Penelope put out a finger to lightly brush the bristles on his jaw.

“You must be exhausted,” she said, tracing her way up along the side of his lips.

Catching her hand, Alex lifted it to his lips, pressing a kiss against the palm.

Chapter Twenty-One

Alex flushed, dropping her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said hastily. “I didn’t — ”

Leaning forward, Penelope silenced him with a kiss. If he had any objections, he didn’t voice them. It would have been hard for him to do so. His mouth and hands were otherwise occupied. He tasted of stewed aubergine, with a slight hint of cloves. Mmm, tasty, thought Penelope, and enthusiastically gave herself up to osculation and aubergine.

Alex’s hands remained for just a moment too long on her elbows before he regretfully withdrew.

“Wait,” said Penelope laughingly, as he drew back, away from her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

He raised an eyebrow. “A safe distance away.”

His tone was light, but she could tell he meant it. Penelope sat up straighter, dragging her skirts close around her knees. “To stop me from attacking you, I wager,” she said acidly, feeling the sting of his words like lemon juice on an open cut. Poor, beleaguered man, pursued by the relentless advances of an amorous matron. She doubted anyone would feel sorry for him.

“Change the pronouns around and you’ll have it right,” he said wryly. “You can’t think, after all this time, that I don’t want you — ”

“You give a convincing impression of it,” grumbled Penelope.

“ — But it would be a cad’s trick to dishonor you,” he finished. “It wouldn’t do to serve you so.”

It was on the tip of Penelope’s tongue to tell him that he wouldn’t be the first. But she couldn’t, not when he was looking at her so gravely, as though he actually gave a care for how she might feel, for something other than the fleeting press of her body against his in a convenient corner.

So she schooled her sarcastic tongue and said simply, “I know. That’s why I want you.”

Despite himself, he grinned. “Because you can’t resist a challenge?”

He looked so much younger when he smiled, thought Penelope, young and carefree. It lifted away the anxious lines beside his eyes. That was one of his most redeeming qualities, Penelope decided, that sense of humor that popped out no matter how hard he tried to be stern.

“You’re not that much of a challenge,” said Penelope dampen ingly.

But, then, what man was? Penelope had pursued her fair share over the years, straight from ballroom to balcony. None of them had put up much of a fight.

It was a poor substitute for riding to hounds, where at least the fox had the courtesy to keep running. She had canoodled in corners with a variety of uninspiring specimens, seeking that momentary thrill that came of desire and the defiance of convention, two birds with one stone. There had been Turnip Fitzhugh, handsome, endlessly good-natured, but as simple-minded as a child; Martin Frobisher, good with his lips but too fast with his hands; Freddy. All good-looking, all self-assured, all with lineages far more distinguished than hers, but not any of them men Penelope had given serious thought to marrying. They were playthings, short-lived pastimes, like the block castles she used to build only in order to smash. There had been precious little liking involved and even less affection; that she had reserved for her female friends, for Henrietta and Charlotte and the crusty old Dowager Duchess of Dovedale.

It was hard to imagine Alex on one of those balconies she had frequented with such reckless abandon. He was dark where her previous conquests had been fair, serious where they had been flippant, irritatingly observant where they had been comfortably oblivious. If one were to judge from past conquests, Alex wasn’t at all in her line.

And it wasn’t just because he was a challenge.

“Because I like you,” she blurted out, and realized that for once it was true. It was a rather unsettling revelation. “You’re . . . , well, you.”

Not just a body on a balcony, not just a pair of lips to blot out boredom, but Alex, Alex who argued with her and watched out for her and woke absurdly early in the mornings to ride with her every day, whether he had the time to do so or not.

Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Alex didn’t seem to think so, either. His dark eyes were intent on her face, watching her in that way of his, as though he were learning her from the inside out, peering into every little dark nook and cranny of her soul. There were plenty of those to choose from. Dark nooks were one of Penelope’s specialties.

He might have wanted her last night, in the still of the bungalow, with the lingering scent of moonflowers on the breeze, but not in daylight, when he saw her again for what she was, brash, impetuous, with her face gone unfashionably tan and curry stains on her habit. He was undoubtedly mustering the words with which to turn her down politely.

Penelope suddenly, very desperately, didn’t want to hear them.

She jumped to her feet, leaning over to gather up the empty tins. “Or we can just ride on,” she said brusquely, not looking at him.

A lean brown hand closed around her wrist. Penelope regarded it blankly, as though not quite sure what it was doing there, alien against the white lace frill of her sleeve. Slowly, her breath catching somewhere in the vicinity of her corset, she lifted her eyes to Alex’s face. What she saw banished any doubts she might have had. In his eyes blazed a reflection of the desire she felt in her own.

Nothing more needed to be said. Without a word, he drew her down beside him on the blanket, the blanket that had seemed so prosaic only moments before, but now presented the prospect of a host of exotic and illicit possibilities. Penelope plunked down hard on her knees, catching at his shoulders for balance as she tilted her head down to kiss him, enjoying the unusual advantage of height.

“Are you sure?” he murmured, his teeth tugging at her earlobe, even as his hands moved intimately up and down her torso.

In answer, Penelope pushed hard at his shoulders, sending him toppling back onto the blanket, narrowly missing sheer disaster with a fork. She followed him down, bracing herself on her elbows and scattering kisses across his upturned face as he busied himself with the buttons on her riding jacket. The fabric parted, and his hands slid beneath, burning through the linen of her blouse, drawing her down on top of him with drugging kisses that made the noon sky dim to dusk and the rustling of the tree leaves blur in her ears.

Penelope wriggled her hands beneath his shirt, feeling the hard edges of muscle beneath, delighting in the way they contracted with each labored breath, with a flick of her tongue against the hollow of his throat and an exploratory expedition taken by her lips along his collarbone. His body felt very different from Freddy’s. His frame was more compact, more economical, with none of the extra layer of flesh lent by too-indulgent living, only skin stretched spare over muscle and bone, broken by the odd ridge of an old scar.

He drew her back up to kiss her mouth, one hand tangling in her hair, drawing her face down to his. The long skirts of her riding habit bunched between them. Her lips still joined with his, Penelope wiggled impatiently against him, trying to displace some of the layers of fabric separating them. Her breasts tingled through the linen of her shirt, her corset cover lightly abrading her nipples as she moved. Penelope could feel Alex’s hands working at the folds of her skirt, moving beneath the heavy fabric to the bare skin underneath. Impatiently, she rocked against him, their mouths locked tongue to tongue as his hands found the bare skin above her garters. The sensation of his hands on her thighs was all the more erotic for the layers of heavy wool cascading around them.

Whimpering, Penelope tried to push downwards, towards his questing fingers, but his hands closed around her thighs, holding her poised in all the inarticulate irritation of suspended desire. She could feel his thumbs at the soft junction of her thighs, maddeningly close to, but not quite touching the area she so ardently wanted him to reach.

Well, two could play at that game. With unsteady hands, Penelope scrabbled at all the excess fabric, prospecting through a wilderness of bunched-up blue wool for the front of Alex’s breeches. It didn’t take his quick, indrawn breath or the constriction of his hands around her thighs to let her know she had found the right place. Penelope gave a husky laugh of triumph as she yanked at the front flap with a fine disregard to buttons and stitches.

Raising the stakes, his thumb brushed against the swollen place between her legs. Penelope delicately curved her fingers around his shaft and applied the just right amount of pressure to make all the blood travel from his brain to another location entirely.

“Christ!” Alex groaned, with what was left of his verbal faculties. “You’re wicked.”

“I try,” Penelope said, then gasped, her back arching as he did some rather wicked things of his own, revealing that while he might not have had much experience with corset ties, he did have a healthy working knowledge of the female anatomy. Penelope emitted a little mewing noise, as her body contracted of its own accord. Lord. It had taken her weeks to teach Freddy to find that spot. Her knees were feeling wobbly. They didn’t want to hold her up anymore. There were black spots in front of her eyes and her swollen nipples rubbed painfully against the lining of her corset. She felt like a ripe fruit, about to burst out of its own skin. Every inch of her was overripe and aching, bursting for completion.

She squirmed away, out of the reach of his teasing fingers. She wanted him inside her and she wanted it now.

“No more games,” she rasped, her knees tightening around his hips. Holding his shaft in one hand, she lowered herself slowly down on top of him, her lips parting in an involuntary gasp as she felt him inside her.

“No games,” he agreed, and there was a wild note in his voice that matched her own, as his hands closed around her bare buttocks, pulling her down as he drove up into her, hard and fast.

Penelope felt herself convulsing around him, the waves of pleasure coming one on top of the other, all the stored-up desire of the past few days pulsing out between them. She could barely hear the echo of her own hoarse cry in her ears for the thrumming of her blood. Still caught in a dizzy spiral of pleasure, she was only vaguely aware when Alex’s hand closed desperately about her waist, lifting her unceremoniously off him as he rolled over to spill his seed in the grass.

Flushed, disheveled, they lay gasping like pugilists who had just fought a difficult bout, each in his own corner. Penelope sprawled in the center of the blanket where Alex had dropped her, propped up on her elbows, feeling her chest work up and down against her corset as her breathing returned to normal and some of the hectic color faded from her cheeks.

Across the blanket, Alex rolled to a sitting position, his hands going self-consciously to the flap of his breeches. His shirt was untucked, his breeches’ flap flopping, his hair rumpled, and there were angry red patches at the open neck of his shirt where she might just have gotten a little bit carried away in the heat of the moment.

Penelope suspected she didn’t look much better. Her hair was scraggling down on one side of her head, her jacket was still open, and she was sitting in a patch of wet. Why was it that the act itself was so wonderful, but the sequel invariably so awkward?

“Well,” she said brightly. Licking her sore lips, she surreptitiously stretched the muscles in her thighs, feeling the stickiness between her legs.

“Well,” Alex echoed uncertainly, watching her with obvious concern. She could see his eyes go to her open jacket, then the rumpled blouse underneath, and a mottled red flush spread slowly beneath his tan.

She could tell what he was thinking, that he might at least have had the courtesy to wait to remove her clothes. Penelope could have told him she didn’t mind. In fact, the extra layers had added a certain spice to the whole adventure. Like the bit of clove stuck between her back teeth. Hmm. How had that gotten there?

Struggling to her feet on legs that weren’t entirely steady, Penelope shook out her skirts. “Oh, Alex, don’t look so Friday faced! I’m not going to call you out to defend my honor.”