The Perfect Stranger (22 page)

He took a deep breath. He could do this. Ever since he’d first pulled Mac and Beowulf out of that river, he’d instructed any number of young officers and men in swimming techniques. Soldiers needed to cross rivers without drowning. And wounded men healed quicker after bathing in the sea. Teaching Faith was no different, he told himself. She had the requisite number of arms and legs. She could be taught to use them in the same way. It was just a matter of discipline.

He said curtly, “Very well, let me see you float.”

Obediently she lay back in the water against his hand, and with grim concentration thrust her hips, her belly, and her breasts up. Nick clenched his jaw.

She bobbed, rosy and wet, the translucent shrouding of her wet underclothes only adding to her allure, like a treasure wrapped in tissue, half-revealed and enticing.

“Breathe,” he ordered and tried to remember to breathe himself.

She breathed, and her breasts rose and fell, her nipples hard like little berries. Water pooled and lapped in the vee of her thighs, swirling the dark gold curls beneath the folds of her drawers.

Desire rocked him. Clamping down on it hard, Nick removed his hand from the small of her back. She floated. He moved away from her. She continued to float.

“How long do you think it will take before I can do this by myself?” she asked.

From several yards away, he said, “Open your eyes, Faith.”

Slowly she did, and saw she was floating. She managed another minute, saying, “I can do it. I can float!” She stood and splashed over to him. “I can float, Nicholas!”

He tried not to laugh at her excitement. There was a hard knot in his chest. She was so damn beautiful. So full of the joy of life. It was almost painful to watch her.

It was fitting punishment, he told himself sternly. He should never have offered to teach her to swim.

“Now, show me how to swim,” she commanded.

He really ought to call it quits now. Go in, get dressed, and get back on his journey. Time was passing. He glanced at the shore. There was no sign of his men. Possibly they were seeing to the horses, he told himself. Allowing Nick privacy to frolic with his wife.

“Very well. It is much the same process, only on your front, not your back. I place my hand on your stomach, like so, and you…Yes, that’s right. Now, have you ever watched a frog swimming?”

Frowning in concentration she followed his every instruction.

His hand cupped her belly, supporting her while she “swam” in circles around him, moving her arms and legs like a frog’s. From time to time she would accidentally gulp in a mouthful of seawater and choke and sputter, or he would take his hand away, and she would sink. But always she bobbed back up, laughing and undaunted, water streaming from her lithe young body.

Nick wasn’t sure if he was in purgatory or heaven. All he knew was that teaching soldiers to swim had never been like this.

“Now try it by yourself,” he snapped.

Her face fell a moment, then it cleared. She glanced at the sun. “Oh, yes, sorry. I am delaying everyone, aren’t I? Right, one more try, and then I promise you I will go in.”

Her face a study in grim concentration, she launched herself into the water and swam clumsily and doggedly toward him. The closer she got, the more he moved away until, when she had swum nearly ten yards by herself, he stopped and let her swim up to him.

“I did it!” She panted as she found her feet. “I can swim, Nicholas! I can float and I can swim! Oh thank you, thank you!” and without warning, she surged up out of the water, flung her arms around his neck, and kissed him. She planted kisses on the corner of his mouth, on his chin, on his cheek, exuberantly and without finesse; she simply rained kisses all over his face.

Chapter Nine

To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.

W
ILLIAM
B
LAKE

T
HERE WAS ONLY SO MUCH TEMPTATION A MAN COULD STAND
, Nick decided. He wrapped his arms tight around her and took firm possession of her mouth.

Her lips were salty and cool, but they parted under his, and inside she tasted hot and tangy sweet. The contrast was intoxicating, and Nick could not get enough of her. She was soft, her skin cool and petal-smooth, and she kissed him back with shy eagerness. Her arms twined around his neck, and she returned each kiss with a heartfelt response that rocked him to his soul.

Her hard-berry nipples pressed against his naked chest, and he caressed her with his hands first and then his mouth, tasting salt through the fabric, and woman underneath. She arched against him, her hands clutching and caressing his shoulders, his jaw, locking in his hair, kissing every piece of his skin she could reach.

“Wrap your legs around my middle.”

Her eyes widened, but she obediently lifted herself against him and wrapped him in her thighs. Warm and soft.

“It’s easy to move around in the water, isn’t it?” she said between kisses. “I’m so light. Do you think fish feel like this?”

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I’ve never tried kissing a fish. I prefer you. Fish are cold and clammy. You’re warm and soft and lovely.”

She gave a soft laugh, and he kissed her long and deep, glorying in her female vitality.

He reached for the ties on her drawers, praying she hadn’t knotted them. They were tied in a small, neat bow. Women were amazing creatures. He tugged at one end, and the bow fell away. He loosened the drawstring at her waist and slipped his hands between the drawers and her flesh. Her warm, wet, silken flesh.

She shivered in his arms, and he felt it clear to the bone. He caressed her gently, and she shuddered again. He couldn’t wait. He pushed the drawers down over her bottom, caressing the smooth curves.

“Move your legs.”

“I think they’ve dissolved.” But she unlocked her legs, and he stripped off her drawers. He drew her legs back around him and, finding her entrance warm and waiting, he surged into her.

She clutched him tight to her, making small moans as she took him deeper and deeper. His eyes closed, Nick gave himself over to the urgent demands of his body and the urges of the woman twined around him. Her movements became more frantic and demanding, and he gave her what she wanted, what he needed, until she arched and shuddered in climax, taking Nick with her.

It was some time before he came to an awareness of what he had done. He was half standing, half floating in the water, Faith curled against him, her legs locked around his waist, her arms around his neck, and her face pressed against his jaw. She was limp and panting. He felt simultaneously exhausted and full of life.

But oh, Lord, he’d just made love to his wife
in the sea
! In full sight of anyone passing.

He looked over her shoulder at the beach. There was still no sign of Mac or Stevens—or anyone else. Thank God.

“We should go in now,” he said quietly in her ear.

She stirred. “Yes. I’m a little bit cold.”

Faith still in his arms, Nick started to wade toward shore.

“Stop!” she said, pushing at him. “What do you think you are doing?”

He gave her a blank stare. “Going in. You said you were cold.”

“Yes, but I’m not going in like this!”

“Like what?”

“Without my drawers! You took them off me. Where are they?” She looked at him as if somehow she expected him to have a pocket into which he’d tucked her drawers.

Nick shrugged. “I don’t know. Somewhere out there.” He gestured toward the sea.

“Well, I’m not going in, in front of your men with—with my bottom all bare.”

“You won’t. The men have gone off somewhere.”

“They might come back.”

“Well—I’ll get a blanket so they won’t see.”

“You’ll have to do that anyway. The effect of water on white cotton, remember?”

“Well then?” Nick was baffled. She’d be covered by a blanket anyway, so what possible difference would it make? But logic didn’t seem to apply, or if it did, it was some female logic, because she would not budge.

“Blanket or not, I am not going out onto an open beach without my drawers, Nicholas! I won’t give that McTavish any further excuse for rudeness. And, do you think I’ll be riding a horse with no underwear?” She made a scornful female noise. “You lost my drawers; you find them!”

He gave her a harassed look, but she wriggled out of his arms and said with determination, “They won’t have gone far, the tide is not yet turning, and the sea is very calm.”

Shaking his head, he waded back to where they had been before and cast around, looking for her drawers. It was impossible. He dived and dived, feeling crosser and crosser. It was his fault for letting her seduce him. He should have had more discipline. It was her fault for being so damn prissy about going to shore without her drawers. After his tenth fruitless dive, he glanced back at her.

She stood in the water, her arms folded, watching him anxiously. She looked chilled but determined. He should just pick her up and cart her to shore and forget about the damned drawers. One more dive, he decided, and if that proved unproductive, he would give up and fetch the blanket and damn well drag her out of the water, bare bum or not.

He dived and, just as he was about to surface, caught a glimpse of something pale wafting in the deep. He dived again and with a growl of triumph retrieved the wretched things.

“Here.” He handed her the soggy bundle.

“Oh, I knew you would find them. Thank you, Nicholas!” She beamed at him as if he’d performed some sort of heroic deed, and he felt some of his irritation dissolve. He watched as she tried to put them back on. The fabric clung, and she could not seem to get even one leg into them. There was a great deal of splashing around and muttered feminine cursing. Nick stood it as long as he could.

“Here, let me help.” He took the drawers from her hand. “Now, you float, and while you’re doing that, I’ll get these things back on you.”

She floated, her golden hair swirling around her head, rosy-tipped breasts bobbing in their translucent covering, and her lower half as naked and beautiful as God made it. Nick set his jaw and forced himself to shroud God’s handiwork in one of the most pointless garments ever invented.

She struggled to her feet. “Thank you,” she said softly and gave him a smile that dazzled him. “It was very good of you to do that for me. I know you probably think it was foolish—”

“Not at all,” Nick lied. His throat was thick with desire. For two pins he’d have had those drawers off her again and be buried deep within her. She seemed to sense it. She gazed at him, and it was as if he was drowning in her eyes, bluer than the ocean and just as wide and deep.

“I had a lovely time just now,” she said almost shyly. Her face glowed. “In fact, it’s been one of the loveliest days in…forever.”

He nodded, unable to think of a thing to say. He’d never experienced anything like it.

They stood in the warm water, waist deep, neither one of them apparently able to move. She looked glorious, golden and so damned beautiful he could hardly believe she was real. But she was, real and wholly female, soft, rosy curves wrapped in damp, white tissue. His wife.

Her eyes moved over his body in fascination. “Amazing,” she murmured. She was staring at a certain part of his anatomy. He supposed she wasn’t used to male nakedness. Despite her previous experience, in some ways she was an innocent.

He gave her an indulgent smile. “What is amazing?”

“It floats.”

Nick looked down at himself and indeed, it did float. He stepped hastily out of the water. He needed to fetch a blanket.

“You’re humming.”

Faith jumped. For the last few miles she’d been miles away, Nick could tell from the dreamy look on her face. All unconscious, she’d been humming a pretty little tune to the rhythm of her horse’s hooves as they ambled along.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, turning a guilty countenance toward him. “I didn’t mean to, I promise. It won’t hap—I won’t do it again.”

He frowned. Her anxious expression disturbed him. “I didn’t say I minded. I didn’t recognize the tune.”

If anything, her look of guilt deepened. She mumbled so that he had to lean over to catch what she was saying. “I made it up.”

“It’s a very pretty tune. Do you make up tunes often?”

She gave him a wary look. “Why do you ask?”

He shrugged carelessly. “No particular reason. I just wondered.” Her behavior baffled him. She acted as if he’d caught her in the middle of robbing a church or an old lady instead of commenting on a tune she’d hummed.

An elusive memory teased him. When Stevens had given her that cheap little flute for her wedding present, she’d received it as if it were the most precious thing in the world. What had she said? Something about having a flute when she was young and her grandfather had smashed it. That was it. Her grandfather had forbidden her to play music.

And from the look on her face when he’d startled her out of her reverie, the bastard had backed up his edict with more than just words. She’d flinched automatically, as if half expecting a blow. Fury flared within him. For anyone to dislike music was beyond him, but to hit a sweet young girl, especially one in whom music bubbled as naturally as water bubbled out of a spring…

“You said once that your grandfather smashed your flute. Was it deliberate?”

Her eyes darkened. “Yes. It was a terrible day.”

“I can imagine. It must have been upsetting,” he said carefully.

She hesitated, then darted him a glance that was half-ashamed. “It was worse than that. My twin, Hope, was beaten, and it was my fault.”