by Stacy Reid
A soft curse slipped from him, and a blush heated her cheeks. But she would not retract the words. Life was too fleeting for her to hesitate with her desires. She wanted more, and he was the man she had craved for years. Who better to experience passion with?
“I do not think your future husband would appreciate your sentiments.”
“Since I have no intention of ever marrying, I think your point is irrelevant. I am interested in a discreet affair…with you, Alasdair.”
His stare was so intense it was a heated caress against her skin.
“I can feel you staring,” she said huskily.
“Join me in the water,” he invited, and it was the deep undertone of need in his voice that lured her.
Willow stood, and without hesitation slipped out of the simple day dress, standing in her chemisette. He swore softly, and her pulse quickened. She lowered herself onto the banking, and slowly eased into the lake.
The gasp was trapped in her throat as firm hands gripped her hips and gently lifted her, sinking her to the waist in the water. Cool water rushed over her soaking her chemisette. She wrapped one of her arms around his neck and placed the other on his shoulder. The sensation of the water was glorious, but not as much as the feel of his strength and the muscles in his shoulders. Her hand coasted over his naked flesh almost reverently. She had not thought he would have stripped to the waist.
“I think you were placed on earth to tempt my sanity,” he murmured. Amusement laced his tone. “I vowed not to take you, yet all I can think since you professed of wanting me as a lover is to spread you wide, feast on your sweetness, then ride you until we are both boneless with pleasure.”
She gasped at the raw desire his words elicited. Her body felt suffused with heat, and she was embarrassed to acknowledge she was at a loss for words. “Then take me,” she pushed the words past her lips.
His silence unnerved her. What was he thinking? “What are—?”
“Why are you not married to Salop?”
She stiffened, then forced her limbs to relax. “Our agreement was cancelled by my father after my accident. Salop did not object.”
The muscles in his shoulders twisted as he waded further out into the lake with her. “I see. Did you love him?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
“Did you love him, Willow?” he demanded softly.
She shook her head. “I have only ever felt such depth of affections for you,” she admitted without any reservation. She had never been ashamed of how she felt about Alasdair.
A soft kiss brushed against her lips, then he spoke, “Trust me for today. Relax with me. Let me be your guide in the water. Let us converse and relearn each other.”
She nodded, absurdly pleased with the idea of learning everything about him. “You should know I am not interested in marriage.”
Tension shifted through his frame, and the fingers still holding her hips tightened on her flesh perceptibly.
“I do not believe I mentioned marriage.”
Curiosity filled her. “You are comfortable with us having an affair?”
“Though I think of nothing but you, your smiles, and your lushly curved body, I will not take you. You deserve better than a quick romp, or to be a mistress.”
Amusement curled though her. “I cannot remember offering to be your mistress.”
His arms came around her, and he spun them, taking her deeper until the water rose to her chest. “You tempt me so damn much,” he said roughly. “Wrap your legs around my waist.”
She complied and encountered a rigid hardness that caused the sweetest throb in her center. She moaned deep in her throat as he pulled her closer, rubbing against a spot that caused her to almost jackknife away from him so intense was the pleasure. His hands slid up her side to gently cup the underside of her breasts.
Palpable sensual tension arced between them. “Kiss me, Alasdair.”
“No.”
She wriggled, he hissed and pulled her even firmer against the hard ridge of his arousal. The valley between her thighs throbbed with startling intensity. Impatience bit at her and Willow released his shoulders and slid her hands through his damp hair. She grabbed a fistful and tugged lower.
He laughed, and she leaned forward and bit his chin.
“Bold, aren’t you?”
She licked the spot she bit, and he went still. She then placed a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth and trailed kisses to his ear, so there could be no doubt of her words. “I desire you to touch me, to kiss me, because I crave something more in my life. I want this ache between my legs to be filled.” She snaked one of her hands between them, shifted a bit to create space, and cupped his hardness.
He groaned, and she smiled.
“This is what I want to fill me. Not because of the past and pain that still lies between us, and not because I feel fear. But because I feel something more than fear and doubt for the first time in years, and I only feel that with you.” She paused and squeezed his thick length harder.
“I am not seeking a quick romp, or to be your mistress. I am seeking pleasures with a man I trust to be gentle and kind. If you’ll eventually desire marriage for besmirching my honor, walk away, for I will not consent to anything greater than this burning passion.”
Silence. God awful silence at her declaration and Willow desperately wished she could see his features. A lump grew in her throat.
Then he leaned close, so close their lips brushed, and whispered, “Take a deep breath.”
Chapter 6
Every emotion Willow felt was reflected in her eyes. He had seen her doubts at his silence, her passion when experiencing his touch, and her slow outrage at his whispered ‘Take a deep breath.’ But Alasdair did not hesitate. He lifted and dumped her deeper into the water. Though she spoke with such certainty of her desire, artlessness glowed around her, and her air of innocence was wonderfully alluring.
She rose sputtering, her cheeks darkening, eyes narrowed. Water dripped from her hair, and some of the tendrils snaked from her plait. She looked too damn appealing. Submerging himself fully into the water did nothing to curb the ardor she roused in him.
“You cretin.”
Her feminine outrage growled at him, only inflamed him further. He dived deep, swimming toward her, and pulled her legs from underneath her. She moved like a dream under the water as she twisted, sliding against him to rise to the surface. Her eyes widened, and then a shout of laughter slipped from her. Her laughter was charming, impossible to resist, and he found himself responding. It was also the most enjoyable sound he had heard in a long time. But he had accomplished something. The doubt that had lingered in her eyes, even when she spoke so boldly of taking him, had melted away.
“I am to your left.”
She swam toward him before he finished speaking. Her sense of hearing and perception amazed him.
“I can see from your playfulness you have no intention of indulging in pleasures today.”
He grunted, and she grinned.
“You love the water, being outdoors. Why did you stop swimming?”
She went silent, gazing at him in that piercing way as if she could see him. Her shoulders relaxed, and she swam lazily to him. “I did not stop. My parents stopped me. I think it was from fear of losing me.”
He met her halfway and drew her to his side, drifting with her along the currents. An ache filled his chest as she complied, seamlessly gliding through the water beside him. It meant she trusted him.
A rueful smile curved her lips. “Pray do not believe I did not wallow in self-pity for years. I did. For two years, I hardly left my room, closing myself off from everyone. The horror of what I had lost drowned me for a long time.”
“Then what happened?” he asked quietly, imagining the pain and isolation she must have endured.
She flipped on her back and started to float. “I got irritated with myself. I was a bear to everyone. In the first few months, I yelled, and I threw tantrums. I refused to eat
, bathe, everything was a battle to those people who only wanted me to be happy, as happy as I could be given my circumstances. I emerged from my self-imposed prison, and then I realized how much my wings had been clipped. While I had the freedom to roam the house, which I did so many times that I can walk now unassisted, the fear my mother felt at me moving beyond the garden has grounded me to the estate, away from our lake,” she ended wistfully.
He glanced at her as she lazed on the surface of the water, the sun glistening off her skin. A deep need to please her scythed through his heart, and he pushed away the desire. If he allowed himself to care for her, it would be a disaster. Though he enjoyed himself more than he could recall in his life, he never forgot that he must wed an heiress. His mother had presented him with several candidates before he left Westerham Park.
His intentions today were simply about being in Willow’s presence. He was startled to realize most of his anger had faded away. Knowing how she suffered, made Alasdair felt tormented. He cared. He had only to look at her and his pulse raced. He liked it. He felt something other than loneliness, a fatal sense of duty, and obligation. “Will you tell me how you lost your sight?” he invited, desperately wanted to know.
She was silent for the longest time. “I fell from a horse. The blow to my head detached my retinas. The doctors said nothing can be done.”
Fell from a horse? She was an expert horsewoman. He had even taught her to ride without a side saddle. “How did—”
“No. I told you how. No more.”
She twisted, sliding against him before he could say more, and found his lips with unerring accuracy. It was a fleeting kiss, one filled with more teasing than real passion. She trailed her lips to his jawline.
Her womanly fragrance overwhelmed him, intoxicating his senses. She turned her face into his neck, inhaled his scent, and then pressed a lingering kiss there. He swore. Need rocketed through him from that simple caress. What in damnation was he doing? She was wholly unsuitable to be his bride, yet he was taking liberties. It hardly mattered she was the one doing the touching. He would never really make love to her and then abandon her. It certainly made no sense to linger on the memory of her taste or the lushness of her lips. If only he could burn from his mind what her face looked like suffused with pleasure.
She deserved more. She spoke of only wanting passion, but he instinctively realized it was fear that pushed her to such thoughts. In the past, laughing and frolicking with each other by this very lake, she had confessed to wanting a large family.
“How did your accident happen?”
She stiffened and moved with graceful strokes away from him. He did not allow her to retreat but sliced through the water, deliberately crowding her space, guiding her to lean against a rock near the embankment.
“Willow?” he prompted at her continued silence.
“I was acting foolishly and pushed my horse too fast.”
Her face was a cool mask, but he detected something painful in her tone.
“I am deeply regretful you felt such pain.”
She nodded and offered him a wobbly smile.
“When was this?”
“A long time ago.”
He arched a brow and examined her closely, doing his best to keep his gaze above her neck. Her chemisette was pasted to the ripe curves of her body, and since they’d been swimming, he had even resorted to reciting Latin to keep his mind from the gutter. “Whatever happened must have been in the year you and I parted. What happened, Willow?”
She huffed an impatient breath. “This line of questioning is over. There is only one thing left for us to discuss today, my lord.”
For some reason, he was no longer turned off from hearing the reminder of his title on her lips. “And that is?” Though he knew from the sensuality suffusing her face.
Her touch, so delicate, uncertain even, yet so seductive, drifted over his chest. “I would like to appease my curiosity.”
“A curiosity, am I?”
There was a pulse of silence that seethed with more than lust.
“You would also be a memory, one I can recall when all else is dark, and loneliness eats at my soul,” she admitted with a frankness that startled him.
From the flush that climbed her cheeks, he deduced she had not meant to be so forthcoming either. And at that moment, he knew he would grant her what she wished for, and indulge in what he had hungered for, for so many years.
The hard chest beneath her hands rippled with power. Alasdair had always been graceful, athletic. He was muscled with broad, defined shoulders. She glided the tip of her finger over the sharp sensual angles of his jaw, up to his hair. The strands of his hair were soft and curled around her fingertips. Images of his grey eyes floated in her mind, and she prayed she would never forget the heat that used to dwell within whenever his gaze had turned to hers.
Warm hands cupped her cheeks, and she shifted her neck slightly and placed a kiss toward his palm. It landed on his knuckles. His fractured breathing rippled through her, pushing away the uncertainty. “I cannot resist you, Willow. Years later and I still cannot resist you.”
Her breath hitched at the raw need in his voice. She also heard the bleakness underneath the layer of desire. “I do not want you to resist. In the past six years, a night has not gone by that I did not think of you,” she breathed huskily, sliding her hand down his chest to his stomach. She was pleased to feel the muscular wall of his abdomen contracting at her caress. The slightly rougher texture of his flesh had her pausing. “What is this?”
“A scar, from the war.”
She traced the puckered flesh with the tip of her finger. “I am sorry you were hurt. Will you tell me about it?”
“Yes.” He inhaled sharply when she dipped her hand lower to tease along his waistline.
Alasdair gripped her hand to keep her from exploring further, drew her roughly against his body and claimed her lips.
Sweet glorious heaven.
There was nothing teasing or gentle about his claiming. Everything faded. The birds trilling in the distance, the soft sound of the water as it lapped at their heated bodies. He kissed her until she was weak and shivering in his arms until she was intoxicated by the pleasure of his taste. He traced the contours of her back, down to her buttocks, and drew her closer to his hardness.
“Yes,” she gasped, never wanting the chaotic sensations engulfing her body to stop.
Alasdair’s fingers glided over her knees up to her thighs to find the source of her heat with aching precision. He stroked across her knot of pleasure, streaking agonizing need through her body. She shifted, clamping her thighs tighter around his hips.
With a groan against her lips, he slipped his fingers down and glided one deep inside her. She sobbed into his mouth, shaking at the fire pulsing between her thighs. Every touch of his hand and every movement of his body against her took her deeper and deeper in want…into desire.
“Please,” she whispered, her voice broken. “I crave something more.” What, she didn’t know, but she needed. “Make me burn, Alasdair.”
She felt his loss of control as he roughly widened his stance, opening her more to his intimate touch. She bit his lip as he pressed deeper, his thumb circling her knot of pleasure in time to the two fingers now plunging into her core. Oh God. He kissed her harder his tongue moving in symphony to the sensual thrusts between her legs.
The sweetest of pain and pleasure combined into burning ecstasy and a wave of heat rolled over her. She moaned, tearing her mouth from his, burying her face in his neck as sheer bliss consumed her, leaving her shaking and clasping his shoulders.
Alasdair waded with her to the shallow end, unwrapping her legs from his waist to place her on the grassy knoll, blanketing her body with his. He was larger than she remembered. A frisson of awareness and lust pierced her. She should have felt vulnerable at his obvious strength, instead exhilaration shot through her. He caressed her shoulders, down to her side with untamed hunger. He pressed a gentle kis
s to her lips, while one of his hands pushed her chemisette to her waist.
He cupped her core, pressing his palm with gentle force against her nub.
Sweet Lord.
A delicious wave of needed roiled through her body. “You promised to make me ache relentlessly. What are you waiting for?” she demanded nipping his bottom lips softly.
A groan pulsed from him, and a smile of satisfaction creased her lips. She loved that she affected him as much.
“No,” she gasped as he withdrew from her, pulling her chemisette down. “Why did you stop?”
“With you, I have no control. I will not make love with you for the first time here. I will have you in my bed where I can worship your body as you deserve,” he said, almost reverently.
A sensual smile curved her lips, and she lifted her face to his. “Kiss me,” she invited.
“What the blasted hell is going on?”
The snarl of rage had her freezing in shock. Alasdair rolled from her in one smooth motion.
Willow trembled. Who was it?
“Easy,” Alasdair murmured when she scrambled to her feet. “He saw nothing.”
“Unhand my sister, Westcliffe.” The voice was stiff with anger.
She felt Alasdair’s heat retreating.
It was Quinton. Why was he here? He should be in London with Grayson and her father. Her knees wobbled. She was compromised. She would not wed Alasdair under these circumstances, under any circumstance. How could she have been so reckless? While she knew the lake was exposed, no one visited at this time of the day.
The cool breeze that wafted over her skin had a shiver skating over her body.
A scent of tobacco and oak moss drifted close, and then rough hands started to dry her hair.
“Do not make the error of bruising her skin because you are angry,” Alasdair warned. The cold rebuke in his voice was startling. The command in it had her brother stiffening, but he halted his rough actions.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
She had always been closer to Quinton than Grayson, and she could only imagine the anger Quinton must be feeling at the thought she had been taken advantage of. He had been the one to punch Lord Trenton for his behavior. He had been the one to encourage her the most to be brave and fight to be independent of their family’s overprotectiveness.