The Highwayman's Folly

by Daria Vernon

  The claws of arousal clamped down on her belly and she was lost to it. Her hips lurched into his hand where he held her—where he possessed her. A gasping shriek escaped her throat as she clutched his dark hair by the fistful and crushed his face into her shoulder. His low growl settled pleasantly on her ears as the last bursts of heat spread and flared within her before settling warm and heavy in her tingling limbs.

  Her chest heaved, and she felt the rumbling movement of his smothered laughter against her. She smiled at him, panting.

  “Pleased . . . are you . . . with your work?”

  Words came between uneven breaths.

  Rhys nodded mischievously before rubbing his nose against her cheek. “I am but a humble craftsman. I suspect you’re the real artist here.”

  His fathomless pupils danced in the firelight.

  For Beth, it wasn’t enough.

  She reached down between them and found where his own need swelled tightly against his breeches. She stroked the taut weave before her fingers began to search keenly for the buttons.

  “I need more of you.”

  Rhys’ mirthful expression softened into one of seriousness and meaning. His fingers wrapped gently around her wrist to stay her hand. “Are you certain, Beth?”

  In the morning there would be many, many things to reckon with, but now—

  “Yes, Rhys. Please.”

  She could hear the ache in her own voice. She knew he heard it too.

  Soon it was not his finger that pressed at her entry but the silky tip of his cock, thick and exciting. She was ready to feel all of him.

  Rhys brushed the hair from her cheek, and she suddenly noticed that the endearing gesture had become a habit of his, even when she had no strands in her eyes.

  Wrapping a strong arm behind her hips, Rhys raised her gently off the cloak, aligning the both of them for pleasure.

  Slowly he pushed into her and her flesh stretched to accept him, to invite him in. Bearing down around the fullness of him, she thought her soul might part. And even when it hurt, it was bliss. She twined her legs around his hips—encouraged him to root himself fully in her depths.

  When their bodies met completely, they each let out their own rasping sounds and began, gradually, to move as one.

  To feel him inside of her was somehow both rapturous and peaceful at once. Yet, in the first moments, Beth struggled to not want more. More of her skin against his. More undress. More sunshine. More time. Rhys stole these thoughts away with a torrid kiss as he heaved into her again.

  After that, all that Beth felt and knew was of the moment. The feel of her body drawing him into her. The way that his every thrust struck some unknown mark within. The cold was cast out completely. Beth’s skin became dewy with the warm exertion of their ardor. They would not freeze in the wilderness tonight.

  Then the pace of his kisses and gentle bites were slowed. He breathed more heavily and she with him.

  She caught him studying her from above. His eyelids tightened in concentration with the depth of every thrust—thrusts that pushed delicate, pleading sounds out of her on every breath.

  Never leave.

  She reached up and held his face squarely in her hands, her nails curling into the skin behind his ears. He now fairly growled with every fervid stroke. His cock twitched deep inside her. He began to pull away, but she didn’t let him go. Looking him deep in the eyes, she assented.

  And he pushed so firmly against her body as he shuddered that she thought her little bed of earth might swallow her. Unbearably attached to the heat between her thighs, she wrapped every limb around him. And slowly every muscle atop her went slack as Rhys’ last aching gasps were expelled. His breath shook, ragged, against her shoulder. She stroked her fingers through his dampened hair.

  The air around them no longer smelled of smoke or of decaying leaves. It smelled of wet wool, and sweat, and seed. It smelled of them.

  She ached at his withdrawal from her.

  Rhys did a languid roll, taking Beth with him and leaving her on top. The cape she wore—his own—now trapped the heat between them. She rested her head against his heart, and their breathing steadied—matched. Spent, they were each at the edge of sleep.

  A contented smile drew across Beth’s face. Her body was filled with dreamy desert sands. Perfectly warmed.

  But as she drifted off, a slender finger of the cold wind wrapped around her ankle, whispering—

  It’s over.

  Beth’s eyes opened to face a squirrel but a few feet in front of her, digging through the leaves for its cached nuts. She followed it with her bleary morning vision, its routine bringing a smile to her lips. The dewiness of the morning had gone right into her bones but at least there was no frost. The fire was now an ashen heap with just one thin tendril of smoke rising from its center.

  She felt a stirring at her back. The squirrel froze, alert.

  “Who’s this little voyeur?” asked Rhys—the end of his query falling off into a yawn.

  “Our breakfast guest.”

  “Well I didn’t invite anyone.”

  “He’s here at my invitation, and we should show him the greatest courtesy here at . . . hmm . . .”

  “Camp Wolvesden.”

  “Oh, that’s rather apt. Better than I would have come up with.”

  Rhys put his arm around Beth’s waist and the squirrel took its nut and ran.

  Beth rolled to face him. She sought his warmth but could feel that the morning dampness had suffused his clothes just as badly as her own. Still, she curled into him, her eyes as heavy as a bear’s in winter.

  “We shouldn’t linger long,” he said and kissed her above her closed eyes. She lazily opened them, mostly to take him in. His sable hair was chaos, hardly a strand left in his queue. The waves of it were in his eyes, and when he leaned close enough, they were pleasantly in her eyes too. She blew gently on one of the locks that clung to his face and searched his features. He held her hand at her chest and smiled down at her.

  This. If life could just be more like this. All the time. With him, it felt like every aspect of her could be seen and embraced.

  He kissed her eyebrow again and stroked her cheek with his thumb. But that hesitant melancholy that she’d caught on his face so briefly the night before seemed to be returning. His gaze pierced her deeply. “I see it in your eyes,” he said. “Don’t try to figure out how it can work.”

  The words bit. But their bite came innocently enough from their truth. She had already accepted their separation as fact, even as they’d been in the throes of intercourse.

  The exciting strangeness of their time together would have to hold her over for the rest of her days. In the last week, she’d had so many revelations regarding her own strengths that it was difficult now to picture how she’d sit alone with that knowledge. Forever. She saw it before her—decades of descent into old age with a poorly embroidered sampler in her lap.

  She wished for a life where she might instead wring every drop from her potential. Where she could be out of doors and active. For most of her adult life, she’d gone to sleep and woken with a terrible itching and crawling in her legs. An urge she could never satisfy. But this morning that was absent. She had used her body—to many ends—in the past day and it was wholly content to be useful.

  Days ago, in the threatening shadows of Lionel and Solomon, she wanted nothing more than to be home, but now the thought brought her equal measures of longing and dread.

  Now it would end.

  She was being ridiculous. If she didn’t take a stance against her own naiveté, it might run away with her. Not only did they have to part, but she had to accept that he could still be full-well lying to her. Nothing besides his own conscience could stop him from demanding payment for her safe return. She was quite confident that he had such a conscience, but she’d made a guarded point
to be reconciled with all possibilities.

  Slipping from under Rhys’ arm, she left their little alcove. Standing, her limbs felt weighted by a lack of sleep. She would never take back the experience of sleeping and rutting in the woods, but surely she wouldn’t mind trying it in summertime. She smothered the fire and began to collect their things.

  Rhys felt the absence of her body acutely. He had to get up, but daydreams of the night before were already inundating him like an army of ghosts. His hands flexed at the memory of taking fistfuls of her thighs and backside. His eyes clamped shut as he imagined the way she’d looked under him, surrounded by fabric and leaves and her own furiously messy hair—how she’d looked when he pushed into her for the very first stroke. How she’d wrapped around him . . . drawn him deeper . . .

  He shuddered and felt his groin knot up. No more of this.

  In silence, he helped her pack up. But his thoughts were unstoppable. He lingered no longer on her body, but his mind would not release him from other, more troubling thoughts.

  He’d told her not to search for ways to make it work, but the advice was just as much for himself. Never again would he lay eyes on a woman standing over the predator she’d just killed by hand. He’d place a bet with the gods on that front. But even putting aside the sweeping dramatics of the past few days—where would he ever meet another such as her? A woman who finds humor in the face of uncertainty. A fearless woman. One who loves the outdoors, not solely in a “follows the hunting party with refreshments” sort of way but in a “leaves in her hair, after a night of rutting” sort of way.

  Had he even known what he wanted before he met her? That he could want such companionship at all?

  He swallowed the thoughts, and they went down as easily as a peach pit.

  Approaching her as she loaded the bags, he plucked one of the aforementioned leaves from her hair. A mere excuse to touch her.

  She didn’t turn to him.

  “I’ll take down the canvas,” he said. He was helpless to say more.

  But even as he tore down their little encampment, he was punished by wistful thoughts. He tried to remember every detail of what happened there between them. The memories of the last few days would have to last his lifetime. It was a future that, now stretching out before him, felt bereft of happiness.

  She brought the horse over to him, and together they rolled up the canvas in silence and packed it.

  Taking her hand, he helped her up into the saddle. Her fingers were cool and clammy.

  He slid into the seat behind her, and forceful memories about their last ride together rolled over him in violent waves. His arousal was difficult to contain, but something wasn’t quite right.

  She felt much warmer than usual against him.

  He bent to put his cheek to hers.

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “Mhmm.” She nodded, drowsily.

  But her cheek was hot against his.

  “Are you feeling well?”

  “I’m well enough. I’m just tired and cold. Forever, cold.” She rested back against him.

  Despite her reassurance, a dull panic was floating, directionless, through Rhys’ chest. He turned their horse and began to head for the sunrise. He tried to keep his voice calm—

  “How is your injury today?”

  “I think it’s fine,” she mumbled. “Doesn’t hurt.”

  He pulled back the cape anyway. “Let me have a look at it. Lean into me.”

  Pushing the fabric away, he looked down over her shoulder. The skin was calm and pink. Thank God.

  He put the cape back into place and wrapped an arm around her. The intermittent shivers were the same as they’d been the night before.

  Just how long had she been sick for?

  Chapter 13

  Much of the ride had been quiet. In the absence of Beth’s lovely voice, Rhys turned an ear to the countryside, but even the birds disappointed him. The winter morning was open and lonely.

  Beth slept against his chest, cocooned in the fabric of his cloak. Her body shrank and expanded, bellows-like, against him. He pulled the hair back from her shining face. Her perspiration tugged at his worries.

  What if the whole terrible affair had somehow doomed her? What if—?

  To imagine a life where she was distant and untouchable was one thing. Imagining her spirit extinguished from the world was quite another. Agony swept down upon him. Thoughts of irreparable harm—

  No. She’s just caught cold. He tried to hold in mind the incredible constitution that he’d come to know her for. She wasn’t some thin-leafed thing that wilted readily at the first lapse of attention. She was an Athena who had been stealthily concealed in drawing rooms for much of her life. Still, it took all his concentration to keep thoughts of more dire outcomes at his back.

  Getting her home was the only priority.

  Rhys turned them onto a narrower road, one less welcoming to carts, with the hope that they’d cross fewer travelers. They’d long since left the woodlands for the leas.

  He’d groomed the rest of the forest out of her chestnut hair as she slept. The small refinement helped but did not exactly render her presentable. Even with her destroyed traveling gown concealed beneath his cape, they still made for a questionable sight. Anyone in the county might know her or might have heard tavern whispers of a local missing woman. The likelihood—and danger—of this only grew the nearer they got to her dear, familiar Greenthorne.

  Rhys had been pulling off the road whenever he spotted someone in the distance, but now that forests had become fields, hiding was nigh on impossible.

  Beth stirred against his chest as they crested another roll of the shallow hills.

  “Beth?”

  She didn’t wake. Rhys looked up from his chosen spot on the horizon. The sun was lonely in a cloudless sky. The weather had broken to a more tolerable chill. Rays of light were pushing the winter away, warming up the wool on his shoulders.

  He lowered his gaze.

  A horse was approaching. Rhys squinted. The rider sat tall, sprucely dressed. There was no shrubbery to conceal them along the trail. Pulling off the road here would only look more suspicious. The last few travelers had left them alone, so why not this one? Rhys straightened his cap and wrapped an arm around Beth.

  The gentleman approached. Rhys nodded to him.

  The man nodded back. “Good day.”

  There was a tinge of caution in the greeting. The stranger’s raised eyebrow did not go unnoticed as the two men’s horses briefly aligned on the path. Rhys forced a swallow through his dry throat and tightened his grip on the reins. Yet the man passed by and the trot of his horse was already fading behind them.

  Rhys began to soften with relief.

  Then the trotting stopped.

  “Pardon me, sir.”

  Rhys stilled and looked steadily over his shoulder, trying his best to bring a cheerful light to his eyes. The nob, in his long blue coat, came riding back toward them.

  “Apologies, but I would be remiss if I failed to ask if you need assistance. Is she quite all right?” His look of suspicion turned to utter concern—or even, disgust?—as his eyes fell on Beth.

  “Indeed, my wife is unwell. I’m taking her straight away to a nearby relation, but I pray it’s just a cold.” Rhys caught the man’s eye again and held his gaze relentlessly, not shying away from the lie.

  “Ah,” said the man, his eyebrow still arcing sharply for his hairline. “Yes, I hope it’s no more than that.”

  “Bless you for your concern—”

  “Have you been traveling long? Forgive me, but she looks—well, if I may be frank—filthy. What in heaven’s name has she been through?”

  Rhys’ lips dropped grimly. Her filth was a fact, but he bristled at someone pointing it out. “She fell off of her horse when it spooked. She’s an
excellent rider, but her malady has exhausted her, and she couldn’t hold on. Unfortunately, the horse ran. Getting her to a bed is my only priority now.” His last words were acutely true, and he longed to be rid of this inconvenient fool.

  His hand stroked Beth where he held her. “We had best get moving.” Rhys turned back to the road, but the blue blood aligned himself again.

  “Forgive any impertinence but—”

  “I’m not sure I have it in me to forgive any more impertinence.” A cutting rasp painted Rhys’ words as a threat.

  The bothersome stranger was briefly taken aback but undeterred. He straightened himself in his seat and set his jaw. “I must have confidence in this woman’s well-being before I ride off!”

  “What’s this now?” asked Beth. Rhys hadn’t noticed her stir.

  The stranger’s jaw went slack, seemingly horrified that he’d woken her. He pulled his hat down to his heart.

  “Forgive me, Madam. It’s abhorrent of me to disrupt your slumber. I merely sought to ensure that all was well here—that no assistance be necessary. Once I have that assurance from you, I’ll be on my way.”

  Rhys’ heart pounded. Beth looked up at him sweetly.

  “I’m sure my husband has things well in hand.” The dreamy quality of her voice momentarily plucked Rhys from the conversation and left a strange ache traversing his skin.

  The man blushed and swallowed hard. “And is there any way in which I might offer my assistance?”

  “My, what a lovely stranger you are. Are they all so generous as you in this shire? I’ll be quite well, I assure you. We are so deeply appreciative of your cares and concern.”

  Rhys bit his lip, straining not to laugh at the overly airy lilt she was putting on to gratify the nob. The man and Rhys exchanged the curtest of nods before nudging their respective mounts in opposing directions.

  “Thank you for coming to my rescue back there.”

  “Well, anything for my husband.” Her eyes twinkled as she looked over her shoulder at him. “Are you sure you know where you’re taking me?”