Relentless Lord Page 4

  “I knew you could not resist.”

  “Bloody hell,” she whispered. “You’re mad.”

  He just smiled bigger and arched his winged black brows. “Were you attempting to rescue me?”

  Feeling exceeding disconcerted, not only by the realization he had not been in any danger at all, which was astounding, but also by the fact that he continued to hold her against him in a way that had them pressed to each other from chest to knee. His arms were tight enough around her middle that she was lifted off the floor of the natural pool while the water lapped just below her breasts.

  Planting the heels of her hands against his shoulders, she exerted some pressure.

  He didn’t budge.

  “Admit it,” he said, narrowing his gaze to strips of vivid green.

  She did not miss how his voice lowered to a warm drawl. Nor did she miss how the muscled shape of his shoulders felt hard like marble yet far from cold beneath her hands. Nor could she possibly ignore the heat that seeped from his body into hers even while the water swirled frigidly around them.

  “You were devastated by the thought I might expire down there alone in the murky depths.”

  Hannah executed a gentle eye-roll at his last statement. “This pool is hardly murky. And how on earth did you manage to stay down there so long without breath?”

  He shrugged, and the movement caused an interesting friction against the peaks of her breasts.

  Hannah shook off the delightful sensation.

  “When I was six years old, I got a cramp while swimming in the pond on our estate and couldn’t get to the surface. One of my brothers saw me thrashing about and rescued me, but I discovered I rather enjoyed the attention I garnered from my brush with death. Mother was so rattled she did not allow me back to the pond the rest of the year. I spent my time practicing how to hold my breath, extending the time I could resist the urge to inhale. When the next summer came along, I played a little prank on my siblings.” His smile turned naughty and Hannah’s heart took a little dive. “They didn’t think it was nearly as funny as I did.”

  “I imagine not,” she chided. “That is a terrible prank.”

  “I learned early that in order to be noticed in a family the size of mine, one often needed to go to extremes.”

  That explained a lot. “Just how large is your family?”

  “Ridiculously large.”

  “How ridiculous?” She was curious despite herself.

  “I have two older brothers, four younger, and five bright and beautiful sisters, the youngest having been born just three years ago. She was a bit unexpected.”

  “You have got to be joking,” she accused. To an only child, the numbers were simply astounding.

  “Not at all,” he said with a wide grin. “My parents are still very active, you could say.”

  “Oh goodness, I would rather you didn’t.”

  “Does the idea of procreation make you nervous?”

  She eyed him warily. His tone was light and joking, but he still hadn’t loosened his inappropriate embrace.

  And she had long since stopped trying to get him to.

  “Of course not,” she replied honestly. “It is a natural occurrence in the animal kingdom. For all our airs as human beings, we are far more animalistic than we would like to admit. We have simply learned to disguise our instincts behind manners, or we have forgotten them altogether in the hopes of distancing ourselves from the natural world.” She sighed, thinking of her life before England. “It is rather sad really.”

  “You are a source of unending astonishment.”

  Hannah studied his face for evidence of ridicule. “Don’t you mean amusement?”

  She gave another push at his shoulders. He shrugged again and finally loosened his hold enough for her to step back.

  “Sure,” he agreed. “Amusement as well. But then I try to find amusement in just about everything.”

  Hannah did not doubt him. She already knew his humor was as much a part of his personality as his penchant for flirtation. She lifted her hands to push back strands of her hair that had fallen from her coiffure to drip on her face. As she did so, she watched his gaze fall to her breasts.

  She glanced down at herself. Now that he wasn’t holding her against him, the front of her body was quite exposed. The thin muslin of her chemise was soaked and had become entirely transparent.

  Too late, she recalled that the British tended to be rather uncomfortable with openly displaying the natural state of the human body. To Hannah, who was familiar with having to bathe in public rivers and other watering holes when necessary, such forced sensibilities seemed a bit unnecessary. Not to mention contradictory when some ladies of the beau monde were known to dampen their skirts to display their charms more clearly, or rouged their nipples to make them more obvious.

  Lowering her arms, but refusing to cover herself despite the bold admiration in his gaze, she tipped her head to say sardonically, “I know how people look at me.” Her words brought his gaze back to meet her eyes. “They think me strange and find it enjoyable to make subtle little digs against my background or my respectability or what have you.”

  She sighed, and although his gaze flickered, she admired that he kept it on her face.

  “Frankly. I do not care what most people think.”

  He smiled then. A low and widening grin that lit his whole face. “Bravo. You shouldn’t. And neither do I. Unless their opinions make me laugh, which they often do. Then I might be guilty of encouraging them.”

  Hannah laughed. She couldn’t help it.

  “Oh ho,” he exclaimed in mock surprise. “She laughs! Perhaps Miss Walpole is capable of having fun after all.”

  Hannah threw him a spirited glare but couldn’t keep her lips from curling upward.

  “Can I help it if I find this country repressive and dull?”

  He snorted. “Darling, we all find it repressive and dull. That is why I claim my joy wherever I can.”

  Without warning, he dove under the water. Hannah had only a second to step back and gasp a breath before he wrapped his hands around her ankles and pulled her under. He released her once her head submerged and she used her momentum to twist around him as he rose back to the surface. By the time she came up for air, she was directly behind him, and without thought of the decorum, she reared up and grasped his shoulders as she threw her weight to the side. Effectively dunking the much larger man.

  She did not need to think about the propriety of her behavior because she knew quite well it was not done for young ladies to engage in any kind of horseplay, let alone with a man while in the water and barely clothed. But she didn’t give a damn. Somewhere in the last few minutes, she had decided to take his advice and seize the unexpected respite she had been gifted with that morning.

  Though she’d managed that one bit of surprise, he had amazingly quick reflexes and was exceptionally agile in the water, nearly as agile as she was herself. In the end, his strength won out over her quickness and they both came up for air with his arms once again secured around her body. Only this time, he held her aloft against his chest. One of his arms wrapped around her back and the other beneath her legs.

  She had nowhere to go.

  Laughing, she pushed her sodden hair out of her face, the full length having long since fallen from the elaborate style her cousin’s maid had created that morning.

  “All right, Lord Whitely, I accede this skirmish to you. You have earned your victory.”

  He shook his head like a dog, his thick black locks sending water flying everywhere.

  Hannah laughed again and wrapped her arms around his neck as she closed her eyes to await the end of his final assault.

  “Won’t you call me Miles?” he asked once he had finished.

  Hannah opened her eyes and her gaze slammed hard into his bright green ones. Water still dripped from his thick black lashes and ran down the side of his handsome face from his temples, over his strong cheekbones to his angled jaw.

  Wet and disheveled, he looked more like a man than a demigod. Stripped of the fine high-society veneer, he was even more dangerous than Hannah could ever had anticipated. Because in his current state, she got a glimpse of who he truly was—a flesh and blood man with a grin that made her knees weak and eyes that saw her as she was beneath the layers of her uncle’s reformation.

  His smiled widened when she said nothing, as though he understood her sudden distraction. Which was really rather annoying once she considered it.

  “I think our relationship has extended past stiff formalities, don’t you?” he asked again.

  “We have no relationship,” she replied, needing to create some distance, in theory, if not in physical actuality.

  “Not yet.” He lowered his tone. “I have to admit to being a little disappointed in your efforts to convince me to marry you. It makes me think you may not be taking this challenge seriously enough.”

  This time, Hannah snorted. “You would be right. I am most certainly not taking your silly challenge seriously.” She squirmed in his hold, trying to signal to him that she wished to be released. Instead, he shifted his hold beneath her legs to grasp her more securely around her thighs. She narrowed her gaze but continued, “I have no desire to wed you, Lord Whitely.”

  “You forfeit already? Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Seduction it is then.”

  “No,” Hannah denied quickly, though heat flashed through her blood at his words. “I told you I will not be seduced and I meant it.”

  His smile curved into a very masculine depiction of satisfaction and triumph. The expression made Hannah’s toes curl and her stomach flutter distractingly. Then he tipped his head toward her until his mouth was just a breath away from hers.

  Hannah could only stare into his eyes. They had darkened around the edges so that only a ring around the center remained vivid green.

  “I have already seduced you, Hannah. You are just too stubborn to admit it.”

  And then he kissed her.

  Boldly. And with a little growl in the back of his throat that went right through Hannah’s resistance like lightning through the night sky.

  Her resistance would have been token and futile anyway.

  The instant his mouth touched hers, Hannah knew he was right. She was seduced. From the moment he had crouched beside her to free her garter and grinned up at her with his devilish gaze to ask if she required anything else.

  When she responded to his kiss with a tightening of her arms around his neck and a shift of her shoulders that pressed her breasts to his chest, he flicked his tongue past her teeth.

  Hannah gasped. That small invasion sparked a conflagration throughout her body.

  She opened to him and twisted in his hold, seeking some deeper connection.

  With another bold and delicious sweep of his tongue, he shifted his arms. Keeping one arm around her shoulders, he released her legs, which allowed her to form the front of her body against the hard planes of his chest and abdomen. The heat of him was startling and consuming, especially when she felt the hard, hot ridge of his erection against her trembling belly.

  She held him tighter, loving the way his large hand palmed her right buttock, kneading and forming her flesh with strong fingers.

  She also loved the taste of him, so masculine, unrestrained and erotic.

  She did not realize he had been moving her through the water until her back came up against the rock wall of the pool, worn smooth by ages of water lapping at its surface.

  Trapped between the rock at her back and the insistently sensual man at her front, Hannah broke from the kiss to draw a desperate breath.

  He did not let up his assault and lowered his mouth to her throat. Gripping her buttocks in both hands, he lifted her against him. Her legs parted naturally around his hips as her breasts came nearly level with his face.

  “Ah,” he said raggedly, his warm breath bathing her collarbone just before he dipped his chin to draw the hardened tip of one breast deep into the hot cavern of his mouth. The thin layer of her soaked chemise was no barrier against the dance of his wicked tongue over her nipple.

  Again, the contrast between his body heat and the chill of her skin roused sensations that strained for expression. She wrapped her arms around his head, cradling him to her breast as she tightened her thighs around his hips.

  Suddenly, she sympathized with all the young ladies who had come before her to be ruined so thoroughly by this man.

  Just as quickly as that thought formed, another followed in its wake.

  She did not want to be another in a long line of his conquests.

  With immense reluctance, she released her hold about his head and shoulders. She brought her legs down along his.

  He did not cease the assault of his mouth, even when he tightened his hands on her rear in resistance to her retreat. She eased her hands against his shoulders. This time, he did not ignore her.

  He lifted his head with a low growl and allowed her body to slide down his until her toes met the sandy bottom of the pool.

  Looking into her eyes with his emerald gaze, he offered a gentle smile.

  “Too much?” he asked with a quirk of his brow.

  She gave a stiff nod. “Quite.”

  “You realize this has only just begun,” he said.

  “Begun and ended, my lord,” Hannah said with conviction. Now that she knew how far he was willing to go—how far she had been willing to go—she was not going to allow anything like this happen again.

  “Are you certain?”

  She tensed at the sardonic confidence in his tone, but she was not able to prepare her resistance when he lifted his hands to cradle her face and brought his mouth to hers once more.

  Against her will, she arched into him, tipping her head back against the rock to allow him full access. As he staked his claim over the deep recesses of her mouth, coaxing her tongue into play, Hannah curled her hands into fists in the wet material of his shirt. A moan reverberated from her chest.

  When he finally ended the kiss, she said nothing. Just opened her eyes and flattened her hands again to give a solid shove.

  He stepped back and she dove swiftly to the side. She swam across the pool in long strokes until she reached the spot where she had dropped her clothes.

  Without glancing back at him, she pulled herself from the pool and began the process of wringing the excess water from her chemise and hair before drawing her dry gown over the top. Hopefully, the sun would remain strong on the walk back to the house, allowing any remaining moisture to dry up. For her hair, she finger-combed it and then braided its length before coiling it atop her head and tucking in the end. With the bonnet replaced, no one would know it was not how she had worn it earlier.

  She refused to glance back at Lord Whitely even though she suspected quite strongly by the heat traveling over her skin that he watched her rather intently.

  Only when she sat on a nearby rock to replace her shoes did she lift her gaze to him.

  He stood where she had left him, his arms crossed over his chest, his mouth—the sight of which sent tingles through her low belly—curved into a careless grin.

  “I have got you, Hannah. There is no getting out of this.”

  She assumed he meant his vow to seduce her.

  Standing with her head high, she allowed her gaze to travel over the parts of him she so admired. His handsome face, broad masculine shoulders and muscled arms. She even took a moment to direct her gaze to a point beneath the surface of the water where she suspected he burned for her still, just as she did in the hollow, aching place between her thighs.

  Then she met his gaze again, accepting the desire she saw there. Accepting her own desire that ran like fire through her bloodstream.

  Smiling, she said, “I am already out. Turn your attention to some other young woman. You will not have me.”

  Without waiting for his reply, she turned and strolled back down the path the way they had come.

  Miles waited until she was out of sight and then took a massive breath and dunked beneath the water. He did not come back up until his lungs burned and his head grew fuzzy.

  And when he did break the surface, it was with a raw curse.

  “Bloody fucking hell. I’m a goner.”

  Then he burst into full-throated laughter.

  Chapter Six

  The next evening was an elaborate dinner party with a guest list that extended to local gentry. Two long tables were set up in the dining room and were crammed with diners seated elbow to elbow. Miles was disappointed to find that Hannah had been placed at the opposite table nearly the full length of the room away. It made for a very dull dinner.

  By the time the gentlemen finished their port and cigars and joined the ladies in the drawing room, his target was fully ensconced within a gaggle of ladies. That she was already peering across the room at him suggested she had been watching and waiting for his reappearance. That he detected a distinct light of triumph in her gaze, told him she had infiltrated the close-knit group with the express intention of thwarting his attention.

  Poor girl, he thought as he made a beeline for her position. If she expected a handful of females would deter him, she had no idea who she was up against.

  Her gaze darkened and her expression faltered as she realized his intention. Her traitorous cousin, who was seated beside her, looked up as well and noted his approach. Miss Tremaine said something in an aside to her two friends, who in turn peeked at him from beneath coyly sweeping lashes.

  Miles recognized the look. The one innocents sent his way all too often. More so once rumors had started to spread that he had a penchant for ruination.

  He didn’t.

  In fact, he had never given any undue attention to an innocent in his life. But once one wayward debutante had made the unfounded accusation several years ago, others followed suit. Miles became the go-to scapegoat for young ladies who needed an excuse to get married and quickly. Of course, there were also those women who earnestly sought his attention, hoping for an exciting dalliance. Such had been the case with Miss Walpole’s older cousin, Jacqueline. That one had been relentless in her insistence they commence an affair. Miles had never been interested in the woman. When she’d finally accepted that fact, she’d thought to force the issue by insisting he had seduced her.