A Rogue's Downfall, page 11
She could not believe the words that came from her mouth. They seemed not to have passed through her brain for approval first. “There is an easy way of finding out,” she said.
“And so there is.” He had taken her free hand in his and laced his fingers with that too. He took the half step that separated them. “Maybe I should take it.”
“Yes.” She could feel his thighs warm and hard against hers. Her breasts were pressed against his coat. She had to bend her head back in order to look up at him. And she had not been mistaken. There really had been the smell of him on her pillow last night. An elusive smell—soap, cologne, leather, all three, none of the three. A heady masculine smell. She closed her eyes.
His lips were slightly parted when they met hers. They were warm and exploring. She allowed her own to relax beneath them instead of clamping them into a tight line as she had done with the two gentlemen who had been permitted to kiss her on previous occasions. She willed him to touch her with his tongue again and he did, running it lightly along her upper lip and back along the lower until she felt a sharp stabbing of sensation in her breasts. She wanted his tongue in her mouth so that she could discover if she found it disgusting, as she had not the night before when she had been half asleep. But he made no move to put it there.
“Mmm,” she heard someone say. It was a feminine voice and could only have been her own.
“Mmm, indeed.” His forehead and nose were against hers and he was gazing down at her mouth.
She felt foolish. “Well?” she asked. “Do I taste the same?”
“Last night,” he said, “you tasted of bed and sleep. This afternoon you taste of sunshine and sea and beach. And both times of woman.”
He was so much more experienced at this sort of thing than she was. Even the pitch and tone of his voice—
“Oh, dear,” she said, drawing back her head so that she could look into his face without going cross-eyed. And her voice again acted independently of her brain. “I think we should build a sand castle.”
He had the most attractive grin of any man she had ever seen, she decided. Of course, with those teeth and those eyes and the all-over beauty, it was not surprising. She wished she had not said anything so stupid. Whatever had possessed her?
“Or something,” she added lamely.
“What a delightful idea,” he said. “But we have nothing with which to dig except our hands. Are you willing to get sand beneath your fingernails?”
“Yes,” she said. “There is no greater fun than being all over sand.” Or at least there had not been when she was twelve years old or less. But she was twenty-three and he was thirty. How ridiculous he must think her.
He set an arm about her waist and started walking again. She had little choice but to wrap her dangling arm about his waist. “A little farther along,” he said, “where the sand looks softer. But you do not play fair, Caroline. I am used to a different kind of flirtation. I am not sure that my heart is proof against this.”
Which was clearly the most stupid thing either of them had said all day.
He had thought of a digging instrument while they walked and when they stopped, presented her with his quizzing glass with a bow and a flourish. She looked at it dubiously.
“The rim is somewhat blunt,” he said, “but it may help.”
“It may never be usable as a quizzing glass again, though,” she said. “But then perhaps that is just as well. There is nothing more unmannerly, I believe, than quizzing ladies through a glass.”
“But it can be marvelously revealing, Caroline,” he said. “And marvelously intimidating too. There is nothing better calculated to discourage ambitious mamas than a quizzing glass and a haughty stance.”
She set the glass down on the sand while she removed her bonnet. “I would not imagine,” she said, “that there are many ambitious mamas for you to repel any longer.”
“Hm, nasty,” he said. “You would be surprised, Caroline. A title and fortune and prospects cover over a multitude of sins.”
He took off his coat and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. And they set to the task of transforming one particularly flat and featureless area of beach into a formidable castle strong enough to withstand the attack of the tide. They worked together for fifteen minutes in near silence until he sat down to remove his Hessians and his stockings.
“There is no point in ruining them as well as a perfectly serviceable quizzing glass,” he said when Caroline paused in her work to watch him. “Besides, I remember from some nameless outing in childhood that there is nothing more delectable than the feel of sand between the toes.”
“Oh,” she said with a sigh, “I have been trying to ignore similar memories.” And off came her shoes and her stockings. Some of the pins had come out of her hair so that it looked like an untidy and glorious auburn halo about her head.
Half an hour later, hot, sticky, and sandy, the viscount sat back on his heels to view their creation. He could not recall an hour he had enjoyed more. Which was a strange and absurd admission to make. Caroline was on her knees, one cheek almost resting on the sand as she worked with a delicate finger at the arch of a gateway. One lock of hair trailed in the sand. Her derriere was nicely and invitingly elevated. He could have reached out and patted it, but did not. She was clearly enjoying herself as much as he had been doing.
They had been telling each other, between bouts of quiet concentration, about their childhood. He had remembered incidents and escapades that he had not thought of for years.
He spread his coat on the sand and lay back on it, one arm behind his head, watching her lazily. He had set himself to win a wager. He had twenty-four hours in which to make the woman admit that she had fallen in love with him. And yet he was wasting at least one of those hours building a sand castle with her and exchanging stories of childhood. He must be losing his touch.
But he liked her. He could not remember liking a woman for years. Not to the extent of seeing her as a person anyway and enjoying merely talking and laughing with her. And building a sand castle with her. He pictured himself suggesting such an afternoon’s entertainment to Lady Plumtree and chuckled aloud.
Caroline turned her head and lifted herself onto her hands and knees. “I am glad I afford you some amusement,” she said. “Lazy workers will not be tolerated, you know. They will be dismissed without reference.”
“Does that mean I will never be allowed to work again?” he asked. “Do say yes.”
She sat back on her heels and admired their handiwork. “It is rather splendid, is it not?” she said.
“It is indefensible,” he said. “There is no moat.”
She sighed. “Should we dig one?”
“Then we would need a drawbridge,” he said. “Besides, Caroline, it is built of sand. Sand castles are impregnable only in dreams.”
She swished her hands together in a vain attempt to remove all the sand. “But it is a lovely dream castle, is it not?” she said. “Think of all the glorious knights who would ride in and out of my gateway.”
“And all the lovely ladies on my battlements,” he said stretching out one hand toward her.
She set her own in it and gazed down at him. “Was this a silly idea?” she asked. “Do you think me very foolish? Have you been unutterably bored?”
He considered. “No to all three,” he said. “Come here.”
“ ‘Here’ being the sand beside you?” she said.
“Yes.” He tightened his grip on her hand and smiled up at her. She looked remarkably untidy and sandy. She looked delicious.
“It would be very improper,” she said.
“Yes.” He grinned.
She withdrew her hand from his, got to her feet, and then very deliberately sat beside him and lay down, her head on his coat. “I always loved lying down outdoors on a warm day,” she said. “Especially on a beach. Watching the clouds, feeling the sun, listening to the waves breaking, and smelling the salt air. But it was never allowed a great deal. Ladies just do not appear with sun-reddened faces, it seems.”
He raised himself on one elbow and leaned over her. “There,” he said. “I’ll shade you from the sun and the ignominy of a red face.”
He was back in his own area of expertise, of course. It would be the easiest thing in the world now to win his wager. He smiled at her and she looked warily back.
“This is very improper,” she said.
“Yes.” He lowered his head and rubbed his nose against hers. “You may very well have to marry me after all, Caroline.”
“No,” she said.
“What if I tell you tomorrow morning that I have fallen in love with you?” he asked. “And what if you tell me the same thing?”
“But neither of us will,” she said, “because we are both on our honor to speak the truth.”
Gad, but she was damnably pretty. Even when she was disheveled and sandy. He lowered his head and kissed her, preparing himself as he usually did to lose himself in the pleasure of an embrace even if it was one that could not be taken to its logical conclusion. But he lifted his head again after just a few moments and looked down at her.
The earth would move, she had said. They would hear the music of the spheres together, he had said. If two persons made love instead of just two bodies, that was. If the pleasures of a man and a woman were combined and shared. If they were aware of each other as they gave and took pleasure. What would it be like? he had wondered then. What would it be like? he wondered now.
He lowered his head again, opening his mouth over hers, licking her lips until they parted, exploring his way slowly inside. And he thought of the child she had been, much adored as the only girl in the family of men, strictly trained and educated by a much-loved governess. He thought of her in mourning for a couple of years as her girlhood slipped past. He thought of her refusing two offers of marriage just recently because she wanted to both love and be loved by the man she would marry. He thought of her wanting children. He thought of her building their sand castle with energy and enthusiasm.
Caroline. He tested the name in his mind. She was Caroline.
She had her arms about his neck. She was sucking tentatively on his tongue and turning to set her breasts against his chest. He lifted his head and looked down at her again. She was gazing back with luminous eyes. What you began to do to me last night, she had said, is probably very pleasurable, is it not? She had never experienced that pleasure. He could give it to her. All of it. Or enough of it to leave him free when she made her admission the next morning.
He could make her love him. And she would be honest enough to admit it. But he would still be in no danger. She would not marry him unless he could say the same. And so he would leave her hurt. Twenty-three-years old and as far from achieving her dream as ever. And with a bruised heart.
He lay down beside her and stared up at the clouds.
Her hand nudged against his until he clasped it. “I am a dreadful novice, am I not?” she said. “I did not know that people kissed like that.”
“You are supposed to be a novice,” he said. “That is what innocence is, Caroline.”
“Are you concerned for my innocence?” she asked, her voice curious. “Is that why you stopped? How very out of character.”
He surged over onto his side and looked into a flushed face. She had sand in one eyebrow. “Hardly,” he said. “I have never corrupted innocence, Caroline. If I am a rake, I am not also a rogue. I have never deflowered a virgin. Yes, that is why I stopped.”
“How are you to make me fall in love with you, then?” she asked.
He cupped her cheek with one hand and smoothed his thumb over the sandy eyebrow. “By making you want the rest of it—and me—for a lifetime,” he said. He watched her swallow. “And how are you to make me fall in love with you, my innocent?”
“By making you want innocence and virginity—and me—for the rest of your life,” she said.
His heart did a handstand. And he lost the battle he had been fighting with some success for several minutes. He felt the familiar tightening in his groin.
And then her hand was cupping his cheek with exquisite lightness and her thumb was moving across his lips. “I know you are no rogue,” she said, her voice a mere breath of sound. “I know that you want the one thing you have never had in your adult life—innocence.”
Lord God. Skilled courtesans had whispered marvelous eroticism into his ears to increase his pleasure. None of it had had one fraction of the power of her words. The witch! His body and his heart responded to them even as his mind knew that she was determinedly going about winning her wager.
And then he was kissing her again—her mouth, her eyelids, her ears, her throat. And spreading a hand over her breast, feeling the peaked nipple against his palm. And lowering his head to it, spreading his mouth wide, taking her nipple between his teeth until she whimpered, then licking it with his tongue through the thin muslin of her dress. Her hands were in his hair and she lifted her head to bury her face against the top of his head.
“Caroline.” He rubbed a palm over the wettened peak of her breast and moved his mouth to the other. She was breathing in audible gasps.
He could not wait. He could not take things slowly as he normally liked to do. Even the time it would take to raise her dress and remove undergarments and to release himself from his pantaloons was too long. He wanted to be able to thrust deeply inside her now. Inside Caroline. He wanted to touch her at her body’s core. He wanted to be with her. Part of her. Joined to her. Once it had happened, of course, neither of them would be left with any choice at all. There would be just the special license and the rush to the altar.
To hell with choice, he thought, sliding his hand down over her flat abdomen, curving his fingers into the increased warmth between her legs. He found her mouth with his again and was not sure which of them it was who moaned.
Innocence. She was an innocent. He was no corrupter of innocence, he had just claimed, no rogue. He sat up hastily and scrambled to his feet, ran one hand through his hair, and turned without thinking to stoop over her and scoop her up into his arms. He began to stride away from their castle.
“Alistair?” She looked and sounded bewildered. She looked tousled and thoroughly well kissed. And altogether as aroused as he. “Where are you taking me? Our things. We cannot just leave them there. Where are we going?”
“To the only sensible place,” he said grimly.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, no,” she said, her arms clutching him more tightly about the neck. “No, Alistair, you wouldn’t. Put me down. Put me down."
“We are doubly hot,” he said, striding purposefully toward the sea, which was considerably closer than it had been when they had first set foot on the beach. “With sun and with desire. It is time to cool off.”
“But we have no towels,” she said. “No change of clothes.”
His feet touched water. Cold water. He almost changed his mind. But he was still throbbing for her and her body was still heated with desire. It was either this or take her back to the dry sand and tumble her. His experiences of the last several years had not taught him a great deal of self-control. And clearly she had lost hers.
She shrieked as she felt water splash against her bare arms and legs. And then laughed. And clung more tightly. And pleaded more desperately. He looked down into her face when he was waist deep in water and saw terror and laughter mingled there. He dropped her.
She came up gasping and spluttering as he dived under.
“Can you swim?” he asked, shaking his head to clear the water from his eyes.
“My dress will be ruined,” she yelled at him. “My favorite dress.”
“And you wore it just for me,” he said, scooping water with both hands and dashing it into her face. “Can you swim?”
“Yes, I can swim,” she said. “Can you?” And she dived at him, clasped both hands over the top of his head, and pressed him under.
He caught at her legs on the way down and they came up coughing and laughing.
“You idiot,” she said. “You imbecile.”
“Guilty as charged,” he said, catching her about the waist and dragging her beneath the surface of the waves again, setting his lips to hers as he did so. Which was a foolish thing to do when he considered the reason he had brought her there in the first place.
Her hair was dark and sleek over her head and down her back when they came up once more and found the bottom with their feet. Her dress was molded to her so that she might as well have been wearing nothing. She was laughing, with water droplets dripping down her face. She looked healthy and vital and infinitely desirable.
“You are crazy,” she said.
“Is that a new charge?” He caught her to him and kissed her again, a hearty smacking kiss followed by a grin. “How well do you swim? I’ll wager you cannot keep up to me.”
“A new wager?” she said. “I’ll accept it like an honorable gentleman. What is to be the prize?”
“A kiss,” he said.
“Done,” she said and she was off, swimming with all her energy and with considerable skill and grace parallel to the beach. He swam beside her, doing a lazy crawl, making no attempt to overtake her.
She realized something after a few minutes. “Where does the race end?” she called to him, her voice breathless.
He laughed and swam for a few more vigorous strokes until he was a body-length ahead of her. Then he turned and caught her in his arms. “Here,” he said and claimed his prize without further delay. “Have you cooled off?”
“Cooled off?” she said, panting. “After that swim?”
“I mean,” he said, “has the sexual heat gone?”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes sliding from his, “that.”
“Now,” he said, “how are we to saunter back to the house and inside it as if we have been involved in nothing but the most decorous of walks? It is going to be tricky, Caroline.”
