by Daria Vernon
Their furious and clumsy disrobing of one another came to a panting halt as they reached the final layers. Beth rocked back on her heels, kneeling before him. Nothing but her fine linen shift was left. For him, it was his breeches, the fall of them still pulled taut against his arousal.
He reached out between them and trailed a knuckle down the crumpled front of her chemise. The fabric was so fine that he could already see the shadows of her nipples, which peaked against the fabric as his touch dragged past them. Bemused, he played with a lock of her hair and rearranged it near her collarbone—only to catch sight of that angry scar, stretched and jagged. It peeked out from the edge of the fabric. He hooked the linen back and leaned in to kiss it. Then traced his lips along that slender bone, thanking the stars that Beth was here.
Her hands knit into his hair, and she cradled him against her as he worshipped the remnant of their strange past. Turning an ear to her chest, he heard the pleasant whooshes of her heartbeat, and he slid a hand up to cup her breast through the fabric.
“Rhys.”
To hear her moan mingled with his name nearly shattered him as he lowered her onto the pile of cushions. And then it came, the touch that he’d longed to feel as she explored him, sought to free him.
Facing one another as they reclined, she looked as serene as a summer pond. Not a drop of worry poisoned the space between her brows. The worry was his now.
Her hand teased him again before dropping to the ground.
“What is it, Rhys?”
“I was very afraid after the last time, Beth. Afraid that I’d hurt you, or ruined you.”
The pillows rustled as she pulled away to look at him more acutely. Her concerning expression was not absent of judgment.
“Was it not established that very day that I was un-ruin-able? The thing already having been done?”
He didn’t mean—he breathed deeply and chose his words more carefully.
“I didn’t mean ruin you.” He looked steadily at her. “What I meant was that I’d ruined your life. That I’d—”
“That you’d left me with child? Is that it?”
He patted her hip and looked away. “I was getting to it, but yes. That’s what worried me. I shall be more careful tonight.”
Her eyes flitted then and glistened as though she were trying to stay ahead of some emotion. He wished he could undo whatever he’d said to cause it.
“Allow me to allay your fears, Rhys. You see, I was quite reckless in my first dalliances as a girl. I was taught about horseback riding and geography and poetry and the Greek dramas, but I was not taught about men. I attacked my girlhood passion for a neighbor boy with oblivious abandon—no sense for the consequences.”
He could see what she danced around, but would not assume.
“I don’t believe I am compatible with the condition that concerns you.”
Beth’s gut folded in half at her own words as though she’d been doubled over by a blow. Such candor was something natural to her, but suddenly, and uncharacteristically, she wished she could take the words back. Rhys’ face shifted through a whole three-act tragedy of expressions—or was that just in her head?
His face settled into something more familiar. “Perhaps it was the lad’s problem?” Rhys took her hand, and she smiled.
“That’s a rather novel idea, isn’t it?” But it isn’t the truth.
He needn’t know that her cycle was rare or that barrenness ran like a brook through her family tree—though her lack of kin might have come to his notice. The thought of not having children had never daunted her personally—she’d anticipated spinsterhood, after all. But the notion that it should be daunting felt often foisted upon her by others. That shrill chorus of society types chimed in now to warn her—
You will not be loved.
Yet here was Rhys’ thumb, still smoothing away the hairs that were never in her eye. And the terrible voices in her head suddenly sounded very much like liars.
She melted back into the cushion at his touch. Why should she be so upset? Some version of forever seemed wounded by her admission to him, but to marry him was so out of the question that—
“I love you, Beth.”
Her busy thoughts fled into hiding and her eyes refocused on the man before her, now silent. Blood rushed to her cheeks. She couldn’t possibly have heard—
“What?”
“I love you,” he said.
Her heart felt suddenly crowded in her chest, and she wished she might free it for awhile, as a bird from a cage. Words swirled loosely in her dark skull and she felt helpless to speak. “I’d not thought of that.” Foolish words. They escaped her, meager and squeaky.
Rhys smiled good-naturedly, perhaps at her turn of helplessness.
What did it change? Anything? Could she still go to the Continent, when this existed? He was suddenly like a story become real. He was no longer just her shocking anecdote or her Ordeal. He was flesh and blood. He was possibility.
He was—
He was looking at her, that boyish smile still across his lips. He propped his head up on a hand, looking utterly un-expectant of a sensical response from her.
He was—
Hers.
She pulled up against him and tasted his lips, inhaling that dash of pine that he carried even in spring. Her fingers rooted into his hair, clutched at it, in disbelief of his realness—of his love.
He rolled on top of her and sat up, stroking her thigh, assessing her. Had he looked at her in such a way only minutes before, she might have shrunk beneath his gaze, but now she felt as she had during her youthful liaisons. She felt safe and confident and cherished. She felt like the maenad, spilling wine and keeping secrets—being altogether herself. Her body was tingly and slack. No gin had a hand in it this time. She was drunk on something else entirely.
Rhys’ neck moved with a dry swallow as he took her in. “More than I ever dreamed.”
He stretched himself down over her legs. Taking her hem in hand, he nudged his face beneath it, pushing the garment upward and kissing precious places along the way. Beth’s lungs lost their air as his chin brushed against her quim and he kissed her there too. It was not the same as the pecks along her thighs. It was open-mouthed. Luxurious. Consuming. The tip of his tongue burned hot paths through the soft pleats of her sex. The very awareness of his face between her thighs as he drank from her—she would sacrifice herself to the maenad’s cult to feel more of it.
Beth shimmied against the cushions, wriggling until she freed herself from the chemise. All the while, she bucked gently from the fire that was rising beneath Rhys’ lips as they worked over her flesh.
Then his kisses began to travel. To her belly. To her rib. He delivered an urgent but delicate bite to the underside of one breast. Her lap—now slickened and warm—was aching at the loss of his lips, until his fingers came to replace them.
She loved the sense of him taking her in hand, of being held on his fingers as they controlled her pleasure from within her. She should not have worried over the loss of his mouth, for his lips trailed their way back down to her. Found her soft dusting of curls. Lapped at her. His tongue caressed her, pulled her apart—accessed her. He moaned against her, and the sound pushed dizzying vibrations through her delicate skin as she bore down against his face and hand. With a curl of his knuckles inside her, her hips drew upward, greedy for the sensation.
He moaned again—that humming—it drilled into her tension like a corkscrew. She clawed helplessly at Rhys’ deliciously naked back as he buried his face against her—giving her everything she needed, everything she—
She snapped.
Sensation spilled over her, striking her with the force of waves hitting a jetty. Her eyes clamped down against the shivers of blinding white bliss.
When she opened them again, Rhys was already sitting back on his heels. Looking
down at her the way a gallery patron might admire the glowing pigments of a Fragonard.
His body was glorious. The hard chest that she’d been pulled against so many times was now bared for her, revealing its firmness in the hills and valleys that rippled when he moved. His arms were braided with muscle. It was easy to picture the sun gleaming off his sweat-slicked skin on a ship’s deck.
Rhys’ grin was self-satisfied as he dragged a forearm across his slick mouth. She needed every part of him against her.
The buttons on his breeches puckered and strained. She sat up to do something about it.
He sat higher on his knees as she worked his buttons and his hands stroked through her hair with tender encouragement. At last, he stood up and turned to shed that final piece. Beth had a view of his buttocks as he did. She tasted her lips as she watched his strong muscles shift with every small movement.
He turned. The lick of a grin accompanied his blush as her eyes reveled in his nakedness. He was broad. A man. He had the marks of life on him. So many small and scattered scars from his years of labor. A spray of dark hair winged out from the center of his chest and trailed down his middle to another, thicker patch. Her eyes fell soberly on the swollen evidence that he was ready to have her.
But she felt drawn to him first. She inched toward him on her knees as he stood facing her. She reached her hands around his backside to feel those muscles and draw him nearer, so that she might plant a kiss on the underside of that powerfully upright shaft. It was warm, vital—
The sensation was too much for him.
He swept down onto her and steadied a ragged exhale as his cock twitched against her.
Her chest lifted against the weight of him. “Does it make you remember the last time?” she asked.
“It does. I still see you with leaves in your hair.”
“It’s much warmer now.”
“It is.”
He kissed her and ground his hips against her. The thick stalk parted her folds, and reminded them both of how slick she was. He resettled above her and grabbed himself, adjusting to sit against her entrance. She felt the moisture at the tip of it and longed for him to thrust. She pressed herself down, chased his cock needfully. Her flesh opened for him, wrapped around the head of him—but it wasn’t enough.
And then he finally drove into her and she was lifted by it.
“Yes.”
Rhys would get his wish. This wouldn’t be like the woods. They weren’t cold and stiff, but hot and fevered. Driven mad by their eagerness, they moved with one another and drank in their freedom.
Beth felt so near to him that it threatened to undo her. He pulled her into a seated position on his lap, and her knees bent up like wings at either side of him. As he moved inside of her, it was almost too much to look him in the eyes, but nor could she look away. There was some dangerous feeling that he was looking at her in the same way.
His moans grew longer, wilder, and she could sense something was near. But he inhaled sharply and she was surprised when he pulled away from her. Words of confusion crept up her throat, but Rhys pulled her chin up, made her look deeply at him, so that she could see the reassuring lust still sparkling in those deep eyes. He shook himself as though to dispose of his own impatience—a shiver that flew down his body.
With a smile playing at his lip’s corner, he knelt and guided Beth to turn around. Then he wrapped her tightly from behind—a familiar embrace—just as they’d been on that first ride to the folly. An embrace that she loved.
Her mind flew with memories of the twisted safety she’d felt when riding against him, when his hat had protected her from cold raindrops. She’d had wicked thoughts—and now such thoughts were brought to life. He guided her back onto him—hard and slick and hot—and she felt once more the adventuress, indulging in sins she saw nothing sinful about. If what she felt was a sin—the flooding of every limb with warmth and nearness and trust—then let her fall through the rings of hell now and drag Rhys with her.
His breath at her neck made every hair on her body stand at attention. His sturdy arm wrapped around her like the strap on some instrument of torture, but she was here to be tortured in exactly this way. She sweated with anticipation as his hand began to trail down her belly, within perfect reach of—
“Rhys.”
She shuddered as he touched her. His fingertips were slickened with only a few strokes of her folds. She reached a hand down on top of his. She wanted to feel it too. Wanted to feel herself, feel him, feel everything. Her fingertips bumped the edge of his hardness where he stroked into her from behind. The sensation of being speared there was singularly the most erotic thing she’d ever known. Her gasp of euphoric surprise was responded to with another deep thrust.
“Beth . . .” His voice was low and ragged. “You are legendary.”
It was what she’d always wanted to be, and now she was going to seal her coronation as a queen, a witch, and a legend.
She rocked harder against his strokes, let his hand and staff take her places.
She clutched behind herself for a grip on him. His groans climbed ever upward, yet he seemed to fight them.
“Rhys, please . . .”
Her desperate words renewed something in him, and he became so ravenous that staying upright against him became impossible. She stretched down along the cushions for him, and he stroked her back before lying against her, kissing her back and neck, tracing her shoulders with a gentle drag of his teeth, never once leaving the place where he was nested hotly between her thighs.
His hand still reached around her as he thrust. The muscles of his abdomen worked against her skin as he pulled her into rhythm with him. Her breaths came in short gasps from the wonderful weight of him. Pleasure once more began to tighten its hold on her belly—every exhale brought it nearer.
And when it came, it triggered her lover’s destruction too.
As her whole body crushed inward around flame and ecstasy, his seemed to explode outward, in roars and shudders, and another I love you that she would never tire of hearing, even as it scared her—or perhaps because it scared her.
He wilted down to her back like a rose petal in the sun—only heavier—blanket-like and comforting. He must have noticed her short breaths because he rolled to his side to relieve her lungs.
The last tendrils of euphoria were unwrapping themselves from her limbs and releasing her womb from a vise. The air in the tent hung heavy. Her claw-like grip on a colorful cushion loosened. Reality closed in much too quickly, just as it had in the woods.
Chapter 23
“We shouldn’t linger.” Beth drew away from him and her skin instantly cooled in the absence of his touch. “We’re in a borrowed place.”
He pushed the hair from her face, and she could feel how the lock had clung to her with sweat. Making herself presentable would take some doing.
“You’re probably right.” A sigh deflated his broad chest as he examined the mess of their discarded apparel.
Together, they hastily redressed. At the end of it, his waistcoat buttons were somewhat off and her stays were re-laced in a barely serviceable manner. Here was her man, deft at undressing her and completely at a loss to put her back together. He now fussed with a blob of rosy silk, trying to organize it into the proper womanly shape. She took the crumpled overdress from him with a weary smile. “You go ahead, I’ll finish up and be out shortly.”
He kissed her cheek. “I need to relieve myself something fierce, so if you don’t see me right away, I’ll have wandered somewhere to that purpose.”
She nodded and was almost grateful when he slipped out beyond the tent’s flap. She could work herself back into a proper condition more speedily in his absence. As she slipped the open robe on over her chemise dress, she realized that a crucial pin had flown off during their harried undressing. “Damn.”
She knelt down, sea
rching.
“Well, isn’t this a sight?” The female voice made Beth’s head whip over her shoulder. The copper-haired woman, whose liaison had inspired her own tryst, now stood at the curtain grinning as a small pipe lolled in the corner of her mouth.
“I’m so sorry! I’ll leave immediately, I just—”
The woman put up a hand against her words. “Don’t worry your head. I just came back for this.” She leaned down to the cushions to pick up a paisley shawl that Beth hadn’t noticed amid all the garish patterns of the carpets. The woman shrugged and winked. “’Tisn’t my domain anymore than ’tis yours, but we’ve given it some good fun tonight, eh?” Beth tossed back her disheveled hair but suppressed an incoming denial and nodded bashfully.
“Are you after this?” The woman picked up a shiny sliver from the carpet and passed it to Beth.
“Yes, thank you—”
“Emily.”
“I’m Beth.”
“Are you going back out there like this?” Emily gestured to Beth with a pitying look on her face. “Ouf. You could use more help than just the pin. Come with me.”
Beth relented and the two slipped outside to the canal’s edge. A boathouse lined with torches gave them enough light by which to arrange Beth’s hair back into a shape that looked vaguely deliberate. Something about the intimacy of having the stranger’s hands in her hair melted the tension from Beth’s shoulders.
No smoke rose from Emily’s pipe, but she gnawed on it fondly as she spoke.
“I seen plenty of folk make like animals at the fair before but few in such a bold state of undress.” Emily pinched the crisp silk between her fingers. “And what a dress, that.”
Beth blushed. “We had our reasons.”
“I mean it to be a compliment. And compliments to that gent with you too. He seemed a simple, handsome chap.”
Beth couldn’t suppress a snort. Simple. Rhys was anything but. It dawned on Beth that she’d not spotted him as she and Emily had strolled the short distance to the boathouse.
