The water was about her ankles now. She fought the urge to shield herself from him, for it would only reveal to him how little confidence she possessed in this moment. How little control.
“No more of your little demonstrations, if you please.” She kept her voice cold as her bare foot connected with the grass and the shore at last. “I have had quite enough of those, Needham.”
“Why do you insist upon doing that?” He cocked his head, considering her, still remaining otherwise still on the bank.
“Do what?” She grimaced at the feeling of sticky mud between her toes and, one by one, swished them about in the water to clean them.
“Refer to me as Needham,” he elaborated. “Earlier, I was Jack. When I was inside you, I was Jack.”
His words set off an acute spear of need.
“Need you remind me of my folly?” she snapped, looking about for her discarded night rail and dressing gown and finding only her gorgeous scoundrel of a husband. “What have you done with my garments?”
“Garments?” His crooked grin in the moonlight and his teasing tone gave him away.
“Have you hidden them, you miscreant?” She crossed her arms over her breasts and crossed her legs.
“A miscreant now, am I?” He made a chastising sound rather reminiscent of the dragon of a governess, Miss Richards, who had terrorized her girlhood. “For shame, Lady Needham. Such insolence will not win you back your night rail and your dressing gown.”
She gritted her teeth. “I am cold, you unspeakably ill-mannered brute. Can you not see I have not a stitch of clothing and I am soaking wet?”
“So says the woman who decided to go for a swim after midnight.” His tone was light.
Still, he had not moved.
The bounder.
The out and out cad.
“I decided to go swimming alone. You and your clothing pilfering ways were decidedly not invited,” she snapped, holding out her hand. “Now give them to me, if you please.”
“Hmm.” He paused, as if he were contemplating her request. “No, I do not believe I shall.”
“Yes, you shall,” she countered, her irritation and desire mounting in equal measures.
What was it about him? Why could she not shake the effect he had upon her? He had followed her here, when all she had been doing was seeking solace and separation from him, the chance to clear her mind and wash away all the unwanted need for him infecting her to her very core.
“Ask me prettily, then.”
His suggestion nettled her.
She ground her molars. “Go to the devil. I shall walk back naked if that is what you want. What a sight, the Marchioness of Needham, parading bare-arsed through Needham Hall for all the servants to see. Is that truly what you wish?”
“Of course that is not what I wish.” His voice softened, growing tender. Intimate. “What I wish is for you to stop insisting this nonsensical divorce between us will happen. What I wish is for you to see reason. What I wish is for you to move forward with me, leaving the past behind, so we may forge a new future together. What I wish is for you in my bed every night.”
“That will not happen,” she growled, stalking past him.
Enough of this conversation. Enough of lingering in the moonlight, of trading words and barbs. One boon of her ceaseless churns in the Needham Hall lake was that she was weary. At last. Perhaps she could join Queen Mab at last.
His large, hot hand closed over her wrist, staying her.
“Nellie.”
Damn him, he was the only one who had ever called her that.
And damn him twice, she loved the way it sounded in his voice, on his lips.
Just the way she loved his lips upon hers, his hand on her skin. His cock deep inside her.Oh, no. Stop it, Nell. Cease this madness at once.
