A Well Favored Gentleman

by Christina Dodd

  “Did you hurt yourself?” She still frowned at him, blatantly unconscious of the direction of his thoughts.

  Speechless with absolute, total pleasure, he shook his head. He hadn’t hurt himself falling, but God help him, if he rolled over now he would suffer a mortal wound. She was nude, utterly naked, stark, staring…He was staring. She would notice. She would move away. He would die of desolation.

  “I thought you would like this place. It’s the upper reaches of the sheep creek, and quite clean…” She studied him. “You look odd. Did you hit your head?”

  He reached up to touch his head, and instead found his hand wrapped around her ankle.

  “Ian, what are you…?” Her voice trailed off; she cocked her head and studied him. Then she spoke, using a sultry note he’d never heard from her before. “Ian, are you looking at me?”

  How could he admit it? How could he not?

  She inched her free foot closer to his head. The other remained firmly planted on the ground, and he could see…more. She opened to him, and his hand began the long slide up to bliss.

  “No.” As she stepped away, her voice burbled with amusement. “I brought you here to see the waterfall, not me.”

  As she spun away, he grabbed and caught her calf. Giggling, she went down on her hands. He lost his grip, and she scrambled away before he could catch her again. With a whoop, she scampered down toward the brook, and instantly surging with energy, he gave chase. An arch of water splashed into the sunlight as she jumped off a high rock into the pool below the falls.

  He stopped, his toes at the edge. “Alanna!”

  She flipped in the deep water and dove, and for the second time in less than a minute, he caught a clear glimpse of her cleft, cupped by the globes of her bottom and followed by her strong legs, kicking toward the sky.

  Never before had he understood how water nymphs lured their victims to drown, but now he did. He could see her in the depths, her powerful arms stroking, her feet kicking, his shirt streamlined along her body. Her hair flowed, a banner of silk caught in the current. He wanted to join her, yet—

  She surfaced at the far side of the pool. “Bet you can’t catch me,” she taunted.

  “I’ll bet I can,” he murmured. If the sight of her nudity fascinated him so much, wouldn’t she be likewise enchanted? Other women had been, although with them he’d been annoyed to be valued like a horse. Now, above her on that boulder, he dispensed with his trousers and stood, naked, dappled by sunshine.

  Alanna’s mouth opened, her teeth caught her lower lip, and she unabashedly stared.

  He didn’t blame her; he didn’t know when he’d ever been so aroused.

  With the swift elegance on which he prided himself, he made his way down to the edge of the stream, just to where the water gathered itself into a narrow channel to flow down the hill. Here the water was only knee-deep, and, he found when he stepped into it, surprisingly cold. He spared a moment of thankfulness; at least he hadn’t followed her in her mad dive.

  With carefree insouciance, he splashed across to the other side and seated himself on a sunny boulder.

  Alanna swam a little closer. “What are you doing?”

  Stretching himself out full length, he rolled onto his side. “Warming myself.” He propped his head on his elbow. “Go ahead and swim.”

  With a shrug, she did, twisting and turning in the water with every evidence of relish. His arousal grew sharper, needier, as with each kick of her legs she enticed him to join her. But he would not, and closing his eyes, he lay back on the rock. Here the sun cradled him, and he drifted, waiting for his prey, planning how he would take her.

  Instead he was jerked from his reverie by the splatter of cold pond on his warm skin. Rolling onto his side, he saw her treading water and laughing.

  “Did I wake you?” she called. Cupping her hand, she splashed him once more.

  He smiled, a slow, dangerous smile. She made it almost too easy.

  Sitting up, he laid his hands flat on his chest and deliberately slid them through the beads there, leaving a glistening trail of water over his skin. He skimmed first one palm, then the other, down his arms, and with his tongue caught the drop that trickled to his mouth.

  Her playfulness gone, she watched him, her gaze riveted to every movement as if engrossed by the sheen of his skin.

  “Alanna, splash me again.” He kept his tone intimate and persuasive.

  She looked into his eyes, her mouth slightly open, her eyes wide.

  “I’m warm, Alanna.” He shook his hair, and droplets flew. “Splash me again.”

  Seemingly mesmerized by nothing more magical than his body, she swam toward him. When she got the ground beneath her feet, she walked out, and with each inch that was revealed, his gratitude to his ancestors grew. They had endowed him with his form; he would pass it on to his children.

  The children he would have with Alanna.

  She stepped onto his boulder, the shirt hugging her breasts, nipping her waist, caressing her hips.

  He was jealous of his own shirt.

  “Why are you watching me like that?” Her voice was a little hoarse, and droplets of water beaded on her thighs, then glided in an erotic dance down her legs.

  “You look…cool. Like refreshment on a hot day.” Leaning back on his elbow, he extended his hand. “Come. Let me drink of you.”

  Putting her hand in his, she knelt beside him, her feet tucked under her. She kissed him, as easily as if they’d been mated for years, and her lips tasted of fresh mountain water and curiosity.

  He wanted to take her head, to guide her, to show her what would pleasure them both. But he waited, wanting to see where her speculation would take them.

  When she sat back up, he thought she’d failed in nerve or imagination. But no; she lifted her arms to her hair, and taking the weight of it between her hands, she leaned over him and wrung the water from her tresses.

  He jumped as each drop splashed against his skin. She splattered him from his chest to his toes, and when she was done, she imitated him. She put her pale hands on his tan skin and spread the water into a thin film that glistened in the sun, then evaporated.

  It should have cooled him; it didn’t. She started with his shoulders, smoothing them. She stroked his pectorals, swirling her touch around each nipple. If she had more experience, he might have thought she was teasing him. But her expression was absorbed as she watched her own hands moving over him, exploring the muscles beneath the skin and stroking the sprinkling of dark hair above.

  He liked it. More than liked it. His heart pounded, his breath caught. If someone was performing magic here, it was Alanna. Unable to keep still, he lifted his knee and gripped it with his fist.

  His movement seemed to startle her out of her absorption. She looked down at his legs, at the cord of muscle on his inner thigh, and with her fingertip she traced it.

  He audibly sucked in his breath. She looked into his face and smiled.

  That smile! All feminine, all knowing. How had she learned so quickly? What had he created?

  Moving to his feet, she sprinkled them with water and her strong hands slid along, up to his ankles, along his calves, over his knees. She massaged his thighs, and when he tensed in a silent groan of pleasure, she pressed and kneaded each clearly delineated muscle.

  His bait had worked almost too well. His body captivated her, and he in turn was being ravished by her.

  He held his breath as she reached his groin, wondering if she’d ignore it in maidenly embarrassment.

  He should have known better. Not Alanna. Not his wild creature. Dabbling her fingers in the water that pooled at the juncture of his hips and belly, she stroked his balls, tormenting him with her light touch. His fists clamped shut when one fingertip traveled up the length of his erection, and she fastidiously dabbed the single drop of semen her handling had forced from him. She stared at it, fascinated, then slowly brought it to her mouth and touched it to her tongue.

  “Alanna!
” Aroused beyond bearing, he grabbed for her.

  She twisted away. “No. I get to do it!” She shoved back at him and he let her, not caring how she took him, only that she did.

  She climbed on him, wrapping her legs around him and clasping him in greedy demand. Lifting herself, she wrapped her hands around him and placed him where he wanted to be. “Here?” she questioned.

  “Right there.”

  She was ready, soft and wet, brought to passion by the sight of his body, by the touch of her hand on his flesh. She was his, attuned to his desire so acutely that pleasure reverberated between them and grew as it journeyed.

  The lust to be inside her brought his hands up on her bottom. He helped her, and her muscles flexed in his palms as she brought him into herself. As her passage closed around him, it was as if he were the virgin, receiving instruction from his first woman…his only woman. God, the heat of her burned him, set him afire and made him want to take her now, take her later, make her know she was his and no other’s.

  Her eyes had closed, her expression intent, absorbing the still new sensation of holding a man within her. Slowly she lifted herself, and as his rod moved along her passage, he slammed against the hard edge of ecstasy. The shirt still molded her body, the tails tickled his thighs and stomach. She paused, hovering over him. She opened her eyes, looked down at him—and she brought her arms up to her head. Her breasts rose as she moved, her nipples hard as raspberries beneath the finest cream.

  Taking her hair, she shook it over him. He could only be surprised that the droplets didn’t sizzle against his bare skin.

  “I’m trying to cool you.” It was blatant lie, for she sank down on him again, then rose and sank again. She used the heels of her hands against his stomach, dispersing the water over the ripple of muscle there. “Are you cooler now?”

  He blazed in fiery agony. He shouldn’t have been able to feel anything but the tightness of her, but her hands added to the punishment. The beads of water she’d not yet captured dribbled along his ribs, and every drop of his blood fought for the luxury of being inside the part of him buried inside her.

  “You’re a witch.”

  “I know.” She smiled smugly.

  Too smugly. He had weapons to wield in this carnal battle, and one of his hands coasted from her bottom to the front. With two fingers he opened her folds and lovingly rubbed the hooded nub nestled there.

  Her smile disappeared. She tried to close her legs, but he was between them. She came down on him hard. His finger pressed firmly. She whimpered and rose, each movement less controlled, more hurried, her haste feeding more haste. He was thrusting now, holding her tightly, being held tightly, keeping pace and wanting to finish now, now—

  “Now,” she said, grinding her pelvis on him in insatiable demand, her inner muscles rippling.

  Putting his feet flat, he lifted his hips and lunged at her, commanding all her response, wrenching from her a high, keening cry to the heavens. She grabbed his arms and clutched them, her head thrown back, her body demanding. He pumped his seed into her, blasting through torment to prime pleasure.

  Panting, she withered down to rest on his chest, and he held her with one arm across her shoulders and the other across the soft cushion of her bottom. She was his. By whatever God dwelt in the heavens, she was his, and life couldn’t be better than this.

  Until she stirred and said into his chest, “Tell me about your earliest memory.”

  She truly had learned every trick known to woman. Soften the masculine beast with sex, then dig for information while he was still complaint. He grunted and pushed the drying strands of her hair off his face. “Why?”

  “I want to know.” Lightly she stroked his arm.

  “I thought it might be because you couldn’t face me again.”

  “No.” But her voice sounded small and questioning.

  She could be moved to passion, but not without consequences. The memory of her boldness made her shy, and her shyness made him tender where he had been impatient. He could answer her question. So many years had passed; surely the memory no longer affected him. “We were swimming in the black ocean.”

  “Black?”

  For one moment he saw the scene through the eyes of the child he had been. “Night, I suppose. I was young—three, four, I don’t know. I just knew it was dark. I was holding on to Mama’s back, and she was laughing and so was I.” A sweat broke out on his forehead, on the palms of his hands.

  She sat up a little, a concerned frown puckering her forehead.

  “This huge wave came and knocked me off.” He turned his head to watch a particularly interesting cloud form—and to keep his head cocked so she couldn’t see his grimace.

  His heart beat heavily, and he had to take a breath of air—of warm, light air—before he could speak again. “I went down into the black, and I couldn’t breathe. Not that I wasn’t used to that. I’d been swimming as long as I could remember, so I knew I would always come up.” He had to stop talking. He wasn’t getting enough air, and he inhaled again, and again.

  What a stupid idea, reminiscing about something that had happened so long ago. It wasn’t important. He wasn’t going to blather about it anymore, and he would have said so, but…he could only concentrate on breathing.

  She slid off of him, but he didn’t move. God, he couldn’t.

  Lightly she stroked him with her fingertips. “This time you didn’t come up?”

  “No.” Under her touch, some of the constriction around his chest faded. “The ocean was too rough. I came up a few times, I think, but I couldn’t get enough air.”

  “Your mother found you. She saved you.”

  “No.”

  With her nose inches from his, Alanna demanded, “What do you mean, no?”

  “The storm was bigger than she’d realized, and she was weaker, I think.” He smiled tightly to prove something—that his motley upbringing accounted for nothing, or that the remembrances no longer upset him. “In later years she told me that human limbs are not an efficient way to swim.”

  “I suppose there are better ways.”

  “It was too turbulent for her that night, too. Someone else got me.” Why had he chosen to tell Alanna this? Before, she hadn’t truly comprehended his monstrosity. Now she would refuse to marry him. “I didn’t know who. I was half dead by then, anyway. It pushed me up on the shore—”

  “It?”

  Ian hated being such a weakling, cringing from a mere remembrance, and he snapped, “I really don’t suppose it was human. Do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “I couldn’t see. I was coughing up water. Then my mother was there, holding me as if she’d never let me go. My rescuer was scolding her. Barking at her. She understood it.” He shuddered.

  Deliberately Alanna wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Dragons and kittens formed and dispersed in the clouds. “We never swam in the ocean after that.”

  Rubbing her cheek on his chest, Alanna murmured, “Poor wee lad.” She strung kisses along his jaw. “But there were good times, weren’t there?”

  “When I was really young, she used to sing.” The clouds rearranged themselves into the image of his mother’s countenance, and he found himself smiling at it. “But later…it was as if she were aging too quickly, drying up. She used to look out at the ocean with such longing. Then she’d look at me, and she’d have the same expression on her face. That’s why I didn’t expect her to abandon me.” Lifting one hand, he stroked Alanna’s hair with it.

  “Your mother lingered as long as she could with you.”

  He didn’t know what Alanna was talking about, and he didn’t understand why she sounded as if she approved of the mother who had abandoned him. His grip on her tightened. “Explain yourself.”

  “Didn’t you know?” Again she twisted against him until she looked straight up at him. “The laws that rule us on Fionnaway would not allow her to stay on land longer. She should have told you.”

&n
bsp; “She might have.” He didn’t listen. She had been his mother, and he’d thought her omnipotent. That she wouldn’t leave him, regardless of the price to her.

  “She went back to the sea,” Alanna said softly. “Perhaps she’s there yet. We’ll go down someday and swim, and perhaps she’ll—”

  “No!” That huge liquid black wave rose again in his mind, and he remembered the choking sensation of inhaling seawater. He remembered the taste, bitter, burning, and the scrape of salt on his skin.

  And regardless of the explanation Alanna gave, he still harbored a grudge against the woman who had been foolish enough to lie down with Leslie and create a son, and then give that son up without a backward glance.

  She was silent, and he realized tremors shook him. He groped after the discipline that ruled him, and gradually brought himself under control.

  “Your father is a stupid man.” Always straight-forward, Alanna spoke with blunt impatience. “He’s thrown away every gift he’s had. Education, charm, comeliness. He abandoned his selkie bride because of fear and estranged himself from a precious son because of envy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re special. He’s not. All his life he’s told himself his inadequacy wasn’t his fault. Then you come along, and in as horrible a circumstance as he could create, you’ve made yourself a man people admire and respect.”

  He’d never thought of his father and their kinship in such a manner. Inside himself, he’d always been the lad whose mother abandoned him and whose father rejected him. But somehow Alanna twirled the world on a string, rearranging reality as blithely as a fairy—or a witch. “There are people who don’t find weatherworking particularly likable or respectable.”

  “Mr. Fairchild could never project power.” Her mouth was grave. “You, Ian, are a powerful man.”

  Ian stared down at the woman beneath his chin. The unruly little lock of hair waved above her forehead, bobbing in the breeze, and she boldly met his gaze.

  Where others flinched from his darkness, she absorbed it, melded with it. Without conscious volition his head lowered to hers and his mouth touched her mouth. He hesitated, but she didn’t try to escape, and he pressed his lips more firmly to hers. Their noses bumped—such an awkward angle—and he slid her head into the crook of his elbow and raised himself above her. Her lips were soft and rich as the butter of summer, melting and smooth. He should, he knew, deepen the contact, but he drew back.