She’d offered him a choice: that safe darkness or her exquisite burning light.
He’d walked away. Brushed her hand from his jaw and put the ocean behind him. The cliffs rose before him. God, he was a fool, wasn’t he? Why remain here if he was not willing to do what it took to win her? He’d written to his solicitor about a loan. Hedid not need her money. There were other women. Why in hell was he still here?
Sand kicked up around him as the cliffs grew closer.
“Wait! Drew, wait!”
He wouldn’t.
Heavy breathing behind him. “Drew!” A hand catching his arm, tugging, begging. “Andrew, stop.”
He turned, the way she’d said his name—Andrew—like a cannonball in the gut. She’d never called him that before. Always Lord Andrew or the shortened form his brothers used—Drew. ButAndrewon her lips was an oddly enticing combination of Mrs. Dart’s confident command and Amelia’s playful familiarity. Yes, enticing. Almost… erotic. Commanding yet playful. In candlelight and beneath bedcovers, touching, teasing, tormenting. His body tightened, and his name, the way she said it, pinned him to the sand.
Her hands pinned him in place, too. She did not release him. Her fingers a manacle he could not shake off. This was not what he’d wanted—panting breaths and chaotic desire. Giving parts of himself over for her to break.
“What?” he demanded.
As if he’d not just shouted, she reached up to cup his cheek, a gentle touch, her fingers cold without the warmth of his pocket. “Do not be afraid.” Her thumb stroked his jaw. “I want it, too.”
Afraid? He was not afraid. He was steadfast and vigilant, unbreakable. Never afraid. Not until she stepped too close to a cliff’s edge.
“Drew.” Her hand slipped around his neck to cup his nape and draw him down. “Look at me. I want it, too.” Lifting up on tiptoe, she kissed him softly, tasting of salty sea air and something else, something he’d tasted the first time he’d kissed her. “I want it, too.” Words breathed into the kiss.
And they breathed life into him. He clutched her to him, pressing greedy hands against her back and deepening the kiss she’d started with such tender innocence. How had she known the exact words he wanted most to hear when he’d not even known them himself? She wanted him, this. And he lacked the language to tell her what that meant to him, how that flooded the darkest corners of his loneliness with light. So he kissed her, telling her by showing her.
He nipped at her bottom lip, and she gasped. An adorable sound. He took advantage of it, slipping his tongue between her lips. The last time he’d kissed her he’d done so on instinct alone, doing only what his desperation and relief had demanded he do—take her, make her his own.
He did so now deliberately, calming the kiss from a claiming fervor to a strategic plunder. And she clung to him, moving in unpracticed ways. A woman who’d not been kissed before. Or not often.
“Good,” he hissed, his hands climbing her back to tangle in her wind-messed hair. He’d teach her how to kiss for him and him alone.
Her hands gathered between their bodies, flattened against his chest, feeling, exploring, making him hard. His own needy hands, curious as hers, roamed down her back, grazed her ribs, and found the gentle slope of her breast. She gasped as he cupped it, let his thumb rub, cursed the layers of velvet pelisse, wool gown, stays, and chemise between his seeking thumb, his palm, and her.
She moaned and arched into his hand, and he slipped his leg between hers, bent the knee and pressed his thigh against the apex of her legs. Another gasp, a shuddering breath. She clenched at his shoulders.
“Help!”
They ripped apart from one another.
“Help!”
“Miss Angleton!” Amelia turned toward the ocean, a hand shading her eyes. “There!”
Arms flailing too far from shore. Caught in Amelia’s kiss, he’d forgotten she was even there. “Hell.”
Drew shrugged out of his greatcoat and ran, shucking his boots as he reached the lapping waves. No. No, no. Foolish girl. She screamed, disappearing below a crashing wave. He dove, pressing under the surge of water toward the beach, coming up to look around. Where was she? If she died… if she drowned… She was his to take care of. Where was she? He dove again, came up, turned his body sideways to become a blade to split the waves.
“There! Drew, over there!” Amelia’s voice from the shore, guiding him.
He scanned the waves. An arm, pale and slender, its palm wide with fear, fingers splayed. He’d found her. It took too long to get to her, each wave a monster and his body a speck of sand for it to fling about. An hour, a day, mere breaths later, the sandy bottom his feet clung to dropped out from under him, pulling him down who knew how deep.
He swam, and swimming was easier. Barely. And then he had his arm under her shoulders, pulling her to him, dragging her toward the shore. A wave slapped his back and the world disappeared for a moment as water flooded his mouth with his gasp, but he held her tight, safe, and when the world righted and they found air again, Amelia stood before them on the shore, her arms stretched toward them, a beacon.
He walked to her, the girl cradled like a child heavy in his arms, his clothes cold against his skin, and each step an aching challenge. Twice more they went under, and both times he righted them, found Amelia and stayed the course.
When the waves lapped harmless around his calves, Miss Angleton’s limp arms dragged up to hang round his neck, and her head rested against his chest. Her lungs pumped air in quick bursts that had slowed by the time they reached Amelia’s side.
He dropped to his knees some ways from the surf and laid Miss Angleton on the sand. Amelia dropped to her knees on the other side of the still woman, pushed sodden hair from her face. “Miss Angleton, are you injured?”
