The Fireside Inn

by Lily Everett

  The click of her throat as she swallowed was audible even over the rush of the waves hitting the rocks below. She shuddered against him as if overcome by the simple statement of desire—or maybe by the incontrovertible evidence of Leo’s desire, which she could now surely feel notched thick and heavy between her thighs.

  “Take me, then,” she whispered, her breath brushing sweetly at his lips before she tucked her face into his neck and locked her legs around his hips. “Show me what it’s like to be wanted.”

  Leo crushed her close and bore her back onto the blanket, covering her with his body. But before the tide of hunger crashed over them both, he had just enough awareness for a flicker of curiosity: Was he truly the first man ever to make Serena Lightfoot feel desired?

  Chapter 5

  “Whew.” Serena stared up at the blue brilliance of the afternoon sky through the stark, bare branches and savored every new ache and sore muscle. “So that’s what all the fuss is about. I think I finally get it.”

  The warm rumble of Leo’s laugh vibrated through her ribcage where they were still pressed together in a damp, sweaty, sated mess, wrapped cozily in the blanket. “Glad to be of service in your pursuit of knowledge.”

  Even though Serena knew he didn’t mean anything by it, the comment hit a little too close to the tender bruise of her worst memories. She frowned and pulled away, shivering as the sea breeze chilled her overheated skin. “Don’t say it like that. I wasn’t just using you.”

  She could practically hear the way Leo’s eyebrows shot upwards in surprise. “I certainly didn’t mean to imply that. Nothing could be further from my mind, love.”

  “Of course.” Serena could kick herself for saying anything. “Sorry, ignore me.”

  “Ah, but that’s one thing I can never promise to do.” Leo hitched himself over onto his side, and she felt his eyes on her while she patted around outside the blanket for her hastily discarded clothes. “What are you doing? Come back here.”

  Glancing over her shoulder, Serena caught her breath at the heady temptation of his perfect, leanly muscled form basking unashamedly in the dappled sunlight. She swallowed down the lump of emotion in her throat. “Don’t you want to get back to the task at hand? We only have a few weeks to come up with your reading for the wedding.”

  “Sod the wedding,” Leo growled, and Serena made an embarrassingly high-pitched noise as she was pounced from behind. The clothes she’d gathered went flying in all directions. “What’s wrong?”

  Apparently a single afternoon was enough to condition Serena’s body to respond to Leo’s. She arched under him instinctively, his bare chest searing into her back. Moaning low in her throat, Serena settled with Leo draped over her like a particularly hot, hard-muscled throw rug.

  Even so soon after being turned inside out and left panting, Leo’s closeness still had the power to shorten her breath. But the way his body bracketed hers also felt intimate and safe, almost protective. Somehow, it was easier to talk like this than face-to-face and fully clothed.

  “Nothing is wrong,” she promised him, hearing the thickness in her own voice. “Absolutely nothing, for once. You told me from the beginning that you wanted me, and I was able to believe you because why else would you come up with such a flimsy pretext to spend time with me?”

  Pressed so tightly together, Serena felt the instant Leo went stiff and wary, and she hastened to clarify. “I’m not complaining! It’s one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me, actually. In my experience, it’s usually the exact opposite.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Serena cleared her throat. “Well, as it happens, I was at the top of my class all through school. Let’s just say there was more than one football player who realized if he smiled at me in the cafeteria, I’d fall all over myself to help him with his homework—which usually translated to me doing his homework for him. Until he passed that class and dropped me like a bad habit.”

  She could hear the thunderous frown in Leo’s voice. “And this happened more than once?”

  “For a supposedly smart person, it took me a ridiculously long time to recognize the pattern.”

  There was a moment of heavy, charged silence broken only by the cries of gulls circling overhead. Then Leo said, very calmly, “I should like the name of every single callow youth who used you that way. In alphabetical order, please, to make it easier for me to track them down and destroy them.”

  Serena laughed, even as Leo’s staunch support warmed her chest. “Oh, leave them alone. I console myself by imagining them all pumping gas and collecting garbage for a living. Staying stupid and ignorant forever is its own punishment, right?”

  Leo hummed and stroked a contemplative hand down her side, fingers pressing just firmly enough not to tickle. “You don’t want revenge, even though these idiot boys clearly left you with an inability to believe in your obvious beauty and desirability.”

  “Well, they taught me the first lesson,” Serena admitted, tilting her head until the blanket almost muffled her voice. “But grad school was where I earned my advance degree in romantic idiocy, as well as library science.”

  Pressing a kiss to the sensitive skin behind her ear, Leo murmured, “Tell me.”

  She couldn’t resist the tender demand. Serena rolled her tense shoulders slightly, loving the way his arms tightened around her in response. As safe and secure as she’d ever felt in her life, she told him the story she hadn’t told anyone in years.

  “I didn’t originally plan to be a librarian,” she confessed. “It’s funny how life turns out—I can’t imagine being anything else, now. But when I started grad school, I thought I wanted to be a professor of library science. I did a ton of work and research developing a new reference system—it was an independent study I hoped to turn in as my dissertation.”

  “So what happened?”

  This was the part that made Serena want to squirm with remembered humiliation. “The man I was dating advised me not to publish my work. He convinced me I’d be better off sticking it under my bed and refocusing my credits toward a degree in librarianship. Which is what I did.”

  “Why on earth did you listen to him?”

  “Well, he was an expert in the field. In fact—” Serena squeezed her eyes right against the memory of Dr. Saul Obinger’s kind, patient smile “—he was my dissertation advisor. So I sort of had to follow his advice. At least, he presented it that way when he explained why he needed to step down as my advisor before we could be together. At the time, I found it wildly romantic. It was intoxicating to imagine that this renowned, distinguished Ph.D. would want me enough to jeopardize his career by sleeping with me. Even after he stopped being my official advisor, he could’ve gotten in trouble for dating a student—although the rules are different for graduate students.”

  “But he wasn’t jeopardizing his career,” Leo guessed darkly. “Was he?”

  Serena heaved in a deep breath, mostly to feel the comforting weight of Leo’s torso anchoring her to the ground. “No. He was laying the groundwork to take my research and claim it as his own. He’s the chair of the department now, well on his way to tenure…and I’m a librarian on an island so small it can barely support the public school, much less the library.”

  The world dipped and swayed around her as Leo curled his arms under her legs and shoulders to flip her up and into his lap. Serena’s heart thundered against her ribs, dizziness forcing her to clutch at Leo’s neck for balance. Even with all the brainless jocks who’d pretended to be interested in her in high school, she’d never been manhandled so casually before. Maybe it lost her some feminist cred, but she admitted privately that part of her loved knowing that Leo was strong enough to lift and cradle her effortlessly.

  Cupping the nape of her neck in his large palm, Leo stared straight into her eyes. “You deserved better, Serena. I’m sorry.”

  The strain in his voice magically eased the strain around Serena’s heart from sharing such an embarrassing, emoti
onally scarring experience. “You don’t have to apologize,” she told him, framing his handsome, aristocratic face between her hands. “I’d given up on ever being truly desired until you came along.”

  ***

  If Leo were a better man, he’d probably have regrets about tumbling his sweet librarian—but luckily he was a scoundrel and always had been. With Serena warm and responsive in his arms, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret a moment of their time together.

  Regret, however, wasn’t quite the same as guilt. And after hearing her tale of humiliation and betrayal at the hands of men who’d had ulterior motives for pursuing her, guilt burned at the lining of Leo’s stomach. As much as he hated, instantly and unquestioningly, every man who had burned that shame into Serena’s voice, Leo had to ask himself: Was he truly any different?

  “You are perhaps the first woman I’ve met who wanted to be desired for her body rather than her mind,” he observed lightly.

  Serena laughed. “I know, it’s kind of backwards. But it’s not really about mind versus body. I’d hate it just as much if someone pretended to be interested in my research skills just so they could get in my pants. It’s more about knowing that everything you want from me is on the table. Your ulterior motives are not ulterior! You told me from the first that you wanted to sleep with me. I like that. I’ve had enough of men hiding their true motives from me.”

  Leo suppressed a wince by running his fingers through the silky tendrils of her bright golden hair. “Ought we to think about getting dressed? I’m enjoying being the only man to get into your pants at the moment, and if someone else were to see you in the glorious altogether, I’d probably have to fight them off. Which I’m willing to do, obviously. But it seems a waste of time better spent in more pleasurable pursuits.”

  “I love the way you talk. Have you honestly never thought of writing your own poems?” Serena lifted herself off his lap, bracing herself on his shoulders for balance.

  This again. Leo let her go reluctantly, his fingertips skimming the bare silk of her tanned skin and memorizing the texture in case he never got the chance to touch her again. “No,” he said, more roughly than he intended. “I believe I can safely promise never to write a single line of verse.”

  Startled by his gruff vehemence, Serena glanced over at him as she rifled through the small pile of clothing. “What are you getting so mad about? It’s hardly offensive to say you have a way with words.”

  She couldn’t know how near she’d come to the scars at the center of Leo’s psyche. Heart pounding, stomach roiling, he said, “It’s not a compliment, either. At least, not one that I deserve.”

  Smiling uncertainly, Serena said, “Ah. Because everyone in England talks like you, right? Do they teach you that at Oxford?”

  “Being an earl’s son carries one quite far,” Leo replied, glad of the topic change. His gaze snagged on the reverse strip tease happening before him as Serena shimmied her hips into her cargo shorts. “But not all the way to Oxford, I’m afraid.”

  “Cambridge, then.”

  The way she cupped her breasts and jiggled to seat them properly inside the stretchy cotton of her bra made Leo’s blood heat. “No, not Cambridge either.”

  She frowned. “Then where did you go to college? Or university, I guess y’all call it?”

  Snapping to attention, Leo realized the danger too late. There was nothing for it but to tell the truth and try to brush it off. “I didn’t. After I scraped through at boarding school, I never saw the point in further education.”

  “You never saw the point?” Serena’s arms dropped before she could manage to get her shirt over her head. Standing above him half nude and wholly appealing, she blinked in dismay.

  Leo reclined on the blanket, deliberately lazy, and shrugged. “My elder brother will inherit the earldom and all of its responsibilities. All that’s left to me is to enjoy life and stay out of any terribly public trouble.”

  “Huh.” Serena hid her expression by pulling on her shirt. “I don’t mean to sound judgmental about your life choices, but that sounds a little…empty.”

  You have no idea, Leo thought bleakly, but when her tousled head popped out of the collar of her shirt, he made sure his expression reflected the sardonic amusement he used as armor. “Not at all. Life without expectations is very freeing.”

  “No one ever expected anything of you?” Serena’s curious question was delivered gently, more of a tickle than a slap, but somehow it still stung Leo into sitting up and reaching for his pants.

  “Perhaps, when I was quite young.” He shrugged into his shirt and did up the buttons, idly noting the creases in the fine linen fabric. “But our mother died when I was only a little chap, and soon after that, my father gave up on me completely in favor of devoting all his time and attention to my elder brother, William.”

  Serena frowned sympathetically. “That’s awful!”

  “Not at all.” Leo shook out his trousers and stepped into them, hitching the charcoal gray up his thighs. “Father was no fool. His every hope for the future of the family rests on William—it’s only sensible that he should spend his parental efforts there, rather than wasting them on…”

  A blinking idiot of a boy, too stupid even to learn to read.

  Swallowing down the bitter memories, Leo flashed his most rakish grin and bowed from the waist with a flourish. “On a scoundrel and wastrel like me.”

  And that was true as well, because once Leo had gotten over being angry with his father, the world, and himself, he’d dedicated his life to not caring about anything. Which was harder than it sounded. Without meaning to, he’d made friends—Miles Harrington, Zane Bishop, and Cooper Haynes chief among them—and they had opened a tiny crack in the wall encircling Leo’s heart.

  Serena grinned, although there was a searching light in her black coffee eyes that made him nervous. “Come on, scoundrel. Let’s get back to work. I’m determined to find the very best reading possible for Sanctuary Island’s wedding of the century.”

  She curled up in the center of the blanket and immediately became absorbed in stacking her books in some sort of order that made sense only to her. When Leo sat next to her, though, she reached out at once to pull him closer.

  Hooking his chin over her shoulder and curving his arms around her waist, Leo breathed in her scent of ink, paper, and book dust. Serena plucked the top book from her stack and started to read aloud, the gentle cadence of her voice washing over him like a song he could only hope would get stuck in his head.

  And as they enjoyed the fading warmth of a bright winter’s day and the freshness of a salty ocean breeze, Leo started to fear that the crack his friends had made in his armor was splitting open wider and wider…wide enough for pixie-like Serena Lightfoot and her passion for books to slip through.

  Chapter 6

  Over the next weeks, Leo spent his days exploring the island with Cooper, discussing the reception plans with Zane, and reassuring Miles and Greta that said reception wouldn’t break any laws of God or man. And he spent his evenings, after the library closed, with Serena.

  Not for the first time, he was glad he’d insisted on staying on at the Fireside Inn even when Cooper and Zane had succumbed to Greta’s request that they move their things to the Harrington family home on Sanctuary Island.

  After that first day up on Honeysuckle Ridge, Leo was determined to keep this affair dabbling happily in shallow waters. Leave the deep stuff to his friends; let them lose Miles’s bet along with their hearts and their freedom. Leo had a good thing going with Serena, the perfect woman, who asked nothing of Leo except his desire.

  Desire was something he could give her, freely and without hesitation. In fact, he was honest enough with himself to admit that he couldn’t stop it now if he wanted to. His desire for Serena was almost a physical need. It was difficult to wait through the long hours of her work day at the library for the moment when she would emerge from the brick building and lock the heavy door behind her.<
br />
  Leo made sure he was waiting at the foot of the library’s front steps for her every day, with a smile and a kiss that communicated the hunger he’d stored up over their hours apart. And he was equally sure to resist her invitations back to her small cottage overlooking the beach.

  Even though it meant a long, cold ferry ride back to Winter Harbor on the mainland, Leo preferred to conduct their liaisons at the picturesque Fireside Inn. Not only because it was shockingly romantic, with its comfortably appointed rooms and friendly, yet polished service, but because he had the sense that going to Serena’s house would be too intimate. More like a real relationship—and that was a step he couldn’t allow himself to take.

  Besides, he reasoned as he stretched his long legs out toward the grate, Serena’s beach cottage probably didn’t have a rollicking huge fireplace like the one that dominated the Fireside Inn’s main sitting room.

  “Sitting here makes me glad the weather finally started turning wintry,” Serena murmured drowsily, smudging the words against his shoulder as he cuddled her closer to his side. “A little chill in the air makes a roaring fire feel so good.”

  Pressing his lips to the golden curls crowning Serena’s head, Leo darted a glance at the darkened front hallway. The innkeeper had gone up to bed an hour ago, dimming the lights with a knowing smile and silently leaving her guests to enjoy each other by the flickering firelight.

  “What books did you bring for us tonight?” Leo asked, curious as ever about the bulging knapsack at Serena’s feet. In between bouts of very pleasant distraction over the past days, they’d explored wedding benedictions, sonnets, quotes from defunct space cowboy TV shows, and nineteenth-century gothic romances.

  “More poetry.” Serena straightened, perking up at the mention of her beloved books.

  Leo let her go without protest, even though the absence of her lithe, warm body against his side left him chilled. As much as he enjoyed discovering the abundant joys of Serena’s sensually responsive body, he’d come to treasure these moments almost as much. Fully clothed, in no way improper—after all, reading aloud was a favorite drawing room activity of the staid Victorians—and yet he knew Serena more intimately through the passages and pieces she’d chosen to read him than he did through the careful removal of each article of clothing.