The water that swallowed her was icy, so cool it was barely
tolerable at first. From beneath it, she let out a squeal of bubbles from the
temperature. They rushed to the surface ahead of her as her face, along with
another bubbling shriek, bobbed up, bursting into air again. She screamed a
third time, of pleasure, enjoying the echo in the slight cavern of the low
rocky pool. The sound, the crystal beauty, even the sharp coolness that was
such a contrast to the warm sun on her face, felt rich to experience.
She turned in the water, treading as she looked up along the rim,
her horizon, watching the thin line of ground she could see over the granite
edge of the pool wall. She looked for Sam. He would come. He would follow. Her
certainty of it made her heart beat like a bass drum in her chest. She could
hear the glad rhythm in her ears as she rolled in the water, swimming one
moment, floating to her back the next, checking the perimeters. He would
appear. Yes, he would. There was nowhere else for him to go but here.
And when he arrived, she would seduce him.
You are being seduced.
The idea made her feel positively godlike. Such a feeling.
Realizing that she might, on her own, take for her own sake and pleasure a huge
scoop of happiness was as surprising and uplifting as suddenly discovering
that, with a leap into the air, she could fly.
Or dive down and swim. The cold water, as she glided down toward
the bottom, was dark. It made her chest tight, but her asthma remained at bay.
Another miracle of the moor. Why it wasn't more of a problem out here, she
couldn't imagine. Years ago, when she'd been miraculously free of it one
summer, her brother had taught her to swim. She still swam well enough despite
a lack of practice. Physical. She liked the feeling of moving her body, of
controlling it through the water. She might have been a tomboy under different
circumstances, she thought – with a healthier childhood, with a family who
hadn't discouraged her swimming and running and riding (though happily they
approved of the archery). She felt sleek now, a little otter herself.
She swam, coming up periodically to draw in deep breaths of sunny
air. It entered her lungs and felt wondrous. Like breathing liberty – license –
shedding an old, outdated restraint. I am an adult, she thought. This is what
it's like to feel adult, in charge of my own destiny. She came to the rocks of
the lowest waterfall, the last little rush over stony surfaces, the river
sheeting over them. Pushing on one rock, she rolled—
That was when she saw him. Sam stood overhead on the far bank, his
knees slightly bent, tense, his body poised: strong, sun-bright, energetic and
handsome. She had just enough time to notice his coat and vest were off – and,
oddly, his shirt hung open, his chest bare – before the tension in him found
release. He sprang up, his body arching out over the water. Arms extended he
headed downward, cutting into the water as cleanly as a knife.
Lydia
wanted to
applaud, he did it so beautifully.
Oh, yes. Pure excitement took hold as she watched his head bob up:
Closer, yards closer, he swam toward her. Yes, oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes. Joy.
What joy! What an amazing feeling was happening to her out here on the moor, a
kind of celebration in living she hadn't known since she was a child. As if she
suddenly possessed her own life – fully in each moment – her life consisting
entirely of her own decisions, inventions, and choices.
And there was an especially fine choice coming at her, his stroke
powerful and gliding, his wake as smooth as the ripple of a swan.
I am allowed this, she assured herself. I get to have my own
particular brand of happiness. Even though others might not understand my
wanting a man who … a man who drove cows in
America
.
That was possibly even part of Sam's attraction. He existed
comfortably at an elemental level, a man who could live outdoors for months at
a time. He moved easily now through the water. Of course. She'd expected it,
yet there was the gladdening sight: an athletic coordination, pure physical
grace, as much as any human being might possess. She watched the slicing
movement of his arms as they stroked strongly through the water. One reaching
pull – he did an even stroke, his eyes never leaving hers – propelled him a
dozen gliding feet closer, while his effort beneath the water didn't so much as
disturb the surface.
She smiled as he swam toward her in his clothes, then began to
laugh, both of them smiling broader, because they realized together: He'd dived
in, clothes and all, because he'd thought she was in trouble. Unable to say why
she was in the water, perhaps having heard her shrill outbursts when she'd
first jumped in, Sam, the relentlessly heroic, had come in after her: out to
save her again.
In the next moment, though, their laughter quieted. Yet he
continued to swim toward her: neither of them mistaking that what was on his
mind had anything to do with saving her. Unless it was to save her from
climbing aboard the next train a virgin.
Lydia
wedged herself
into a nook formed by the last stony tier of falls, where two flat rocks came
together behind her. There, she lifted herself up on her elbows, enough that
her breasts broke the surface; water flowed round her elbows. She closed her
eyes and leaned till the back of her head touched stone behind her, water
pouring into her hair, making it flow like liquid onto the stones, over her
shoulders. In front, she could feel the wet lawn of her chemise sticking to her
breasts, feel the sunny air on them, on her cold, contracted nipples just above
the water line. She arched as through half-closed eyes she watched Sam
approach. An indiscreet, delicious game.
He drew nearer, and she could see the water beaded on his cheeks.
The sky, reflected, made the water a bright, saturated bluebird azure, but the
color was nothing compared to his eyes. They held hers like a mesmerist's. She
couldn't look away from their dark, preternatural blue, so deep in hue, vivid
against the line of his black lashes – he drew close enough that she could see
water beaded in them, too. Such beautiful eyes. The most beautiful eyes she had
ever seen on a man. Beautiful even against a puffy cheekbone, a nose a
centimeter crooked, yellow at the bridge, black and blue at the socket.
Sam stopped in front of her, treading water simply to stare,
taking her in where she balanced on her arms, chest out, in her small cove of
rocks. Then he reached around her, taking hold of the rock at either side of
her, and lifted himself up to rest his forearms outside hers, so that they both
held their weight up on the same wet rocks. The stones were warm, then cool for
a second in a thin wash of water. It flowed around her elbows and into the
strait between their arms. She could feel the current gently pushing her toward
him, sense his resistance to it as he held himself steady.
She was sure of what was going to happen. It was in his eyes, on
his face – on her own, too, she didn't doubt as she looked up at him.
Before his mouth touched hers, the heat of his long, heavy body
came over her like a shadow. His open shirt flapped loosely against her rib
cage like sea grass. All these small anticipations, then the full presence of
him as he pressed forward, trapping her against the rocks behind her with the
muscular sturdiness of him, so solid, so contoured. Like the rocks themselves.
Oh, the sensation of Sam was lush. His bare chest was cold, though
within moments his skin felt warm against her goose-fleshed breasts; hard
muscles against her yielding breasts, flattening, rounding them upward on her
rib cage. He tilted his head, brushed his lips across hers, then he lifted
himself higher on his arms – water running off him noisily – to bear forward
and down on her from above her. He leaned his head to her, bringing the
contrast of his cold lips against hers as he invaded this time with the
furnacelike heat of the inside of his mouth, his tongue.
She heard him groan, felt him slide his body down hers, hard,
rubbing as he pushed his tongue deeply into her mouth and pressed her back
against the rock till the best way to breathe was to take the oxygen from his
breath, inhale through his open mouth.
His kiss rolled down into her, from their mouths into her breasts,
sinking down, low, low, into her body beneath the water, till she felt like a
melting oven inside her own cold skin. She let him spread her legs with his
knees. Then, by simply allowing her feet to float up, she had them around his
hips. Where this instinct came from was a mystery.
Lydia
only knew she
wanted him tightly between her legs with all the strength of her will. She dug
her heels into the flexed muscles of his backside. Hard-muscled, his buttocks.
She hugged him tightly like this, arms and legs and mouth and tongue.
Oh, the heat of him. Better, so much better than she had
anticipated. And, best, as Sam kissed her – his weighty kiss that sank through
her – the sensation pushed its way down till it lived between her legs, alive,
hot, shivery, trembling.
Her body stirred against him, a yearning that roiled in her belly,
the feeling between her legs becoming animate in a riveting, hypnotic way that
left her in thrall to what she suddenly knew of him: to the robust feel of a
growing
erection
.
Erection
. She thought the word, and it
made her turn her head so she could push her open mouth harder down over his
tongue; she wanted to swallow him.
Penis. His penis was hard and thick and unapologetic where it
pressed along her sex – she felt herself open, unfolded somehow, her warmest
place cooled by the water, heated by the friction of him as he rode against
her. Cold water or not, his penis felt feverish. So did she. Inside, she felt
molten.
Inside
. He rubbed himself up
then slowly down through their clothes beneath the water. A little pocket of
heat between them, their contact shockingly hot. It made her head dizzy, it
made her limbs weak.
After perhaps two minutes of this blissful torment, kissing and
kissing and rubbing against each other, he suddenly pulled back, pushing
himself the full distance away of his arms.
He looked down into her face, panting, frowning, Serious Sam. His
expression, as it could, carried the weight of the world. "Ah,
Jesus," he muttered. His breathing was raspy, his voice hoarse. So
delicious, the deep, masculine sound of him. So Sam. He closed his eyes and
said in a husky whisper, "Liddy, if you are really English nobility, this
will ruin you."
She laughed. "No, it won't. I'm not going to tell
anyone."
He rolled his eyes, not joking, put out with her – now of all
times. He actually moved away.
She couldn't believe it. "Sam!" She reached for him,
letting herself fall into the water.
"You don't understand," he said. "You can't."
He took a breath, as if to dive.
Lydia
grabbed at
him, catching him by the hair. They were both suddenly free-floating, treading
water, clinging, wrestling in conversation. "I know what I'm doing,"
she protested. "I want you. I deserve this!"
"Ha," he said. He shook her off then faced her, his
wet-haired head above the water. "The world doesn't owe you anything,
Liddy Brown, and you better understand that." He took a breath, then
groaned. "God, I want to make love to you like you can't believe."
Another breath. "But there could be hell to pay, Miss Viscount's
Daughter—"
She cut him off with an impatient breath. "Stop," she
said. "I'm not a child." She inhaled gustily, then told him, "My
suitors want my money and position, so let them have my money and—"
"No," he said. "The man who marries you will want
this, too, I promise you."
"Well, I'm not asking you to marry me, Mr. Cody, if that's
what you're worried about."
"Good thing," he said quickly. Then he blinked, frowned,
glanced to the horizon. There was a funny moment before he met her eyes again
and said, "Right."
Why was it a good thing? Sam wondered. Because somewhere these
words –
I'm not asking you to marry me
– made him feel awful. When he should have felt excused, spared: Marrying her
or anyone was the farthest thing from his mind at the moment. So why be wounded
that she'd let him off?
He turned in the water, letting her paddle around him as he
treaded – not unhappy to frustrate her: doing it on purpose.
Or maybe just watching. Her hair floated about her shoulders; it
spread everywhere, like a living creature near the surface. Liddy, waterborne,
was beautiful, eerie. Her breasts floated, her wet chemise clinging to them.
High and round, they periodically broke the surface in little mounds, two
perfect, gently bobbing, alabaster islands above the neckline of her chemise.
In contrast, through thin, wavering fabric just beneath the water, he could see
her dusky brown nipples. They wobbled in loose movement with her breasts – a
brunette's nipples, a dark, ruby umber.
Have her. She wants you to.
He puzzled
them both, though, by swimming backward away from what he wanted, while the
complexion of her face – in consternation – reddened. He was assailed by all
the variations, the delicate colors of her skin, the textures. Her wet lashes
flapped, so long and thick they brushed the tops of her cheekbones. Like
butterfly wings, he thought, wet ones that spiked, clinging for a moment to her
pinked cheeks. Everything about her … breasts, eyelashes, shoulders, hair … her
hips, the heat of her sex he'd felt against him as he kissed her … everything
about her arrested him. Liddy was so attractive to him from so many directions,
he hardly knew himself near her. He could understand neither the strength of
his attraction to her, nor the strength of his reservations.