Page 29 of My Hellion, My Heart
A flimsy slatted bridge hung across a narrow gorge and swung in the breeze. It was dizzying to look down, so she hastened across as quickly as she could. Every step made it sway precariously. Gulping, she flung herself the last four feet to the other side and collapsed onto the ground. She lay there, staring up at the bright blue sky. Lord help her, she wanted to laugh with pure exhilaration.
Pushing to her feet, she followed the rest of the winding path. It seemed easy, until it opened up to a precipice. She had indeed climbed upward, she realized. The winding path through the wood had led her up to where a narrow waterfall tumbled to a pool below. Looking over the edge, she could see the stable down in the distance. It felt like she was on top of the world.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Her breath trickled to honey in her throat as she turned. The earl stood there, a bronzed god with wide sculpted shoulders and a magnificently bare chest that tapered to a trim waist. Good Lord, he was mesmerizing, like the nude statues she’d seen in sculpture gardens in France. She wanted to stare at him, devour his shirtless nudity to her fill, memorize every single stunning line of hard, muscled flesh so that she could analyze it later at her leisure.
Beads of sweat dampened the front of him, turning the waistband of his fitted tan breeches to the color of dark wet leather. Irina couldn’t speak, much less catch a breath at the sight of the hard, defined ridges of his stomach. She dared not look lower. Dragging her burning gaze upward, her attention caught on several raised scars reaching from beneath his arms to the sides of his torso. Irina noticed other details, too, and what looked like bunched tissue at the tops of his shoulders. They did not detract from his beauty or strength, but something in her heart twinged all the same.
Seeing her stare, Henry backed away, keeping his front to her, and reached for his discarded shirt. Once reclothed, Henry strode back toward her. Swallowing hard, Irina’s gaze lifted to his, and she nearly retreated right off the edge of the cliff. He was furious, his anger fairly snapping off him as his eyes roved her from head to toe.
He clenched his jaw. “Why are you here?”
She blinked, her mouth opening and closing. “I…had to give you a message from your mother.”
“My mother?” he said, staring at her blankly. “You followed me here?”
“Yes.” Her excuse rang emptily in her own ears as she floundered in the lie, and then gave up. “I needed to find you,” she admitted.
“You fool,” he growled. “Don’t you know you could have been killed?”
“Killed? It is hardly a deadly course,” she replied, lifting her chin in the face of his fury. “How do you get down?”
“You jump.”
“Oh.” She looked down and grinned. “Scary. I can see—”
Her words cut from her lips as a piece of the cliff crumbled from beneath her sole and she lost her balance. Strong fingers curled round her wrist, hauling her body back to safety and slamming her into the solid, immovable column of his body. Every tingling inch of her was plastered to every inch of him. Henry’s eyes glittered into hers, their breaths coming in short pants as she clutched at his arms, one hand lifting to thread into the hair at her nape. With an animalistic growl, he bent his head.
Irina met him in the middle.
Henry claimed her mouth as if he owned it with hot, savage fervor. She welcomed it, savoring the arousing taste of sweat and whiskey. Heat shot through her in lightning bursts, pulsating in the area between her hips—hips that were currently glued to his, like every other shamelessly willing part of her. Henry nibbled across her lips, tearing away to nudge wet bites and scrapes along her throat, only to return to ravage her mouth, his tongue teasing hers with silky nudges and velvet licks that made her insides dissolve to water.
Sweet Lord, the man knew how to kiss.
Running her hands up and down his arms, Irina dragged his head closer, luring his tongue back into her mouth and circling hers around it with a purr of pure feminine satisfaction. The mix of lust and adrenaline shooting through her veins was like nothing she’d ever felt. The tips of her breasts ached, pressed against him as they were, and she had the indecent desire to drag them across the sprinkling of bronze hair on his chest that she’d glimpsed during her earlier inspection.
Slipping her fingers beneath his untucked shirt, she reached upward to find puckered skin.
Henry froze.
He dragged his lips away with a strangled groan. “Enough.”
…
Struggling to catch his breath and his sanity, Henry wanted to wring her lovely neck as much as he wanted to continue plundering her sultry, decadent mouth. Christ. What had he been thinking? That was just it. Hehadn’tthought. All of his discipline, his willpower, had disappeared. He’d only reacted…as he always seemed to do when it came to Irina. More so here in these woods, where he always gave in to his intuition and base instinct. If she hadn’t touched his back and jolted him out of the moment, he might still have been lost to the fog of lust blanketing them.
Henry couldn’t believe she had followed him, but he had to admit it wasn’t surprising. Irina was fearless.
And bold.
And too bloody tempting.
Standing before him, she was a mess and covered in dirt, but the sight of her made his blood heat. That glorious hair of hers tumbled in silken waves down her back, making him want to sink his fingers into it once more. Henry wanted to rip the sodden, muddy waistcoat from her body, run his palms over her bare torso and around her trim bottom, still clad in those indecent breeches. He wanted to peel them from her, to kiss every inch of velvety skin, tease her with his hands and lips and tongue. Right here on the ground. She would let him, he knew, because she wanted it, too. No woman had ever met his need the way she had, the force of her desire matching his, beat for beat.
But defiling Princess Irina was not an option.
It hadn’t been before, and now that Rose had replied to his proposal, just that morning, with her conditional acceptance, it most assuredly was not.
