The Dangerous Mr. Ryder

‘Mmm?’

‘Just Jack.’

He chuckled and sat up, propped on one rigid arm, running his free hand down over her. ‘Cold?’ Without waiting for an answer, he stood and began to make up the fire. Eva found her shirt and pulled it on, leaving it loose. With the warm night air and the glow of the fire it was all she needed. Warm inside, she thought, wrapping her arms round her knees and sitting watching Jack.

In the moonlight, lit by the fire, he seemed like primeval man—naked, unselfconscious, beautifully made. The light slid over matte skin, highlighted muscle, threw intriguing shadows. She wished passionately that she could draw, could capture him, just as he was now.

He came and lay down again on his back with the relaxed, unselfconscious grace of a big cat. Eva lay, too, propped on her elbows at right angles to him. She rested her chin in one cupped hand and began to run the other over Jack’s torso.

‘What are you about?’ he asked lazily, his mouth twisting as she inadvertently tickled him.

‘Exploring.’ She let her fingertips trail down the line of hair below his navel, then drifted them lower to thread into the dark tangle of curls.

‘There is nothing there but standard male equipment having a rest.’ Jack sounded amused as she caressed him. ‘And if you are hoping to provoke me into further activity, I give you fair warning, it will take a little while.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Eva assured him, meeting his eyes with a smile of fulfilled satisfaction. ‘It is just that I’ve never been able to do this before, you see. As I said, I’m exploring.’

‘What?’ Jack levered himself up on his elbows, looking down the length of his torso to where she was cupping his testicles, gently weighing them in her palm.

‘This. Louis would always leave my bed as soon as we had finished making love. I have never been able to examine a naked man like this, so closely. Your body is fascinating,’ she explained seriously, then leaned forward and blew lightly as an experiment, intrigued by the way the skin contracted. ‘This is all very sensitive, isn’t it?’

‘Very,’ Jack said emphatically as she teased him with the back of one pointed nail. ‘Why would your husband always retreat like that?’

‘I don’t know.’ Eva pondered it, realising it had never struck her as odd before. But then, she had no basis for comparison. ‘I think perhaps he would see it as a sign of weakness to be naked and vulnerable, and not at his most potent. Louis would always want to be rampant—like the lion on the Maubourg coat of arms. But I think it is more a sign of strength to be able to trust, like this.’ On impulse she leaned even further and dropped a kiss onto the half-hidden flesh.

‘Come here.’ Jack sat up, pulling her almost roughly into his embrace, then lay back with her against him. Under her cheek the sound of his heartbeat was reassuring, his skin was warm, slightly rough from his chest hair. ‘It must be trust for two people to do what we have just done, together. We made love together. That is new for me, that feeling of partnership.’

‘I know,’ she said sleepily burrowing into his shoulder. ‘I felt it, too: counterpoint.’

‘Music, yes,’ she heard him agree as she drifted off, feeling him draw the blanket over her, cocooning her safe against his body.

Eva woke to warmth and to the drift of hands over her breasts and stomach. Sleepily, eyes closed against the daylight, she snuggled back into the hard body she was curled against.

‘Good morning,’ Jack whispered in her ear, and slid into her with one slow thrust. She gasped, shifting to accommodate this new position, then relaxing as he continued to move gently within her, his hands the perfect complement as they caressed with a total lack of urgency, focused only on pleasuring her.

It was bliss, but she could not touch him, could not kiss him. Except one way. Eva tightened her muscles around him, playing with the effect it had both on her and, from the gasp as she did it, on Jack.

It was blissful, languorous, sensual beyond belief. Eva had no idea how long they lay curved together, only that when it came she lost herself entirely in the peak of sensation he brought her to, shuddering with delight in his arms.

She must have dozed again, for when she opened her eyes she was alone in the nest of blankets, water was heating on the fire and Jack was standing knee deep in the stream, washing. Eva got up and took herself off into the bushes, treading cautiously in bare feet. When she got back Jack was just rinsing off by the simple expedient of lying flat in the water. He emerged, shaking himself like a wet dog, and saw her.

‘It’s cold. Come in,’ he invited.

Was she ever going to get used to looking at him? Get used to the way he looked and the effect it had on her? It wasn’t simply the lines of his face, or that he was beautifully made and superbly fit. It was the fact that he did not appear conscious of those things that was so attractive. And that a man so self-contained, so disciplined, should let down his guard so totally with her still filled her with awe.

‘Only if you get out first. Or we’ll get…distracted again.’ Eva kept the shirt firmly wrapped round her body.

‘All right.’ He splashed to the bank and climbed out, pausing beside her. ‘I could become very easily…distracted.’

What if we never go back? What if we stayed here for ever? Eva tossed her shirt to one side and stepped off the bank. The cold water was enough to recall her to the real world—danger, duty and a small boy who needed his mother.

Chapter Fourteen

They rode on again all that day, up through the rich and gentle landscape of the Côte d’Or, halting at noon for their rendezvous with Henry in an inn in the little wine-growing village of Auxey Duresse, just south of Beaune.

Jack watched Eva as they rode. She was easy in the saddle now, apparently unaffected either by her ordeal in the river or their lovemaking. The memory of her supple body answering his, following where he led—sometimes, as her confidence grew, leading him—had him hard, the thought that tonight she would be even less inhibited, even more unreserved, had him aching with longing to hold her again.

From time to time, apparently prompted by some thought, she would turn in the saddle, her eyes warm and happy as she smiled at him. No one had ever looked at him like that, he realised, impossibly flattered when she reached out her hand and touched him fleetingly on the knee, as though it gave her pleasure just to know he was there.