Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
He’d flummoxed her—and Liam rather liked that.
A man could be most gratified by flummoxing a woman like Lady Saskia Calthorp.
“I…” She spread her hands wide, an abashed smile curving her mouth. “I know nothing about horses.”
Well, she hadn’t told him anything he hadn’t already worked out.
“Take the carriage horse as an example,” he said.
“When one crosses a Thoroughbred with a hardy breed like the Cleveland Bay, one gets any variety of horse types. A carriage horse, like we see with these two girls. Or a hunter, or a hack. It really depends on several factors—size, temperament, conformation.”
“Enlightening.”
His mouth twitched. “You’re dead bored, aren’t you?”
“I don’t get bored by facts, and you’ve provided me with one hundred percent more facts than I knew about horses five minutes ago.”
He lowered into a courtly bow. “My honor and pleasure, Lady Saskia.”
She giggled, and he realized while he’d heard her laugh, he’d never heard her giggle. The soft, feminine, flirty sound of it winged through him. Still, he had to ask, “How is it you know nothing about horses? Surely, you’ve ridden one?”
Her smile didn’t precisely fall away, but her giggle did.
He felt a trench dig into his brow. “You have been on a horse, correct?”
“Well, if you must know—”
“I must.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, which only made her look winsomely small in his too-large evening coat. “I haven’t.”
The furrow of his brow deepened as his brain attempted to absorb this impossible information. “You can’t ride?”
“I can’t.” Her head tipped to one side. “Well, I’m sure I could, but I haven’t.”
She would see that as an important distinction. She was Harriet LaPlume, after all.
He, however, didn’t.
“You need to know how to ride.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever felt that need.”
“There’s nothing like it, Saskia. It’s fun, and it’s freedom.”
“And with over a thousand pounds of animal below one, a wee bit dangerous.”
“That’s part of the fun.”
She smiled despite herself. “For some.”
How beautiful she was, laughing and talking and just being herself.
Her true self.
Not Harriet LaPlume or Arabella or the fearsome Lady Saskia Calthorp those in the ballroom, like Bridgewater, thought they knew.
Here, with him, she was simply Saskia.
“I suppose we should return to the ball.”
Was that regret flickering behind her spectacles?
And though every cell in his body resisted, he said, “I suppose we should.”
So, they did as they should and began walking. They’d only stepped onto the mist-slick cobbles of the forecourt when she said, “I have a question for you.”
A note in her voice had him tensing. “Aye?”
“Now that you’re Bolton—”
And there went his jaw—clenching.
“—won’t you miss the world of horses and horse racing?”
“No.”
“No?”
He could see he’d shocked her. “Bolton owns a small racing stable,” he explained. “It hasn’t met with much success in years, but there is promising stock that can be worked with.”
She came to a sudden stop, her head angling so she could get a proper look at him. “Bolton,” she said. “You mean you own a racing stable.”
He blinked. “I suppose I do.”
They’d just entered the garden path that would lead them back to the ballroom, waltzing strains of violin and cello reaching out to guide them on their way, when he felt it land—a fat drop of rain on his nose. Saskia blinked, clearly having experienced her own fat drop of rain. “Liam, we need to—”
Her next words were abruptly drowned out when next it wasn’t another solitary drop of rain that landed on their heads, but an entire torrent of the stuff that burst free of the clouds above.
Instinctively, he took her hand, at first thinking to make a dash for the manse.
But it was too far. They would be thoroughly drenched by the time they reached the ballroom.
They were already halfway to drenched as it was.
His frantic gaze happened upon a structure, small and indistinct through the dense wash of rain. “There,” he shouted, pointing, his feet already on the move.
Within seconds, his shoulder had shoved the door open and he’d pulled Saskia inside with him.
“The gardener’s shed,” she said, using the dim light afforded by the structure’s single window to get a look at the cramped room’s contents—a square, sturdy table against the back wall…
a three-legged stool before it…rows of shelving holding every sort of garden implement known to mankind on two adjacent walls.
But those details hardly penetrated Liam’s mind for he found his hand was still clutching hers—and he’d detected a slight tremble. “Saskia, are you still cold?”
Her gaze lifted. Perhaps she was searching for the right words, as she remained silent for several seconds before she said, “I’m not cold in the least, Liam, and I tremble not from anything beyond you and me.”
With such words in her arsenal, it was no wonder Harriet LaPlume sold so many books.
An understanding came to him.
Harriet LaPlume wasn’t the secret inside Saskia.
It was the other way around.
It was Saskia, her true self, that provided the fuel and fire for Harriet LaPlume.
He reached up and brushed a sodden tendril of hair from her cheek.
Then, carefully, he removed her spectacles and set them aside before he angled forward so only a sliver of air separated his mouth from hers.
In the instant before their lips met, he shifted so his mouth grazed her ear.
“The thing is,” he said, his voice a crushed velvet scrape against his throat, “I might be Bolton, but I’m still Liam. ”
She released a breath, a light, wavering exhalation he only caught as it skittered across his neck, lifting the fine hairs of his nape as it went. “Bolton holds no sway over me,” she uttered. “No title…nothing in this world holds a power over me greater than that which you wield.”
And there were those words of hers again, inciting him, provoking flame into life.
They were the words one spoke in the heat of such moments—he knew it; she was learning it—but those words took possibility and turned it into intention.
He tucked a few fingers beneath her chin and slowly traced the pad of his thumb across her plump bottom lip, then he inhaled her next trembly exhalation and replaced his thumb with his mouth.
Soft…sweet…warm…Saskia—the feel of her…the taste of her…
Nothing in this world holds a power over me greater than that which you wield.
And didn’t those words only mirror feelings that stirred inside him?
Feelings he hadn’t the words to express?
She’d expressed those feelings for the both of them.
These long last weeks of restlessness and ache, he’d struggled. All he’d wanted was to do as he was doing now—to kiss her…to pull sighs and moans from her… His hand moved to her waist, steadying her as he walked her backwards until the small of her back met the shed’s only table.
Instinctual, this was.
Madness, too.
Inevitable.
Her arms clasped around his neck, she stretched the full, curvy length of her body against him, deepening the kiss, her tongue no longer that of a shy novice, but tangling slowly with his. She was a quick learner, Saskia. Ardent, too.
This last month, he’d imagined her in all sorts of ways, in all states of dishabille—mostly nude, in truth—and in all sorts of positions—he’d lost count of the number of ways he’d had her in his dreams and how many times he’d taken himself in hand to relieve the ache.
But none of those imaginings came close to the flesh-and-blood reality of her in his arms—her desire… her passion.
For the thing about Saskia was when she was in pursuit of a goal, she achieved it. No one matched her for single focus of the mind. And what she was focused on—the goal she was pursuing—was him. And how he reveled in that—being the object of desire for a woman like her.
His hands tightened around her waist, and he lifted so she perched on the edge of the table.
He gathered her gown and pushed it above her knees, past the frilly garters of silk stockings, exposing creamy thighs.
Higher, he slid coral silk until the meager light from the window was caressing tight red-gold curls.
His manhood throbbed and ached and demanded he bury himself inside her this instant.
This very instant. “These weeks without you have been torture, Saskia. I need you so badly.”
This need, it might transcend the physical, but the transcendent could wait.
For now, the physical would do.
Her gaze held his. “Then, Liam…” Her hand brushed down the front of his shirt, lower, to the waistband of his trousers…
along the hardened length of his shaft. He sucked in a sharp breath.
Knowledge shone in her eyes. Knowledge that she held him in the palm of her hand—both literally and figuratively—as she angled forward, her soft lips just touching his as she said, “Take me. I’m yours. ”
Her nimble fingers flicked open one button, then the next…and the next. His cock sprang free. Trembly fingers feathered along his length, and he thought he might shatter as they explored him. “Saskia,” he groaned.
“You’re so soft.”
“Not what every man wants to hear.”
“And so very hard.”
“Better.”
“And long…”
“Much better.”
“And so very thick.”
“Watch it, or you’ll give me a big head.”
“Oh, I think I’ve already done that.”
A bold finger traced around the crown of his cock, pulling a ragged groan from him, even as a chuckle rumbled through his chest. “You’ve redeemed yourself.”
He grabbed her sweet, lush arse and brought her to the edge of the table, his length brushing along her warm, slick cunny. Slender, feminine fingers wrapped around him, positioning him at the entrance of her sex. Such sweet torture, this was. Exquisite, really.
“Liam,” she said—demanded, “take me now.”
And while in the normal course of events, he might have a mind of his own, in this moment, he didn’t.
In this moment, he was taking orders.