Page 114 of The Boxing Baroness

“You’ve not got enough fat to float easily,” he agreed. “But I’ll hold you up.” He sank down into the water and drew her closer, until he bathed her with his hot breath.

“Ah, God. Yes, please, St. John,” she murmured as he buried his mouth in her sweet sex.

* * *

It might not have been the easiest position to maintain—she had to remember to keep her lungs filled or she sank—but there was something magical about being pleasured so erotically in the moonlight.

She stared down her body, her eyes locked with his as he slowly teased her toward another climax, taking his time and working her toward the edge over and over before finally allowing her release.

Only when she was shaking and whimpering did he let go of her legs and slide her down his body. Marianne opened her thighs to him and he drove himself deep, filling her with his hard, silky heat. His big hands cupped her buttocks, pulling her closer.

“Warm enough?” he asked gruffly, his powerful hips beginning to pump.

“I’m perfect,” she sighed against his throat, licking and kissing and nibbling the taut muscles of his neck as they bunched and flexed.

“You are perfect.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to hold on to this night forever.

His thrusts were necessarily shallow because of the resistance of the water, but the water allowed him to do other things . . .

Holding her with only one hand he worked the other between them, caressing them where they were joined. “I’m going to make you orgasm while I am inside you, Marianne.”

Marianne thrilled at his words. Even now—when he was naked, wet, and buried inside her body—she was unable to reconcile the fact that the man whispering such wicked intentions was the same man the rest of Britain knew as the untouchable Lord Flawless.

And he was hers.

Only Marianne saw this side of him—she knew that without a doubt. He might keep a mistress back in London, but she would know the sophisticated lover, a man who gave her jewels and mounted her between silk sheets.

She would never know the things Marianne knew about him.

How he hated that she boxed for a living and yet still took her seriously and did his best to see that she won.

How he’d sat beside her bed and cared for her when she couldn’t care for herself—refusing to hand her over to another nurse.

How he’d mounted her in the water like a wild, passionate creature from mythology—a river Potamoi to her naiad—fierce and free of the crushing demands of society.

Marianne tightened her inner muscles around him.

“Marianne!” His clever finger paused only for a second, his hips drumming harder now, faster, as he rode her to a shattering, shared climax.

For the second time that day, her tears mixed with the river. In joy, this time.

But for how long?

Chapter 28

They stayed at the farm for six more glorious, idyllic days.

They were the best days of his life—an admission that increasingly shamed him. Not because he was ashamed of spending every waking hour—and a good number of sleeping ones—with Marianne, but because Elliot’s absence suggested something bad had befallen his friend.

While there were still almost three weeks between now and the meeting in Metz, the roads had become even more clogged with traffic. Thankfully, most of the military movement seemed to be north and west, as opposed to south and east, which was their direction.

He would wait ten days for Elliot.

Until then, he worried plenty about his missing friend, but his concern couldn’t rob the days and nights of magic.

But today was the ninth morning, and he could avoid the truth no longer.