“How can I possibly forget?”
“Then be a good fiancée for all these nice aristocrats observing us and humor me.”
She was annoyed, as she had every right to be. Dev was playing dirty by alluding to their arrangement to influence her compliance. Well, hadn’t she learned by now he wasn’t above it?
Bow in one hand and quiver of arrows in the other, he led her to the last pair of haystacks in the row, which kept them in view of all, but not within hearing. She crossed her arms over her chest.
He held up one hand. “This is a bow.” He held up the other. “These are arrows.” He pointed. “That is the target.”
“I’m not a complete dunderhead.”
“You fit the nock of the arrow—that’s this little notch—to the string.” He illustrated each instruction with the corresponding action. “Then you lift the bow, pull the string on an inhalation, aim, and…release.” He left out the bit about offering a quick prayer heavenward that it would hit the target.
Proving that prayer worked, the arrow—improbably… miraculously—buried itself into the very heart of the gold circle.
A reluctant smile curved Beatrix’s mouth. “Impressive.”
So he wouldn’t follow the compulsion to bask in the not-quite-warm glow of her praise, he extended the bow and an arrow. “Your turn.”
Her smile fell. “Dev,” she began, her tone absolutely reasonable. “Must I truly?—”
“You must,” he cut in. “Truly.”
He knew why he insisted—and she would, too, in a moment.
She took the proffered implements without joy, the lift of her chin mutinous.
“Now…” He stepped closer.
Her brow creased with alarm. “What are you doing?”
“Instructing you, of course,” he said, all innocence—and anything but. “Position your body perpendicular to the target.Like so…” He touched his hand to her waist and applied light pressure until she followed the movement. “Now, you’ll want to fit the bowstring into the nock.”
Telling, that rasp in his voice.
Not only to him.
She would know it, too.
His hands remained on her waist, even as the rest of him remained apart from her, separated by a sliver of air. How his body ached to close that distance.
“Like this?” she asked.
And there it was—the telling rasp inhervoice.
He angled and peered over her shoulder. “Yes,” he said, his voice a low rumble. He imagined a shiver purling down her spine.
She lifted the bow and began pulling the string. “Here,” he said, reaching around and placing his hands over hers—purely in the interest of instruction, of course.
As they bent the bow together, he felt her tremble. It could’ve been down to typically unused muscles being put to work. But it wasn’t. It was their bodies touching, him flush against her back, his cockstand rising. The ragged tremor of her inhalations and exhalations matched his.
How intimate and precious was the air around them.
“Now,” he muttered. “Release.”
As one, their fingers unclenched, and the arrow let fly, hitting the haystack, but missing the target.
It mattered not.
