Chapter 29 #2
Her feet lifted from the lake bed. The water bore their weight, buoyant and warm, and she wrapped her arms around his neck to steady herself as Hugo’s arms encircled her waist, drawing her against him until there was no space left between them, only warm skin, cool lake water, and the hard, steady beat of his heart beneath her hands.
Every sensible thought she possessed, scattered.
The sky, the trees, the fading burn of sunset all blurred at the edges until there was only his mouth on hers, the strength of his shoulders under her fingers, and the heat gathering between them.
She kissed him back with a boldness that startled her. Lily clutched at him as though he were the only solid thing in the world.
A deep sound left him, more felt than heard, and his hands tightened briefly at her waist. Then his mouth broke from hers and moved to her throat, slow and searching, lingering where her pulse fluttered wildly beneath his lips.
“Hugo.” Her voice barely rose above the hush of the water.
“Mm.” He kissed the curve beneath her ear, then lower, to the slope of her shoulder.
“Someone could see.”
His breath warmed her damp skin. “No one can see us.” His mouth brushed her again, and she felt the faint curve of his smile. “We are half a mile from the house, and I own every inch of land between here and the horizon.”
“That is not as reassuring as you think it is.”
“It should be.” His hands moved beneath the water, slow enough to make her shiver. “It means you are safe.”
The word slipped through her, undoing some final thread of hesitation.
Safe. Hidden.
Wanted.
He kissed her again, deeper this time, and she rose against him instinctively, her legs brushing his beneath the surface. The shift brought her closer, close enough to feel the full force of his restraint, the need he was trying, not entirely successfully, to master.
Lily’s breath caught.
Hugo stilled for a heartbeat, his forehead resting against hers. “Careful,” he murmured, his voice rougher now.
She might have laughed if she had any breath left. “You are the one touching me.”
“And you are the one making it very difficult to remember my patience.”
The confession sent a reckless thrill through her.
She slid her hands from his shoulders to the back of his neck, drawing him down again, and his control frayed beneath her mouth.
His kiss turned hungry, then tender, then hungry again, as if he could not decide whether to savor her or surrender entirely.
His hand skimmed along her side beneath the water, tracing the curve of her waist, then the delicate line of her ribs.
Each touch was slow and deliberate, and Lily felt herself mapped by his fingers, each new point of contact sending a ripple of heat through her body that had nothing to do with the temperature of the lake.
She tipped her head back, and he took the invitation, his lips traveling down the column of her throat to the hollow at its base. The water lapped softly around them, covering and revealing in shimmering fragments. Lily had never felt so exposed, nor so adored.
When his fingers drifted higher, her breath left her in a broken sigh.
Hugo lifted his head, his gaze dark and intent. “Lily.”
There was a question in the way he said her name. A warning, perhaps. A plea for sense.
She answered by pressing her mouth to his shoulder, tasting lake water and sun-warmed skin. He drew in a sharp breath when she kissed him there, then again when she let her teeth graze him with more daring than she knew she possessed.
“Sweet heaven,” he muttered, and the words, rough and helpless, made heat bloom through her.
His hands found her waist again, but this time he did not pull her closer. He held her still, as if anchoring them both. As if the slightest movement might ruin him.
Lily smiled against his skin. “Not so patient after all?”
His laugh was low and strained. “Do not test me.”
“Or what?”
His answer was not words. He kissed her until the teasing vanished from her mind, until she was clinging to him again, breathless and trembling. At that moment, the entire world was reduced to his mouth and his hands and the ache of wanting more.
Then he eased her back, just enough to look at her.
The water rippled between them, silvered by the last light of day. Hugo’s gaze moved over her face, her damp hair, the flush she could feel warming her cheeks.
There was nothing hurried in the way he looked at her now. Nothing careless. The hunger was there, unmistakable, but so was something deeper, something that made her chest tighten.
“You are so, so beautiful,” he said under his breath.
The softness of it undid her more than his kisses had.
Lily reached for him, but he caught her hand and pressed his lips to her palm. Then his mouth brushed the inside of her wrist, slow and intimate, while his other hand slipped beneath the water again.
Her breath faltered.
His touch traveled down her side, over her hip, then lower with devastating patience. Lily’s fingers curled against his shoulder as he drew her closer, his mouth returning to hers in a kiss that swallowed the small sound she could not hold back.
The lake moved around them in dark, gentle waves as his hand slid between her thighs. His fingers slid inside of her, and his thumb found the center of her pleasure that pulsed at his touch.
Lily bit her lip and looked up at him from under her damp lashes.
Without thought as to whether or not it was wise, she reached down and grabbed the length of him.
She bit back a grin when his eyes widened, then darkened with desire.
Slowly, she slid her hand down around the thick girth before moving ever so teasingly upward.
“You are a minx,” Hugo said, his voice husky and broken.
His touch found a slow, devastating rhythm, and Lily moved with him, helplessly drawn into the same tide. The water hid them, but it could not soften the heat of it, the intimate pull and retreat, the aching sweetness that built with every passing breath.
Her forehead fell against his as the world slipped loose around her. There was only Hugo. The low rasp of his breathing. The strong arm holding her steady. The brush of his mouth against her temple, her cheek, the corner of her lips.
“Lily,” he whispered, and her name sounded like a vow.
The tenderness in it nearly unraveled her.
She answered with a broken little sound and pressed closer, matching him with shy, instinctive movements that made his restraint tremble beneath her hands.
He kissed her again, but this time there was nothing controlled about it.
The kiss was deep and consuming, full of everything he had been holding back, and she felt the answering hunger in herself rise to meet it.
The pleasure gathered slowly at first, a golden warmth low in her body. Then it grew brighter, sharper, and spread through her limbs until she could scarcely tell where the lake ended, and Hugo began. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. Her breath came in soft, uneven gasps against his mouth.
“Hugo, I—”
“I know.” His voice was rough, almost unsteady. “Let go for me. Do it for me.”
Those words unraveled something inside her.
She tipped her head back and closed her eyes.
Her lips parted, and the evening air cooled her flushed skin while the water lapped warm against them both.
His fingers moved with patient, devastating purpose, and the pleasure built in slow, tightening waves, each one cresting higher than the last. She gripped his shoulders.
Her breath came in sharp, broken pulls. And then the release swept through her, sudden and consuming, and she buried her face against his neck and held on as her body trembled and the last rim of sun slipped behind the trees and the lake settled into gold around them.
Hugo gathered her close, his mouth at her throat, his own breath ragged now.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
The lake rocked gently around them, cooling what the sunset had left burning. Lily rested against him, boneless and breathless, her cheek pressed to his shoulder while his arms held her as if he had no intention of ever letting go.
At last, Hugo kissed the damp hair at her temple.
“You are going to be the death of me,” he murmured.
A soft laugh escaped her, still shaky at the edges. “If this is how I kill you, I suspect you will die happy.”
“Exceedingly happy.” His arms tightened around her. “And entirely at your mercy, which is a position I am not accustomed to and find deeply unsettling.”
Afterward, they dressed on the bank with their backs to each other, though the modesty felt absurd given what had just transpired.
Hugo shrugged on his shirt and turned to find Lily struggling with the buttons at the back of her gown.
He crossed to her and fastened them without being asked, his fingers moving with a tenderness that contradicted the wicked things those same fingers had done minutes before.
He draped his coat over her shoulders. The fabric was warm and smelled of sandalwood, and she pulled it around herself and breathed him in.
They walked back to the house as the sun dropped behind the tree line. Their shoulders brushed with each step. Neither of them spoke.
At the garden entrance, Hugo held the door for her. She paused on the threshold and looked up at him. The last of the daylight caught the amber in his eyes.
“Thank you,” she said. “For the swim.”
“Thank you for jumping in.”
She held his gaze for a beat. Then she walked inside, and his coat stayed on her shoulders all the way up the staircase to her chambers. She did not take it off until Nell arrived to help her dress for dinner.
She hung it on the back of her chair, where she could see it from the bed.