Chapter 5
Chapter Five
A week later
Delilah rounded a bend in the footpath she’d been ambling along for the last ten or so minutes and was met full in the face with a blast of early-morning sea breeze lifting straight off the ocean.
Her hair, curls unbound, whipped about her as she picked up the scent of salt on the air, the taste of it on her lips.
The rising sun was a red fireball in the east as hazy gray clouds hovered above the far-away horizon, catching and absorbing the light, then sending bright rays streaking across the sky, above and below.
And beyond them, directly above her head, the sky hung gray-blue, even as a placid gray-blue sea mirrored it below; small, uniform waves meeting the soft, mellow sand of the shore with a muted roar in the morning quiet.
She stopped and unlaced her boots before kicking them off entirely.
Her cotton stockings quickly followed. She wanted to feel the night-cool sand between her toes.
Today was the Albion Players’ last day on the coast before they cut inland.
Everyone had the day on their own, and instead of performing tonight, the company would light a bonfire on the beach.
It felt a bit pagan to Delilah, and she couldn’t wait.
She stuffed her stockings into her boots and tied the laces together, before slinging them over her shoulder.
She cut left, venturing off the path and striking out across the sand dunes toward the shore.
She was half sliding down one, hands out, trying to keep her balance when she noticed a figure in the water.
Not a sea animal, but an animal of the human variety, out from the shore about twenty yards, one arm after the other slicing through the water in smooth rhythm, swimming like he had somewhere to go.
He.
Yes, definitely a he, judging by the broad expanse of his back and shoulders, the bulk and cut of muscles on his arms, his dark blond hair just grazing his shoulders…
A ping of recognition spiked through her.
This wasn’t any he—but the he she’d been avoiding this last week.
Ravensworth.
Swimming at dawn.
Her eyes narrowed on one particular point in the water.
His taut, white, naked arse.
Ravensworth wasn’t simply swimming in the ocean at dawn.
He was swimming in the ocean at dawn, naked.
Her feet started moving—not away, but toward.
She should bolt in the opposite direction. But when had she ever resisted the call of a provocation? To do so now went against her very nature, and this summer adventure was about being entirely herself and following her interests and passions.
And the Duke of Ravensworth? How did he fit into the context of her interests and passions?
He didn’t, of course. Still, it was a question better left unexamined after…oh, after what happened a week ago.
Something else better left unexamined.
Except her body remembered—too well.
Last night, she’d placed her own hand there, as her body had been craving, the ache having become too much. But it wasn’t the same, and instead of pleasure, she’d only delivered herself disappointment.
But Ravensworth—the man she’d spent the last three years despising…the man whose naked arse held the entirety of her attention—he knew how to deliver.
He’d awakened her.
And though she shouldn’t, she wanted more.
At the bottom of the dune, she spotted a dark mass and slid the rest of the way toward it. A pile of clothes, folded neatly. They could belong to none other than Ravensworth.
Impulsively, she lowered to a seat squarely atop the neat pile and stared out to sea, luxuriating in the feel of sand sliding between her toes, becoming mesmerized by the small waves lapping the shore, the rhythmic slice of his arms through water that couldn’t be much warmer than this side of frigid.
She felt the sudden impulse to strip off all her clothes and join him, but quickly decided it was an impulse better left ignored.
The truth was she wasn’t as impulsive as people thought. She took careful consideration before acting. But it was simply her inclinations tended toward the unconventional, which made them easy for others to dismiss as wild and flighty.
But she was neither of those things. She simply wanted a life fashioned and forged by her own hand and talents.
And this summer she’d found it.
She couldn’t help wondering if now that she’d gotten a taste for freedom, she could leave it behind in a month.
After a good long while, Ravensworth switched direction and cut toward the shore…swimming directly toward her.
Every muscle in her body tensed with sudden anticipation. She was sitting on his clothes…effectively holding them hostage. That would tweak his nose. It wasn’t too late to jump to her feet and leg it down the trail back to her caravan.
Yet she remained silent and still.
“Can you stay away from me?”
He’d put the question to her a week ago.
And she had stayed away.
Until now.
Until she’d sat on his clothes, watching his naked form slice through the water.
Not staying away.
The fact was she wanted to tweak him. She wanted to test him. She wanted to see him react to her provocation.
His head lifted to scan the shore, and her heart began racketing about her chest. Then his golden gaze found her and his forward momentum came to a sudden halt. It was the first time she’d met his eyes in days—since…
Since a week ago was a fact established.
The why of it, too.
No need to cover that ground yet again.
“What precisely are you doing, Lilah?” he called out, treading water.
Lilah. She hadn’t given him leave to call her by that name. But he didn’t need it—not when he was simply Seb.
“Enjoying the glory of the sunrise,” she responded, unable to control a grin. “Seb.”
The muscles of his neck and shoulders glistened with seawater and morning sun.
She couldn’t help noticing.
“Seated atop my clothes?” he asked, the question not a question at all.
She shrugged. This was fun. “They’re truly perfectly placed.”
“I’ll be needing them presently.”
Truly, she shouldn’t smirk. “When I’m ready.”
Who didn’t enjoy exerting a little power over a duke?
His eyebrows lifted, and even across this distance she caught a light enter his golden eyes—challenge.
An unhurried smile slid across his mouth, and a long, slow shiver purled up her spine. She’d only thought to taunt him, but it was occurring to her that she’d crossed an invisible line and had thrown down the gauntlet.
And he’d accepted.
He began swimming forward.
Toward shore.
Toward her.
She watched, mouth dry. She simply couldn’t retreat from her position. But how could she possibly hold it?
She noted the instant his feet caught purchase on the bottom. Her stomach tightened as he began to emerge from the sea; one slow, relentless step after another, all golden and glistening like the sort of god people once worshipped.
And Delilah could see why.
The muscles of his shoulders, chest, and ridged stomach created channels for water to stream, leading the eye like gravity, down…down…down…
“You wouldn’t dare,” she called out, futilely. It was obvious that he was, indeed, daring.
How was it that his smile became even more arrogant?
The shiver spread and rippled through her.
“Watch me.”
Watch him?
How could she look away?
“Of course,” he continued, “you won’t.”
“Why would I?” she asked in a disinterested show of bravado. Hopefully, he hadn’t detected the slight wobble in her voice.
He shook his head chidingly. “That’s not the question. Would you dare not look away?”
Delilah’s mouth snapped shut to prevent it gaping open. There were no words as he moved through the water, and she stared, transfixed, at the Adonis emerging from the sea.
Or would that be Poseidon?
Oh, what did it matter?
What did anything else possibly matter?
The water reached his waistline. Heat flushed across her skin. She should lift her gaze and keep it fixed above his neck—simply to prove to him that she could.
And herself.
Really, she should fix her gaze upon any point other than where it insisted on landing.
Another step. A fuzzy mound of golden hair revealed. Her heart beat hard and fast against her ribs, and she had the strangest sensation of floating outside her body. Yet another step…
And there he was in his full morning glory. His thick thighs…his—oh—manhood. So visceral and masculine.
Ravensworth.
Before her was no duke of girlish fantasy, but a flesh and blood man.
She’d spent so many years despising Ravensworth that he’d become like a villain in an uninspired play—flat and possessed of a single dimension. But these last few weeks—here…now—she was able to see him fully, as the man he was.
The sand continued to shift beneath her feet—and not simply of the literal variety.
Ravensworth wasn’t simply daring her to look at his naked form.
He was daring her to look upon him fully—as the man he was.
Which would require her to see him—all of him.
A realization that had caught her sideways a week ago—and again now.
Was she ready to see him in that way?
The feeling snaking through her body, making her thighs squeeze together, suggested she was.
Waves lapping at his ankles, he stepped from the shoreline and strode across the sand.
He ran a hand through his hair, loosing droplets of sea water, slicking his hair back, though one lock insisted on flopping across his forehead.
He radiated the confidence of a duke—of a man aware of his supreme attractiveness.
It should’ve been off-putting.
It wasn’t.
The arrogant smile on his mouth…
That should’ve been off-putting, too.
It, too, wasn’t.
His dukely arrogance only enhanced his devastating good looks.
As he neared her, she knew she should shoot to her feet and make for the dunes. Yet her body refused to obey. She glanced away. It was like staring at the sun. One had to avert one’s gaze at some point, or risk having brilliant light imprint itself permanently onto one’s eyes.
She’d been risking precisely that with Ravensworth just now.