But when he looped his horse’s reins over a nearby post and bent to remove the branch, he was startled by a quick, light step behind him.
Before he could turn to face whoever had snuck up on him, a warm, melodic voice said, “Stand and deliver.”
His heart leapt in his chest just as a pair of soft, slender hands gripped his hips to hold him in place.
He felt her breath on the back of his neck an instant before she pressed her lips to the spot where his hair curled above the collar of his riding coat.
A shiver ran through him.God, but he loved that she was tall enough to do that to him.
“I surrender,” he said.“Take anything you want.”
He could hear the smile in her voice when she replied, “What if I want everything?”
Turning to face her, Gabriel’s gaze devoured the sight of his lovely wife in the moonlight, her dark hair tumbled across her shoulders, her eyes the same dark, infinite blue as the sky.
“Everything I have is yours,” he told her, feeling suddenly drunk on her unexpected nearness.“All that I am, all that I was, all that I ever will be.Yours, yours, yours.”
“Mmm.Mine.”She grinned and wound her arms around his neck, pressing her gloriously soft bosom into his chest.“I like the sound of that.”
“That’s lucky, as you married me.”
Nuzzling under his chin to get to the place she liked to nibble, the side of his jaw where the edge of her teeth made his hands grip her tighter and his hips buck against her, Lucy purred, “I missed you today.”
“Sorry I’m later than I said I would be,” Gabriel began, but Lucy shushed him by laying two fingers across his lips.
“Don’t apologize.I knew you’d be late—everyone wants to see you, speak to you, have you kiss their babies and admire their prize sheep and compliment their new roof thatching.I don’t mind.I think it’s lovely.And it gave me time to put this together.”
Pulling him around the tree branch, which now appeared quite conveniently and artfully arranged to Gabriel, hopefully by a pair of brawny footmen and not by Lucy herself, she gestured proudly at the private bower she’d created.
A cozy nest of blankets and pillows stretched across the grass that ran alongside the track.A wicker hamper held down one corner of the blanket.Moonlight streamed through the branches of the gnarled elm tree arcing overhead, leaves rustling in the night breeze.
Gabriel recalled a similar scene, on a different night along a different road, when The Gentle Rogue had ridden to the “rescue” of a fair maiden with a broken wagon axle.He hadn’t stayed, that night.
He’d known that if he did, nothing would stop him from having her.And she’d been still so young.So innocent.So very, very dangerous to his precarious peace of mind.
“I love it,” he told her, voice thick.He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss into her knuckles.“It’s perfect.”
Her cheeks were rosy with pleasure, her eyes sparkled with happiness.She radiated joy.
It still staggered Gabriel to know, to accept, that he was a part of that joy.That he made her happy.
That he was allowed to take care of her.
Nothing in his life had ever made him happier than that.
He led her to the blankets and sat, tumbling her down with him to straddle his hips in a flushed, laughing heap.
Sweet, he thought, going mindless and intoxicated as she framed his face between her palms and kissed him.So goddamned sweet.
He reached up to shape her breast through the thin muslin of her gown, groaning as he felt her nipple furl into a taut point beneath his touch.Lucy undulated against him, her tongue a silken glide in his mouth, searching and tasting and stoking the fire of his need for her into a blazing inferno.
“You’ve worked so hard today,” Lucy crooned, trailing kisses across the crest of his cheekbone.“Lie back, darling.Let me…”
“I love a woman with a plan,” Gabriel said, subsiding onto the blanket.His hands never stopped touching her, though.He didn’t think he was capable of that.
“Then you’ll love this.”Lucy reached a languid hand up to undo the tapes holding her dress closed.In a few swift moves, she was able to shrug the fabric from her shoulders.Her nipples were dark and swollen, hazily visible through the fine lawn of her chemise, and Gabriel licked his lips.
“More,” he demanded, fists clenching in the bunched material of her skirts where they pooled around their hips.
