Free Luckpenny Land by Freda Lightfoot Page A

lotions. Now she gasped with delight as the ice cold tarn water flowed upon it, swimming as briskly as she could to keep her blood flowing.
    ‘Come here, damn you!’ Jack was after her in a second. When he caught her she wrapped those long brown legs about his waist, shaking wet hair back from her face. He buried his face in it, capturing her breasts with his hands. ‘God, you’re beautiful. You’re like a drug I can’t leave alone.’
    ‘Why should you leave me alone?’ Slanting hazel eyes regarded him with open provocation. ‘When it’s so good.’
    ‘Oh, it’s good right enough.’ It was so easy to penetrate her here in the lake. He grasped her hips and pulled them down hard against him, making her scream and shiver with ecstasy as he plunged upwards into the soft warmth of her. The experience was intoxicating, addictive.
    Later, when they lay spent on the cropped grass, gazing up at speckled sunshine glistening amongst the green leaves of an old oak, he swore softly through gritted teeth and she laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you want it again, so soon?’
    ‘No, witch, leave me alone. Why do I feel so damn guilty?’
    Kath smoothed a languorous hand over the broad chest and down the length of his flat stomach. ‘I can’t imagine. It’s not as if you’re engaged or anything, is it? You’re still a free man.’
    He pushed her hand away and sat up. When she was touching him like that he couldn’t think clearly. ‘Meg seems to be making plans.’ He couldn’t understand how it was that matters were moving so fast between them. She’d have him buying a ring soon if he didn’t watch out, and he hadn’t yet decided yet if that was what he wanted. Nor could he quite bring himself to give her up.
    Kath sighed deeply, closing her eyes against the sun and enjoying the heat of it on her bare skin. ‘Nonsense. Tell her not to. Life is too short for plans.’
    ‘She spends hours at the farm with my dad. Keeps talking about farming. I think she’s more besotted with the sheep than me.’
    ‘I wonder why.’
    He gazed down at Kath’s nakedness and felt himself start to harden again. ‘Meg would certainly never lie here with me like this.’
    Kath’s eyes sparkled with a taunting challenge as she watched his discomfiture worsen. She licked drops of water from her upper lip and saw him groan in fresh agony as his eyes followed the movement. ‘Well, there you are then. Nothing to worry about. She’s happy with her sheep and I’m happy with this. No plans. No ties. Come here. Let me make you a happy man.’
     
    Trying to fetch the sheep down on her own was, Meg discovered, the craziest thing she had ever attempted in her life. And it was all Dan’s fault for stirring her up into anger.
    Some of the greedy ones followed her, hoping for extra feed, but if she attempted to herd them in one direction they quickly panicked and set off at a gallop the opposite way.
    She had run and stalked and circled wide, blocked up gateways, called, begged and even cried, but had known all along that it was useless. And all the time she was aware of Dan watching her from the , house, laughing fit to bust, she shouldn’t wonder.
    In the end she realised she was in danger of risking injury to the precious stock and sat on a boulder shaking with fatigue and anger, letting the tears of humiliation and ruined pride fall.
    What a fool she was always to rise to Dan’s jibes. Why couldn’t they have an easy relationship, like she had with Charlie?
    Just because she had helped one sheep bring a lamb into the world didn’t make her a farmer. Because she knew how to give a dose of treacle and egg white to cure its ills, didn’t mean she could catch the animal in order to issue it. Sheep were not half so stupid as they looked, she decided.
    Meg gazed about her at the majesty of the mountains that rose above the lower slopes of the fells and felt humbled. Patches of shadow, like giant grey sheep, were being chased over the barren fell