“We have one more day.”
“Yes.” He sounded sad. She wasn’t sure why that should be a surprise.Shesuddenly felt rather melancholy.
She knew the solution to that. “I know I’m meant to get up and sneak back to my room. But what if we both get up and sneak outside?” Who needed sleep? She had the rest of her life to sleep. “We could have a ramble before we need to leave for Doveborough. Just a quick one?”
A slow smile blossomed on his impossibly dear face. “Yes.” The smile grew wicked. She wondered what he was thinking about. “Let us ramble.”
* * *
What Archie regretted, what he hadn’t told Clem, was that now he was going to know what he was missing. Cutting things off after this holiday was going to be hard enough. Doing so after her proposed time-limited affair would be impossible. He felt strongly that he wasn’t going to offer Clem a carte blanche. Even if he did, even if he could see his way past the revulsion the notion inspired, it would only be a matter of time until they were caught, or she accidentally fell pregnant. She would be forced to marry him. And the one thing Archie knew with certainty was that he wasnevergoing to be the man to force Clementine Morgan to do what she despised: hunting, marrying, any of it.
As they strode out through the gardens just as the sun was coming up, he considered trying to explain. But his speech would be inelegant, and she would only argue with him. He told himself not to think overmuch on the matter. They had today. And tonight.
As soon as they cleared the gardens and entered the forest, he took her hand. Spun her around as if they were performing a Scottish reel among the trees. She laughed, and as their spin wound down, he walked her backward and pressed her gently up against the trunk of a large oak.
“We don’t have time!” she laughingly protested as he tugged down her bodice and bent his head to kiss the small mounds of breasts exposed by his adjustment.
“We do, though!”
“But it took ever so long this morning. Last night. Whenever.”
“That was by design. It needn’t take long.” He was fairly confident he had her measure and could deliver a most expedient release.
“Elaborate.”
He dropped to his knees.
“What are youdoing?”
“Applying myself to the task at hand.” He lifted her skirts and handed them to her. “Hold these.”
He moved aside her small clothes and kissed between her legs.
“Archie!” she exclaimed.
“Shh.” Theydidn’thave much time, so, with regret, he dispensed with further teasing, and spread her inner lips with one hand. Let his mouth come down on the pink bud he found there.
“Archie,” she said, her voice a low warning, a bit uncertain.
He paused. “Trust me?”
“Of course.”
The speed and vehemence with which she answered shot a bolt of lust down his spine. He lowered his mouth again, and licked. When she gasped, he did it again. And again, with a bit more pressure each time. Dear Lord. She was soft and vulnerable and somehow also like a gale-force wind, whipping his entire body, his entirebeing, into a frenzy.
It wasn’t long before she was moaning, and, judging by what he’d observed about the sounds she made when she was close to release, he calibrated his ministrations so he began sucking as her moans deepened.
It only took another few moments until she was fluttering beneath him. Like a foolish, unschooled boy, he ripped open his breeches, took himself in hand, stroked, and soon he was joiningher.
Mindful of the time, he forced himself to stand, took her skirts back from her, smoothed them, and adjusted her bodice. “There. No sign whatsoever of what has just occurred.”
He was tucking himself back into his breeches, when she stopped him. Her hand came to rest on his prick gently, but her tone contained a distinct note of pique when she said, “I wanted to do that.”
He laughed. “My apologies. Time was of the essence.”
She pouted, looking for a moment very like her sister. “Well, what I really wanted was for you to lie with me. In the true way. Right here against this tree. Is that scandalous?”
Oh, how he wanted to lie her down on a blanket of pine needles and push into her. Or to do so against the tree, like she’d said. To pretend for a moment that he was a country boy, without the weight of title and society and marriage and the like. Without a mother who didn’t know him. Clem could be a country lass, always and forever free to roam the land—and perhaps inclined to allow him to roam alongside her from time to time.
