Page 85 of His Scandal
He lifted one hand from the oar and reached for the hem of her skirt. She watched wide-eyed as he slowly revealed her slippers, then her ankles.
“Because while you were busy trying to seduce me with your eyes—”
“Alex!”
“—I was fantasizing about seducing you in that wherry.”
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Goose flesh rose on every part of her body.
“Do you want me to tell you what I was thinking?”
He took her foot in his hand and slid off her slipper, never breaking their shared gaze. Gently he rubbed his thumbs into the arch, and she couldn’t stifle a moan.
“Tell me.” She watched with fascination as a breeze lifted his black hair away from his face.
“You wore a man’s shirt,” he said softly, “and when you leaned back I could see your breasts through the fabric.”
She could feel her nipples harden, and with each rapid breath, they brushed against her smock. Between her thighs, her muscles were tight and damp, and the ache was maddening. With half-closed eyes, she watched Alex pull her skirt back over her foot, then place her foot directly between his thighs, resting against the hard ridge of his erection. With a gasp, she gripped the bench beneath her.
His voice grew hoarse. “When I saw you like that under the sun, I could do nothing to appease my hunger, for not only were you drunk, you were dressed as a boy.”
She laughed, then experimentally wiggled her toes. It pleased her when she heard his breath suddenly leave his lungs.
“So I had to content myself with my imagination,” he continued after a moment.
“And is it as wicked as you are?”
He grinned. “Even more so.”
“And what did you imagine?” She felt his hands beneath her skirt, sliding from her ankle up to her calf. His fingers traced patterns across her skin and made her squirm.
“I imagined a tree like that one—”
He nodded toward the southern bank of the Thames, where a grove of trees grew at the water’s edge. One particularly large willow tree bent low over the river, with its branches dragging in the current.
“—And in my mind,” he continued, almost in a whisper now, “I rowed you beneath its branches, into our own private bower.”
When his hand left her leg, she almost gave voice to her disappointment until she watched him row toward his mysterious tree. Her heartpicked up pace, and her trembling increased as the first branches swept over the bow of the boat. Alex reached over to guide the branches around her, then around him. The leaves silently slid back into the water, like a curtain over a bright window. The sunlight faded, and the current ceased its tugging in their little shallow pool by the roots of the willow tree.
For a moment they just stared at each other, connected only by her foot between his thighs.
“What happened next?” she asked softly.
