Summer Is for Lovers (24 page)

Chapter 28

S
HE WALKED EAST,
of course.

She could do nothing else, after leaving the circus of her house. Her mother was beside herself with excitement. Penelope seemed pensive. Poor Bess busied herself changing out the water in all the flower arrangements.

And so Caroline had taken the walk she had known she would take from the moment her eyes had opened this morning. If nothing else, it gave her a solid hour to think.

Three proposals. Three opportunities to help her family.

Three chances to get it completely, miserably wrong.

She almost,
almost
turned back around on the threshold of the cove. But the painful memory of David’s parting last night and the wretched, abraded surface of her heart, pushed her forward through the final stretch of scrub grass. She did not know which gentleman’s offer to accept, but she knew she could not consider any of them without taking this next, necessary step.

Her conscience was doing its best to tell her this decision was wrong. Not the wanting of David—she suspected she was going to be caught in that trap no matter her final decision on which offer to accept. She could no more stop loving him than stop the tide from coming in. But wanting the man and acting on her desires were two different things.

Was it a sin to seek physical passion from one man when she had a bona fide offer of marriage from another? If it was, she was about to be a sinner three times over.

He was already in the water when she arrived, a fact Caroline found vexing. He had coaxed a promise from her that she would not swim here alone on account of the danger, and yet here he was, sluicing through the waves. He was swimming away from her, facing the eastern edge of the inlet, and Caroline took advantage of his removed concentration to study him.

Although she tended to have a critical eye when it came to swimming technique, she could find little fault with his movements today. He had improved since their instruction began, and her gaze moved appreciatively from the motion of his arms to the spray of water his feet kicked up. She noted a few things they could work on. His hand tended to cup on the downward arc, which, when corrected, would lessen the drag. And his legs tended to kick too wide apart, when a narrow, scissorlike kick worked better for propulsion.

Caroline stepped behind the rock and set herself to the task of removing her dress, but she hesitated at the point of putting on the altered navy gown. Her fingers skimmed the lower edge of her shift, pausing at the scalloped lace edge. Yesterday’s experience in self-exploration had been . . . frustrating. Incomplete.

Maddening.

Why had he chosen that particular lesson? Truth be told, David had been far more physically engaged during the interlude in the bathing machine. And to her mind, the main difference between those two experiences had been the amount of clothing involved. Warmth pooled in her abdomen, heat that had nothing to do with the sun or the blinding light from the cliff walls. She recalled the appreciative gleam in his eye when he had kissed her under moonlight, remembered the heady feel of his hand on her bare breast a mere two days ago.

But this was not a moonlit night, nor a dimly lit bathhouse, with shadows to hide her flaws. The midday sun hung overhead, bright and glaring and inescapable. Her doubts tried to dissuade her, jeering at her as loud as any crowd, but she refused to be guided by those old fears.

She did not want to release David from his promise, no matter their argument last evening, no matter the shocking details of his confession. He would not be outside the bounds of logic—or decency—if he refused to honor their arrangement today.

But to Caroline’s mind, these lessons had been negotiated and executed primarily on the basis of her curiosity, and that had not abated in the slightest. If anything, faced with the mind-rattling choice of the three men vying for her hand, her desire to seize this moment with David had swollen to a fearsome size. And if she gave him the choice to bow out now, she would not merely be denying her own chance at pleasure. She would be giving up on him.

She wanted to prove to him that he was more than his history. She wanted to lie down on the rock beside him, run her fingers through his hair, and extract the hurt he carried inside him. And if she were truthful, she wanted him to understand what he was forcing her to offer another, so that he might feel a fraction of the envy that she felt when she thought about Elizabeth Ramsey.

The navy serge gown dropped to the rocky shore, forgotten. She had two days left.

And she refused to spend them as frustrated as he had left her yesterday.

D
AVID HAD BEEN
swimming for the better part of an hour, pushing his body, testing his strength. He had slept poorly, tossing and turning and waking in sweat-soaked sheets, plagued not by nightmares of the girl he had lost, as he had expected, but by feverish dreams of the girl he could not permit himself to have. He had come to the cove early, determined to drive all carnal thoughts of Caroline out of his head the only way he knew how: with a good, punishing dose of exercise. It had nearly worked too. He was exhausted, struggling for air, and swimming in water that reached several feet over his head when he saw her.

Caroline Tolbertson was standing at the water’s edge, clad only in her shift.

His mind was none too clear, having reached that place where survival outweighed the need to think. His muscles were numb, both from the physical exertion and the constant, cold waves that battered him. But his brain was not so muddled that it did not hone in on the sight of her lithe body, stepping into the water.

He sucked in a breath and seawater flooded his mouth, making him cough and sputter. Eleven years ago he had nearly drowned in this very spot, paralyzed by the knowledge that he had failed someone he loved. And as Caroline waded out farther into the waves, he was struck by the sudden realization that in a scant few seconds, he was going to be poised to do it again.

Because if he held her in his arms, with only the futile barrier of her wet shift between them, his failure to preserve her virginity wasn’t just a possibility.

It was a bloody foregone conclusion.

He had hoped his exhaustion would have calmed that part of his body. He had never been a man prone to good fortune. The sight of her dampening shift, and the shadows that emerged to visibility beneath the translucent fabric, proved more than enough to send his cock straight to attention, the cold water and exhaustion be damned.

He made his way toward her, wary and weary, slogging his way through water that lessened in depth with each step. And then she was inches away in hip-deep water, peering up at him with ocean spray in her eyelashes. He wanted to crush her to him and kiss her till her knees gave way beneath her. It would be wrong to take that advantage, though.

He briefly entertained the idea of shaking her senseless, if kissing was not going to be an option. She had clearly come for their lesson, dressed as she was. Any sensible girl would have kept her distance, given that he had admitted to something just short of murder last night.

Of course, hadn’t Caroline proven on more than one occasion that she had far more substance lurking beneath her surface than any merely sensible girl?

“You started without me.” Her voice sounded accusing, and he wondered how long she had been watching him battle the ocean current.

“I did not expect you,” he admitted. “Not after last night.” He ran a hesitant hand through his hair. “Christ, Caroline, you twist me up in enough knots to do a sailor proud. What do you
want
from me?”

“Our bargain.” She licked her lips, and the motion shot straight to his groin. “I am not inclined to release you from the promise you made.”

David groaned out loud. Couldn’t she see how dangerous this was? He had no way to win this game she played. He preferred his odds of surviving the inlet’s high tide. While weighted down with paving stones.

Tumbling down drunk.

Suddenly she was in his arms, and he was knocked off balance by the sweet, terrible surprise of her. They tumbled into the water, and then they were under, their lips of an accord on the matter of kissing.

Salt water stung his eyes, and the power of the ocean roared in his ears, but it was no match for the wicked sting of lust that snaked through him as her mouth moved against his. And then her tongue touched his own, and he was lost to all coherent thought, save one:

This woman was both his reward, and his greatest punishment.

He had timed the morning’s brutal exertions to temper the keen edge of desire. Had swum an hour in this ferocious current for no other purpose than to banish the need to claim her as his. How ironic to discover that far from serving its intended purpose, his exertions had instead left him too exhausted to resist her.

They bobbed back up to the surface, gasping for the air in each other’s lungs. He cradled her head in his hands, threading his fingers through her hair. The beast in him, the one he tried so hard to keep chained, raised its head to roar.
Mine.

But the gentleman in him, the gentleman he hadn’t quite believed existed, placed an authoritative hand on the beast’s head and pushed it down for the breadth of a second.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” He all but snarled against the sweet temptation of her lips, because God help him, he was failing the test he had laid for himself.

“With certainty.” She answered with a breathless moan he could not refuse.

Scooping her up in his arms, he staggered to the shallows, his lips refusing to leave hers for even the second it took to draw a new breath. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he could feel her bare calves rubbing against his own skin where his trousers met his torso. Implausibly, his brain registered the obvious before his cock did.

They were here alone, an hour or more from civilization. She was almost naked. And the scandalous press of her legs about his waist was pushing her core flush against his bare skin.

The trouser-encased part of his anatomy that wanted to bury himself inside her jerked toward the promise of her body. He thrust upward, a deliberate stroke that left nothing to either of their imaginations. She gasped into his mouth.

And then, unbelievably, she said, “More.”

He obliged the lady’s request and thrust again. Slower this time. A delicious promise of friction that sent his fingers curving about her cotton-clad arse, there at the point of no return.

“Think hard on this,” he growled into her mouth, even as they splashed down to earth at the water’s edge. “Because there is no going back.”

Caroline landed on top of him, a heavy burden he could not bring himself to regret. The relentless current swept them backward toward shore, and pebbles and shells scraped across his bare back, but he held her about her waist as she straddled his chest, the feel of her woman’s mound against the bare skin of his abdomen the most agonizing sensation of all.

“I
have
thought hard on this,” she told him, her eyes glittering down. “And eleven years is a long time to think.”

He thrilled to her response, even as he pulled her down to meet his lips. David kept his touch gentle, though his body ordered he set a different pace. He ignored his cock’s demands for the moment. He’d endured a great deal of practice ignoring that most insistent part of his anatomy, a part that hadn’t even, at first, realized the treasure it was pointing him toward.

Five more minutes’ restraint was not going to kill him, not if he could stoke the fires of her enjoyment first.

He forced his body into compliance and kissed Caroline a long, leisurely moment, enjoying the sharp, salty taste of her. The tide was coming in, the waves rolling into oblivion around them, but he ignored them for the moment. He ran his tongue along the edge of her lips, a sensual slide that belied the building frustration he felt for this slow, careful process he was determined to construct for her. His hand had found her breast at some point during the kiss, and he rubbed his thumb deftly over her peaked nipple, back, forth, and back again.

She responded by rocking against him and gasping into his mouth. “More,” she murmured again.

He grinned into her kiss. For such a loquacious person, it seemed the woman in his arms was reduced to the same primitive, one-word responses that he felt in this moment. “Tell me what you want.” He let his hand drift lower, teasing at the edge of her shift. “I am good at following directions.”

She pulled back and stared down at him, breathing hard. Her skin was flushed, marring the usual prominence of her freckles, and her lips were beautifully swollen from his kisses. “Liar,” she told him, rocking against him again in a movement that suggested either a damned fine instinct, or a great deal of time spent studying her sister’s book. “If you had followed proper directions, we would have done this yesterday.”

Chapter 29

D
AVID FELT AN
answering grin spread across his face. “Tell me what you want
today
, then.”

“You.” Her eyes glinted down at him, framed against the sunlight by the wild halo of her hair. She lifted her palm to cup his face, and her touch felt like silk, pulled across sensitive flesh. “This.” She breathed out, and the sound was like a balm to his soul. “Us.”

David pulled her down and rolled with her so they were lying side by side, the water rushing around them. He let his eyes roam down the exquisite length of her, from her pert brows to the pink toes that flashed at him amid the ebb and flow of the shoreline waves. He recalled the water had felt cold to him this morning, but there was none of that in this moment, only an intense, burning heat that seemed to suffuse every pore.

Her eyes met his across the space of the few inches he had created with his repositioning, and he seized upon an adequate description for their color.

Abalone. The most incredible mixture of colors, but defying any single label. She was unique, like the shells that littered this beach, like the storm of emotion that littered his mind. And while he did not know that the next hour might bring, for this moment, at least, she was his.

His gaze drifted down to the tempting, wet edge of her shift. He wondered if she knew that he could see every part of her through the fine, thin cotton. The dark patch between her legs, in particular, stood out against her skin like paint beneath a transparent canvas.

He reached a finger down as he met her eyes once more. Brushed against the curls that waited for him there. Knew he had found her hidden pleasure point when those beautiful eyes widened and she arched up to meet him.

“Is this what you want?” he asked, though it was a question she had already answered with the push of her body against his questing finger.

“You know it is.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth, and her obvious frustration urged him on.

He settled into a rhythm, testing her reflexes, finding them open for his touch. He focused hard on that spot that made her thrash beside him, challenging her to go further, reach higher, than she had yesterday. He offered words of encouragement, carefully skirting any mention of that messy business of love.

And then, in response to her strangled cry, David added the “more” she was begging for, slipping his finger inside her. The blazing heat of her passage was like crossing the surface of the sun.

“I . . .
oh
. It didn’t feel like this yesterday,” she exclaimed, closing her eyes and straining toward the push of his hand.

He took her lips in a kiss then, drowning in her words as much as her heat. “It wasn’t meant to,” he found the presence of mind to say after a moment. “It was a lesson to teach
me
what you wanted, not a lesson for you to find it.”

“Then you are an apt pupil,” she gasped, “because . . . I . . .”

And then she was gone, shattering around his hand. She bucked upward through the surf, her cry of release the most beautiful sound imaginable. Her body pulsed around his finger, an invitation his cock readily accepted as its well-earned due.

But still, David hesitated. She was falling back to him now, her wings momentarily clipped. They could stop this. Somehow, some way, he had survived it, though he was about ready to spill in his trousers like an inexperienced schoolboy.

And then she opened her eyes. They were glazed. Brilliant.

Begging.

“More,” she whispered, her drugged smile the most compelling of invitations. And then he was unbuttoning his trousers.

He rose over her, his mind focused on her beautiful face, the primitive echo of “mine” roaring in his ears. He was about to take her, here on the open beach, her invitation unmistakable, his own body more ready than it had ever been.

Only one thing stopped him, a single terrible thought that flashed through his mind and threatened to asphyxiate him far more quickly than any convenient drowning.

What if she had already accepted Duffington’s offer?

Remorse spun through him, all the more confusing because it was tempered by a desire to harm a man he had no cause to dislike, much less want to kill.

But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t go through with this, couldn’t give her the experience she sought, not if she was promised to another man.

David hauled his objecting body off her pliant one, settling into the grit and small, smooth-shaped rocks that lay all around them. He was shocked to his core by how close he had just come to taking her virginity. It did not matter if it was a gift she gave freely. It did not matter if he wanted it more than his body’s next breath. It did not matter if she asked for “more” ten times over.

He was leaving for Scotland with his mother, in just over a week. He had been about to ruin her life forever, on the cusp of an inevitable parting.

And he, of all people, knew what it was like to live with that kind of regret.

She struggled to sitting, her eyes a perplexed shade of amber and green. “Why did you stop?” she asked in confusion.

David swallowed against the trembling note of confusion in her voice. “I think,” he said, struggling to form the words he needed to say, instead of the words he wanted to say, “that before we go any further with this lesson, we need to have a serious talk.”

S
TUNNED BY THE
abrupt shift in mood, Caroline pulled the edge of her shift down as far as it would go. She had found her senses again, and the reality of the moment lay like hot coals beneath her skin.

David had just . . . and she had felt . . . well, she didn’t know what he had just done or what she had just felt, but she was quite sure there was a word for it somewhere in Penelope’s book.

And “celibate” was not it.

“What do you want to talk about?” she asked, struggling to a sitting position and curling her legs up beneath her. She was confused by the new note of censure in his voice. Moments before, he had been urging her into oblivion.

Now, he seemed determined to yank it out of her grasp.

“Did you accept Duffington’s offer?”

She sighed into the directness of his question. “No. Not yet.” Caroline felt as if she were a ship that had sighted land, only to flounder in the shoals. She did not want to think about Duffington’s offer in this moment. Or Branson’s or Dermott’s either. She wanted to return to the distraction of David Cameron’s mouth and busy fingers.

But judging by the dark glower he was tossing her way, she suspected she wasn’t going to get out of the conversation by kissing him again.

“Do you plan to?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, forcing her mind to the pertinent question at hand. “You raised some excellent concerns about Duffington last night, things I had not considered.” In fact, now that a certain part of David’s anatomy had been almost introduced to a certain part of hers, she was rethinking the wisdom of Duffington’s size. “He is not a good fit using weight as the criterion, I’ll admit.”

A hint of relief touched David’s smile. “I am relieved to hear you say that.”

“If I am to go by height,” she mused, reaching a hand to brush away the silver grains of sand that clung to the thick, blond hair on David’s chest, “I think Mr. Branson would serve better than Duffington. But if I am to rely on instinct, I must admit Mr. Dermott has made an excellent case for me to place his offer first.”

David reared back as if she had grasped one of those hairs and plucked it straight out. “What are you talking about?”

Caroline dropped her hand and battled a twinge of guilt. She knew she had been negligent in not admitting as much earlier, but a frank discussion of her choices had seemed a poor preference to kissing, at the time. “Mr. Branson and Mr. Dermott both presented me with offers of marriage this morning.”

David pushed up and away from her in a single, fluid motion. “Bloody hell, Caroline.”

She did not object to the obscenity. Indeed, it was a phrase she had been dancing around uttering herself all morning. As far as expressions went, she doubted she could find a more apt one to describe the absurdity of her week. She, Caroline Tolbertson, Brighton’s most established wallflower, had received three offers of marriage in less than a single day, one of them from a man believed by many to be the most handsome of the summer set.

Bloody hell, indeed.

David fastened the buttons of his falls with a series of jerks, buttons she hadn’t even realized had been undone. When he had finished, he glared down at her. “Were you going to tell me before or after I tupped you on this beach?”

Caroline lifted her chin. “That depends. Is tupping still an option?”

He reached down a hand to pull her up. He felt hard, vibrating against her skin like the blade of a sword, swung against granite. “Are you seriously considering any of them?” he demanded.

Caroline spent a long moment scraping the grit and crushed shells from her shift. There was no doubt she was going to find the tiny particles in places best left unmentioned, after David’s bold exploration of her body. And no doubt she was avoiding answering the question.

Finally, she found her voice. “I imagine I would be mad not to, don’t you think? I must marry someone. And I cannot marry someone who hasn’t offered for me.” She allowed her eyes to meet his, wincing as she took in the stone-set cast of his jaw. “Ergo, I must choose one of them.”

David looked ready to explode. “You don’t need to marry anyone, at least not in the immediate future. And you deserve someone better than Dermott.”

“He has quite redeemed himself.” Caroline thought back on Mr. Dermott’s expression from the morning. He had looked desperate for her answer, crushed when she had offered him a delayed response. He had been serious in his offer. Either that, or the man was the most accomplished actor she had ever had the ill fortune to come across.

And unlike Branson, Dermott’s offer, at least, had made her pulse wobble, just a bit. If she was to take David’s own advice on the matter, wasn’t
that
what she supposed to be looking for in a husband? Only two men had ever made her body hum enough to seek their kiss. One of them, of course, was Dermott. It had ended poorly, but she had not known what she was doing at the time. Logic argued that next time around would be more pleasurable.

The second man, who was even now stalking over to the rock and snatching up her discarded dress, had made his feelings on the nature of their relationship more than clear. Though he was upset over Mr. Dermott’s offer of marriage, he was not going to make a counteroffer. She realized, in that moment, a part of her had been hoping he might. Her heart came close to crumpling in her chest.

David thrust out the gown as if the very fabric burned his hands. “Dermott does not deserve redemption. I should know. I am an expert in the cause.”

Caroline met David’s gaze, anchoring herself to the chink that had appeared in his armor. She accepted the dress from his clenched hands. “
Everyone
deserves redemption, David. Yourself included.”

David fetched her slippers next. “I do not like the man.”

Caroline stepped into the gown and pulled it up over her shift, wincing as the fabric turned dark with damp. “You don’t have to like him,” she retorted, working to reach the buttons between the back of her shoulders now. “
I
do. He has a nice bank account. Lovely, straight teeth. There is no doubt he would be my preferred choice over either of my other two offers.”

She risked a glance at her glowering companion, wondering how far she was prepared to needle him. David was rapidly approaching the end of what appeared to be a very short rope. The only question was, did he care for her enough to prevent what she was honest enough to admit might be a grave mistake?

“I am three-and-twenty, David. Falling off the shelf. And Mr. Dermott is considered an excellent match.”

“He does not appreciate you. Not the
true
you, at any rate.”

Caroline exhaled, praying for patience. Was this really the same man who had just touched her so intimately? He looked angry enough to scale the white cliff walls using only his teeth for leverage. “What do you mean, the ‘true’ me? I’d say he does, if he is offering to marry me. It is not as if I have a dowry to tempt him.”

“Perhaps he is responding to the myth, rather than the woman. Or perhaps he feels the need to best Branson. But he doesn’t know you, not like I do. You would never be happy married to someone like him.”

The first niggling shards of doubt lodged in Caroline’s mind. “What myth? What are you referring to?”

A muscle ticked near David’s right eye, and his face reddened, making the bright, golden color of his hair seem even lighter by contrast. “I might have encouraged Dermott’s thoughts toward you along a more flattering path. Tuesday night, after our moonlit swim.”

Caroline’s thoughts flung wide at his admission, and settled on an inescapable truth. “Branson was there too, wasn’t he?” she asked, horrified.

“Aye.” David at least had the grace to look discomfited now, blast the man. He picked up his shirt and slipped it over his broad shoulders. “Branson was there,” he admitted. “Hamilton too. But not Duffington or Adams. You cannot blame their interest on me.”

Caroline stared at David as he buttoned up his own clothing. How could she not have seen it? It was so obvious now . . . The interest. The offers. Why would any of these men be interested in her, unless they had been spun a string of lies? Caroline swallowed the painful lump of her throat. “What did you say to them? What did you
do
?”

“I didn’t want your reputation hurt any more than had already been done, and so I spun a little fancy over a shared bottle. I encouraged them to think of you in a more feminine light, I suppose. Distracted them from their incorrectly drawn conclusions. But I only wanted them to leave off with their heckling. I never expected it to result in all this stir.”

The newfound confidence Caroline had discovered during the past few days dissolved into nothingness, displaced by the same self-doubts that had plagued her all her life. “Did you lie? Say something about me what wasn’t true?”