Page 16 of A Lady Igniting Wicked Passions
But, as she stood, leaning on Aaron for support, Achilles danced away from her.
“He is too frightened to allow you to ride him,” Aaron said.
Arabella had been hopping after him, reaching for the reins, but Aaron swiftly caught up with her and lifted her from her feet. She put her arms around his neck and looked up at him. Around them the sky growled its displeasure and the first, fat drops of rain began to fall. Aaron set off for the crofter’s cottage, striding easily through the heather.
With a thunderous crash the rains came and in moments both were soaked. The door of the cottage had fallen from its hinges, the wood dragging along the floor. Aaron shifted it with a thump from his shoulders and stepped inside.
A single room greeted them with a fireplace set beneath a stone chimney breast and the remains of broken or rotted furniture. A pile of freshly gathered straw demonstrated what the old tumbledown cottage had been used for in recent years. Aaron gently lay Arabella down on it and then gathered armfuls for the horses, piling it at the other end of the room.
Lying back on the soft, aromatic bed of straw, Arabella watched him as he discarded his sodden coat. Her own dress was similarly soaked through and clung to her body. Through his shirt, she could see the outlines of his sculpted physique.
He stood over her and stripped it off, loosening the laces and then yanking the garment up and over his head. Arabella lifted herself onto her elbows and unashamedly perused his body. Aaron looked back, equally unashamed and she felt his eyes roam over her breasts and hips, like a physical touch.
“I will start a fire and then you must remove that dress, or you will catch your death,” Aaron said.
“I will need your help,” Arabella replied.
He nodded and set to work starting a fire, using the driest of the furniture remnants. Arabella sat up as the flames began to give off warmth, shivering at the cold air that gusted in through the glassless windows and caressed her sodden skin. Aaron knelt behind her and deftly undid the buttons securing her dress.
As he did, he peeled it back from her shoulders, revealing a cotton under-dress. Arabella stripped it from her arms as Aaron’s hands came to rest on her shoulders. Though a layer of thin fabric separated them, she felt as though he were touching her naked skin. The thought sent a different kind of shiver through her body.
“Help me stand so I can remove the skirt,” Arabella said.
Coming around to stand in front of her, he offered her his hands. She allowed him to pull her to her feet, holding on to his shoulder to keep weight from her ankle. Before she could do it for herself, he took hold of her waist and pulled the dress down over her hips. It fell to the floor, but Aaron’s hands remained on her hips.
She looked up into his eyes, and saw her own desire reflected there. He pulled her close, bending his head towards hers, to kiss her. As he did his hands caressed her hips and her buttocks, squeezing and kneading her flesh.
Each movement of his fingers awakened sensations within her that drove away any perception of pain from her throbbing ankle.
Hooking her injured leg around his, she allowed his strong hands to bear her weight as she pressed her loins tight against him. As she felt the first throb of constrained lust from him, she pressed harder and drew a stifled groan of desire. The sound coming from him made her giddy with desire and caused her to whisper his name, in between increasingly heated and frantic kisses.
Her lips moved from his mouth to his chin, cheeks, brows, and ears. Finally, she bit his neck, imagining herself to be some seductive and inescapable succubus, driving her victim out of his mind with lust. Aaron was drawing up the hem of her under-dress, gathering the soft, damp cotton with his fingers.
It reached her calves, then her thighs. The stockings she wore beneath were knee high and as the hem rose above them, his fingers touched her naked thighs. First, he tickled the back of her legs, reaching upward to stroke the bottom of her buttocks to make her squirm and squeal in his embrace. Then he squeezed her left thigh from the front, running his hand even higher.
Arabella’s toes pointed and curled at the maddening sensations of anticipation and pleasure that were coursing through her womanhood. A moan of disappointment escaped her as his hands whipped away and he stepped back.
She overbalanced and fell onto her back in the straw, her under-dress riding up to the top of her thighs. She could see his barely contained masculinity now as he opened the belt of his breeches, eyes never leaving hers.
***
Arabella woke with Aaron’s name on her lips. Her eyes opened and she stared across her bed into the darkness. The embers of a fire provided a dim, amber glow from one end of the room. She lay on her side, blankets kicked away and legs drawn up. Her nightdress was bunched in between her legs, clutched tightly. Breath came in quick, short gasps.
The dream still felt vividly real in those first few moments. She could almost taste his skin on her lips, smell his body in the air around her. With a frustrated sigh, she flung herself onto her back, kicking away the blankets that clung to her feet.
Staring up at the canopy of the bed above her, her mind was filled with the duke. Her sister’s fiancée, whom she had passionately kissed that evening. And been passionately embraced by.
Reaching up and behind her head with her right hand, she touched the small, metallic object that she had found when she had scrambled from the chaise in the cellar nook. It was a red and white enamelled cross, chased in silver. A medal that Aaron had worn on the breast of his coat.
Something, possibly their lustful clinch, had dislodged it. As she had crawled behind the chaise it had pricked the palm of her hand. Biting back the yelp of pain, she had closed her hand around the offending object but there had been no opportunity to return it to the duke.
Now, she held an object that she should not. An object that tied her to the duke, at a time when she wanted no connection between them. No connection that might lead to gossip or, worse still, scandal. The wedding between Helena and the duke was the culmination of careful planning by her parents.
And would bring about rank for Helena; a union with an ancient and respected noble house. As her fingers traced the outline of the medal, she felt a chill of fear. No one must ever know what had happened between them. The problem was, she wanted it to happen again.
Chapter 10
Arabella walked sedately and silently alongside her husband-to-be. She tried to keep her eyes from the man who had dominated her thoughts since the ball, a week before. He walked ahead, Helena clinging to his arm and casting furtive glances back towards Arabella, notably when the duke’s attention was elsewhere. Arabella tried to ignore the pointed looks and almost triumphant smile.
