'Of course,' she said, her knees feeling decidedly wobbly. What were they doing? After this business with Garnett was cleared up and presumably once the ball was over, they were to leave Penhallow and go their separate ways. They would never see each other again. Was she quite sure she wanted this memory? But she realized even as she asked herself the question that really she had no choice now. Whatever happened-or did not happen-this afternoon would be forever seared on her memory.
Would she find Josh as difficult-or as easy-to get over as she had found Kit? She had never lain with Kit.
She stood gazing out at the endless expanse of blue-and-green water as he spread one blanket over the coarse grass above the little cove of a beach to which he had led her. It was indeed more sheltered here. One could almost imagine that it was summer again-a cool summer's day. He set down the other blanket, still folded. Presumably they would cover themselves with it if they were chilly.
Afterward.
She drew a slow breath. It was not too late. He would not force her.
The last time it had been easy. There had been no decision to make. She had been in the throes of an urgent, blind passion occasioned by the pain of the christening party and something he had said to anger her-she could no longer remember what. Today there was too much time for thought.
But one thought pulsed with the beat of her blood. She wanted him. She wanted the memory to take with her into the future. She could no longer think of protecting herself from the sort of pain she had known before with Kit. It was already too late.
She had no wisdom at all, it seemed, in her choice of men to love.
She sat down on the blanket, drew up her knees, and clasped her arms about them, all without looking at him. He came down beside her, sprawled on his side, his head propped on one hand.
'So, sweetheart,' he said softly, 'why are we here?'
She shrugged her shoulders and kept them hunched. 'To see the island?' she said. 'To spend some time together?'
'For what end?' he asked her. 'Because we are betrothed?'
'But we are not,' she said.
'No.' He was silent for a while. 'Why are we here, Free?'
He was going to make her spell it out, was he? Well, that was fair enough. She had asked to be brought here. She had asked that they come alone. Was she now to act like a wilting violet and expect the man to take charge of the situation? She turned her head to look at him. His eyes were smiling back at her but without either the mockery or the wicked laughter she had expected to see there.
'To make love,' she said.
They gazed at each other while the air fairly crackled between them.
'Ah, yes,' he said, his voice low. 'To make love. We will do it properly, will we, sweetheart, without frenzy, without any haste at all? So that we will both have happy memories of our brief weeks together?'
He sat up and pulled off his Hessian boots and his stockings. He shrugged out of his coat and unbuttoned his waistcoat. Freyja lifted her arms and drew the pins out of her hair. By the time she shook it free, he was pulling his shirt off over his head.
She had hardly had a chance to look at him in the gamekeeper's hut at Alvesley. But his beauty, she discovered now, was not confined to his face. His shoulders, his chest, his arms-all were strongly muscled, beautifully proportioned male perfection. She set one hand on his back and spread her fingers. He was warm and inviting.
'I have wanted this,' she admitted, 'ever since the last time.'
'Can you not do better than that?' he asked her, turning to her, smiling. 'I have wanted this since before the last time. I believe it all started in a certain inn room when you were barefoot and wild-haired and furious.' He moved his head closer until his lips brushed hers. 'You must be by far the most desirable woman I have ever known, Freyja Bedwyn.' His tongue stroked lightly back and forth across her lips, causing her to sizzle with sensation from her lips down to her toes.
He unclothed her with hands that were clearly very expert indeed at the task. Then he removed the rest of his own garments while his eyes devoured her and hers devoured him. She lay back on the blanket when they were both naked.
She was afraid then that if she touched him, if she initiated anything, she would spoil it all by being in too much of a hurry, as she had been last time. She wanted to discover if there could be any tenderness to lovemaking as well as soaring passion. She wanted to be able to remember him with tenderness. She wanted to remember him as he looked now, gazing down at her with controlled desire. She spread her hands to the sides, palms down.
'Make love to me,' she said.
'Oh, I intend to, sweetheart,' he said, bending over her.
His hands went to work on her. He was as expert at making love with his hands, she soon realized, as he had been at unclothing her with them. He knew just where to touch her and how, sometimes with such light fingertips that she felt sensation more than his touch. And he knew how to use his mouth too, kissing her pulse points, suckling her breasts, breathing warmly against her navel and flicking it lightly with his tongue, feathering kisses along her inner thighs, sucking one of her big toes before raising his head and grinning at her.
He took her feet in his hands, massaged them in ways that sent desire coursing through her with a faster beat, and then turned them and moved them upward in such a way that her knees fell open before he set her feet back down on the blanket. He came to kneel between her thighs, lifting her legs over his own. And then he slid one hand down between them.
She was wet and hot-his hand felt cool in contrast.
He knew just how to touch her there too. His fingers moved lightly, knowingly, and he watched what he did while she watched his face-beautiful, heavy-lidded, absorbed in what he was doing. And then he touched her somewhere with his thumb, rubbing it very lightly. She arched upward, crying out, all her carefully preserved control
