Her breath came faster, but he worked his tongue slowly over her lips, planting his forearms on either side of her head, pinning her.
He planned to linger.
Everything, she’d said.
One day wasn’t enough, not for everything he wanted to do to her. Damned if one lifetime was enough.
Her husband was a cad and a simpleton. Why would he seek other women when the one who shared his table, his bed, offered endless delights, endless challenges, provoked the mind and inflamed the body, irritated and enticed and . . .
Christ.
She was undulating against him, sighing into his mouth, so he stilled her, pushed his tongue inside as his thigh nudged her legs apart. Her mouth opened to receive him, tasted sweet, with a slight savor of mint, of mugwort, and he stroked a wicked rhythm that she interrupted with gasps, tangling her tongue with his, catching at his lower lip with her teeth. He broke the kiss, ran his lips down her throat. Her skin was smooth as silk but salted with her sweat. It stung him. Oh, but he liked the burn of her. He licked away the salts, flicking with his tongue, then sucking the lobe of her ear into his mouth, twisting his fingers in her damp hair until she hissed.
He was already so hard it hurt. He slowed his breathing, eased his lower body away.
The madness of the situation struck him. He had surrendered. He’d let Lavinia goad him into defying reason.
He opened his eyes. She’d opened hers. Bluebell blue.
“You’re stopping,” she said, softly, without surprise. As though rejection and disappointment were her constant companions. Betrayed, and alone in the world, she made wishes knowing they wouldn’t come true.
He hated that resigned note in her voice. But he wasn’t a magician, had no power to banish past hurts.
That last wish she’d made, though. That he could grant. No magic required. Only desire. Desire, and a willingness to suspend his own better judgment.
They had no future together.
But they could have today.
“I’m not stopping,” he said. “I haven’t begun.”
He lifted her into his arms, carried her from the willow into the sun-dazzled clearing. Her mouth was wet on his neck, and her fingers threaded into his hair. As he lowered to his knees, he had to detach her gently, laying her down where the moss made a thick bed.
“You said you wanted to appreciate the mosses,” he murmured, sitting back on his heels. She propped herself up on her elbow, made a face.
“What if I don’t, though?” she asked. “Could you appreciate a woman who doesn’t appreciate the mosses?”
She taunted him. But he detected an odd quaver in her voice, an unexpected vulnerability in her eyes.
“It depends.” He brought her muddy shoes onto his thighs, tugged at the laces, worked them off one by one. Her stockings were wet at the toe and the heel. He scooted her closer, drew her calves onto his thighs, and pushed up her skirt.
“She doesn’t object to moss, does she?” His hands slid up to her garters. “It’s comfortable, cool, fragrant . . . one of the great luxuries of the forest.” He dropped her stockings behind him and set her bare calves on the green mat. “Fit for a queen. A pirate queen, at any rate.”
“Nature’s settee.” She arched a brow but the trouble still lurked at the corners of her mouth. “I haven’t the foggiest notion, though, of the Latin.”
He stared, cursing himself. He’d called her empty-headed. Made it clear he didn’t think her capable of being a spy, let alone a scientist. That she was less than she’d pretended to be.
“You’d learn easily.” He tried to push with his eyes, to bring forward all his certainty. “If you put half a mind to it, you could memorize the Latin name for that tree, and that bush, those flowers. I could teach you in no time.”
She was biting her lip.
He wanted to bite her lip. But it was more important to speak. “The Latin doesn’t matter. You already know how to describe the world, and you do it more vividly than most. And you know how to imagine other worlds.”
The look on her face made his heart swell in his chest. Damn her husband. Damn everyone who had kept her so starved for recognition.
“I could label dinosaur bones all day long, sort through dusty boxes.” He took her bare feet into his hands, comparing them like two fossils so that she laughed and kicked at him, but he tightened his grip, looked at her seriously. “Anyone can say that’s the tooth of an iguanodon. I’d want you to help me picture the living beast.”
She snorted, but her eyes were bright. “I wouldn’t be surprised if an iguanodon lurched out from between the trees. These are the woods that time forgot.”
He kept fondling her feet, avoiding the blisters on her heels, rubbing his thumbs into her soles.
“That’s it,” he said, grinning. “I became a plant hunter instead of a professor because I wanted that feeling. The sense that anything could happen. I feel it in places like this.”
“I know,” she said dryly. “Or on mountaintops, or better, ledges. You’d be thrilled if a massive purple iguanodon charged right at us, crowing like that sinister rooster.”
He blinked. She did have a knack for imagery. It had never occurred to him—an iguanodon crowing.
“The rooster in Kyncastle,” she clarified. “I’d never heard such an ear-splitting sound! I’m certain dinosaurs couldn’t sound worse. So just imagine. He’s thundering toward us, the iguanodon, with a horn on his nose and making the most hideous racket. You’re happy about it, aren’t you? You don’t mind one bit that he might gobble us up.”
He laughed. She watched him, mouth curving. Holding back her own laughter. Still, she wanted an answer.
He’d never met anyone like her, of that he was certain. Should he tell her that iguanodons were herbivores? No. It was entirely beside the point.
“I’m happy about you,” he said at last. She’d deceived him, yes. But she’d told him why, and he believed her. The raw suffering in her eyes had been real. And now he had a chance, here, now, to discover more about the real Lavinia. Not just what she suffered, but what brought her joy. Pleasure.
She made him feel the very excitement he’d pledged to sacrifice for a relationship based on conversation.
But he could talk to her. They didn’t have the kinds of conversations he’d imagined—two people upholding each other’s points of view. No, they vexed and surprised each other. That was part of it.
“I prefer you to an iguanodon,” she said, primly, as though she were perched on a chintz settee in a drawing room, instead of sprawled on nature’s settee, letting him manipulate her plump little toes.
“Do tell,” he said. “I want to know all your preferences.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do, though.” He smiled at her. Freckles dusted her nose, and her cheekbones were rosy with sun. Her hair straggled from its pins. She looked wild. Skittish, but also bold.
“For example, you prefer Moët to ale, saffron buns to scones, novels to horticulture journals, late nights to early mornings, London to Cornwall—”
“I’m coming around on Cornwall,” she interrupted.
“Mmm,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it.”
His fingertips stroked up from her ankle to her knee. She had soft pale hairs on her shinbones, like on the undersides of young sycamore leaves.
“How do you prefer to be touched?”
Her shock was almost comical. Her jaw dropped, and her chest, throat, and face turned a deep, blooming red.
Clearly, no one had ever put the question to her.
He lowered his voice as he pushed her skirt higher. “You’re so good with words. I want every detail.”
She shook her head, emphatic. Almost frantic.
“Let me . . . I can touch you.” She spoke in a strangled voice and sat up, pressing her palm to the bulge in his trousers.
He felt himself straining against the fabric. She swallowed, moving her hand, her expression concentrated. He sucked in his breath.
“The question isn’t what you can do.” He bent his torso over her, pulling her against him. “I don’t doubt you can do anything.”
If she kept touching him, that adorable, determined look on her face, she’d find out one thing she could do, quite a bit sooner than he’d like.
He couldn’t remember a time a woman’s hand had worked him to this state.
His voice was rough. “The question is what do you want.”
He cupped the back of her head, claiming her mouth as he bore her slowly down onto the moss. Her arm snaked between them—she was trying to release him from the trousers—but he slid down her body, kissing her throat, the swell of her breasts. Thank God she wasn’t wearing one of her silk gowns with all the complicated panels and lace, the eyelets and hooks. He had her out of the thin cotton frock and ruffled knickers in a trice. For a moment he could only stare at her, her creamy body on a bed of green, breasts tipped with pink, dark curls glinting gold at the juncture of her thighs.
“You said everything.” He studied her face as he unbuttoned his shirt, fingers trembling slightly. He wasn’t nearly as calm as he sounded.
He wanted her. He shook with the force of it. “But we need to prioritize. There’s so much.” He took a deep breath as he let his shirt fall. The breeze felt deliciously cool, tickling his ribs. “Tell me.”
“What?” She was up again on one elbow, brow furrowed in confused anger. “I said everything. That means . . .” She trailed off, eyes roaming down his chest. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. Then she met his gaze.
“Take me,” she said hoarsely, and her eyes fell to his groin. Her look alone affected him like a finger stroke. The ache had become a torment.
An equal torment—his sudden knowledge of her innocence.
She knew nothing of the other pleasures he could offer her.
She’d been taught to give but not to take.
That husband of hers, he was an outright villain.
He came onto all fours beside her, nuzzling her breasts, flicking her nipples until they hardened against his tongue. His hand slid over her belly down the slope of her hip. He pulled his head from her breasts to take her mouth in a kiss as his hand slid further, and he teased the curls between her thighs. He burrowed into them with his first two fingers, felt the sudden shock of her moist heat. She cried out in his mouth, bucking, and her arm came around him, fingernails scratching down his spine, then her fingers hooked the band of his trousers. She tugged down.
He moved his fingers gently, feeling the soft wet edges and the hard knot of her, which swelled under his touch.
She still tugged helplessly at his trousers. Sighing, he removed his hand, plucked away her tugging arm and pinned it beside her. He stopped sipping at her lips to take her nipple between his teeth, to plant kisses on the undersides of her breasts and below her navel, and then he was hovering over her lower belly, admiring the fullness of her thighs, and everything that glistened between.
His touch had made her open like a crocus. He wanted to open her wider, to taste each ridge and fold, parting the lavender-rose of her, heavy with dew.
The stream of air he expelled with his groan made her squirm. He leaned in and licked the very center.
Her stomach clenched as his mouth closed on her. Dear God, what kind of caress was this, the wet stroking of his tongue at the tip of her sensation? She gasped and wiggled, and his hand closed on her hip, pushing her into the moss, stilling her.
Her breath came ragged. Her legs butterflied around his wide upper body. He held her beating against his mouth, and her cheeks flamed with the near unbearable intimacy of it. She felt his fingers parting her, then the delicious, unsettling stretch as his knuckle churned against her inner flesh, his tongue sliding in rhythm.
Had George ever tried to position himself thus, propped between her thighs, spreading her? No, no, he’d kiss her mouth, her breasts, brush her down there with beringed fingers, then fit himself inside.
If he’d tried . . . she’d never have allowed it. She had wanted George to see her as a princess, an angel, wicked at times, but always irreproachably lovely. He would climb on top of her and she’d make sure her hair was fanned out like a golden halo on the pillow. She would run her hands down his smooth back, sigh prettily, let him take her, adoring his closeness, the flickers of pleasure in that secret place where he rubbed against her.
It wasn’t secret now. She was open to Neal, to the woods, to the sky.
Neal had asked her what she wanted. She didn’t know if she wanted this, this exposure.
“No.” She bit back a cry as his lips, tongue, and teeth pulled and warmth flooded down her thighs. Louder. “No.”
At once, he was up beside her, the muscles in his arm bunching as he took her in a protective embrace. She shuddered against his hard chest.
“You don’t like it,” he murmured.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” She was embarrassingly near tears, trying not to rub her legs together, to rekindle that desperate desire, almost a need. Sun filtered through the leaves, heating her bare shoulder, her brow. Some horrible insect had stung her cheek. She scratched at the lump. “I’m sorry. I look . . .”
He opened his mouth. He’d say beautiful and he’d be lying.
“Like you belong in these woods,” he said, and gently untangled a leaf from her hair.
Her insides squeezed. “I don’t belong anywhere.”
“Today you belong here, with me.” He pulled back so he could study her, and she was undone. He belonged in these woods, with his wild locks and bronze skin, his broad shoulders, his ribs knit with muscles, his body so lean and strong and animal.
“Unless you recant your wish,” he said.
Recant? She was already shaking her head. She didn’t want to recant her wish. That was the problem. She wanted to double, then quadruple it. She wanted today and tomorrow and the day after that. She was greedy and needful and ugly. She was dirty and bitten and throbbing with lewdness.
She was unpresentable. Unfit for polite company. Utterly unperfect, now and perhaps forevermore.
“It’s not . . . nice . . . down there,” she managed. His eyes seemed suddenly to darken as he understood her. She could fall into them forever.
“Oh, it’s nice,” he said, voice like velvet. His finger trailed over her collarbones, the callus scratching over her nipple, beneath the curve of her breast, lower and lower. “Like moss and lilies and riverbank and cloud.”
She tried to laugh but it was trapped in her tightening chest.
“It’s dirty.” Her voice strangled.
“Mmm.” His tongue moved over his bottom lip, and she realized with a start that he must be able to taste her there. “Like dirt too.” He smiled. “Slippery mud. Seaweed. Worms.”
Now she did laugh. “You’re a lunatic.”
“It’s like everything,” he said. His finger barely touched her, skimming the tuft of hair at the apex of her thighs. His face became hard, intent. His finger pressed down, found the spot that made her want to writhe and moan.
“You do like it,” he said, watching her.
“Maybe too much.” She gasped as he curled his finger. “What if I can’t control how I . . .”
She couldn’t finish. It wasn’t just his touch but his face that took her breath away. She’d never seen him so purposeful.
“If you can’t control how you look?” He inched his body closer to hers, stretched out to his full length, not on top of her, but beside her, staring into her eyes. Down there, his finger worked at her. “If you can’t control how you sound?”
She couldn’t help it. She groaned and rolled onto her side, wanting more contact. Ah. There. Her breasts bumped his hot, hard chest, flattened against his naked skin. He exhaled but didn’t stop circling with his finger, didn’t stop speaking . . .
“If you become completely wild, like a forest creature, or like a pirate queen who takes her pleasure without apology and gives no quarter . . .”
He pushed her onto her back and loomed over her, so his shadow quenched the light.
“God, I want it.” He almost groaned the words. “I want to make you come and come apart and forget every goddamn thing but the feel of my mouth.”
She quivered, legs loosening.
“Do you want it too? Tell me.” He waited, and she saw that he was vibrating with the effort, with his eagerness.
She had the power to decide.
“Yes.” Her chest heaved. “Yes.”
She shut her eyes against the sun as he nestled again between her thighs, spreading her even wider than before, tasting and tugging until she couldn’t tell his tongue from his fingers. The fullness inside her pressed up through her belly, made harsh cries burst from her lips, but she didn’t care.
This was no time for tidy, calculating prettiness. She clutched at his head, wrapped his hair round her fingers, tipping her hips, pushing herself into his mouth. Shameless.
The tension was going to make her split, make her shudder into pieces. Her back arched and her head went hard into the moss, which prickled the backs of her arms and her spine.
She was saying his name, saying words she’d never dreamed of uttering. She wanted him deep inside her, wanted his cock.
He gripped her hips, lifted her so he could fit more of her in his dark, hot, stroking mouth, and suddenly, she broke, releasing a guttural moan, pulses of pleasure rolling down her legs and cresting up into her belly, nothing like those delicate flickers she’d felt in the past, surface ripples that left her depths placid.
She was a whirlpool of pleasure. All of her was caught in the funnel of sensation. Now, at last, he settled over her and she felt the jolt of his weight, the delicious impact of his hot, hard chest. When she scrabbled at his breeches, he didn’t bat her hand away, but let her push them down, helping her bare him.
In this, he differed, too, from George. He was thicker and longer, and she felt the dense, ironlike muscles in his thighs bruising her flesh as he rocked against her. Yes. She wanted this force, this urgency. She lifted her head and mashed her lips to his, tasting herself, and it was like everything, earthy and rich, sweet and sour.
His arm came under her, and she was clasped to his chest as he sank inside her, each slow inch reactivating the surges of pleasure.
With George, she’d tried not to move lest she do the wrong thing. She’d lain in his arms like a doll.
Now she gave herself over to the sweet wildness, digging her fingers into Neal’s glorious backside, feeling the muscles flex and pushing with them, driving him deeper, angling her hips to create just the friction she needed. She was panting beneath him, sweat sliding between her breasts, moisture pumping between her thighs. And then she opened her eyes. His face was right there, jaw rigid, and those glittering eyes saw her, saw everything as she exploded, openmouthed, in his arms. He began to move quickly then, stroke harder, fingers threading hers, until shuddering, he jerked away and spent himself in the moss.
Later, after they’d dozed in the sun, limbs intertwined, she was the one who suggested they stay, stay all night, and he the one who laughed with surprise. They had no shelter, no dinner, no water. So ran his protests. But who needed shelter? She’d already ruined her complexion and glutted all the insects with her blood, and the woods were warm and nature’s settee made a lovely bed if they only rolled his coat into a pillow. Though she hadn’t ever caught a fish in the Min River, she did have a hook and a line in her dress pocket, and surely Laura Odgers, during her woodland tours, hadn’t neglected the freshwater brooks and springs. So she insisted, and that was how they found themselves—hours later, after swimming and fishing, after dining on Cornish trout and pleasing each other more and even better—curled by a dying fire, her front to his back, in the mild summer night.
She turned her head, cheek pressing his shoulder blade, and looked up at the stars through the leaves—one wish fulfilled, so many out of reach.