The Vicar's Widow

The suggestion colored Mrs. Becket’s cheeks, but she looked at him with a bold little smirk.

“What is it then, Mrs. Becket? Have I offended you? Have you not, in truth, wondered, if only a little, if I had indeed done so?” he asked pleasantly. “If I am not a man, and therefore, in search of certain pleasures?”

She opened the wrought-iron gate that surrounded the cemetery, banging him in the hip in her haste to do so. “You presume too much, sir. I am not in the habit of wondering about parishioners in the least,” she said and strode through the gate.

Darien easily kept stride with her. “But I am not just any parishioner,” he pressed nonchalantly. “I am a man who has made it clear that he esteems you. And I should think a woman of your youthful years, having enjoyed the fruits of a marriage bed, then having lost them, might wonder about it from time to time.”

“Mmm,” she said pertly. “It would seem as if you have an inordinate amount of time to sit about speculating on any number of things.” She paused at the first tombstone and took one of the flowers from his expensive bouquet and laid it at the head of the grave, and did the same at the next.

“I suppose I do,” he agreed, calmly watching her dismantle the flowers he had given her. “For I have also imagined, if only a little, what it might be like were I to visit your bed.”

Mrs. Becket almost tripped over a crooked grave marker. Darien laughed, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her around a neighboring obelisk that rose over some ancient ancestral grave, and lightly pushed her against it, holding her there with his body, his hands on her waist, his legs braced around her skirts. She tilted her head back with a challenge in her eye.

“I have wondered what heaven it would be to kiss your breast,” he said low, smiling lopsidedly as his hand glided up to cup the mound of her breast. Mrs. Becket drew a quick breath, and her eyes fluttered closed.

Darien’s smile deepened. “And I’ve wondered at the heat of our bare skin as we lay together,” he murmured, dipping to kiss her neck. “Or even how my hands might feel on your bare bottom in the throes of lovemaking,” he said against her skin as he squeezed her hips.

She gave a throaty laugh before she pushed him away. Darien instantly stood back. He grinned at her. Her eyes were sparkling with amusement, and she did not seem the least bit intimidated by his bold gesture.

“I have certainly not wondered about it,” she said pertly but with a coy smile. “Are you determined to make your point by ravishing me in a church cemetery?”

“Don’t tempt me, madam.” And he meant it, as he took in her face, her full lips, the way her nose upturned just so, and her eyes, always glittering with something deep within. There were times, like now, that he looked upon her and thought he’d perish if he didn’t have her.

But he laughed, stroked her arm. “Don’t deny it, Mrs. Becket. You’ve wondered what it must be like to feel my body against yours. . . .” He leaned forward, so that his lips were against her ear. “Or in yours.”

“I haven’t,” she said unconvincingly.

“You have,” he insisted, his gaze dropping to her lips again. “And I further believe you have thought often about the kiss we shared, and perhaps wondered if it was real, or if your memory had played a trick on you and made it into something so spectacular that your heart took wings.”

She gave him a saucy toss of her head. “You must be speaking of your own heart.”

“Perhaps I am,” he said, slipping his hand beneath her chin and turning her face so that he could graze her lips with a kiss. “My heart did indeed take flight that night. But I am quite certain mine was not the only one, Mrs. Becket. I felt your heart beating just as rapidly against mine.”

“You are trying to seduce me!”

“No, madam, I am trying to love you.”

Her lips curved with a soft sigh. “Are you not fearful of being seen?” she whispered, her gaze dipping to his lips.

“I am only fearful of never kissing you again.” He touched his lips to hers.

He felt her body stiffen with the first glance of his lips, and he moved closer, angling his mouth across hers, kissing her softly, just feeling the flesh of her mouth against his. But then he felt her rise up like a mist, so slowly and gently that it was almost imperceptible, until her body was touching his.

Darien slipped his arm around her waist, pulled her into him, away from the obelisk, and kissed her like a woman then, not some maiden to be gentled, but a woman who had known the touch of a man and had gone without it for two years now.

Mrs. Becket opened her mouth beneath his and drew his breath into her; he heard the clatter of the basket as it fell to the ground and hit a grave marker as her hands went around his neck. Her body felt firm and supple and alive against him; she was perfect in his arms.