Page 77 of Miss Determined
“Did you miss me?”
“I missed Trevor Dorning. The prospect of marrying a peer…”
They climbed the steps of the cottage porch. “Yes?”
“I will have to do as you did and assume a role. The gracious lady in her jewels.”
“You are a gracious lady, and the jewels… Don’t wear them if you don’t please to.” He led her to a bench facing the river. When they sat, he again tucked his arm around her waist, because simply touching Amaryllis made his heart rejoice.
“My father was obsessed,” Trevor went on, “with his privileges and the deference due his station. He was vain about social standing he’d done nothing to deserve. I cannot be that sort of peer. I want to be the peer who pulls his share of the load and then some. A marchioness concerned with which parure to wear to the opera could never hold my heart.”
Amaryllis kissed him, which was the outside of too much when he was trying to be sincere and manly, so he kissed her back, and this resulted in stirrings—more stirrings than usual when in her company—and thus he escorted his darling to the sunny bedroom on the far end of the cottage.
Amaryllis made short work of his clothing, sparing him only breeches.
“I’ve missed the gatehouse,” he said, working his way down the row of hooks running down the back of her dress. “The hours to touch and talk and drowse and love. I hadn’t realized…” He drew her against him, tenderness engulfing him without warning.
“Trevor?” Amaryllis turned in his arms and embraced him.
“Years ago, I saw what Jeanette had discovered with her second husband,” he said, wrapping Amaryllis close. “Saw that she was enthralled, as was he. I was emphaticallyde trop, and more to the point, I could barely stand to look on them. My own father hadn’t been capable of that closeness and joy. What did that mean for me? Would I ever find anything similar, and would I know enough to appreciate it if I did?”
He kissed Amaryllis’s bare shoulder, for courage and for joy. “Then you came galloping along, determined as hell to stay on your panicked horse, unruffled even to find yourself in the ditch, ready to get right back on as soon as you’d caught the beast. You caught me instead, and thank God for that, because I am never letting you go.”
He’d made a vow to his prospective bride with those words, and she seemed to know it, because her mood turned patient and sweet. Her hands entreated rather than demanded, and her kisses promised rather than insisted.
The bed was comfortable and sunny, and so were the preliminaries to the loving. Trevor wanted to give Amaryllis his whole heart, all the desire and cherishing and wonder, but he had a lifetime to deliver those sentiments.
Today, he’d taken another step toward that lifetime with the woman he adored.
“I want to be on top,” Amaryllis said, giving his backside a brisk, get-a-move-on pat. “We don’t have hours to indulge ourselves today, and you have too much self-restraint.”
He tucked closer, hoping for another little spank. “You are complaining about my vast consideration for your pleasure?”
“Never that.” A stroke instead of a pat, then a luscious squeeze. “But we will be missed, and there will be smirks and smiles, and—not fair, Trevor.”
He’d changed the angle of their joining, aiming straight for his target. “If we’re to be subjected to smirks, let us at least earn the penance and give ourselves ample reason to smile as well.”
“Oh, very well, but I want—botheration.”
A slight increase in tempo had earned him abotheration. “You wanted to be on top?”
Lissa locked her ankles at the small of his back. “Soon.”
“But if it’s what you desire, my dear, what would please you, then surely, as the soul of gentlemanly—?”
A slap that ended in a caress. “Drat you.” Amaryllis was laughing, a curious pleasure when he was intimately joined to her. “Drat your dratted, dratting self-restraint.” She hitched herself more tightly around him—ye gods, riding astride did marvelous things for a woman’s leg strength—and set out to defeat Trevor’s willpower.
He lost the contest, though the struggle was glorious. A steeplechase of the passionate variety, and not—he hoped—the last such race they’d have.
He levered up onto his elbows and knees and crouched over his intended, dealt with the mess he’d left on her belly, then rolled to his back and wrestled her atop him. He drew the covers over her shoulders as her sigh fanned his chin.
“We must work on your managing tendencies, my lord.”
“Must we really? What of my lady’s managing tendencies? I am rather besotted with them, and if you’d like to hone those skills yet further, I will be your willing accomplice in about five minutes.” Or ten. A quarter hour, if he was honest.
“Hush, I must hone my napping skills, and I have found the most agreeable, if somewhat talkative, pillow.”
Trevor kissed her crown and let her doze, though he was too happy to sleep. He’d thought to abandon the joys of France, sort out his estates, and resign himself to the quest for a marchioness.
