Chapter Five
A week later
Delilah rounded abend in the footpath she’d been ambling along for the last ten or so minutes and was met full in the face with a blast of early-morning sea breeze lifting straight off the ocean. Her hair, curls unbound, whipped about her as she picked up the scent of salt on the air, the taste of it on her lips.
The rising sun was a red fireball in the east as hazy gray clouds hovered above the far-away horizon, catching and absorbing the light, then sending bright rays streaking across the sky, above and below. And beyond them, directly above her head, the sky hung gray-blue, even as a placid gray-blue sea mirrored it below; small, uniform waves meeting the soft, mellow sand of the shore with a muted roar in the morning quiet.
She stopped and unlaced her boots before kicking them off entirely. Her cotton stockings quickly followed. She wanted to feel the night-cool sand between her toes. Today was the Albion Players’ last day on the coast before they cut inland. Everyone had the day on their own, and instead of performing tonight, the company would light a bonfire on the beach.
It felt a bit pagan to Delilah, and she couldn’t wait.
She stuffed her stockings into her boots and tied the laces together, before slinging them over her shoulder. She cut left, venturing off the path and striking out across the sand dunes toward the shore. She was half sliding down one, hands out, trying to keep her balance when she noticed a figure in the water. Not a sea animal, but an animal of the human variety, out from the shore about twenty yards, one arm after the other slicing through the water in smooth rhythm, swimming like he had somewhere to go.
He.
Yes, definitely ahe, judging by the broad expanse of his back and shoulders, the bulk and cut of muscles on his arms, his dark blond hair just grazing his shoulders…
A ping of recognition spiked through her.
This wasn’t anyhe—but theheshe’d been avoiding this last week.
Ravensworth.
Swimming at dawn.
Her eyes narrowed on one particular point in the water.
His taut, white,nakedarse.
Ravensworth wasn’t simply swimming in the ocean at dawn.
He was swimming in the ocean at dawn,naked.
Her feet started moving—not away, buttoward.
She should bolt in the opposite direction. But when had she ever resisted the call of a provocation? To do so now went against her very nature, and this summer adventure was about being entirely herself and following her interests and passions.
And the Duke of Ravensworth? How did he fit into the context of her interests and passions?
He didn’t, of course. Still, it was a question better left unexamined after…oh, after what happened a week ago.
Something else better left unexamined.
Except her body remembered—too well.
Last night, she’d placed her own handthere, as her body had been craving, the ache having become too much. But it wasn’t the same, and instead of pleasure, she’d only delivered herself disappointment.
But Ravensworth—the man she’d spent the last three years despising…the man whose naked arse held the entirety of her attention—he knew how to deliver.
He’d awakened her.
And though she shouldn’t, she wanted more.
At the bottom of the dune, she spotted a dark mass and slid the rest of the way toward it. A pile of clothes, folded neatly. They could belong to none other than Ravensworth.
Impulsively, she lowered to a seat squarely atop the neat pile and stared out to sea, luxuriating in the feel of sand sliding between her toes, becoming mesmerized by the small waves lapping the shore, the rhythmic slice of his arms through water that couldn’t be much warmer than this side of frigid.
She felt the sudden impulse to strip off all her clothes and join him, but quickly decided it was an impulse better left ignored.
