Oh. Yeah. I try to disentangle myself from him, but he tightens his grip, holding me in place. Slowly, he stands, drawing us out of the water with my legs still around his waist. I throw my arms around his neck and hold tight.
“If you drop me, I’ll kill you,” I say.
He chuckles. “I’ll be careful, I promise. I’m not done with you yet.”
Slowly, he steps out of the pool and carries me over to where his jeans lay in a crumpled pile. Only then does he put me down, but he keeps an arm around my waist as he reaches down and grabs the pants. As he fumbles for the pocket, I stand on my toes and close my lips around his ear. His arm grips me tighter and his arousal leaps against my thigh.
“Hold on, hold on,” he says.
I answer by flicking his earlobe with my tongue. One of my hands skims over the muscles of his back while the other drifts down to touch his other muscle.
“Fuck, woman, give me a minute.”
I don’t want to give him a minute. I want him now. In reality, it probably only takes him a moment to open the condom, but it feels like forever. My body is so tense and achy with longing that I can’t think straight.
And then suddenly he’s grabbing me with both arms again, lowering me down to the ground. I relax into his grip, letting him press me down onto my back against the grass of the clearing. After the cool water, the ground feels almost unnaturally warm—but maybe that’s only because my blood is boiling in my veins.
Ward is on top of me, and every sweet inch of his body feels like heaven against mine. We’re both still wet, but I can’t tell what’s fountain water and what’s sweat.
I raise my hips, looping my legs around him once more, and he slips inside of me so quickly, so easily, that it’s a small miracle it didn’t happen back in the pool. I gasp in pleasure, and Ward exhales. For a moment, he doesn’t move.
“This…” I begin, but I don’t bother finishing. I know. He knows.
When he moves, it’s with far more restraint than I expected. I move my body up to meet his and tilt my head to kiss him. His mouth joins mine eagerly, and I return the passion, biting down on his lip as we rock against each other.
My whole world is heat and light. I’ve had plenty of sex in my life—good sex, sweet sex, emotional sex—but I’ve never had sex that felt like this. This is wild. This is explosive. I never want it to end, and at the same time I’m afraid my body won’t be able to take it. That I’ll black out and wake up sometime later dazed and satisfied and sore in places I never realized I could feel such pleasure.
Lights dance across the inside of my closed eyelids. I don’t care if it’s moonlight, starlight, or just the pleasure centers exploding in my brain.
“Ward…” I say, but it’s more of a moan than a name.
He murmurs something back, but I can’t make out the words. My mind is too full of sensations to have room for processing other things.
“…ere,” he says.
“Mm?”
It takes me a moment to realize he’s stopped moving.
My eyes fly open. Ward is frozen on top of me, but he’s not looking down at me. Instead he’s looking back toward the place where we entered the clearing.
“What is—”
He hushes me with a gentle hand across my mouth. And then I hear it: a voice, from somewhere else in the maze.
“Who’s there?” comes the cry.
One of the guards. Someone knows we’re out here. And he’s not far, from the sound of it.
Ward moves quickly, climbing off of me and leaping to his feet. I lie there, stunned, until he reaches out his hand.
“Come on,” he urges in a whisper. “Quick. Grab your clothes.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. Things aren’t going to end well if we’re discovered having sex in the hedge maze with a bottle of very expensive stolen wine. We dart around the clearing, gathering our discarded clothes. I grab the near-empty wine bottle from next to the fountain as the guard calls out again. I don’t know if he knows the way through the maze, but he definitely sounds closer this time.
We don’t take the time to dress. There’s another way out of the clearing, opposite the place where we entered, and we both run toward it without having to say a word to each other. We dart down the path between the hedges, and I don’t even bother to pretend that I don’t know the way. I lead us through a winding series of turns until we come to a small alcove built into one of the leafy walls. It wouldn’t be much of a hiding spot in broad daylight, but there’s enough shadow right now that we might avoid the notice of someone running past. Assuming they were able to follow our exact path in the first place. There are plenty of places a guard might get lost in here.
I pull my clothes back on with shaking hands. Now that I’ve gotten the chance to breathe, though, I realize that the trembling isn’t from fear; no, this rush of adrenaline is an odd mixture of arousal and the devilish sort of excitement you feel only when you’re doing something completely wicked. I almost laugh out loud.
And when Ward’s hands find me in the darkness, I realize that he’s nearly laughing, too. He pulls me close to him and gives a sad little chuckle.
“That’s not how that’s supposed to end,” he says. “That bastard.”
The guard shouts again, though it sounds like we’ve definitely put some distance between us and him.
“Fortunately,” he continues, “I had the foresight to bring a couple—damn.”
“What?”
“I know I packed a couple of condoms,” he says, patting his pockets. “The other one must have fallen out somewhere.”
I give a defeated laugh and lean my head against his shoulder. Seriously? Can’t the universe give us a freaking break?
Somewhere far off, the guard calls another time, his voice even quieter than before.
“You know,” I say, determined to make the best of the occasion. “Sex might be out of the question, but we’ve gotten around that problem before.”
“Mm. I like the way you think.”
“You’ll like me even better in a few minutes,” I say, my hands on his jeans. “I owe you one anyway.”
And I drop to my knees, eager to go to work.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
That reporter Asher is watching me. Yeah, I know I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in a couple of weeks—really, it’s been more like months—but I know this isn’t just exhaustion-fueled paranoia. I run a lot of errands for Mr. Haymore, all over the estate, and I seem to run into Asher more than I should.