Page 78 of Never a Bride
She quickly sat on the bench behind her and straightened her back. “If you really knew what I was thinking, you’d be apologizing profusely. You quite endangered us all.”
He heaved a dramatic sigh and began to row away from Kent Hall.
“Alex, what are you doing?”
“Your servants told me you were boating. It seemed a perfect time to tell you of my fantasy.”
Emmeline’s throat tightened and a sudden wicked feeling swirled through her belly. “What fantasy?”
Alex rested his elbows on the oars, allowing the current to guide them. “Do you remember when I found you drunk at the Paris Gardens?”
“I was not inebriated,” she sniffed.
He leaned closer and his voice lowered. “Then do you remember caressing me with your eyes and your hands?”
Emmeline was too stunned to move. That had been almost two months ago, before they’d even kissed. “I couldn’t…I didn’t—”
“You could and you did, love. In fact, you told me I was ‘sinfully handsome.’”
She should be embarrassed, for that day’s memories were vague at best. But since then, her actions had only proven the powerful emotions she felt in his presence. She watched his mouth, remembered his kiss.
“And why are you telling me this now?” she whispered.
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 bent low over the river, with its branches dragging in the current.
