Free Seacliff by Felicia Andrews Page A

shifted so he could work free the laces as he gently eased her from the bench to the soft mattress of grass. It was time to stop this madness, she told herself suddenly. But as they faced each other in the moonlight, the laces finally slipped from their ivory eyelets, and her breasts fell softly into his palms. Pressing, gently kneading, he let his mouth break free of hers and slip to her throat, to the hollow between her breasts. She gasped and tilted back her head. Listening to the rustle of her skirts as they rode toward her hips, she could feel the grass against her legs. His hands, slightly rougher now, stroked her flesh, igniting sparks too long unkindled.
    She had one last heartbeat of resistance as he eased her tenderly to her back; then all resistance was gone. A gold buckle glinted in the moonlight. His chest was bare and covered with a pelt of dark hair. She reached out to slip his breeches down over his thighs, her fingers trembling, and her lips quivering.
    The wind gusted, and her flesh accepted its caress.
    The water lapped softly at pond’s edge as she lifted herself to his face and pulled him to her. His grin faded to an expression of feral intensity when she closed her teeth over his lower lip and teased it. She moaned deep in her throat when finally he entered her and ignited the fire she craved. There was a clarity to the heavens overhead, a soughing to the wind that matched her own sighing.
    And when he whispered her name in time to their rhythm, she opened her mouth and laughed through the tears that sprang to her eyes. Laughed when the tears blurred the stars into white comets. Laughed at the explosion of the sun in her loins.

6
    A week passed, and July loomed on the horizon. The temperature began climbing earlier in the day, and a heavy, ghostly mist clung to the trees long after dawn, to gather again quickly after sunset and cloy the night air. Though logs were stacked ceremoniously on the lion-faced andirons, the fires remained unlit; the house remained reasonably cool during the daylight hours, and neither would the night necessitate the striking of a match.
    Yet despite the heat, Caitlin spent as little time as she could inside. Most often, between meals, she would wander about the estate, a parasol in her hand and her gaze fixed on nothing in particular. And more often than not she found herself at the pond, standing beneath the high boughs of a stately pine whose needles had carpeted the ground and whose shade was like the touch of a cool autumn breeze. She would stand and she would stare at the glass-smooth surface of the water, bleached of color as the sun grew white. And at the bench she knew would be almost too hot to touch until Davy roused himself and brought its canopy from storage. And finally she’d stare, after a great deal of stalling, at the patch of ground where James had made love to her.
    For the first two days she had suffered an intense bout of guilt, refusing to meet Oliver’s eyes. Ignoring his drinking she prayed he would not notice the seemingly perpetual blush on her cheeks. But on the third morning she had caught sight of herself unexpectedly in a mirror and realized with a sardonic smile that no adulteress’s mark had been branded into her forehead, no devil’s horns had sprouted from her head. At that moment she had taken to the pond to think, to wonder if in fact she really felt guilty. She knew there was no question about Oliver’s conjugal disinterest—either over her physical or her emotional needs. And while she would not have given herself to just any man, James Flint had happened along at just the right time. His words, his manner, his carefully tender caresses had all struck complementary sparks within her, inflaming her senses.
    Gwen still knew nothing definite. There had been several questioning looks, a few almost comical hints, but Caitlin had had the sense not to broadcast the affair. Besides, she knew what her friend would say, that she’d known all