Impossible that he’d thrown her in this boat today without wanting to kiss her? She had no idea.
“Entirely possible,” he said, meeting her fiery gaze with his steady one. “And you know it. You remember it.”
That stirred up silence. No sound but the splash of the oars and the slice of the boat through the water. She looked away from him again, but one hand, folded nicely in her lap, hovered upward. She touched her lips with her gloved fingertips.
And he allowed himself to look. Pink. The bottom lip full, pouty. The top one a series of hills and valleys, kissable little curves.
With a circle of one oar, he shifted their course, and with several hard strokes, he brought them to the far edge of the lake beneath the shade of a line of trees. He let the oars rest and studied the other boats dotting the lake. The men rowing them rested in the sun, leaning back, hats tipped over faces. The women turned to one another in intimate conversations.
Nothing so intimate as the semiprivacy of this little bower.
He shouldn’t kiss her. Even if she didn’t hate him, there was no future.
But goddamn it, couldn’t a man have something for himself? Some little thing to get him through the aching loneliness of a lifetime?
They didn’t even need a future. If she was intent on taking a lover, let it be him.
He leaned forward, reached out, plucked the fine muslin of her skirts where they spilled over the curve of her knee. That wrenched another gasp from her, this one smaller, more of a hot inhalation. Between his forefinger and his thumb, the muslin slid smooth and warmed by her body. He held on to it. That little pinch seemed enough to draw her forward, closer.
“Beatrice?” Her name a soft whisper that felt like a kiss as it brushed past his lips.
She curved nearer, as if he spoke too low for her to hear otherwise.
“Beatrice.” He said her name again. He liked how it felt on his tongue. “When I said I’d rather marry a cow than marry you, it was only because I never thought I would have a chance to marry you. It rather stings my pride, you know.” And something deeper than that. “Particularly because most days I’m certain you’re the only woman I could ever marry.”
Her head was shaking, curt little side-to-side movements. Her face was pinched. “You hate me. You think me not good enough. You think my cousin not good enough. You think?—”
“That’s not true. You’re much too good for me.” He didn’t want to talk about her cousin. “And when I feel like I might hate you, I think… that’s when I think I wish to marry you most.”
Her gaze met his, those pale-green eyes almost vibrating with… what? Some cavalry of emotion rampaging through her. “You are absurd.” She bit her lip. “But you are not absurd.” She closed her eyes, a little sound—half moan, half groan—rumbling in her throat. “I know because I have felt it, too. I hate you. I want you. Oh.” She dropped her face into her hands. “Row me back to shore.”
Row her back to shore? After that little revelation? “No, Beatrice. Not without a kiss first.”
Her head snapped up. “I hate you.”
His hand, sneaky little thief, stole toward her face, cupping her cheek. “I know. And I try to hate you, too.” Hating her the only way to survive loving her.
He kissed her. An inhale as he swiped his thumb across her jaw, then an exhale as he settled his lips lightly across hers. So lightly. A test. To see. What would she do?
Pull away and strike him with the palm of her hand?
Or give in and kiss him in return?
She did nothing, moved not a single muscle. Not even the breeze riled her hair. So he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her closer. She startled, a little flinch of movement that bloomed her body into life. And she did not pull away. She did not strike him.
She melted into him, her hands finding the tops of his thighs and settling there as if they meant to stay. Her head tilted, slanting her lips across his in a new direction. Her fingertips curled into the wool of his breeches, past that into his muscle, sinking in hooks to catch him. As if she already hadn’t.
A wave of victory swept through him, tightening his muscles, heightening his need. He’d been waiting years for this, and he should kiss her carefully, risking nothing.
He could not.
Instead, he kissed her with years’ worth of longing pulsing at every point their bodies touched. He gave her the heat of his rage, the intensity of his sorrow, and the bittersweet joy of his pleasure. God, he’d missed her.
And he told her with that kiss.
He opened his mouth and deepened it, and his brave Beatrice didn’t flinch. She welcomed it, coasting closer to him. Her hands crawled up his abdomen, his chest, settled on his shoulders and squeezed. He felt each of her fingertips like coals, her nails sinking in and claiming him. No need for claiming. God, he was already hers. Had been for too damn long.
A crack from the nearby shore startled her, broke the seal of their kiss.
