by Dare, Tessa
Undeterred, she waded farther. Soon she was submerged to her waist. When Gabe joined her, his ballocks retreated so swiftly, he could have sworn they’d taken up lodgings in his rib cage.
He held her firmly by the wrist. This time, he would brook no argument. “Not another step.”
She pointed. “He’s just on the other side. I can see him. You needn’t go with me. If I cross the stream—”
“Are you mad?”
“It isn’t that deep. My head will stay above water.”
“That leaves more than enough of your body to contract pneumonia, consumption, and the grippe.”
“Maybe I’m willing to take that risk.”
“Well, I’m not.” He slid one arm about her waist, tucked the other beneath her knees, and hauled her out of the water, into his arms. Like a damned mermaid. A sparkling, golden-haired, ruby-lipped mermaid. “I can’t lose you.”
I can’t lose you, he said.
I can’t feel my elbows, Penny thought.
She couldn’t help but give a long, swooning sigh.
This man was so dangerous. He had a habit of blurting out these growly, possessive statements, punctuated by intense gazes and capped by displays of sheer virility.
And then he had a habit of immediately ruining them.
“If something happens to you, my—”
“I know, I know.” She wriggled out of his arms. “Your property value will decrease. Goodness. We can’t have that.”
“Don’t complain. If I didn’t have a financial interest in your life, you’d be packed off to Cumberland by now.”
With that, Penny couldn’t argue. “I won’t cross the river. But I’m not giving up.”
She tromped along in the knee-deep water, calling for Hubert.
Gabriel tromped along behind her. “For God’s sake, let the beast have his freedom. He’s a red-blooded . . . whatever a male otter’s called.”
“Boars. The males are boars.”
“He’ll build his own little house . . .”
“It’s called a holt.”
“. . . find a Mrs. Hubert . . .”
“Otters are polygynous. The boars mate with multiple sows.”
“So he’ll find multiple Mrs. Huberts. Even better. I never thought I’d envy an otter, but here I am.”
She heaved a long-suffering sigh.
“Before long, he’ll have sired a whole crop of otterlings.”
“Pups.” She wheeled to face him. “They’re pups. Stop pretending you know what an otter wants. You don’t know the slightest thing about them.”
“I know that he’s doing what he was born to do. And that you are being selfish.”
“Selfish?”
“That animal is not your possession. He doesn’t exist for your amusement. He has needs, instincts. Urges.”
The way he said that word, in that deep, earthy growl, had chills rippling over her skin.
She swallowed hard. “Urges?”
“Yes. Urges.” He sauntered toward her—as much as a man could saunter in knee-deep water. “But what could a lady like you know about those?”
“Oh, I understand urges. Right now, I have the powerful urge to do this.”
She shoved him hard in the chest, hoping to send him flailing backward into the river.
He didn’t budge. Not a teeter. Not a totter.
Not even a blink.
Penny would not surrender. She took a step in reverse and then tried again, adding the weight of her body to the effort.
This time, he was ready for her. He caught her wrists in his hands, stopping her before she could even make contact.
“Now, now, Your Ladyship. This is most unbecoming behavior.”
“I know that.” She clenched her hands into fists. “You are so maddening. You have a way of provoking me, unlike anyone I’ve ever known. It’s as though I become a different person when I’m around you, and I’m not certain I like her.”
He pulled her to him. “I like her.”
Penny expected he would shortly ruin that statement.
I like her—smoldering pause—potential to increase the return on my property investment.
Not this time.
Instead, he lowered his head until his mouth brushed hers.
Teased her lips apart, until his tongue brushed hers.
And then they tumbled together against the riverbank, and his everything brushed hers.
Gabe didn’t want to want her. But he did. God above, he did. Even though it made no sense. Even though everything in him was against it.
“I shouldn’t be doing this.”
She pushed against his chest, making just enough distance between them to meet his eyes. “We’re both doing this.”
He kissed her deeply, exploring her sweetness with his tongue and pressing her body against the riverbank. Springy green grasses crushed under her back, making a bed against the cool damp of the earth. Her skirts tangled around his boots and held him in a tight embrace. And her body . . . Her curves yielded beneath him, welcoming all his hard edges and giving them a place to rest.
Her fingers teased through his hair, sending a shiver of joy down his spine.
She threw her arms around his neck and clung tight. “Gabriel.”
Sweet heaven.
No, no. More like bloody hell.
He knew what this little dalliance on the riverbank could cost him, not only in shillings, but in pride. He knew what it could cost her, too. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop.
She tasted too good, felt too soft beneath him.
He shouldn’t be here. Didn’t belong in her arms. He was a street urchin trespassing in a fine house, forbidden to touch. But that was precisely why he ached to touch her—all over. To take what he’d always been denied.
But once again, she upended all his thinking. Even the lowest born of men couldn’t steal what was freely given.
As they kissed, she arched her body against his in a silent, instinctive plea. He slid a hand up her rib cage until his thumb grazed the underside of her breast. She tensed beneath him, and her fingernails bit into his neck.
He broke their kiss, staring down at her and drawing ragged breaths, until her body relaxed and her blue eyes gave him permission to continue.
“Yes?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
When he cupped her breast in his palm, he was the one to sigh with pleasure. He’d been wanting this, dreaming about it both asleep and awake. Her flesh was cool, and the frigid stream had drawn her nipple to a firm knot. For a moment, he simply held the chilled softness in his hand, making it his purpose to warm her, banish the cold.
But he couldn’t be satisfied with simple contact for long. He massaged the soft weight of her, then found her nipple with his thumb and gently strummed. Her breath caught. The small sound was a spark, igniting desire that raged into a blaze, kindling his every nerve.
He began to murmur foolish words against her skin—words like “want,” and “need,” and “Penny,” and “God,” and he buried his face in the sweet curve of her neck to keep them secret. Even from himself.
With fumbling fingers, he peeled the damp muslin from her skin, working the sleeve over her shoulder until he had just enough slack to slide his fingers beneath and lift her breast, drawing it free from her chemise and stays.
Her bared skin was like silk, and her ruched nipple was the same tender pink as her lips. A touch of sunlight drifted through the leafy branches above, dappling her skin with a warm glow. Bending his head, he caught her nipple in his mouth, drawing on it with his tongue and—when that wasn’t enough—gently scraping with his teeth. She tasted like flowing water in spring. Fresh, pure, sweet. He lapped at her, greedy for more.
More.
When he’d entered the water, his ballocks had gone so deep into hiding, Gabe hadn’t expected them to emerge for days. He’d underestimated the power of this woman. His cock hardened against his trousers placket, straining the buttons and insistently pressi
He sent his hand on a downward journey, exploring the rolling landscape of her waist, hips, thighs. Her soaked skirt clung to her legs, revealing the contours of her body. When he reached the hem of her frock, he worried the edge between fingers and thumb. He thought of her stockings, lying discarded on the grass.
He shouldn’t.
He did.
Parting the clinging fabric from her skin, he reached beneath to encircle her bare ankle with his hand.
As he swept his touch up her calf, she jerked in surprise. Her hand caught his, trapping it just below her knee. He paused at once.
“Ticklish?” He could scarcely scrape the word from his throat.
She shook her head.
“What is it?”
“I . . .” Her kiss-flushed lips curved in a coy little smile. “I think it’s the urges.”
He couldn’t help but grin in response.
These teasing hints of her naughty side were driving him mad with curiosity. He wanted to pry her open at the delicate pink seams and explore the sensual woman within.
But at the center of this woman was a heart. A soft, vulnerable one, made to be broken. He damned well didn’t trust himself with that organ, and if she possessed any caution, she wouldn’t let him anywhere near it.
“Mr. Duke!” The call came from the direction of the road. “Mr. Duke, are you there?”
“Oh, no.” Pushing against his chest, Lady Penelope scrambled out from beneath him. “He’s returned.”
“One moment,” Gabe called out. He offered a hand and helped her to her feet. “Stay here. I’ll go ahead and make some excuse for you.”
“What excuse?”
“I don’t know. I’ll tell him you’ve gone to relieve yourself.”
“Really?” She wrinkled her nose. “Can’t you at least say I’m gathering flowers or something?” She picked at her wet, muddy frock. “And slipped into the stream in the process, I suppose, with a good roll in the mud on the way down.”
He shrugged. “If you prefer.”
“It’s just so embarrassing. As if I don’t generate heaps of humiliations on my own. Now I have to go borrowing them.”
“You, er . . .” He hesitated. “Not that I mind, but you may want to fix your frock.”
She glanced downward. Seeing her exposed breast, she quickly tucked it back in her stays. “See what I mean? Heaps of humiliations. Heaps.”
Gabe wondered if the past quarter hour went into her heaps of humiliations, or whether she regarded it as something else.
He wondered, but he wasn’t going to ask.
On his part, he wouldn’t be filing this memory under the heading of “Humiliations.” Oh, no. It was going straight into the stash of “Fantasies” that every man kept under his mattress, figuratively if not literally.
He was never going to forget the taste of her, pure and sweet. The way her skin moved like satin under his hands, warming to his touch.
And the way she’d responded to him? That was already etched on his brain.
I think it’s the urges, she’d said.
The worrisome part of it was, their urges had gone unsatisfied.
They would remain so, he told himself. This afternoon had been a mistake. An enjoyable mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. Time to revive his judgment. Gabe could survive deprivation of all sorts, including this one.
He would not put his hands on Lady Penelope Campion again.
Absolutely not.
Definitely not.
Probably not.
Damn.
Chapter Ten
To make her story plausible, Penny decided she might as well pick some wildflowers while she waited for the men to repair the carriage wheel.
So that was how she passed the next quarter hour: Picking wildflowers, standing in sunny places in a futile attempt to dry her frock, keeping an eye out for Hubert, and thinking about Gabriel’s tongue on her nipple.
Licking. Swirling. Sucking.
Sigh.
Other ladies—and no doubt a good many gentlemen—would view their tangled, passionate interlude as a mistake. Penny? Never. She had not an inkling of regret.
She felt awake. Alive.
And rather proud of herself, really.
She’d never dreamed she would feel such raw, carnal sensations. Her friends had marriages where love and desire were intertwined—two strands in a tightly braided cord. But Penny had always believed it couldn’t be that way for her. The chance had been stolen from her long ago, when she was too young to even understand what she’d lost.
But today . . .
She thought of the way he’d paused when she touched his hand. When she hadn’t known whether she wished to drag his touch higher, or push it away. But he hadn’t made any judgments or pressed to satisfy his own desire—he’d merely waited for her to decide. It was a revelation.
After packing up the picnic things—the ants wanted her sandwiches, even if Gabriel didn’t—she cast a final look at the riverbank, scanning the reeds for any sign of a sleek brown otter.
Nothing.
If Hubert had wanted to return to her, she supposed he would have done so. Perhaps Gabriel was right. He was pursuing the life he was born to have. A life that didn’t include Penny.
Farewell, Hubert. I wish you many happy years.
As she turned back toward the carriage, her bare feet squelched in her boots. She’d retrieved her stockings, but there seemed no point in putting them on when her wet skirts would immediately soak them through.
Penny was no wheelwright, but as she returned to the coach, even she could see that the carriage wheel had not yet been repaired. Her first hint was that it was lying on the side of the road.
“It’s the bit that connects it to the axle that’s broken.” Gabriel swiped at his brow with his forearm. “This could take hours to mend.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“The two of us will walk ahead to the village,” he said. “We’ll wait on the carriage at the inn.”
“Why can’t we wait here?”
“I can’t take you home looking like that.” He swept a glance down her muddied, grass-stained frock. “We both need to wash.”
“I can bathe at home.”
“And you could do with a lie-down.”
“If you’re so concerned about my fatigue, why do you want me to walk two miles to the inn?”
“Because. I’m. Famished.”
Penny blinked at him.
“There. Are you happy? I couldn’t choke down enough of your miserable sandwiches. I need to eat something. Something that once had a face.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s a horrid way of putting it.”
“You asked. I tried to spare your feelings this time. Give me credit for that much.”
“Go on by yourself, then. I can wait here.”
“I’m not leaving you stranded on the side of the road.”
“I wouldn’t be alone. I’d be with the coachman and smith.”
“You’re not as important to them as you are to me. I’m not leaving you here.” He picked up the birdcage and walked backward, in the direction of the village. “Just like you’re not letting me walk away with your deuced parrot.”
Impossible man.
The afternoon had grown warmer. Delilah, being a tropical bird, seemed to thrive in the heat. Penny did not. She was weary and thirsty, and growing testier by the moment. “I thought the village was only a mile or two.”
“It can’t be much farther now. Probably just after that bend in the road.”
“You said that two bends in the road ago. I thought the coach would have caught us by now. Perhaps they can’t mend it.”
“All the more reason to find the village. If worse comes to worst and the carriage can’t be mended, we can find other transportation. I can hire a—” He stopped in the road. ���Fuck.”
His blasphemy sent Delilah into a titter. “Fancy a fuck, love? Ooh! Ooh! Yes! Pretty girl.”
“My coat,” he said. “I left it in the carriage.”
Penny paused and squinted at the cloudless sky and the cheerfully scorching sun. “I can’t imagine you’ll need it.”
“I don’t need the coat. I need the money that’s in it.” He set the birdcage on the ground and rubbed his face with both hands, cursing into them.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know. But one way or another, I’ll have you back in London by nightfall. You needn’t worry you’ll be ruined.”
“I’m not worried I’ll be ruined. I can’t be ruined.”
He lowered his voice, though there was no one but Delilah to hear. “If this is about earlier, by the river . . . There’s quite a gulf between what we did and the act of copulation. You haven’t lost your virtue.”
“For heaven’s sake, I understand how matters work between a man and a woman.” She wiped sweat from her brow. “I can’t be ruined because that would suggest I have prospects to ruin in the first place. I’m still unmarried, despite being an earl’s daughter, despite having a considerable dowry. No suitors are beating down my door.”
“There is no way in hell that your unmarried state is due to a lack of interest.”
“Please, enlighten me as to the reason.”
“That’s simple. You’ve been hiding yourself, and you’re good at it. A master of camouflage.”
She laughed. “Camouflage?”
“That’s the only possible explanation. You’ve made a frock from the same silk covering the drawing room walls, trimmed it with cat hair and feathers. Then when gentlemen visit, you stand still and blend in.”
“You have a surprisingly vivid imagination.”
“What I have is experience.” He stopped in the road and turned to face her. “I’ve built a fortune by spotting things that are undervalued, dusting them off, and selling them at the proper price. I know a hidden treasure when I see one.”
“Oh.”
Looking away, he pushed his hand through his hair. “Not this again.”
“Not what again?”
“Every time I speak three words, you look as though you’re going to swoon into my arms.”
-->