A quick smile tripped across her mouth, and she slid her hand from his before springing up and running straight into the ocean, splashy laughter trailing in her wake.
He pushed off the sand and followed, unable not to. “Come somewhere with me tomorrow,” he called out.
“The company is decamping tomorrow.”
Blast.
A playful splash of water landed on the side of his face. He sputtered salt water from his mouth. “Delilah, be careful of the consequences of your actions,” he said, wading toward her through waves that now reached his waist.
“I am,” she said, now floating on her back. “Always.But here’s the thing, Sebastian. I generally find my provocations to be worth the consequences.”
She directed another well-aimed spray of water at him.
Head averted, he braved the sloshy onslaught until he came close enough to gather a giggly Delilah into his arms, their naked bodies slick against each other. “Come somewhere with me when we make camp again,” he entreated. His mouth found her neck. It couldn’t help itself. His cock grew heavy.
“Anywhere,” she exhaled, throwing her arms around his neck, and her legs around his waist, weightless, his hard manhood pressed against her hot cunny.
Even as he took a taut nipple into his mouth and sucked, and she reached between their bodies and guided his shaft to the entrance of her sex…even as he pressed inside her…he vowed this wasn’t the only way he would have Lady Delilah Windermere.
He would make more than her body his.
Chapter Nine
A week later
Scene rehearsal finishedfor the day, Delilah’s mouth watered at the prospect of the mince and potato pasty in her hand.
She took the caravan steps two at a time—a benefit of her long legs—and poked her head inside, her eyes adjusting quickly to the gray light within. Her gaze immediately found Flora and Dorie, who went instantly quiet. They’d been in conversation…about her. That was what the cut-off silence and the funny smiles they were casting in her direction said.
In an instant, she knew why, her heart beating out a few extra thuds as her gaze shifted toward her bunk.
There, arranged upon her homespun pillow, lay a single flower.
Not a rose or peony or the sort of flower that would require cultivation in a conservatory or formal garden.
A wildflower—the sort plucked directly from a field.
And this wasn’t the first wildflower. Every day a different one appeared. Yesterday, it had been a pale pink milkmaid, and the day before a cheery purple columbine.
Today, it was her favorite: a simple white daisy.
She lifted the flower and held it to her nose. A light scent of grass and country air.Lovely.
Today, however, she noticed something new on her pillow alongside the flower. A folded square of paper.
Beneath the watchful, knowing eyes of Flora and Dorie, she took it between forefinger and thumb, only just thinking not to bring it to her nose, too. It would smell of citrus and cedar, that much she knew.
“Got yourself a man who can read and write. That’ll be a keeper,” said Dorie on a broad laugh.
“And I wonder who that man might be,” said Flora with a suggestive waggle of her eyebrows.
Seb.
No one needed to say it. In a theater company who spent most of their waking hours together, there were no secrets—and not much need for any, either.
Seven mornings ago, after Sebastian had walked her to the caravan and kissed her breathless at the steps, Dorie had let out a long, low whistle and Flora had giggled like a schoolgirl. And when Delilah had laid her head down on her pillow and closed her eyes, she heard, “A lass doesn’t let one like Seb go.”
And that had been the end of it. There was no shame. No imposing Society’s rules of propriety upon her. She was allowed tobe—and if she wanted to be with Seb, then that was her business.
