almost all the way out of her before slamming back in, and she can feel that pleasure building inside her again, like she's never left his arms, not really.

"God, Owen…" she whispers, as she feels it building, far quicker that yesterday, maybe it's something about the angle sat on the desk like this with her legs wrapped around him, but this feels that little bit more heavenly, even more like she's about to crash and burn, ruins of herself.

He meets her eyes, and there's so much in there she's almost scared, for a moment, but then he rests his forehead on her shoulder, and she can feel his gasping breaths against her, as he slides his fingers back between her legs and she's not quite sure exactly what he's doing there, but it must be some sort of magic, because all of a sudden she's exploding, crashing all around him, and she claps a hand to her mouth so she doesn't scream his name.

With one more thrust, she feels him empty inside of her, and then he's leaning on her, so drained he's almost a dead weight. She tightens her legs around him, holding him close as she feels him soften inside her, and she buries her face in his hair as he gets his breath back.

When he looks right at her, she presses her lips against his, because that says so much more than anything she could put into words.

And then they're scrabbling to find their clothes, and there's a heavy silence falling over them, because what in the name of God in heaven are they doing and surely this can't go on.

But as she walks towards the door, and he catches her arm, pulls her flush against him and kisses her one last, long time, she supposes right now, it doesn't matter. Right now, it's happening. And if he's her only ounce of sanity in a world that's turning upside down and not making sense anymore, well, he's an ounce of sanity that feels better than she ever could have imagined.

It'll go on, for now.

Soooo… apparently this (part 2 of the trilogy) has decided it would like to be a multi-chap. Any of you that were there back in the early JW days for Rescue Flares will remember that sometimes when my fics decide they want to be more than my default oneshot, they can keep going on a lot longer than I ever intend. So I'm not sure, as yet, quite how many chapters this will be. What I am sure of, however, is I'm going on holiday tomorrow and won't be back until August 5th, so don't hold your breath for chapter two. But I promise it will be on its way.

Please drop me a lovely little review, I would love to know what you think, both of this and where Clawen are going next in this little world! I have a plan for them, but that is always subject to change for any brilliant ideas!