“And who was that?”
He tilted his head, and through a soft curtain of dark hair, he studied her, parted his lips, then shook his head. “Trouble. That’s who I was.”
She hopped off the rock and stood at the edge of the stream, the lightening rain melting into her already soaked cloak. Clear water tumbled over polished stones, and she picked up a small one that had washed onto dry land. She tossed it, and it landed with a plop and a splash.
He joined her, towering above like a strong oak, hands stuffed into pockets. “Did you use the basket? The blanket?”
“Pardon?” She looked at him over her shoulder. “The one in the coach? Yes, I did.”
“I thought you might find those things useful.”
“Youthought? But Mrs. Beckett put those…”
He grinned, pink slashing over his high cheekbones.
“You?”
He shrugged.
“They were quite useful.”
“Good.” He stepped around her to stand between her and the stream. “Do you forgive me? For the kiss?”
There was nothing to forgive. The kiss did not hound her—lies she told herself. Shecherishedit. Relived it over and over because it sang through her blood like a perfect melody. It may be the only memory of passion she’d have to look back on after she let a husband she did not love into her bed.
The only memory? How sad, how pitiful. “How can I grant forgiveness when I want nothing more than another kiss?”
Every sound around them fizzled into silence—the rush of the stream, the patter of the rain, the hush of their separate breaths. Then he stepped closer, his thighs brushing against her skirts, and his hand nestled beneath her chin, lifting it, forcing her to meet his gaze.
“Do not say it if you do not mean it.”
She was soaked and sad, lonely, and the adrenaline of her nighttime mission still buzzed through her. “I will likely marry soon and?—”
“It is already arranged?”
“Not yet. Soon. But it is not likely I’ll know passion.”
“A true tragedy.”
“Not if I explore passion now.” Give into impulse one more time. “Before I marry a man who will never know me.” Not truly. What man could she ever share all of herself with? What man would love her knowing why she’d married him?
“What are you saying?” he asked.
He was flippant and charming. He took liberties and he teased. But he cared, too. He was no thoughtless aristocrat using her as a plaything. He was a working man with calluses on his palms. This the kind of man she wanted, but not the kind of man she’d have in the end. At least she’d have the memory of his touch, of the desire hot in his eyes, when she married herself to cold duty.
“I’m asking you to show me what passion is like. I wish to learn of pleasure before it is too late.”
His jaw shifted side to side for a moment as he looked through the trees to the road in the distance. Then it softened, and so did his lips, and his hand beneath her chin smoothed around to the back of her neck, pulling her tight against his hard body. “If I go to hell for kissing you, so be it. The taste of your tongue is worth eternal damnation.”
When he crashed his mouth against hers, the flames leapt to life, consuming, raging, ruining. Sinning was a sweet thing, and instead of falling into hell as she fell into this man’s lips, she found heaven quite reachable on earth.
Five
Keats would never prove himself a gentleman, not when Lucy’s lips offered themselves up for the ravishing. Not strong enough to resist. Surely, no man was, but thankfully she’d chosen him for her seduction. Happy to oblige. Honored, even. Couldn’t turn her away, not when she tasted of the honey he’d secured in the wicker basket he’d stowed in the coach. She’d eaten what he’d provided her, and now he wanted to eat her. Need ravaged him, moved him, took her mouth and made it his own.
She let him. And he’d keep taking as long as she said yes.
She was saying yes with every slant of her lips across his, with every hot breath, with every fingertip on his arm branding him hers.
