“Fine, I’m gullible! But that’s better than being jaded and weary of life.”
“It is indeed. Now, let us discuss the sleeping arrangements. I prefer to sleep on the left side, but if we are unable to find accommodations that give a certain amount of shelter, I am more than happy to take the outside. For protection, you understand. Not, I hasten to add, that you need protection, especially as you are armed, and all I was given was a cloak, but just as a general courtesy. Do you have a preference as to sexual position?”
“We are not having sex.”
“I beg to differ.”
I gawked. “There is a word for what you’re thinking!”
“Yes: seduction.”
“Ha! Seduction implies consent on both sides. I do not wish to have sex with you.” That lie lasted for about four seconds before it irritated me so much I had to take it back. “Gah! Fine, I may wish to have sex with you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to.”
“I enjoy many sexual positions, but in this I’m happy to defer to your tastes.” He didn’t even look at me as we rode, a somewhat dreamy expression on his face. “You straddling on top of me would be an excellent starting choice, because you would be able to set the pace. Also, your breasts would be free for me to enjoy.”
“You are insane. No sex, Gregory. None. Talking about it won’t make me change my mind.”
“Now, the reversed version of that—with you still on top of me, but facing in the opposite direction, is also enticing. Again, you would have free rein of the tempo, while presenting me with the view of your derriere. I enjoy looking at your derriere clothed, so I can only imagine that the sight of it unclothed will be even more spectacular.”
“I do not have a spectacular butt. It’s just a butt, a normal butt, a butt that you can find on any woman.” A mental vision of me riding Gregory was hard to dislodge from my mind, so I let myself enjoy it for a few minutes. What was the harm in indulging in a little fantasy?
“The traditional position of you beneath me also has its charms,” he continued, still not looking at me. I was grateful for that, since my blush seemed to be a permanent part of me now. “You are not a tiny woman, so I won’t feel like I am squashing you. That’s always off-putting. No, you are built so that we might indulge ourselves in a manner that would allow our movements to achieve maximum extension, if you will.”
I imagined just how flexible he could be, and what maximum extension he could achieve once he really got going. My tongue suddenly seemed too big for my mouth.
“Now, for middle-of-the-night action, side by side, with you draping one of those long, long legs over my hip, would be appropriate. By then we will have sated the most immediate of desires and can settle in for long, lazy lovemaking. I find that I have quite a bit of stamina in the side-by-side position.”
I shifted in the saddle. It was suddenly very chafing, rubbing me uncomfortably in locations that desperately wanted Gregory’s touch. While lying on my side next to him.
“I wonder . . .” He thought for a moment. “I wonder if it would be possible to rig up some sort of a swing. All that would be needed would be a couple of young trees, some rope, and padding for the seat. That would allow me to stand, and you to wrap your legs—long, as I believe I’ve mentioned—around my hips, bringing a new depth of motion to the experience. Hmm.”
My mouth went dry at the thought.
“Right,” I said, pressing Bottom’s side with my heels. “That’s it. You can sit there and think all the smutty thoughts you want about being flexible, and having extension, and touching my breasts, and the long, sensual sweep of your back right where it meets your hips, and how the muscles in your thighs and chest and arms move when you walk, which you do on purpose, I have no doubt, and all the other enticing bits of you, but I’ll have no part in it! I’m going to get to Ethan’s camp so I can check on my mothers and not have sex with you, no matter how good it will be, because you’re the Watch, and sooner or later, my moms will do something that will make you want to arrest them, and then I’ll have to do something horrible to you, and I don’t want that because other than the whole Watch thing, you’re really nice, and I believe that you’d have excellent extension and flexibility.”
Bottom leaped forward before I finished the last sentence, so it came out as a bit of a shriek, but I felt better for saying it. For about eight minutes. Then Bottom, in full canter, shied at a family of adorably fluffy bunnies, and I went sailing off the side of him to land in a patch of mossy wildflowers.
I lay there staring up at the blue sky, green willow branches dappling me with shade. Bottom, relieved of my presence, stopped and began cropping the grass. I wondered how long it would take Gregory’s slower horse to reach us. I wondered if Mabel could even canter, so broad in the beam was she.
Overhead, a few bits of gauzy clouds gathered and formed into a shape that was vaguely horselike.
“Three minutes and change,” I said aloud when Gregory’s face blocked out my view of the sky. “I had only reached one hundred and ninety-two Mississippi.”
He tickled my nose with a pink flower, and lay down beside me. “You think I’m nice?”
Trust him to focus on that first. “Any other man, a man of honor and consideration, a man who claims to have superb manners, would have asked me if I was hurt before pandering to his ego.”
“But you do think I’m nice?” A high breeze made the clouds shift their shape into that of a petaled flower.
“Yes,” I said, wanting to laugh and run away at the same time.
“Excellent. I like you a great deal, too. Enough that I looked you over to make sure you weren’t hurt before I spoke.”
The wispy white clouds overhead drifted lazily into the shape of a heart. “I’m not hurt. Moss is very forgiving. Bottom shied at bunnies.”
“He appears to be an extremely high-strung horse. Do you really wish for me to be gone out of your life despite all my niceness?”
The clouds melted into the blue sky. I rolled over onto my side to study Gregory. “That depends. Can you promise me that you won’t arrest my mothers?”
His eye crinkles smoothed out. “No, I can’t.”
I rolled onto my back again. There was nary a wisp of cloud in the sky, and yet I felt as if I was standing in the middle of the biggest, blackest thunderstorm ever. “Thank you for being honest.”
“I will always be honest with you, Gwen, even when it is something that I know you do not want to hear.”
Despite the words, the sincerity in his voice touched something inside me. I wanted so badly to throw caution to the wind and just give in to the urges my body was making. I wanted to forget there was a world outside of Anwyn. I wanted to remove the fear for my mothers that had been my constant companion for the last half of my life.
I wanted desperately to be in love with Gregory, and to let him cherish me as instinct told me he would.
Tears stung behind my eyes. “It isn’t fair,” escaped my lips, and the second it did, I was ashamed of how juvenile it sounded.
“No, it isn’t,” Gregory said, and brushed my cheek with the flower. “I’ve found that life seldom is. Gwen, if I—”
“No.” I rolled over to put my fingers across his mouth. He kissed them. “This isn’t your problem, Gregory. You are what you are. You have a job to do, and I am not going to ask you to shirk your duty just so we can be together.”
“You make it all so black and white,” he said against my fingertips, opening his lips to suck one inside. The swirl of his tongue against the pad of my finger made my entire body tingle. “As if it came down to having you or having my job.”
“Doesn’t it?” It took a great deal of mental strength to speak, but I managed to get the two words out, and I was proud of that fact.
“No. There are shades in between that you don’t seem to see.”
I pulled my fingers away, suddenly chilled and tingle-less. “Because I’m not one of your people, you mean?”
“That is a very minor shade of gray, and not one that concerns me.”
“But it is still there.” I took the flower he held and tucked it behind his ear. “Tell me, what if I changed my mind and wanted to have a relationship with you? What if I wanted the whole nine yards, marriage, kids, eternity
