Mr. Banner made a move; she countered. She made a move; he countered, each reaction mostly without forethought. Until now.
This was deliberate. And mutual. Something bright and fragile, a filament inside an incandescent lightbulb capable of miraculous illumination and warmth in the right hands, vulnerable to explosive shattering if mishandled.
She stopped, and forced a smile to hide a wince as cold water chafed the delicate skin at the back of her knees.
His eyebrows lifted mockingly.
“That’s it? That’s as far as you’re coming in?”
“This is deep enough for someone who can’t swim.”
His eyebrows inched higher. “You don’t know how to swim?”
“London proper has relatively few places for a young lady to learn, Mr. Banner.”
He frowned, his arms stirring steadily as he worked to keep his head and shoulders above the waterline.
“You didn’t spend time out in the country?”
“Not after my father died. And before he died, I’m sure the thought of teaching his daughters to swim never entered his mind. He was too busy grieving our mother with whatever spirit was at hand. Irish whisky was his preferred intoxicant, but when it ran out and he’d worked his way through the wine cellar, rum and gin proved as effective, if not more so. They were significantly cheaper to acquire, and so he could drink more for the same price.”
“I’m sorry.” His expression took on the grave countenance she’d learned to dismiss as easily as she did the platitudes that usually followed.
“It was a long time ago, Mr. Banner. I’m well past the age where my father’s dissolution of self has power to harm me.”
He nodded, but she could see from his expression that he didn’t believe her.
Inhaling, she suppressed a tremor of cold—not residual anger over her father’s mismanagement of his and his daughters’ lives—and, before she could change her mind, waded deeper, swallowing a gasp of shock as water closed around her waist like a vise of ice while a murky brown cloud blossomed in the water around her.
She was beginning to see why Mr. Banner had dived in from shore and remained near the middle of the pond where it was deep enough for him to tread water without stirring up the pond’s bottom.
Maybe it would be wiser for her to turn around now, grab up her belongings, and head for the manor, pausing partway along the path in the sheltering screen of shrubbery to put herself back to order as best she could without aid of a mirror, or soap to cleanse her feet of detritus picked up along the way.
Better yet, why didn’t you leave your dress on in the first place and return home when he tried to run you off with his blatant dare?
And that was why.
She’d told him she’d not be run off. Even by him.
She froze when Mr. Banner abruptly dunked beneath the water’s surface with the fluid sleekness of a harbour seal, and choked on a startled yelp when he popped up directly in front of her, slowly gliding towards her, only his head above water, his expression intent. Purposeful.
The glint in his eyes and vague daring turn of his lips was reminiscent of the look he’d given her right before he’d undressed her in her chamber, and made her lie back...The shudder that rocked her had nothing at all to do with the water’s temperature. She’d been in it long enough to grow accustomed to the elemental difference between the sultry heat above the surface and liquid coolness below.
No, the tremor softening her knees and every vertebra of her spine so she dared not move for fear she would topple like a dropped marionette had nothing to do with cold. Only heat. Hot, pulsing heat.
She swallowed when he stopped an arm’s length away, his mouth below the waterline, green eyes fixed on her. Goose pimples jagged along her shoulders and arms, almost as painful as the throb of her nipples that had condensed to tight buds.
She held his gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to betray the spine-tingling dread, or hope, or whatever emotion was rioting through her like an explosion at a fireworks factory and turning her blood to vapour.
One touch. One touch of his hand, and she would shatter.
Only she didn’t. She shivered, her eyes closing involuntarily as he floated close enough for her to hear the steady rhythm of his breath, feel the shift as he stopped and the water kept moving, a low wave that forced her chemise against her skin, against her swollen mound.
Her knees tugged inward, threatening to buckle.
She forced her eyes open and locked her spine when, like Poseidon emerging from the sea to cause an earthquake, he slowly straightened to his full height, water beading off his tanned shoulders and arms to tangle like diamond chips in the black curls coating his chest. His brown nipples were hard, and mere inches from her mouth.
She inhaled a shaky—anticipatory—breath as he moved closer yet, close enough for her to feel the charged air vibrating in the shallow space between them, close enough she could smell the pond water’s musky odour on his skin, see a tiny red mark on the underside of his jaw where he’d nicked himself shaving. Close enough that there was no going back. Not now.
Not for her.
SHE STOOD MOTIONLESS, her pale freckled face as smooth and unlined as polished marble. She could have been a Greek goddess or a nymph carved of stone. But she wasn’t.
Likenesses carved in stone and marble had presence but lacked substance. They were impersonal monuments, while she was...monumental. Alive. An electric wire dropped into the bathwater of his life.
He couldn’t escape the current arcing between them even if he wanted to. It held him fast, searing his soles to the mud while at the same time lifting every hair on his body, hardening his muscles, turning up the heat on his desire to near boiling. He knew she felt it, too.
Her lips parted, and her breath grew shallower, more fractious with each inhalation, while her fingers twitched a half inch above the water’s surface as though she were poised to thrust him away—or grab him and pull him closer.
Her wrists were delicate, the white cotton of her chemise iridescently sheer. Sheer enough to reveal her dusky pink areolae.
Christ, he wanted her. Wanted her with a fierceness that frightened him. It didn’t help knowing that she wanted him as much. She’d made that clear with her striptease, rolling down her stockings and draping them over the bench so they hung like silken silhouettes of her slender legs; plucking the buttons of her shirtwaist loose, one opalescent fastener at a time; holding his gaze while she undid the ties of her skirt and let it fall around her feet before stepping out of it to saunter to the water, a Mona Lisa smile on her face...a saucy swing in her gait.
For such a small woman, she made a huge impression—a chunk of meteor plummeted from the sky to leave a scorching hole in the earth. He was the hole, singed and smoking, irrevocably marked regardless of how much dirt was eventually levied to backfill the emptiness if the meteor were hauled away.
He would forever be the where, she the what.
He raised a hand and trailed a damp fingertip over her lower lip. She closed her eyes and leaned towards him, forcing him to grab his cock and squeeze hard as he sucked in air through his teeth, fighting to choke off his orgasm while continuing the slow trace of her mouth and jawline. Her eyes opened.
A split second of bewildered lust clouded her emerald gaze, and then a knowing, seductive light sharpened it.
He almost cracked a rear molar when her small hands dived beneath the water to close on his hand that held his cock.
He shook his head.
Mouth curling in an “oh, yes” smile, she tugged at his fingers.
He shook his head again, but already his body was betraying him, his hand lifting away as hers closed around his shaft, warm and surprisingly confident, firm yet gentle as she moved closer to fit her body to his.
The sensation of her legs grazing his, her pert breasts brushing his chest beneath the dry upper portion of her chemise while her wet chemise below bunched between them, her supple hands gripping
him while she gazed up, confident and teasing, was unlike anything he recalled feeling.
He’d never had a woman take charge, and it left him feeling weak, and impossibly strong. Brutally alive, and on the verge of cataclysmic death. Powerless to stop her, himself, his orgasm, and whatever it was between them. Whatever it was that made him want to possess her, lift her and pull her down on his cock, and feel her clench around him as he spilled his seed in her, thrusting into her relentlessly until he drove out whatever demon had possessed him on the day she had arrived at Sugar Hill.
Somehow, he managed to hang on to the tiny bit of rational mind he needed to not act on the impulse. But he could not resist the feel of her hands. The irrepressible strain in his loins.
“Good God,” he rasped, hunching.
She nipped his neck as his hips bucked and his seed pumped warmly between their bodies separated only by the cotton of her chemise. He groaned, gripping her shoulders as the force of his orgasm threatened to drop him like a kick to the back of his knees.
“That’s it,” she whispered, holding tight to him as she dug her feet in the muddy bottom to balance them both. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, now.”
HE SMELLED GOOD. WARM, musky pond water and green leaves, and now a faint hint of the maleness she’d come to know after her marriage to William.
It was a scent all its own, not quite fecund, not quite spiced, yet clearly recognisable. But she’d never have presumed in a million years that she’d ever want to celebrate it—unless it preceded the immediate conception of the child she’d so desperately hoped for. Yet she could not quell the bubble of victory swelling within her, round and full and warm as a hollow glass globe straight from the artist’s flame.
She’d succeeded. She’d taken him to the scintillating heights of pleasure he’d taken her, and though she should feel some shame for her brazen act with a man not her husband, she found she could not summon the necessary emotion. Rather, she felt like she had looked up from the base of Kilimanjaro and decided she would scale it, and then did.
Oh yes, she did.
Eyes closed and cheek pressed to his chest, the damp curls offering not quite pillow-like comfort but comfort just the same, she eased out a breath, unwilling to move and lose the connection she felt listening to the rapid tattoo of his heartbeat, which gradually slowed as his breathing evened. His skin was warm beneath her fingertips where they dug lightly into his muscled back, while in her other hand, his hard shaft began its slow, but steady retreat.
Regret whispered through her, reminding her that as his penis resumed its natural state, unfettered by a frenzy of lust, so too would they rejoin their normal lives and routines.
This was not real. It was fiction—a fable in which her triumph earned his affection. Maybe a kiss.
She’d like that. A kiss. But not now. Not from him.
Kisses were the epitome of intimacy, and what they had just shared, though not exactly impersonal, was not intimate. Not in the true sense. And she wanted no reminder of how indecorous this was, nothing to ruin the story or break the gossamer spell she’d weaved around the image of intimacy their current closeness inspired.
But already the moment was fading with the firmness that had bulged his muscles when he’d reached his peak. Just as, she suspected, reason replaced his ardour.
Though still taut, the tension she felt beneath her fingertips and in the slightly off-tempo thump of his pulse was that of incertitude, not passion.
Pride goeth before the fall.
With a great deal more reluctance than she cared to admit, she eased away from him but stalled when his arms tightened around her. He dropped a kiss on her neck.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
She looked up and scowled.
“Thank you?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Thank you.”
She pushed away from him and, whirling, made for shore, windmilling her arms as she struggled to slog through waist-deep water and shin-deep mud without losing her footing and plunging face first in water fast turning from greenish murk to mud brown.
Thank you? Was that a paid service thank-you or a birthday gift thank-you? Did she even know when his birthday was?
May twenty-fifth.
The month and day jumped out of her thoughts like a grinning jack-in-the-box, frightening her because she couldn’t immediately recall William’s date of birth. Or George’s. And she’d been married to them, had celebrated their birthdays with them, while Mr. Banner...She only knew his birth date because she’d read it in a ledger.
George was...August thirtieth. And William...late November.
Of course. They’d met in the winter of 1905 and married in November of ’06, a week after William’s twenty-fifth birthday. She’d been eighteen. Now she was twenty-eight.
And William and George were dead.
May 25, 1885.
She bit her lip, water splashing as she propelled herself through lily pads and up the squishy incline towards shore.
Mr. Banner had turned thirty-one this year. He was five years younger than William would have been, if he’d lived.
Why? Why did her thoughts guiltily trip back to William and George whenever she gave into the slightest temptation of soul or flesh where Mr. Banner was concerned?
“Stop.”
A strong hand gripped her elbow, jerking her to a halt.
She wheeled on him.
“How dare you grab me? How dare you thank me, like I’m some—” She grunted as he hauled her to him and clapped a hand over her mouth. He shook his head.
“Don’t move,” he whispered.
Whether it was the paleness draining his sun-kissed skin or the authority of his tone that broke through her mental fog of humiliation and guilt, she didn’t know. She simply reacted, going still and quiet as commanded.
“What is it?” she murmured.
“Pygmy.”
“What?”
“Rattlesnake. In the weeds near shore.”
Oh, God.
She hated snakes. Hated them with a passion surpassing the desire she’d felt moments earlier.
“There are rattlesnakes here, too?” she muttered. She thought she’d left the dratted things behind in Texas.
“A couple of varieties. This one’s a pygmy. Smaller than its cousins but just as deadly.”
She closed her eyes, afraid to breathe.
“Is it coming towards us?”
“No.” His voice was low, assured. “It’s working its way along the water’s edge, probably hunting frogs or small birds. I noticed it in the reeds when it raised its head and flicked its tongue in your direction, disturbed by your splashing. If we remain still, he—or she—will lose interest and move on.”
They remained that way for an interminably long time.
Her legs were aching with the strain of trying to stop them from trembling as the heat generated between her and Mr. Banner faded and cold seeped through her wet chemise to thread its agonising way into her bloodstream, despite the hot sun above.
He was shielding her from the worst of it, taking the full brunt of the burning rays on his back and shoulders. If it bothered him, he gave no indication, but continued to hold her in a lover’s embrace while his heart maintained a steady, almost casual rhythm, though she felt the faint shifts of his body as he made minor adjustments in his stance or slowly angled his head, watching the snake’s progress.
She was near tears with a combination of apprehension and humiliation—and frustration over her secret delight at having an excuse to be in his arms—when he finally loosened his hold on her.
“It’s gone far enough along we can get out without inciting it to defensive action.”
“Defensive action,” she muttered as she turned around. “More like offensive. It would have struck me without me even knowing it was there.”
“It doesn’t know that.” He cupped a hand under her elbow, fit his other hand over her opposite hipbone, warm and firm through the damp cotton
as he helped her up the pond’s slippery side. “It only knows you’re charging it and acts on instinct. Most animals do.”
“Hrmph.” But she was sufficiently rattled—ha, ha—and too dangerously close to tears and weak in the knees to dissuade his assistance, and so she permitted him to maintain his hold on her until they completed the sludgy tromp through the water and weeds to dry land and then the few grassy feet to the bench.
It wasn’t until she turned and sat, trembling with cold and adrenalin, that she remembered he was starkly, blessedly, naked.
SHE TRIED NOT TO CONVEY shock or show interest as he grabbed his shirt and shrugged into it before reaching for his breeches, but he noticed the slight stiffening of her posture, and her covert glances as she went about brushing the dirt off her small feet to pull on her stockings. By the time he had his breeches yanked up over his damp skin and buttoned, she was tying her skirt at her waist.
Without thinking, he picked up her shirtwaist from the bench and held it out, prepared to help her into it. She blinked at him and then wordlessly slipped in one arm and, turning away, the other. She offered no protest when he moved around and started buttoning from the bottom up.
“You’ve done this before.” Her voice was subdued, her words fact, not question.
“Many times. But not lately. Maisie hasn’t allowed me to help her dress since she was eight and decided the only person who was allowed to aid her toilette was Lisette.”
“A lady needs her privacy.”
“Does she?” He paused, his fingers on the button in the middle of her chest. With just a slight extension of his pinkie fingers, he could graze her nipples.
She seemed to know it, too, because the tenor of her voice dropped and was faintly breathless when she replied, “Sometimes, depending on the lady, and...”
“And?”
She’d kept her gaze fixed on his chest whilst he was working the buttons, but now she tilted to look at him.
A faint sheen of moisture glimmered in her eyes.
My One True Love Page 22