breeze coming through the balcony doors. His erection was seated along her sex, and before she was fully awake, Sara was subtly moving against him.
Trusting she would tell him if he was asking too much, Beck shifted minutely behind her, wrapped an arm around her waist, and began to ease his way inside.
“Good morning,” Sara murmured, bringing his hand up to settle over her breast.
“Good morning,” Beck politely rejoined, pushing more firmly into her body. “It’s a lovely day.”
“Beautiful,” Sara agreed sleepily. She contracted her sex around him and sighed—contentedly, he thought—as he gained a deeper penetration.
“Is this…?” Beck paused while he focused on easing his cock that much deeper into her heat.
“Beautiful,” Sara assured him, closing her fingers over his on her breast. “Just… lovely.”
He hadn’t made love to her before in daylight. He wanted to, of course. He wanted to make love to her so he could see the sunlight on her face and not just on the erotic curve of her spine. He wanted to put her on her knees and fill her so deeply she groaned with the pleasure of it. Wanted her atop him, her hair drifting over them both, and he wanted her…
He slipped his hand out from under hers and closed her fingers around her nipple, then let his palm glide down over her belly, to her sex. His fingers found the seat of her pleasure, and in slow, glancing caresses, he began to drive her toward completion.
Beckman almost regretted it when he felt Sara surrender to her orgasm, so greatly had he been enjoying the lovemaking. He let himself join her, though his own orgasm became more intense for the control he tried to maintain over his body.
“You all right?” He stroked a hand down her spine when he could speak again, knowing she was unused to this much sexual activity, regardless of how he tried to contain himself.
“Blissful,” Sara said, sounding well pleasured and smug. “How do married people behave in company, Beck, when there’s all this between them in private?”
It struck him as an odd question. Sara had been married far longer than he had. Odd—but flattering.
“They start off with a honeymoon,” he said, “and have a little privacy in which to gain their balance. But I believe a certain kind of misbehavior is the signal attraction of the married state for most people. Stay put and let me tend you.”
Lest he ravish her the livelong day.
“I want to devour you,” he said as he tidied her up. “Visually at least, if not otherwise.”
“You need your breakfast,” Sara informed him. And yet she parted her legs farther and didn’t push his hand away. “Why shouldn’t you look?” she asked, watching his face. “I like to look at you. Love to, in fact.”
His gaze shifted to assess the truth of her statement, only to find the demented woman was smiling radiantly.
“I love the look of you when you’re dressed for town,” she said while his gaze traveled from that smile back to the damp, pink glory of her sex. “You’re handsome when you’re all country-gentleman-about-his-business. I love the look of you at breakfast, teasing Allie, ready to storm off on your list of tasks. I love the affection and exasperation I see in your eyes when you argue with North, or harry him off to the hot springs for his medicinal dip…” She might have gone on with her list of “I loves,” except Beck closed her knees and wrapped his arms around her legs.
“You are going to need a medicinal dip,” he declared, thinking he himself could do with a cold swim. God in heaven… The sight of her… so fearless and… generous. “I’m going to order you a bath, see about our breakfast, then scare us up a conveyance suitable for a drive along the water. Will that suit?”
“It will suit wonderfully.”
He rose from the bed and caught her—true to her words—admiring the view shamelessly. When they’d finished breakfast and Beck was leaving her to her bath, he paused at the door.
“Sarabande Adagio?”
“Beckman Sylvanus?”
He wanted to give her something, something in return for holding him in the darkness and all of those “I loves” in the light.
Something she would not reject as beyond the bounds of a frolic. “I’m already regretting we must leave this place tomorrow, and when the summons comes from Belle Maison, I will regret that too, and not just for my father’s sake.” And then he slipped out the door, giving her privacy and taking some for himself as well.
The day was idyllic and sleepy, like a Sunday in late spring should be, but warm enough to make the shore breeze comfortable. Beck hired a horse and buggy to take Sara up on the headlands for a picnic, finding a depression surrounded by stubby trees near a hilltop to spread a blanket. The view from the nearby cliff top was at once private and spectacular, with the sun bouncing off a sea of white caps and the town spread out below them.
Sara brought her book, and Beck read to her, her head on his stomach as he lay back on the blanket. He hadn’t packed wine for some reason, but felt as lazy and relaxed as if they were on their second bottle. He set the book aside, thinking perhaps he’d read his audience to sleep, and let his hand stroke over Sara’s hair. Her eyes drifted open, and she turned so her cheek was on his stomach.
Her hand came up to shape him through his breeches, and Beck had to close his eyes. A gentleman wouldn’t ask anything of her today—hell, a gentleman would not have swived her silly before she even broke her fast. A gentleman…
She was undoing his falls, and he didn’t protest, but he did have his limits.
“You need to recover,” he managed. “I mean it, Sara.”
She paused, frowning, then extricated him from his clothing, which was a delicate challenge when he was more than half aroused.
“You need something else entirely,” she said. She got her mouth on him, but to Beck’s relief, she desisted abruptly. He watched with silent curiosity as she took his hand and wrapped it around his shaft, then shifted around so she was lying on her back at right angles to his chest.
Slowly, slowly, she eased her skirt up over her bent knees, and God in heaven, the woman wasn’t wearing drawers. She let her knees fall open, and let go a sigh.
“You wanted to look this morning,” she said. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, Beckman. No reason you shouldn’t touch.”
She tossed all modesty aside and began opening the buttons down the front of her bodice, while Beck watched, speechless and increasingly aroused, as she pushed her clothing aside until she was lying in a pagan tangle of flesh and fabric, exposed to the sun and his hungry eyes.
He did not resist what she offered, but feasted on the sight of her. He looked, he touched, he tasted. He put his hands on every inch of her, took down her hair and draped it over every inch of him. He brought himself to orgasm more than once just looking at her, brushing his fingers over her sex, her breasts, her derriere, her mouth. She refused him nothing, obliged his every request, seeming to understand that in this situation, trust and arousal were bound together for him.
“You’re going to burn,” Beck cautioned when he lay naked, spent for the third time, his hand caressing the firm curve of Sara’s bare buttocks.
Sara smiled over at him and wiggled under his hand. “Not in the biblical sense.”
“I’m not usually so…”
“Lusty?” Sara’s smile broadened. “Amorous? Passionate?”
“Horny.” Beck’s smile was embarrassed. “Selfish, hedonistic.”
“For God’s sake, Beck.” Sara’s smile faded. “It’s a beautiful spring day, you’re a healthy young man, and a little friskiness doesn’t make you your half-crazy brother.”
His eyebrows shot up as he considered the possibilities she was raising. Had he checked his lustier impulses to avoid sharing Nick’s tendencies?
“You’re not like him,” Sara said, seeming to read his mind. “He discards women as easily as old boots, to hear you tell it. He goes for the jades and widows, almost as if he doesn’t deserve a good woman’s affections. You know better.”
Put like that, Beck…
