Page 51 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
We’ll muddle throughtogether,”she had said, with one of those enchanting, cheeky smiles that Ben had so grown to adore. Whatever there had been of nervousness, of trepidation, had faded to nothing in its wake.
They had bared themselves past the skin straight to the soul, and how could there be anything less than beauty in that? The other half of his heart lived outside his chest—and she frolicked naked in the moonlight, splashing like a selkie through the water without an ounce of shame.
The breeze whisked chill bumps across her bare skin, and she turned, the wet ends of her hair sending an arc of droplets flying as she placed her hands on her hips and inquired, “Are you coming?”
Ben would have followed her straight over a cliff if she had asked it of him. He knew he was staring—gawking, really. At the spill of the moonlight over her breasts, a river of silver trickling down the smooth lines of her belly toward the juncture of her thighs. At the sparse, dark curls clustered there, the tiniest veil of modesty, which no man had ever glimpsed before him. At the lush softness of her naked bottom as she turned again, making for the bank.
Christ, yes, he would come. Probably too damned quickly.
Of course she had made it out of the pond before him, and she paused there on the bank to collect her hair in her hands and wring the water from it, and to watch, curious eyes luminous and faintly covetous behind the lenses of her spectacles, as he fought the resistance of the water to reach her. He could feel that avid gaze running over him, every bit as hungry as his own had been.
In another life—one where he’d been softer, when he’d had the privilege of timidity, he might’ve found himself embarrassed by it. But this wasDiana, who looked at him as if he had hung the moon in the sky only for her.
And she stared still as he climbed out of the water at last, and said in a wondering whisper, almost to herself, “How could I not love you?”
He had known it, of course, but the raw admission chipped off a tiny corner of his heart anyway. His hands trembled as he reached for her, and shecame into his arms without even the smallest trip of hesitation, wind-chilled skin growing warm once more against his own. She was so soft beneath his callused hands, and he—he had no right at all to touch her like this. She was meant for so much more; a finer life than he could ever have hoped to offer her.
He couldn’t offer her even a humble one.
But she made a small, approving sound in her throat as he caressed her shoulders, the smooth slope of her back, the indent of her waist and the flare of her hips, chasing away the chill bumps that lingered wherever he found them.
Her delicate fingers slid down his chest one delicious inch at a time, lingering over bands of muscle as they descended on their leisurely journey, and the warm press of her lips to the underside of his jaw nearly pulled his attention—until she wrapped her palm around his cock and stroked, and his whole body shuddered with the sensation.
“Christ.” It was a vivid, guttural grunt into the soft hair near her temple. “Where the hell did you learn that?”
A particularly feline smile. She said, “Lydia.”
Lydia? “I beg your pardon?” He gritted his teeth against another slow stroke that threatened to unman him entirely, tensing his thighs.
“My sister-in-law. She’s a bit scandalous, you know.” Another stroke, and his knees trembled. “She was my brother’s mistress years before she was his wife, and—well, she’s a bit chatty.”
“Chatty,” he repeated inanely, and held his breath to stave off the climax that tingled right at the base of his spine. Probably she could feel the pounding of his heart even in the rigid flesh held in her hand.
“She says it’s practically criminal that women are sent to the marriage bed knowing so little about what is meant to take place there,” Diana murmured. “I might have…plied her for a bit of information.”
“Oh.” What, exactly, had she been told? And how did she intend to wield it against him? Another stroke had his hands clutching the globes of her bottom, and a little sigh curled out of her throat.
“She says women are woefully uneducated on such matters,” she said against his shoulder.
Another stroke. “Diana,” he rasped helplessly.
“That there are too many women who don’t know that they’re meant to take pleasure in it, too—”
“Diana.” Somehow, he managed to wrench free one of hishands and place it around her own, stilling those lovely, curious fingers. “If you don’t stop now, all of the pleasure is going to be mine.”
Her fingers twitched beneath his own, and she canted her head to look up at him, her lips parting in surprise. “Do you mean you are going to—”
“Yes.” How he had battered back the tenacious urge to spend right into her soft palm was a mystery his lust-fogged mind could scarcely comprehend.
Yet she did not release him. “I would quite like to see that,” she said, so earnestly that it coaxed a chuff of laughter from him. And he thought—this was exactly how lovemaking was meant to be. Soft smiles and laughter and sincerity.
“Another time,” he said, and he was still chuckling as he managed to pry her fingers off, and swept her off of her feet to carry her, like a new bride, to the quilt she’d laid out upon the grass.
It wasn’t the most comfortable of beds, but then neither were any of those within the cottage. But he didn’t think she minded; not when she tugged at his shoulders as he followed her down, sighing at the press of his body on hers.
Probably he was still going to embarrass himself. But he didn’t think she would mind that, either.
Gently he eased the water-spotted spectacles from her face and placed them atop the bundle she’d made of his clothing nearby. “To keep them safe,” he said, and she blinked at him with a little pout.
