‘We don’t have to go,’ she said. ‘Like you say, there’ll be other balls.’
Not while Farlan was here, though.
Something flickered across his face, like sunlight washing over the moors, and he lowered his mouth and ran his tongue over her lips. ‘I know we don’t.’
He was kissing her now, following her pulse down her neck to the hollow at the base of her throat. Shivering, she squeezed her thighs together against the slow, decadent ache that was starting to build there.
There would be three hundred guests at the Beaters’ Ball, and they would have to talk and eat and dance with some of them. They would be surrounded by people.
‘We could just stay here—’
‘We could, but we’re not going to,’ he muttered against her skin. ‘I know I don’t have a title, but just for one evening I want to be your Prince Charming, Lady Antonia.’
Her fingers moved down over his stomach, hovering over the thistle tattoo below his hipbone. She heard him suck in a breath, and then he was rolling over, taking her with him so that she was straddling his hips.
‘You have a one-track mind,’ he said. His eyes were dark in the half-light.
‘Only with you,’ she said.
He didn’t smile. Instead, holding her gaze, he caressed her waist, his hands moving upwards to cover her breasts. She whimpered as he licked first one and
then the other nipple, making them swell and throb.
‘You’re making it so much harder for me.’ His voice was hoarse.
‘To do what?’ She was moving against him now, back and forth, so that the head of his erection pushed against the relentless ache between her legs.
‘To leave.’
So don’t leave, then, she thought. Stay here with me.
But they had tried that before and they both knew it wouldn’t work.
This was all they had.
This bed.
This room.
And, leaning forward, she pulled his mouth back to her breast and lifted her hips to meet his thrusts, his hard body driving out the pain of that thought.
Smoothing his hand over his face, Farlan turned off the water. For a moment he stood in the shower, his hands pressed flat against the cold tiles, steam rising off his skin, and then he grabbed two towels, wrapped one around his waist and began rubbing his head with the other.
Depending on his mood, it usually either baffled or annoyed him how no amount of hot water and huge, feather-soft towels could erase the memory of years of shivering in unheated bathrooms.
Today he had other things on his mind.
His mouth twisted.
One thing—one woman.
Nia.
He had left her back at the gardener’s cottage to get changed for the ball, and he had returned to Lamington to do the same.
Glancing down at his watch, he frowned. It had only been an hour since he had dragged himself away from her soft, pliant body, and yet already he was missing her.
He had told himself that it would be enough—that coming back here had started something between them that needed to be finished properly this time. And that if they allowed themselves these few days to let it run its course then he could finally get on with his life.