Mishap Marriage. Helen Dickson

yet with a mysterious allure he found hard to ignore. He could feel himself responding, a fact that only inflamed his ardour. He searched the flushed contours of her face, the thick crescent of her lashes and the fine line of her eyebrows for a long moment, then reached up to gently touch her chin. He felt it tremble slightly beneath his finger.

      ‘Shona,’ he murmured, addressing her by her Christian name for the first time, liking the feel of saying it on his lips. ‘If I were free, I really think I might be tempted.’

      She forced a smile at his gallantry, but couldn’t manage an answer. Instead she slipped away from him into the pool. The water had an iridescent green glow. It was warm and welcoming, the gentle swell sending her petticoats swirling around her thighs. Stretching out her slender legs behind her, she glanced up at him, finding him watching her intently with a smouldering silver glow in his eyes. She swam across the pond and back again, disappearing now and then beneath the surface. After a moment she hoisted herself out of the water on to the rock beside him, dripping water. Leaning over, she wrung out her long, heavy hair before tossing it back. She stretched out her long legs beneath the wet petticoats, her feet small and perfectly shaped.

      Zack continued to watch her, devouring her with his eyes, having resisted the temptation to fling off his clothes and join her. The mere sight of her abandonment had left him throbbing for her like a youth hungering for his first woman. Yet there was little he could do to control either the lust licking at his veins or the disquietingly tender feelings that were prodding at his heart. Something in his chest tightened.

      ‘You are competent in the water,’ he remarked. ‘Do you often come down here?’

      ‘Every day. I come here to swim and to cool off.’

      ‘And, I suspect, to escape your sister-in-law.’

      She laughed. ‘Something like that. I look on the creek as my own special place. It’s private, so I have it all to myself—although today is an exception.’

      ‘Do you mind? It wasn’t my intention to intrude. When I arrived at the house, your sister-in-law informed me your brother had been delayed. You were just disappearing into the trees and she suggested I might like to walk with you. I wanted to see you anyway—as I said, to apologise.’

      Shona scrambled to her feet. ‘There really was no need.’

      Zack stood up and stepped towards her and as she turned to retrieve her dress, he caught her arm and turned her back to face him. ‘Yes, there was.’ His other hand rose and he gently took hold of her chin. ‘I couldn’t leave things as they were.’ Releasing her chin, he dropped his arm, his fingers, just like last night, unintentionally brushing her breast. He was instantly aware of the contact. And so was she.

      It was an intense moment for Shona. Her breath caught sharply in her throat. Suddenly he seemed enormous and very near. His powerful body emanated heat, matching the heat that was rising in her cheeks. She attempted to ignore the effect of his unintentional caress. ‘Would you please not touch me?’

      It was a supremely proper response, just the kind Zack would expect from a woman of her innocence and reserved manner. But her reticence to let him touch her and the state he was in were like a red rag to a bull. ‘Had I agreed to wed you, Shona, you would have to accept my attentions.’ When she did not move away he lowered his head, his face close and threatening. ‘Shall I show you what you could expect?’

      ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ she said breathlessly. His suggestive tone made her uncomfortably aware of the raw sensuality emanating from his long, muscular frame outlined in the closely fitted breeches and white shirt, open at the throat. A muscle throbbed in his neck. A shudder ran through her as his gaze moved over her face, lingering on her soft full lips, before dropping to leisurely study the thrusting curves of her breasts beneath the clinging fabric of her petticoat. She was unable to move away as his fingers gently brushed the droplets of water away from her cheek.

      Running his hands gently up her arms, quietly, he said, ‘Come now. A kiss is all I want. I would be as gentle with you as you wish me to be.’

      Shona turned liquid inside at the meaning she read into his words.

      ‘Am I bothering you, Shona?’ he asked in a husky whisper.

      ‘You know you are,’ she murmured before she could stop herself. She heard his satisfied chuckle and turned her head away from him. ‘You’re doing it on purpose and it’s making me nervous.’

      ‘In that case, try to relax.’

      Without giving her time to protest, he lowered his mouth and assaulted her lips with a controlled expertise that left her gasping. It was a warmly seductive, lingering kiss that bestirred some strange, unexplainable pleasure in the pit of her womanly being and sent her vow not to wed Captain Fitzgerald soaring into the wide blue yonder. It was a heady brew that sapped her strength from her limbs and made her head swim and her heart race wildly out of control. When he raised his head, he slipped his arm around her waist and drew her closer still. Again his lips descended to hers. She gave herself up to him, completely abandoned, clinging to him as ivy might cling to oak, and the strength in that hard, lean body gave promise of pleasure she had never imagined.

      Their kiss seemed to go on for ever, became more passionate, arousing Shona’s blood to madness. She was no longer aware of what Zack was doing. It was not until his lips left hers and he buried his head between her breasts that she remembered she was half-naked in his arms. But the sight of her own flesh, rosy in the heat of the sun, still rosier in contrast with the dark hair brushing her face, did not embarrass her in the least. It was as though, from all eternity, she had been created merely to give herself to this man, as though she had been made for him alone.