Chapter Sixteen
Yes. What a delicious, permissive, freeing word that was!
Yes, carry me from the water. Yes, lay me down in the sand.
Yes, make love to me until I don’t know where the fantasy ends and reality starts.
The litany of yeses coursed through her as Alistair lifted her from the water and waded ashore, their mouths ravaging one another in their eagerness, desire making them rough and ravenous.
Now that the decision had been made, they were both impatient—too impatient to get all the way back to the pile of clothes on the beach, falling to the ground instead just at the shoreline where water met sand; too impatient to gently remove the tangle that had become the wet chemise sticking to her body when ripping was far more expedient.
Her own hands, clumsy in their haste, shoved at the waistband of Alistair’s small clothes, pushed the wet garment past his lean hips.
‘We are beasts,’ Alistair growled playfully, hungrily, his mouth at her neck, his hips hard against hers, his teeth seizing a love bite at her throat.
‘Beasts after a long winter.’ She moved against him, opening her thighs, enjoying the abandonment that came with rough play.
‘Do make haste,’ she encouraged. ‘I think I might combust from anticipation.’ From the sound of his breathing, she thought he might, too.
What a waste that would be. Had she ever wanted anything more than she wanted Alistair inside her at this very moment?
She would simply die if she could not have him.
He was the air to her lungs, the antidote to what ailed her, and she could go no longer without him.
Later, there would be lingering lovemaking, slow, leisurely explorations of their bodies, but now there was time only for consummation: consuming, devouring and being consumed, being devoured in turn.
Ismay gave a long, shuddering cry of primal pleasure as he came into her, and then another and another.
Why not cry out? There was no one to hear.
There was only them, and this was her celebration, her cry of triumph, of freedom, of claiming.
She wrapped her legs about his hips. He might be on top, but this was her conquest as much as it was his.
‘Harder, Alistair, do not hold back.’ Alistair set a rigorous pace, and her hips lifted to meet his, to meet him in creating the rhythm, their rhythm, his groans joining her gasps, his shudders joining her sighs.
So much communicated, so few words needed.
She dug her fingernails into the muscles of his back, she tightened the grip of her thighs as if she could hold him, hold these moments forever even as her body knew such perfection was meant to be ephemeral only.
Pleasure pulsed and beckoned, a veritable Pandora’s box.
If she opened it, claimed it, that pleasure would burst, slide away within moments.
If she did not claim it, it would linger on a tempting horizon, never achieved.
But it was not her decision. Pleasure decided for her, pushing her towards that horizon with or without her consent like a ship tossed by the sea, mast and sails useless against the onslaught of the storm.
She felt Alistair’s body gather, the muscles of his back tighten beneath her hands.
She looked up into his face, into his hard-set jaw, teeth gritted from desire-driven effort, blond hair darkened by water falling forward in his face, blue eyes lit like flames, her conquering Saxon, her fierce warrior, and she his willing captive.
He gave a final thrust, and they were swept into pleasure’s whirlpool together, crying, groaning, shouting their release as it crashed over them, rewarding their impatient hunger.
It was not a matter of anything ever feeling this good, Ismay thought as she drifted in the aftermath.
This was not merely good. It was a matter of ever feeling anything like this at all.
Or, came the niggling fear on the edge of her pleasure, ever feeling anything like this ever again.
She would not think of that now. She would think only of how it felt to lie in Alistair’s arms, to feel the heat of the sand at her back, the water at her toes, the comfort of his body against hers, and know that she’d been a part of his pleasure as much as he’d been a part of hers.
Those were no small thoughts, given where all of this had begun weeks ago, and to think now they’d become lovers…
It was almost too improbable to believe, but the proof was lying beside her, gloriously naked in the sand, and the evidence of their loving echoed in a slow, warm thrum throughout her body.
‘How do you like Eden, Alistair?’ she murmured softly, drawing a light line down his torso with her fingertip.
His hand made an echoing caress down the length of her arm.
‘It has exceeded expectations.’ His voice was still infused with a postcoital rasp, low and seductive.
‘You were right, Ismay. We were about to erupt like your mountain.’ And then they had.
‘I haven’t words for it. Stunning, earth-shattering?
They hardly seem enough. Already, I want to do it again, to have that feeling one more time.
At least in my mind. My body needs more time.
What a heady addiction we’ve created, Iz.
’ He sat up slowly, drawing her up with him, his arm about her. ‘How long can we stay?’
‘The last ferry leaves at six.’ Already, she was doing the math in her head. Five glorious hours remained to them. It seemed an eternity. Perhaps it would be enough, these moments out of time, in a sheltered cove they had all to themselves.
‘Shall we swim and clean off the sand?’ Alistair pulled her to her feet, then drew her in for a hard kiss, skin to skin, mouth to mouth.
‘We’ll just get sand on ourselves again,’ she teased.
‘Then, we’ll swim again.’ She felt Alistair smile against her lips. ‘We have all we need. A bath, a beach, an untapped picnic basket and each other. A veritable Eden, indeed.’ He nipped at her lower lip, his hands bracketing her hips. ‘And we’re naked, just like Adam and Eve,’ he teased.
She ought to find that last part worrisome. They were stark naked out in public. But she was not concerned in the least, her mind was too occupied with other things like pleasure to give much thought to propriety. She wound her arms about his neck. ‘Aren’t you worried I’ll steal your clothes?’
Alistair laughed. ‘Perhaps I will steal your clothes this time, quid pro quo.’
‘And make me walk back to the ferry naked?’
His arms went about her waist. ‘I’d make you pay a forfeit.
You could buy them back, kiss by kiss.’ But having her clothes stolen was yet another consideration of least concern.
He could have them, for all she cared. There were other things of more value that he might steal by accident—like her heart—and she might not be able to get it back. He kissed her again, this time softly.
‘I thought we were swimming.’
‘Hmm. So we were.’ But he was loath to let her go, she noted.
He held her hand as they waded into the water.
‘Shall we swim like otters, on our backs, hands clasped?’ He floated on his back, and she joined him, hips bumping hips as they bobbed next to each other, looking up at the sky, hands joined.
‘Otters fall asleep like this,’ Alistair said, ‘so they don’t accidentally get lost or drift away.
It’s called rafting. They keep each other safe. ’
‘Like us?’ It was hard not to see an allegory in that, especially as they floated side by side.
But she only dared voice such a thought as a question.
To assume they were, to make a statement of it, perhaps presumed too much without his permission.
Yes, they had made love on the beach, and yes, she did not doubt it had moved him as thoroughly as he proclaimed.
But Alistair was a man who lived in passions and moments.
He didn’t make a habit of looking ahead.
Such moments existed in and of themselves.
Those moments did not need to connect to any larger pattern for him, and they’d made their promises to each other.
‘Are we each other’s raft, Alistair?’ When they made it safely to the shore of their broken engagement, the raft would no longer be necessary.
He grinned up at the sky, squeezing her hand. ‘I suppose we are, Iz.’
‘Do you still have an otter holt down on the river?’ She had not thought of that for years. It wasn’t far from the swimming hole at Sessile Oaks.
‘We do. Father has worked hard to restore the population, at least in our little part of the world. I’m impressed you remember it.’
‘You’d be surprised at what I remember,’ she joked.
‘What else do you recall? Besides me being a horrid boy.’ She could hear the pout in his voice. ‘Perhaps you remember something nice about me?’
‘You weren’t really horrid, you just ignored me,’ she confessed. ‘I wanted your attention so badly. Nothing I did was ever enough to get it and hold it. I was envious of you and Hayes. How wondrous to have cousins and siblings. You had playmates all year.’
He put his feet down, touching bottom, and drew her to him, his eyes half-laughing, half-serious.
‘You have all my attention now, Iz. Shall I show you?’ She could feel that attention pressing hard against her thigh beneath the water.
His hands cupped her bottom. ‘Wrap your legs about my waist,’ he instructed at her ear.
‘Trust me, I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall. ’
It was too late for that, she thought, as he slid into her, her body answering, rousing, at his presence, at the prospect of pleasure that waited three, four, five, strokes away.
She’d already fallen. When this was over, somehow she’d have to pick herself up and carry on.
She arched her neck, tilted her face to the sky and held on to Alistair, held on to her life raft, with all she was worth. For now the fall was glorious.
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