He scoffed, but in those well-fitting breeches his accoutrements bulged beautifully.
She widened her eyes at him. “No pillow at hand here, sir!”
He blushed—and she adored the boy who lived in him that he would honor her so. Then he sat down on a log. “None!”
She threw back her head to chuckle. “Impressive!”
“Go.” He indicated the river. “Get in and stop baiting me.”
She lifted her skirts and deliberately gave him a view of her legs, from knees to bare feet. “I want to be fair.”
“Well,” he said, his gaze locked on her ankles, “that ship sailed long ago.”
“Have you had many women?” she blurted, taking a few steps to let her toes freeze in the water. She had lost sight of him as she walked, surprised and yet not, at the gush of her own desire for him warm and wet between her folds.
“Enough to know what I am about. And what I am not.”
“You are not about anything lately.” He had not made any advances on her. Only that one reference to him pleasuring himself. She must not continue with this dialogue.
“By necessity, madame.”
“Thank you for that,” she said so softly that she wondered if he heard.
He did not respond.
She dared not turn to look at him, but she did want to know more about him. His past, his personal affairs.
“Have you had many men?” he asked her, closer behind her than she expected, his tone wistful, demanding.
“That’s fair,” she said as she stepped into the bracing water that flowed between her legs. “No. I had only my husband, Maurice.”
“I have enjoyed the pleasure of a few ladies.”
She smiled to herself. “No wives?”
“None.”
“No permanent lovers?”
“None now. In the past, I had one lady, but when I came abroad, of necessity we parted. I wrote a generous pension. She was a very congenial companion, sorry to see me leave.”
Amber walked gingerly further into the river, the bottom covered in smooth stones. The cool current added to a new rush of wet desire for him. And yet to want him, to have him, would be so wrong, so against their agreement and the necessity for clarity in what they must do together.
She turned, walking along the grass away from the river and him.
That she was committed to dealing with her guilt for leaving Paris meant she would wander the earth. He could not, would not be, by her side forever. A lifetime of protecting her was too much to ask. At some point, she would let him go, encourage him to leave her.
Now, today, she wanted him. If her desire was simple female lust, she could accept that in herself. She had found immense pleasure in it with Maurice.
But she feared that to want this man meant she might also need him as hers, as permanently as she had needed Maurice.
The price here was higher, harder to pay, yet as needy as she was, she would not lie to herself. She stopped and put her hands to her cheeks. The sun was not that hot. Her body was. To have him would be so…easy. To deny herself his loving again and again would not be.
For she knew, just as a wild cat in heat knows when a male tracks her, Ram desired her.
Facing away from him, she also knew it was right to give him only a portion of what he wanted. Answers to who and what she really was. And why. And so she said, “You asked me before what keeps me devoted to my work.”
She felt his warmth as he came up behind her. She squeezed her thighs together in abject want. She had the urge to turn, embrace him, and follow the demands of desire pulsing in her belly. To have him fill her would be the satisfaction she needed.
