Incredulous, he stared at her. “What in the hell are you doing?”
“Picking apples,” she insisted, grinning. “Why have you followed me?”
“Why do you think, siren?” he muttered. “You lead, I follow!”
She laughed, pleased with his remark.
“Do not let it go to your head, and do not throw another apple at mine!”
“All right,” she agreed.
He eyed one bare calf, exposed because her skirts were tangled around her. “Come down here,” he said, softly now.
She raised a brow. “But I am not finished.”
“Come down here,” he repeated, his tone sensually coaxing.
“If you want me, you will have to come up and get me,” she called, and she shimmied higher into the tree.
“Are you mad?” he said. “That tree cannot hold up weight!”
“If you want me,” she said, and she gave him an utterly bold, provocative look, one that held his gaze then raked him thoroughly, “then you will have to come and get me, my lord!”
His breath caught at such seduction. Then, smiling with purpose, he reached up and hoisted himself into the tree. It groaned and swayed beneath his weight. The branch he was on cracked. Undeterred, he moved higher, reaching for her pretty little ankle. She eluded him deftly and, with the speed of a squirrel, shimmied down past him, dropping easily the last bit of the way to the ground. She was laughing at his amazement, and she paused beneath him, hands on her hips. “You look silly in that tree, my lord, and it is about to break in two!”
She took off at a run just as he jumped to the ground. He darted after her. He lunged for her; she dodged, a tree between them. He reached right, she dodged left, he reached left, she dodged right, all the while laughing. Rolfe was grinning. He feinted left and waited for her to go right. She did, and he caught her with a cry of triumph.
“Put me down,” she cried as he lifted her high in his arms and spun her in the air.
“But you like heights,” he said innocently. “Is this not high enough for you?”
“You’ll drop me,” she cried, but she was laughing.
“Never,” he replied, but nonetheless he clutched her to his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “What kind of game was that, Ceidre?” he asked huskily.
Her violet eyes stroked the depths of his. “An amusing one,” she said simply. “Were you not amused?”
He grunted, secretly having enjoyed such silly nonsense as thoroughly as if he were a boy of six. “This amuses me,” he said, and he bit her chin, then claimed her mouth with hard, checked passion.
“Will you take me here?” Ceidre gasped as he knelt, pushing her onto the ground.
“Here, now, in the dirt,” he said roughly, “as I have longed to do from the instant I first saw you.”
Ceidre looked at him.
He lay on his back, his head propped up with their clothes and straw, gazing absently ahead. She was draped partly over him, her chin on his chest, her legs entwined with his. He had a hand on the small of her back, and it drifted lazily, stroking her flesh right down to the full curve of one buttock.
It was that night, and they had met in the stable. Rolfe was completely relaxed, and the hard line of his mouth was softer now, hinting at contentment. He was so unbearably beautiful, she thought, and her heart was so swollen it positively ached. He glanced at her, and his blue eyes were so uncharacteristically soft that Ceidre almost choked with the ripe, bursting sensations filling her.
“Why do you stare?” he asked, his hand moving up to tangle in the thick tresses of her hair.
“’Tis easy to stare at you, my lord,” she said boldly. “You are a sight that takes a woman’s breath away. Of course, you know this.”
He smiled. “You think me handsome, do you?”
“You know I do. ’Tis a most unfair distraction.”
“Good,” he said, caressing the hair of her head. He toyed with her ear. “Then we are even, because I have long since ceased to think straight around you.”
