She held silent for a moment, treading in place, considering him with deep scrutiny and her perpetually pink cheeks. She moistened her lips, catching droplets of water with her tongue. His gut tightened at the small action. “All effects of Nora’s tonic, I am certain. I don’t think it’s left my . . . uh, body yet.”
The bloody tonic again.
“And how long, pray tell, do you think it will before the effects dissipate? Fully dissipate?”
She shrugged and inched closer. “Days. I don’t rightly know. Who can say? You will be long gone from here before then, though. I am certain of that. A man like you has far more diverting things to do than keep to this little provincial backwater.”
It was as though she was a mind reader. That was what he had thought, after all, when he had initially planned to depart after the tediously boring dinner.
He narrowed his gaze on her. She was practically crouching now in the pond’s shallow edge, her attractive knees poking up out of the water. She seemed to be weighing her options. If she were to emerge from the pond she would be fully naked.
He had already gotten an eyeful of her. At least from the waist up. He swallowed thickly at the memory of her yanking down her nightgown.
She only had to stand and he’d have all of her in his gaze.
“Can you turn around, please?”
“I beg your pardon?” The words felt like marbles rolling around in his mouth.
“Turn. Please.”
He snorted. After everything, she would cling to modesty. As though he had not seen her. As though he had not moments ago just witnessed her floating on her back like a water nymph, her perky breasts sticking out of the water, those pebble-hard nipples tantalizing him as they had when she yanked her nightgown down.
Smiling tightly, he obliged.
He listened to the sound of her moving forward through the water, then water dripping and sluicing down her form as she stood, followed by the crunch of her bare feet over the ground.
He had many flaws. Too innumerable to count. As the bastard son of the Earl of Norfolk and a famed courtesan, it seemed he was destined for vice and wrongdoing. His fate had been sketched before he drew his first breath.
But he had never denied a lady’s request for modesty.
If a woman said stop, wait or no, he obeyed. In this, he was at their mercy.
Just as he was now at Charlotte Langley’s mercy. In the library and here. Right now.
“I look forward to continuing our acquaintance and getting to know the real you without the influence of your sister’s tonic,” he called, still humoring her insistence that this tonic was the reason for her behavior this night.
“What do you mean?” Branches rustled as she gathered up her clothes. “You were to leave today. You said so yesterday.” A touch of desperation tinged her voice.
“I’ve decided to stay,” he announced.
Silence behind him met the declaration.
He risked a look to find her attired again, her dress damp and clinging in several places. She stood still as a marble statue, her shoes and stockings dangling from one hand as she stared at him with horror.
She’d only just emerged from the water, but the tendrils framing her face were already curling charmingly. “You cannot. You cannot mean to stay.”
“You needn’t look so appalled.” He stepped forward.
Gasping, she backed up several steps on the pebbled ground, watching him as he advanced. He strolled toward her, enjoying the sensation of her heated eyes on him.
For all her horror, she could not seem to look away.
A gratified smile played about his lips. He looked her up and down. “You’ve dressed yourself, but you might as well be without garments. I can see you quite clearly in my mind. Your lovely dusky nipples, the size of a farthing, perfectly bite-sized. I grow hard just at the memory of you.”
She gaped like a fish at him as he lowered himself down on the grassy earth at her feet.
“Would you like to see?” he asked.
“What are you doing now?”
She glanced around wildly, clearly assuring herself that they were still very much alone. Satisfied, she then looked back at him, and he saw the understanding in her scalding gaze.
She knew perfectly well what he was offering.
“Yes,” she whispered and then licked her lips, staring at his hands as they lowered to his trousers.
He opened his breeches slowly, still giving her time to flee if she chose, but she didn’t move as he freed himself.
“Oh! Cover yourself.” The soft words were barely audible between her ragged little pants.
A dragonfly, its wings beating as rapidly as his heart, darted in the space between them, its blue-green body glinting as it hovered, coming dangerously close to landing on her shoulder. All things were drawn to her. He fought a smile at the whimsical thought.
He lay on his back, elbows propped on the soft cushion of grass. He angled his face up to the lightening sky as though he had all the time in the world to lounge naked.
“You’re incorrigible.” Her breathy words escaped like a caress as her hungry eyes devoured him. He felt them wrap around him in a seductive touch, leaving no doubt that she did not want him to cover himself.
“And yet you still stand here.” He looked up at her as he took himself in hand. “Taking your fill of me.”
She flushed and shifted on her feet.
It was encouraging. She had not fled in scandalized affront. She remained. She was still that lass—the one from the night before who had boldly mounted him and took her hungry pleasure. Of course, she still believed herself drugged.
Her gaze roamed him freely and he could not help his body’s reaction. His cock hardened. He glanced down at his member, noting its deepening color, his prick’s flushed head, swollen and ready.
“Curious, is it not?” he asked.
“What?” She moistened her lips.
“How we’re made to fit each other. Man and woman. Aren’t you a little curious at what it would be like with a man inside you?”
Her nostrils flared as he fully circled his prick and gave it a slow pump.
Her eyes never left him. She watched his hand wrapped around his cock. “I’ll have that experience soon enough. I don’t need you for that,” she blurted defiantly even as her lips parted in unabashed fascination.
His grip tightened on his cock and he felt himself scowling. “With that Pembroke fellow?”
He couldn’t stomach the thought.
She nodded jerkily, and he couldn’t help marveling at her eyes. The blue was so vibrant, shining around her dark pupils.
“Well, you’re not his yet,” he grit out as blood rushed to his cock. “Tell me, Charlie—”
“My name is Charlotte. Not that I’ve granted you permission to use my Christian name. You may call me Miss Langley.”
He ignored the ridiculousness of that request. “Have you ever thought about doing the things to Pembroke you did to me? Fantasized about him?”
Her silence was deafening . . . and telling.
And damn satisfying.
He smiled slowly. Smirked, rather. “Of course not.”
Pembroke was a proper gentleman.
Thankfully, Kingston was not.
She was a vision, inching closer, her lovely eyes drawn to the sight of him, spread-eagle, his cock arrow-straight and swollen with need. It was very nearly enough to make him spill himself in the grass right then.