“A mere coincidence,” he remarked. Despite his cheekiness, she laughed and shook her head.
“You are incorrigible,” she said. Suddenly, she kicked her heels and drove her horse into a gallop down the path. Philip did the same, and they rode fast until their horses started to grow tired.
Chapter 26
Miss Loraine Beauchamp
Loraine had been awaiting his arrival. In fact, she’d been so eager to see him that she’d watched from the window and ran downstairs when she’d seen him riding into the courtyard.
Having spent two weeks in Paris trying to get him out of her head, he’d managed to infiltrate it again after just two meetings. It was pathetic really, but she found it difficult to care when his handsome, grinning face filled her doorway.
Their conversation during the ride was, without a doubt, the most honest conversation they’d ever had. And having addressed the rumors with him, they suddenly seemed far less terrible. At least he didn’t deny them. There was something admirable in that.
Loraine was leading him to a waterfall. She hadn’t been since before her parents had died. They’d taken her there one summer afternoon because her father had been so busy the previous week.
She remembered seeing him hunched over papers in his office. She’d asked him if he might have time to play a game of cards with her that afternoon, but there must have been something in her expression that had affected him.
He’d put his papers aside and smiled at her. “How about we have an adventure instead?” He’d said.
When Loraine had seen the waterfall, she’d felt like she was stepping into a fairytale. Her father had asked her what she thought of it, but she hadn’t been able to find the words to explain.
She only hoped that it lived up to her memory.
They had to take a path that was a little mountainous before they reached the fall, which the horses struggled with a little. But they took it slow and managed.
They heard the fall long before they saw it, so he must have known what was coming. But he didn’t say anything, which she appreciated. She felt like the last part of the ride had to be done in silence.
When they finally arrived, they came through a thick grove of trees and into a small clearing of earth. There were big rocks around the shore of the river, which rippled from the force of the fall. It wasn’t a particularly high fall, but it was wide and maintained a steady flow of water.
“The greens are my favorite thing about this place,” she murmured. She was beginning to smile, as she realized that nothing had changed. And that the place was just as much a fairytale as it had been when she was younger.
Loraine was so captivated by the sight that she felt like she’d forgotten who she was. She was nothing more than this creature observing something beautiful and sublime.
She crouched and started to remove her boots.
“What are you doing?” Philip choked out.
She paused and looked up at him. “I’m going for a swim,” she said, in a tone which implied that she didn’t fully understand the question.
“In your gown?” He asked, looking stupefied.
Having kicked off her boots, Loraine went to work on the fixings of her gown. “Have you ever swum in a dress?” She asked, with a quirked brow. “No one has. You don’t swim in a dress. You drown in one. And that wouldn’t be much fun, would it?”
Philip clearly didn’t know what to say, and that gratified her enormously. She grinned impishly and reached for the hem of her gown. She heard Philip make a strange, guttural sound.
Again, she paused. “A gentleman would turn around,” she remarked.
His lips were parted, and his eyes seemed brighter than usual. She could see that his chest was rising and falling a little unevenly. “A gentleman would,” he agreed, but didn’t turn around.
Loraine shrugged.
In one smooth motion, she let the gown fall to the ground. She was still wearing her slip, but once wet she knew it would leave nothing to the imagination.
The air was warm, but she knew the water would be cool. She stepped into it and walked in, slowly, until she was deep enough that she could dive under.
The water was crystal clear. She could see every pebble on the riverbed and every single fish flashing in the sunlight as it passed. When she resurfaced, her hair was plastered to her neck and back and the water dripped down her skin like diamonds.
“Well?” She called. “Are you coming?”
She smiled at him. His cheeks were pinker than usual and he was standing strangely. Rigidly, and utterly still. But when he heard her call, he moved very suddenly. He started yanking off his boots, almost falling over as he did so, and then the rest of his clothes.
When he started to remove his trousers, Loraine lowered herself into the water so that she was submerged up to her jawline. She watched him, feeling a warmth dance through her veins.
His body was golden like a sun god’s. He left his breeches on, but his chest was bare, which afforded her the opportunity to truly see him for the first time.
His shoulders were wide and defined by sinew and muscle. His abdomen was firm and had fine lines crossing through it, which rippled when he moved. But her favorite thing about him was his collarbone. All the little dips and shadows that were so delicate.
She knew they’d be abundantly soft, and she suddenly wanted to kiss those grooves and alcoves, all the way up to his neck.
Loraine took a breath to steady herself. When he stepped into the water, she took another dive.
“Loraine?” He called. The sound of his voice was muffled by the river. She could hold her breath for quite a while and thought she’d enjoy this game of hide and seek.
***
Lord Philip Everton, Marquess of Blackhill
When she started to take off her dress, Philip felt like he couldn’t breathe. This had to be a dream. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t imagine a woman being so brazen.
But Loraine was. And when her slip was clinging to her like a second skin, he could see her pearl-white skin. The hourglass glide of her waist. The way her body was serpentine like a stream and it seemed as if his hands had been made to fit into each of its undulations.
When she called for him to join her, he swallowed. He hadn’t felt so at a loss with a woman before. But he was under a spell. Entirely at her will.
He fumbled to get his clothes off, so desperate to be in the water with her that he almost fell over when he yanked off his boots. He cursed himself and took off the rest of his clothes, leaving him in his breeches.
When he splashed noisily into the water, he had every intention of heading straight for her. Taking her into his arms and kissing her senseless. But before he reached her, she dived under the surface.
He could keep track of her for a few seconds, because the water was crystal clear and she was like a porcelain mermaid beneath it. But then he lost her when she swam too close to the waterfall, which frothed the water and made it difficult to see through.
“Loraine?”
He frowned down at the surface of the water and whipped around rapidly, trying to catch sight of her. He couldn’t see her anywhere, and it started to feel like she’d been down there too long.
What if something had happened? What if she didn’t resurface?
“Loraine!” He called again, as his panic started to brew. He kept turning, his eyes gliding quickly over the water, looking for any sign of her.
He took a breath, meaning to dive under and search the riverbed. But before he was submerged, he caught sight of something shimmering in the falling water. He recognized the pale flash of one of her limbs and moved towards it.
When he passed underneath the fall, the noise became momentarily colossal and the light disappeared. It was like stepping onto another planet.
Once his eyes adjusted to the new light, he realized that the fall didn’t stop there. There was a whole rock cavern behind it, with a platform you could stand on above the water’s le
vel.
“Loraine?” He said, once more, though this time he felt compelled to whisper. There was something strange about this place. Something that felt unearthly. It humbled him.
“Yes?”
He felt a hand on his back, feeling the notches in the center of his spine.
His breath trembled out of him and he closed his eyes.
She hummed a soft noise and her hand drifted lower, feeling the dip of the small of his back. Then he felt her touch his hip, and felt something warm and soft against his shoulder blade.
Her lips.
“You’re shaking,” she whispered against his skin, which suddenly felt feverish.
“Am I?” He rasped.
When she nodded, he felt her lips brush him.
“It’s cold, I suppose,” he said, his words shuddering out of him like leaves on a breeze.
He felt her smiling. “Is that all?”
Philip swallowed and turned around to face her. “Do you want the truth?”
“Always,” she answered. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright, even in the darkness.
He looked down at his hands and watched them touch hers beneath the surface of the water, which reached the middle of his chest. “I’ve never felt like this before,” he whispered. And though the cavern was filled with the sound of falling water, he knew she’d heard him.
“Does that frighten you?”
It was a bold question. His eyes lifted from beneath his lashes, which were dusted with droplets of water from the river. “It terrifies me,” he whispered, after several beats of intense silence between them.
She slid her hand up his wrist, then his forearm. She moved slowly, watching her fingers glide across the inside of his bicep until she reached his jawline. Following the curve of his cheek with the very tip of her finger, she murmured, “I am too.”
And then she kissed him. Philip closed his eyes as her body aligned itself against his. In the coolness of the water, she was a flame. His brows puckered deeply, as though he was in pain.
But he’d never felt anything sweeter, nor so intense, in all his life.
His hands were trembling when he gripped hold of her hips and pulled her closer. He moaned and started thinking through a haze.
His senses seemed to come alive and every touch felt like lightning, every sound like it was rushing through his ears, the scent of fresh falling water permeating his every nerve. And just as he came undone, so did she.
Loraine gasped in a sudden breath and plastered herself against him. Her body arched upwards, his arm enfolded her lower back, and her hands tangled through his hair. They were twined together like string, made sturdier together.
Made stronger.
“Loraine,” he breathed, when the tug of her fingers in his hair shot a tight, hot feeling through his gut. It was meant to be a warning, but she didn’t take it as such. The sound of her own name seemed to awaken some wonderfully beastly part of her.
She stopped kissing him, opened her eyes and stared at him for a single instant. And then, with a pitched moan, she pushed him back until his spine curved against the smooth rock face that served as the foundation of the cavern.
The force of the push knocked the breath out of him, which she caught on her lips.
“Loraine, I-”
She put the tips of her fingers against his lips and shook her head quickly. “Don’t,” she breathed. Her eyelids were heavy and her pupils were dilated. “Don’t tell me you can’t. Don’t tell me you’re a gentleman. Don’t lie.”
“But-”
“I’m asking you to, Philip.”
He went silent, his lips parted beneath her fingertips. When she seemed convinced that he wasn’t going to speak again, her fingertips slid down her chin, then down the length of his neck. “I’m asking you to,” she said again, but more softly.
This time, when she kissed him, it was tender.
It wasn’t a moment for thought, or for reason. Her words were a mantra chanted in his head. They were harmonizing with the sound of falling water.
His hands found purchase on her hips, with almost bruising force. He lifted her out of the water and they rolled onto the cavern floor. He pressed his hips between her thighs and lowered his face over her chest so that he could kiss her throat.
Water spilled off of them in streams, so that he created a thousand waterfalls, which dripped from his locks of hair and onto her collarbone.
He felt the rise of her hips underneath him, like the pressure of a wave. Felt the heat between her thighs as she gathered her soaked slip in her fists and dragged it higher. She whispered his name, which made him tremble.
Her throat was like a fall of cream.
His fingers dug into her upper thighs.
He tongued her nipple. It was soft at first, then it hardened in the cool air and pebbled against his lips. She wouldn’t be still, which was a new experience for him. Most women he’d been intimate with could be passive in their inexperience.
But Loraine was anything but passive. She dug her fingers in when he didn’t kiss and grip her hard enough. She rolled her hips and pushed at his breeches, inching them down his hips by hooking her toes into them and arching.
When they were nothing but skin, he felt something he’d never felt before when naked with a woman. Fear. When their bare bodies were finally plastered together, everything went suddenly very still.
He looked at her. His lips were rosy, damp and made plumper by the ferocity of their kisses. His eyes twinkled in the cavern’s darkness, and his brow was softly furrowed.
Whatever she must have seen in his countenance was mirrored in hers. Though she’d clutched at him as if she’d never needed anything more… she was afraid too.
Loraine lifted her hand and gently pushed back his wet hair. It was such a simple thing. So beautifully simple. But it swaddled his fear and made it okay. “You’re afraid,” she whispered.
In answer, a breath trembled out of him.
“I am too,” she said, with the smallest of smiles and a furrowed brow.
She cupped the back of his head and drew him closer. He closed his eyes when she kissed him and didn’t open them again. Just remained there, naked between her thighs, with their faces so close that he could feel her breath on his chin.
“Because I love you.” The confession was a tender exhalation. It danced across his cheeks and down his neck. It trembled through his gut, through each of his limbs.
And he suddenly understood his fear.
He was afraid… because he loved her too.
Their bodies slid together like two halves of an oyster shell. She gasped when entangled, and he hushed her in the tenderest of murmurs. He stroked her hair and whispered to her that it was okay.
They were still for a few moments, as this new world dawned on them. And then they moved together.
He was the waterfall, and she was the river, rippling as she received him.
Chapter 27
Miss Loraine Beauchamp
Loraine pulled on her slip, which was still sopping wet, and sat beside him on the rocks.
She wrapped her arms around her knees and held them against her chest, to ward off the chill. Without his body surrounding her, the cold felt bone deep.
He’d pulled on his breeches and sat on the edge of the cavern’s floor, with his legs dangling in the water. He was looking out at the fall, and the light on the other side.
“Are you alright?” He asked, quietly, when she settled.
She nodded. “Are you?”
He nodded too.
They were silent for a little while, waiting for what had just happened to fully dawn on them. Loraine tried to make it sink in… what she’d just done… but it felt stuck in the space around her. And at the same time, she felt altogether different.
She was different.
“Was that…” he whispered, but stopped before he could find the words to say. “I hope you don’t…”
“I don’t regret it,” she m
urmured.
She saw Philip’s neck bob as he swallowed. It was so strange to see him like this. He looked star struck. Out of his depth for once, and she liked that. Loraine put her cheek against his shoulder and expelled a soft breath.
“Did you mean what you said?” He asked.
“Would I have said it if I didn’t?”
He looked down at her, and she looked up at him without taking her cheek from his shoulder. “I didn’t say it back,” he said, as if he’d only just realized this.
Seducing The Vengeful Marquess (Steamy Historical Regency) Page 20