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She couldn’t face Cranbrook. Sailing to France would be easier.

If Neal came with her.

Lies and wishes. They’d been the source of so much trouble in her life. Her next utterance would be both.

“I wish we had today, just today,” she whispered.

“For what?” He was so close now that his eyes twinned in her vision, and the beating of his lashes tickled her skin.

“Something.” She shifted her hips and he groaned into her mouth. “Everything.”

He moved his lips to speak, but her own lips were between them, and his answer became their kiss, sweet and then deep, deeper—shattering.

Chapter Thirteen

Her breath came faster, but he worked his tongue slowly over her lips, planting his forearms on either side of her head, pinning her.

He planned to linger.

Everything, she’d said.

One day wasn’t enough, not for everything he wanted to do to her. Damned if one lifetime was enough.

Her husband was a cad and a simpleton. Why would he seek other women when the one who shared his table, his bed, offered endless delights, endless challenges, provoked the mind and inflamed the body, irritated and enticed and . . .

Christ.

She was undulating against him, sighing into his mouth, so he stilled her, pushed his tongue inside as his thigh nudged her legs apart. Her mouth opened to receive him, tasted sweet, with a slight savor of mint, of mugwort, and he stroked a wicked rhythm that she interrupted with gasps, tangling her tongue with his, catching at his lower lip with her teeth. He broke the kiss, ran his lips down her throat. Her skin was smooth as silk but salted with her sweat. It stung him. Oh, but he liked the burn of her. He licked away the salts, flicking with his tongue, then sucking the lobe of her ear into his mouth, twisting his fingers in her damp hair until she hissed.

He was already so hard it hurt. He slowed his breathing, eased his lower body away.

The madness of the situation struck him. He had surrendered. He’d let Lavinia goad him into defying reason.

He opened his eyes. She’d opened hers. Bluebell blue.

“You’re stopping,” she said, softly, without surprise. As though rejection and disappointment were her constant companions. Betrayed, and alone in the world, she made wishes knowing they wouldn’t come true.

He hated that resigned note in her voice. But he wasn’t a magician, had no power to banish past hurts.

That last wish she’d made, though. That he could grant. No magic required. Only desire. Desire, and a willingness to suspend his own better judgment.

They had no future together.

But they could have today.

“I’m not stopping,” he said. “I haven’t begun.”

He lifted her into his arms, carried her from the willow into the sun-dazzled clearing. Her mouth was wet on his neck, and her fingers threaded into his hair. As he lowered to his knees, he had to detach her gently, laying her down where the moss made a thick bed.

“You said you wanted to appreciate the mosses,” he murmured, sitting back on his heels. She propped herself up on her elbow, made a face.

“What if I don’t, though?” she asked. “Could you appreciate a woman who doesn’t appreciate the mosses?”

She taunted him. But he detected an odd quaver in her voice, an unexpected vulnerability in her eyes.

“It depends.” He brought her muddy shoes onto his thighs, tugged at the laces, worked them off one by one. Her stockings were wet at the toe and the heel. He scooted her closer, drew her calves onto his thighs, and pushed up her skirt.

“She doesn’t object to moss, does she?” His hands slid up to her garters. “It’s comfortable, cool, fragrant . . . one of the great luxuries of the forest.” He dropped her stockings behind him and set her bare calves on the green mat. “Fit for a queen. A pirate queen, at any rate.”