The Lord's Inconvenient Vow

His hands slipped gently over her body, just softly on the outer swell of her breasts, he would make his way there later, he promised her silently as his hands slipped over her thighs. They twitched under his touch and she grabbed his shirt, pulling him closer.

‘I’ll help you back in when we’re done,’ he murmured against her throat as he undid her gown, shifting her so that it slid to the ground, grateful having no maid meant she’d dispensed with stays.

‘When we’re done,’ she confirmed, tugging his shirt from his trousers. ‘I just don’t quite know how we will be done. I can barely fit in that cot on my own...’

‘How limber are you, little mountain goat?’ He nuzzled Sam’s scent just below and behind her ear—silky soft and warm and it flowed through him like melting honey. Yes, orange blossom and biscuits. God, he was hungry for her.

‘Limber...?’ He felt the word through the skin of her throat. Her hands were pushing into his hair, sifting it like she would the soft sand of the delta as he tasted her, licking her earlobe and catching it with his teeth as a silvery shudder quivered through her. He smiled and kissed the soft skin there, aware that it was absurd to be pleased he was already beginning to find her weak spots, like the one right there, just beside her hip bone where the skin stretched towards her navel. He let his fingers linger and tease that indentation through the soft lawn chemise, loving the answering shivers that tightened her long legs around him.

‘Yes, limber. That bed presents a problem. We shall have to be creative.’

‘Oh. Tell me what to do and I shall try.’

He brushed his mouth over hers, a little surprised to feel his own mouth curved in a smile. She sounded both dreamy and determined. Typical Sam.

‘All you must do for the moment is close your eyes and relax, Night Star. I shall do the rest.’

Chapter Seven

The camel’s hoof pressed Gabriel deeper into the sand, its grizzled chin and twisted teeth less than an inch from Gabriel’s face.

‘If you had asked for help, boy, we wouldn’t be here. And they call my kind stubborn!’

—Captives of the Hidden City,

Desert Boy Book Four

Sam knew she had to move, but she didn’t want to. Edge yawned, his body stretching against hers, his arms pulling her more securely on to his lap as he leaned back against the wall of the narrow cot. It felt so good to be held. To surface from a fuzzy cloud of pleasure into comfort.

To think that just a few hours ago she’d been miserably convinced Edge was regretting his completely uncharacteristic impulsiveness in marrying her. He certainly hadn’t been complaining a few moments ago. He’d been...

She shivered in appreciation and growing anticipation and gave herself a silent reprimand. The man was exhausted, the setting was as uncomfortable as could be imagined, besides—twice in one night? It was probably not done. She rather suspected most of what she’d just done with Edge was not done. She very much doubted Dora had ever agreed to be seduced on a narrow wooden table and certainly would never have whimpered so loudly he’d had to muffle her cries with his mouth.

He yawned again, burrowing his face into her hair, his arms slackening for a moment before gripping again as if he was fighting sleep.

‘Go to sleep, Edge. You looked utterly exhausted at dinner. You are not a good advertisement for the restful qualities of hammocks, you know.’

‘It wasn’t the hammock that kept me awake, Sam,’ he mumbled against her hair and then untangled himself from her, groping around for his clothes. He made it out the door without bumping into anything or strangling himself in the hammock. The man must have eyes like a cat.

When he was gone she snuggled deep under the blanket, tucking it under her bare feet and wishing she was tucked around his warm body. She stared at the vague shifting in the dark that marked the still-swinging hammock.

Tomorrow she would brave that contraption again.

* * *

Where was he?

It wasn’t that she’d expected Edge to be beating down her door at dawn, but it was already midday and she was sorely tempted to hunt him down and tell him it was foolish to return to sulking after last night.

Well, she refused to beg. Instead she began a new drawing and finally became so engrossed she didn’t hear the tapping. It was the dull thud against the door that caught her attention and she hurried to open it.

‘Edge!’

He winced at her cry, but didn’t move. He was leaning on the doorjamb with both hands and he looked horrible.

She took his hand and pulled him inside. He flinched, turning away from the lamp.

‘The light...’ Edge’s voice was always deep, but now it was subterranean, a clenched rumble. He moved without any of his usual grace, as if his body was solidifying into stone as he walked. She forced him on to the cot, shuttered the oil lamp so it left only a glowing rim of gold.