word.” She slid closer to him and whispered the word she’d read in his ear.
His face went still.
“Will you teach me that one, as well?” she asked.
She slipped her hand across his chest, over his heart and down the center of his abdomen.
Feeling brave, she moved lower. She dipped her hands underneath his undergarments and her fingers closed around something long, hard, and cylindrical.
“Got a big tallywhacker, ’ave you?” she asked in a guttural male voice.
He choked on a laugh. “It’s above average.”
“I have nothing to judge you against, that’s all.”
“You’ll have to trust me on this one.”
She did trust him.
She trusted him enough to allow him to see the woman she was becoming. Wilder. More free. A woman who lived inside her body, as well as her mind.
His staff rose to meet her touch, growing harder and thicker with each stroke of her fingers.
“Does he like to be touched?”
He made a strangled noise that Beatrice took for a yes. She circled the head with her fingertips.
His hand closed over hers, guiding her around his stiff length and showing her how to move up and back down.
Soon she had learned the correct method, judging by the quickness of his breathing and the soft moans he made.
They lay side by side on the bed. He reached between her thighs and she parted her legs.
As she stroked him, he touched her in slow, luscious circles.
His lips sought hers in a long, slow kiss. His hand covered hers, gripping more forcefully, showing her that he wanted more pressure. He began to move in her grip, thrusting with urgent movements.
“That feels so good, Beatrice,” he gasped.
She strengthened her grip, matching his movements. He made low noises deep in the back of his throat as he reached his pleasure, bucking into her hand and collapsing against her, the weight of his body pinning her to the bed.
She smiled into his hair.
He lifted his shirt off and wiped his phallus and her hands clean, before covering himself with his undergarments.
“That was amazing. Beatrice, you are . . .”
“Highly distracting to the virile rogue?” she supplied.
“Highly addictive.” He kissed her neck, nipping her with his teeth. She squeaked and he nipped harder, nibbling his way from her throat to her sensitive nipples.
“Ready to learn more new words?” he asked, with a devilish glint in his eyes.
His fingertips brushed over her again. There. And sensation rippled through her belly.
“Again?” she gasped.
“Again,” he commanded, shifting his hand so that his palm covered her mound, rocking gently over her in slow, deliberate circles.
She tensed. “No, I’m . . . not . . . I couldn’t.”
This one was quieter than the other, more of a mellow ripple than a flood of pleasure.
She laughed, delighted by her body. “I had no idea I could do that again. Ford?”
“Yes, Beatrice?”
“If we were stranded together on a desert island, I’d want to do this every day.”
His laugher brushed her ear, soft and low. He kissed her earlobe, then her lips, his tongue slipping inside her mouth.
Tendrils of longing curled inside her again, threatening to burst into blossom, rose petals on her tongue, perfumed by desire.
“You’d spend so much of your time scratching dictionaries onto cave walls that we wouldn’t have time for this,” he finally replied.
“I would make time. Dictionaries aren’t everything. Sometimes life needs to be experienced, instead of written about.”
“You could read aloud to me from your dictionary while I pleasured you,” he suggested wickedly.
“But then you wouldn’t be listening.”
“And you wouldn’t be able to keep reading.”
“Is that a challenge, rogue?”
“It’s a certainty. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d take you up on it.”
“Another time,” she said lightly.
He stopped smiling and flopped to his back beside her.
She’d said the wrong thing. Brought reality into the room with them. There couldn’t be another time.
They weren’t on a desert island. They were in a bed in a house not far from the house where she lived with her mother.
And somewhere, a ship was moving closer, coming to take him away.
Beatrice laid her head against his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat. A few more moments within the circle of his arms.
A few more moments within the walls of this impossible dream.
“I read your diary entry, Beatrice.”
She lifted her head. “My diary?”
“You left a torn-out diary entry in the book you lent me.”
What was he talking about? “I didn’t mean to give you any of my writing.”
“I know. I started reading the page and I knew immediately that you hadn’t meant to give