Five
S ome fools maintained that a sauna couldn’t possibly be refreshing in a hot climate. They’d obviously never felt the pleasure of sweating out the grit of travel and then dumping a cold bucket of water over their heads.
Adam strode from the washroom feeling like a million bucks.
The warm night air kissed his skin as he emerged. It would’ve felt even better if he’d kept his shirt off—but somehow he doubted that Lady Sabita and Kumari Padma shared his somewhat lackadaisical policies when it came to proper dress.
He’d restored the shirt along with his trousers, though both clung to his still-damp skin. His feet remained bare as he stepped out into the soft light of the courtyard.
The fountain splashed gently to his right, the sound mingling with the quiet rustle of breeze-tossed palms and ferns. A few scattered oil lamps had been left out to illuminate the pathways.
Adam’s attention was snagged by the sound of voices from above him.
“Don’t stay up too late,” Constance warned.
His gaze rose to one of the balconies that framed the courtyard, where he saw Constance give Ellie a hug.
“I won’t,” Ellie promised her.
Constance moved away, and Ellie remained behind. She gazed out over the fountain and the palms as though not really seeing any of it. The space between her eyebrows was creased with little furrowed lines—the I’m thinking too much look that Adam was coming to recognize.
Without quite realizing he was doing it, he moved toward her, stepping into the lamplight on the path that ran beneath her perch.
He wanted to nudge those worry lines out of her forehead. The scene suggested a perfect way for him to do it.
“‘But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?’” he called up.
Ellie’s eyes dropped to where he stood and widened with warm recognition, even as her mouth twisted skeptically. “Shakespeare? Really?”
Adam flashed her a grin. The next lines were ready on his lips—and he knew exactly how they would be received. “‘Wert thou as far as that vast shore washed with the farthest sea, I would adventure for such merchandise.’”
“ Merchandise ?” Ellie echoed indignantly.
He pressed a hand to his chest. “‘O speak again, bright angel.’”
“Perhaps I shall speak on the insidious impact of referring to women poetically as pieces of physical property,” Ellie offered. “How have you the entire balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet memorized? I didn’t take you for a thespian.”
Adam shrugged. “It’s the iambic. Sticks in your brain.”
A taut silence fell, accented by the soft rush of the fountain and the distant sound of someone laughing.
Ellie’s gaze dropped, tracing the line of water he could feel trickling from his hair down his neck. It slipped to the open buttons at the top of his shirt, where his skin was still damp from the sauna.
Her gaze locked there with a look that set Adam’s nerves tingling.
She swallowed tightly. “Why are you wet?”
Adam’s own attention was a little less focused than it ought to be. He kept studying the tendrils of hair that had come loose from her practical bun, thinking how much nicer they’d look if he just pulled all those pins out and then ran his hands through the thick chestnut waves of it.
“Sauna,” Adam replied a little densely.
Ellie was still staring at him like he was a tall glass of lemonade on a hot day. “There’s a sauna?” she pressed a little numbly.
“Had to try it after dealing with The Mustache,” Adam replied with somewhat less than his own usual eloquence. He was thinking of how after he’d taken her hair down, it’d be awful nice to give it a gentle pull to guide her head back and then kiss his way down her throat to her—
“The Mustache?” Ellie echoed with a confused frown.
“Frosty-Mothballs,” Adam rambled back, trying to push the image of tugging aside the open collar of her blouse from his brain. “Fusty-Mouseberry. Whatever the hell his name was. He thought I had designs on your friend. Wanted me to know his grandad’s a duke.”
Ellie stiffened with indignation. “As though that gives him the right to lay claim to a woman like a horse at an auctioneer?”
The sight of her righteous anger made Adam feel pleasantly warm. He liked it when Ellie got righteously angry. “I was close to tossing him into a fountain over it, only I didn’t want to get us kicked out of the house.”
Ellie’s look heated with quiet approval. “Pity,” she noted as she gazed down at him through the soft gold of the lamplight.
The silence returned, and their eyes locked. The night air gained a subtle electricity that danced across Adam’s skin as he looked up at her, his mind racing with everything they might get up to in the twilight intimacy of the silent courtyard.
No , he told himself firmly as he fought for control. He couldn’t kiss Ellie senseless on Constance’s family’s balcony. He needed to stop acting like an impulsive idiot and take control.
“Could I come up there for a second? Just to talk,” he added quickly.
Ellie’s eyes flashed with surprise and confusion, but she nodded.
Adam crossed over to the entryway beneath her perch and mounted the cool, dark stairs. He stepped out onto the balcony—and there she was, waiting for him. Still looking a little travel-rumpled with those tendrils of hair curling over her shoulders, lips practically begging for just the right kind of bite.
Talk , he told his brain firmly.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
Ellie frowned, clearly taken off guard. “For what?”
“For the… liberties I’ve taken with your…” Adam waved an awkward hand over Ellie’s softly curved form. “…Person. Since we started traveling together.”
“Liberties?” Ellie stared at him as though struggling to keep up with the turn in the conversation.
“You know,” Adam elaborated. “In the cenote. And the hall on the boat. And that bit in your stateroom with the table and…”
“Oh!” Ellie exclaimed, finally catching on. Her cheeks flushed—which did not help Adam’s concentration. “But why are you apologizing for that? I was hardly an unwilling participant.”
“Maybe that’s true,” Adam returned stubbornly. “But it’s still not right. I was being… irresponsible . And selfish. I’ve just been blundering along without thinking of the consequences.”
Ellie seemed surprised by the sharp change in his tone. “I see,” she said carefully.
“I wanted to let you know that it’s not going to happen again,” Adam declared firmly. “I’m going to stop acting like a cad and give you whatever time you need to figure things out.”
Ellie went still. “Figure things out?” she echoed quietly. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Adam shifted uncomfortably where he stood on the paving stones. Something about her tone didn’t sound right, but not in a way he could pin down.
This was the responsible thing to do, he reminded himself firmly. He owed it to her.
“You know,” he explained awkwardly. “Just… where you want all this to go.”
Ellie hugged her arms over her chest. “Where I want this to go?” she repeated tightly. “Is that… what this is about? Have you just been waiting for me to come to my senses and be reasonable about things?”
“Huh?” Adam replied, thrown.
Ellie’s tone sharpened, hurt flashing behind her hazel eyes. “Because it’s reasonable, of course, to just smile and go along with an institution that oppresses an entire gender—that has caused untold harm to countless women for centuries …”
Her tone sparked a quick flare of panic. This wasn’t how Adam had expected the conversation to go. He was trying to do the right thing. Why was she getting mad at him for it?
And then his brain caught up with his gut as certain words from her tirade cut through the fog of his fear.
Institution. Harm. Centuries.
“Wait a minute,” Adam cut in quickly. “Are you talking about marriage?”
Ellie frowned at him. “Yes. Aren’t you? Isn’t that what you were asking? When I was going to change my mind?”
“No!” Adam burst out in return. “I don’t want you to change your mind about marriage!”
“You don’t?” Ellie echoed, clearly confused.
“I like your mind!” Adam pushed back forcefully. “I like that you don’t just pretend everything’s okay when it’s not! That takes a hell of a lot of courage and integrity. Why would I want to change that about you?”
“But if that doesn’t change, we’re never going to get married!” Ellie threw up her hands.
“So?” Adam retorted.
She stilled again, her eyes going wide and vulnerable. “Is that not…? I mean, I suppose I had just assumed that you…”
Her voice trailed off, and Adam could hear the hurt in it. It cut at him like a knife.
He was screwing this up again—fumbling into a disaster like someone who couldn’t get out of his own goddamned way. He moved closer to her on instinct as though physical proximity could make up for the fact that he couldn’t seem to get his foot out of his mouth.
“No!” he insisted, and then flinched. “I mean—yes! But…”
“Because you mentioned something about seeing it as a necessity back in British Honduras,” Ellie hurried on tightly. “And that was before we had engaged in certain…”
“I did!” Adam confirmed quickly. “And I would still—absolutely!—if that was what you—”
Ellie stiffened. “I told you before, I have no interest in being someone’s obligation.”
“You’re not my obligation!” Adam burst out.
“Then what am I, exactly?” Ellie pressed, her voice uneven.
This was all going wrong. The words weren’t doing what Adam needed them to do. They twisted back on him like snakes, striking where he meant them to help.
He was screwing it up—again. Just like he’d done so many times before.
“You’re…” he started, his voice strangled as he fought for a way to salvage this—to make her understand. “I…”
Her shoulders drew in on themselves as her eyes swam with hurt. “I see,” she said softly.
Adam felt a crack as though a piece of something vital inside of him threatened to break loose and fall away. Fear roared up in response, along with a sudden rush of determination.
“No, you don’t, dammit,” he shot back—and grabbed her.
He tugged her to his body until he could feel every firm, shapely line of her pressed against his skin. Then he kissed her.
The embrace was fierce—claiming, devouring. She stilled for only a heartbeat with surprise before her hands rose to his hair, tangling in the wet locks of it as she pushed up on her toes to meet him.
She tasted like black tea and honey. Smelled of rustling old paper in the silence of a library, woven through with something wilder—ancient forests and the promise of lightening before a storm.
Adam dropped his hands to her thighs, gripping them through the layers of practical twill. He lifted, then pivoted to press her up against the wall.
Ellie let out a gasp at the impact, her head tilting back. He took it as an invitation to set his mouth to her throat, gliding up to catch her sensitive earlobe between his teeth.
She groaned, clutching him more tightly between her thighs. Somehow his shirt had come loose from his belt, and Ellie’s hands were inside of it, gliding up the muscular ridges of his flanks.
Adam cursed into her mouth as his desire rose, sweeping in like a tide—fierce, implacable, insatiable. He wanted her closer. He wanted her bare. His hands slid beneath the fabric of her skirt, and the notions of what he was going to do with her burst through his mind like a fireworks display on the Fourth of July.
“You’ll make it up to me, will you?” Lady Sabita chirped brightly from below.
Adam froze. He lifted his head from the opened front of Ellie’s blouse to see Constance’s mother dart playfully out of one of the doorways to the courtyard, turning back to smile at her husband.
Reality crashed in like a falling boulder. Ellie’s hair was undone, pins scattered on the paving stones. Her shirt was open to expose the pale curves at the top of her practical corset. Adam’s hands gripped the round curve of her rear beneath her skirt, holding her flush to the unmistakable evidence of his arousal.
Lady Sabita’s giggle drifted up to their shadowy perch.
“Maybe I should be late more often,” Sir Robert quipped playfully, giving a darting chase to his wife around the fountain.
Adam looked down into Ellie’s eyes. Her pupils were dilated to black, her cheeks flushed. Lips red and bitten.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed out desperately.
She blinked back at him, bewildered and pleasure-fogged. “You’re sorry?”
He drew his hands away, letting her legs slip back down to the ground—where they belonged, he reminded himself furiously. He stepped back—one idiot stumble, just far enough to put a breath of space between them.
The distance only let him see that much more clearly how her chest heaved with her wild breath, her clothes in obvious disarray as her hair tumbled down over her shoulders.
He could knot his fingers in it, tug it back as she gasped…
“I have to go,” he blurted out in a harsh whisper.
As Ellie gaped at him, he whirled on his heel and ran away.