I Loved a Rogue The Prince Catchers (10 page)

When she’d gone out in Thomas Shackelford’s curricle along the village lane, nobody thought anything of it. He was the squire’s son, and she the vicar’s daughter. The tailor had tipped his cap from the doorway of his shop and the draper smiled at them fondly as the dust rose behind the carriage wheels.

But none of the church ladies or shopkeepers of St. Petroc would understand
this
.

His family’s rules were just as strict. They sold trinkets and horses to the residents of St. Petroc and the surrounding villages, but they only truly mingled at the May Day fair. The smith was friendly with them, and Papa, of course. Otherwise, the Gypsies kept to themselves and the people of St. Petroc obliged them. Everyone abided by the invisible barriers.

If anyone discovered they had gone walking today, there would be a price to pay on both sides. Both of them were breaking the rules. But that was not the reason she’d hidden it from her family. Now, with her heart dancing in her throat, she could not deny the reason. Doing this—being with him—felt wrong.

It felt wrong because it felt too right.

“I don’t wish to go in.” She tilted up her nose. “It will sully my gown and Papa would scold.” And ask questions. Questions she could not answer truthfully.

Taliesin didn’t respond. Finally she turned her head. He wore only his shirt and trousers. “Then take it off,” he said.

“Take it off?” she uttered dumbly.

“Your dress.” The provoking smile returned, but something else shone in his black eyes that made her heartbeats stumble. “You are afraid,” he said with complete assurance.

Not afraid.
Terrified
. “I am not.”

“Prove it.”

“I don’t have to prove it to
you
.” She gave him the scoff she’d been perfecting on him since she was nine.

The intensity left his eyes and he shrugged. “Suit yourself. But I’m going in.” He climbed down the bank to the water’s murky edge. She watched him close his eyes, long dark lashes dropping, and his face registered perfect pleasure as he walked into the pond without tripping or slipping on the rocks. He moved now just like he mounted a horse, with confidence and ease, the way he did everything. He was as comfortable in water as anywhere.

Jealousy and frustration and yearning gathered in her breast.

“It looks like tepid broth,” she said, trying not to stare at his shoulders. Threadbare at the seams, his shirt pulled from one side to the other. They’d gotten wider over the summer—his shoulders. She didn’t know how she knew this, except that when he’d stood near earlier, she’d felt small beside him for the first time ever. “How is it?”

“Feels like that heaven you mentioned,” he said, wading into the middle of the pond, the water rising to his knees then higher, soaking his trousers. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “The one your father’s always preaching about.”

“How would you know? You don’t go to church.”

“It may be that I don’t need to go to church to know what heaven is.” The tail of his shirt dipped in the water. He lifted it out and squeezed it, and silvery sparkles leaped on the pond’s surface. “Are you coming in or not?”

“I already said I’m not. I don’t wish to.”

He looked up at her. “You sure about that?”

Beneath her shift, moisture trickled between her shoulder blades and down the gully of her breasts. The boy in the pond who had become a man over the summer looked cool as autumn rain.

Then in one fluid movement he pulled his shirt up his waist and over his head, and tossed it onto the reeds by the bank. He shook out his hair, and a slow, goading grin lifted the side of his mouth.

“Come on,
pirani
. Now it’s your turn.”

She couldn’t breathe and the oppressive heat was not the cause. She had never seen such a thing and knew she should not be seeing it now. But she could not tear her eyes away. Lean and muscled from shoulder to belly, he stood before her without shame. He swept up a handful of water and splashed it across his chest and she stared like a pauper at a shiny guinea. As she watched his palm slide down his tawny skin, her knees went wobbly.

Only one wish battered at her: to be next to him, as close as possible to that raw maleness that was thoroughly alien yet belonged to the boy she had known for years. She
needed
to be near him.

She had to go into that water.

But what if a chill took her lungs and she had to explain how it had happened?

She couldn’t
.

Taliesin’s grin penetrated her panic: pure goading deviltry. She could not refuse this challenge, no matter the consequences.

With sticky-hot fingers it took her some time to unfasten her sweat-dampened gown and the ribbons of her petticoat. Wearing her stockings, shift, and simple cotton corset, she half walked, half slid down the bank into the water. He came forward and when she slipped on the slimy rocks, he grabbed her hand and steadied her, and the muscles in the enthralling landscape of his chest shifted. Eleanor’s lungs ceased to function.

He released her as soon as she found her footing. The water soaked through her skirts to her skin, her legs, cool and secret. He did not move away, but stood right before her as if challenging her to acknowledge that something was happening here.

So she did.

“I have never before seen a man’s bared chest.”

“I don’t suppose you have.”

It looked smooth. Firm. Vital.
Touchable
. Longing curled in her, urging her to get closer still. He was everything familiar, known her entire life it seemed, always there, always plaguing her, and yet now something entirely alien too, male and thrilling. “I . . . I want to touch . . . it.”
Him
. Her mouth was dry. She licked her lips to wet them. “May I?”

His gaze seemed fixed on her mouth. “Not such a good idea.”

Pique pricked at her. “You made me come in here, leave my clothing on the bank, and you removed your shirt. Now you’re turning craven?”

“Didn’t exactly expect you to say you want to touch me,
pirani
. Didn’t think you were that kind of girl.”

What kind of girl? At his family’s summer camps did he know other girls? Other vicars’ daughters? Did he teach them how to ride and walk with them in the woods? Did he remove his shirt and make them wild to be closer to him?

“Don’t you want me to?”

“I want you to.” His breathing sounded rough. “Too much.”

She barely touched him, brushing her fingertips across his chest, his heat and the taut softness of his flesh a sudden revelation. He was so strong and beautiful and free and perfect, and he made her want to be beautiful and free and wild too. He always had. Stroking her fingertips along the ridge of bone that cut from his shoulder to his chest, her hands started to shake.

And quite abruptly she understood that everything she had ever wanted was standing right in front of her.

This boy
. She didn’t want to best him. She simply wanted
him
.

Overwhelmed, filled with feeling and confused, she dropped her hand and sank it beneath the water’s surface, ashamed that he might think she trembled because of fear.

“My turn,” he said in a low voice.

“Your turn?”

With the grace of physical strength she had always envied in him, he cupped his broad palm, dipped it into the water, and took up a glimmering handful. His hand tilted and the water drizzled over her shoulder. She gasped from the sudden freshness, and sighed upon a smile. Then he did it again, this time over her breast. It was cool and felt miraculously good as it trickled beneath the shift and dampened her nipple. Alive with sensation, from her lips to her fingertips and oddly in her belly, she giggled.

For once he did not laugh. With utter reverence he brushed the backs of his fingers along the side of her breast. Eleanor’s breaths stole from between her lips in little stutters. Delicious, quivering weakness eddied through her. The expression of worship on his face and the tingles in her body made her gulp back more sighs. Then he cupped his hand around her breast.

“Aren’t you going to tell me to stop?”

“I should.” She couldn’t seem to get enough air. “Do you want me to?”

With heavy, uneven breaths he squeezed her breast gently. It was not unpleasant—rather, astonishingly pleasant.
Pleasurable
. Her eyelids felt thick, the damp heat of the day and the quiet sounds of trickling water and birds all around, and his hand touching her as he should not, making her wish he would touch her
more
, making her feel wicked. Wanton.

“I like it,” she whispered. “I think that makes me a bawd. Or perhaps a Jezebel.”

He dropped his hand. “It’s best we go now,” he said tightly.

“I’m still hot.”
Mesmerized
. “Aren’t you?” She slid her fingertips along his forearm corded with strength. He was made so differently than she, his skin thicker than hers and taut over muscle and big bones. Strong. Every bit of him drew her, fascinated her, made her weak with a strange sort of yearning. How many times she had sat beside him laboring over texts without noticing anything except how much more quickly he was accomplishing a task? Now she wanted to memorize him, to know every part of this new Taliesin, the muscle and sinew and new depth of his voice. Her fingertips reveled in him, in his texture.

“Eleanor,” he said deeply, his chest rising. He never called her Eleanor. Sometimes he called her Vicar’s Girl, but mostly that Gypsy word.

She ran her fingers along the water’s surface, then smoothed them over his shoulder wrapped with muscle. The streak of moisture glistened on his skin. As if in response, jittery heat darted all through her. She did it again and an animal sound came from his chest. It didn’t repel her. It made her feel good. It made her ache.
Deeply
. The need to explore him, to know him, swelled beneath her ribs and in her belly. She trailed her fingertips down the hard center of his chest to his waist.

“
Eleanor
.” He reached forward, grasped her behind the neck with his big, callused hand, and brought their mouths together.

She had always assumed that a kiss satisfied a need. It didn’t. It made the need greater. From the first fumbling meeting of lips, through the learning, the knowing of shape and pressure, and tasting, to the melding of mouths in frantic rhythm, she discovered that kissing him once was not enough. Kissing him twice made her want even more. She’d been waiting for this all summer and now she couldn’t get enough. He must feel it too, this longing that surged with each meeting of lips, each breath drawn from the same air.

His hands came around her face, sinking into her hair and holding her close as their mouths consumed. Their tongues met. Retreated. Met again. Twined together. Tongues. Lips. Hands. He licked her teeth like he was licking preserves from them, and it felt astonishingly wonderful. Everything was real, natural, and desperate for more. The more he kissed her, the more of his kisses she wanted. The more she wanted
him
.

This
could not
be right.

She broke free, gasping for air. “I—”

“God’s blood,
pirani
,” he blasphemed, wrapped his arms around her, and in one movement brought their bodies together, and their mouths.

Chest to chest, thigh to thigh, arms around her, he held her tight and she let him kiss her. And she kissed him. She clutched his back and wicked, torrential thrills crashed through her along with the certainty that nothing could feel so right as the hard length of his body pressed to hers and her mouth under his. Nothing could
be
so right. Nothing.

He dragged her off him and backed away, water eddying out around him. His chest heaved, a tawny rippling of shadows and sunshine that made her tender lips fall open in awe.

“You’ve got to go.”

“I know.” Dazed, panting, she stared at him. “I do? Why?”

“Men aren’t built to stop once it gets going. And I don’t want to stop with you. I’d never want to stop with you.” His eyes looked feverish. “But I know I can’t have what I want.”

She nodded. Everything inside her seemed to be rushing forward. Toward him. “What happens now?”

“You go, and I cool down.”

“And we talk later.” She attempted a little smile. “When we’re dry and dressed again?”

“If that’s what you want.”

She wanted him to kiss her again. She wanted it with a sweet sort of desperation she’d never before felt. She wanted more than anything to press her palms to his smooth, hot skin and feel his heartbeat pounding as quickly as hers. She wanted him to put his strong arms around her and make her feel not weak and vulnerable, as everyone except him seemed to think she perpetually was, but powerful. Powerful that she could inspire this fever in his black eyes. But she said, “All right.”

He remained in the pool while she climbed the bank, took up her clothes, and donned them as best she could. The wet shift clung to her legs as she dressed in a haze. She didn’t realize until later that he must have seen everything there was to see of her through the soaked linen. She didn’t realize it even the following day, after he did not come to the vicarage, and after he was not at the horse corral when it came time for her afternoon ride.

Instead she went about with her head in the clouds and her toes two inches above the ground, a jumble of nerves in anticipation for the next time they would meet.

Tonight? Would he kiss her in the moonlight as he had the first time? Or tomorrow morning would he take her to the old oak and kiss her there again? Now that this
thing
had happened between them, they would have to tell Papa. Wouldn’t they? Or would they keep it a secret from everyone? When no one was watching would they hold hands and steal kisses that made her knees weak? She wanted to shout her feelings to the world. She couldn’t imagine her feet ever touching the ground again.

Then she heard her papa telling Ravenna that, since Taliesin had gone, he expected her to see to the task of scooping out the ashes from the grate.