Chapter 19

Andromeda had never seen the sea before. She'd always imagined it angry, though, swelling with storms and deep dangers, ventured onto only by the brave.

Not so. At least not today when dying sunlight bled across the horizon turning blue-gray waters golden. A bit like her. More like her than she would ever have thought possible. Because she knew beyond the peace of the evening lurked, still, the danger, the anger.

Just like her. She pulled the large, warm blanket closer about her shoulders and dug her toes deeper into the sand. Cooler underneath. She did not need the blanket in the heat, but the weight of it gave her something solid to cling to, to hide beneath now that she'd stepped out of the well-known past she'd clung to with desperate claws for so long.

What was she to do now? Standing in the bright-lit room. Alone.

She removed the blanket from her shoulders and snapped it out before her, let it billow to the sand in a green-black square next to her already discarded shoes, and then she sat, pulling her knees to her chest and leaning against them.

He had a right to reject her. Now that he knew everything. His brother came first. Naturally.

Honorably.

And yet… anger curled her fingers in the blankets on either side of her feet. She'd jumped for him. She'd followed him into the darkness. Had he never truly cared for her? Had she been merely a means to a noble end? He'd wanted familial ties with a duke, after all, and she, poor lonely Andromeda, had been the swiftest way of accomplishing that. Had he used her lonely longing to get exactly what he wanted?

She'd thought, though… she'd thought he liked her, wanted her, not any of her sisters. Just her. He'd said as much, and she'd believed him. And now that belief lay tiny and shattered, sifting through her hands like grains of sand. Because when he'd discovered the truth, he'd backed away from her.

A storm rose within her, hurtling her to her feet like a wave hurtling against the shore. Too hot. Much too hot, and she pushed her gown down her arms, grateful she'd only barely tied the tapes before rushing from her room in her need for open sky and endless water. How odd that she'd been so content for so long, existing within in such confines, such limitations as she'd set for herself in her grief. All the world had been stretching out before her, waiting. And she'd hid her face from it. Scared.

She'd hide no more. She marched toward the gently lapping waves. At the horizon, the sun glowed orange as it dipped toward the water, which washed cool against her feet. She hissed in a breath and stepped forward once more until the lapping waves swallowed her ankles, then her calves, and she kept going, her pale shift floating around her in soft undulations. The water soothed her skin and deeper, and perhaps once she submerged her chest, it would soothe her heart, too.

No, though. The water ripped about her shoulders, stronger than she'd expected, pulling her back to shore, then farther away from it, and still her heart raged and wept. The horizon, glowing and golden, offered no solace, either.

"Beautiful," she sighed. It looked how Tristan made her feel. Glowing and golden. But the sun was setting, and she'd be lost in darkness again soon. The beach stretched desolate and deserted into forever on either side. She'd thought that would be her life—loneliness forever, but he had made her hope differently, and then he'd taken it away. Yet…

No, the wind seemed to whisper, the waves seemed to insist. No.

She closed her eyes to listen better. Darkness. Not so bad. Comforting because, even here, there were waves. Not the salty, insistent ocean currents but the wind-rippled ones from the lake at home, the country seat where she'd spent her childhood. She'd spent summer days swimming as far across the lake as she could muster, always farther and farther from her sisters and mother on the shore, laughing, reading, drawing, popping strawberries into their mouths and hollering at her.

"Come back! Too far, Annie!" Always one of her sisters who issued the warning, and always followed by her mother's voice, saying, "Swim as far out as you like, dear. You'll be fine. You're strong enough."

Andromeda could almost hear Mama's voice now, loud enough to carry but gentle and always with the hint of a chuckle.

Swim as far out as you like. You're strong enough.

She was strong enough. She felt it now, as surely as she felt the salt sting her skin, the breeze ruffle her hair, and the sand shift beneath her feet. A laugh rose up out of nowhere, and she tossed it to the sky, tilting her head back and opening her arms up wide to welcome a long-due realization.

She'd be fine. No matter how much grieving she had to do, no matter how alone she felt, she could keep swimming forward. Better that than the nothing she'd locked herself in the last several years. Never again. Whether Tristan wanted her or not, the future remained hers to shape with her own two ready hands.

"Andromeda!"

Her eyes popped open. Surely, she imagined—

"Andromeda, get out of there now!"

She turned. Tried to. And slipped a bit, lurching sideways in the waves, barely seeing Tristan's tall, rigid form hurtling across sand toward her before her head disappeared beneath the water. Salt in open eyes stung, but she found her footing quickly, snapped upright, gasping, laughing a bit too because it had been so unexpected. And near the shore, Tristan waded toward her, boots and all, his face a pale mask of panic.

"Go away!" she cried, wading toward him as if she trudged through molasses.

"Get out of there," he demanded.

"No. I like it here. It's soothing, and after today, I need soothing."

Each of his steps was huge but almost useless. "Get out. Right. Now."

She tried to swim away from him, but the ocean wanted to push her back, and her body was swept backward into something—someone—hard. A wave crashed over her, and she held her breath, sputtering when she could finally drag in air. She didn't even have the forethought to struggle against him when he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder, then dragged her back to the shore. Too busy rubbing salt water from her eyes, too amazed by the sight of his drenched trousers clinging lovingly to his rear. When they reached the sandy shore, and he continued up, she wrenched back her freedom from his water-molded assets.

"Put me down." She could demand, too.

"Not until you're inside your room."

"If you do not put me down, I will… I will… pinch you!"

He didn't even laugh. A good sigh or a bad one? He simply rumbled, "Do as you wish."

She kicked, flailing her legs up and down, trying to loosen his hold on her. Undignified? Yes, curse him.

He merely clamped his arm down tighter. "I'll pinch you, Andromeda Merriweather."

"You wouldn't!" He might. And she might enjoy it, too. Depending on where he pinched. She shook her head. No. She would not give into the provocations of his ocean-molded arse. "You've lowered me to cursing, Mr. Kingston."

"I didn't hear you curse."

"In my mind. That's just as bad."

He snorted. "Good. You deserve to be lowered after scaring a decade off my life."

"Scaring you?" He'd almost reached the soft slope that gently became grass and led up to the hill where Bashton's house sat. "How?"

"I couldn't find you," he ground out. "No one could. Searched the whole house, outside, too. Only fear and dread led me to look in the ocean, and there you are, standing waist-deep in the same water that takes men's lives. If you leave a house, tell someone. If you go into a cursed ocean, bring someone else along. Where's Johnny? He'd not have let you slip out like that."

"Johnny is in London, unaware of my current location. Like you are supposed to be."

"You were happy to see me not an hour ago."

She had been. She stopped kicking, losing the will to fight back.

And he stopped walking, and with a sigh, he shifted his weight and set her on her feet, cupping his hands around her shoulders. "You're shivering. How are you shivering? It's hot as Hades out here."

"It's cooler now the sun's gone down." Only an orange-purple glow lit the darkening navy sky at the ocean's edge. Stars had begun to blink faintly behind Bashton's house.

"Do you have clothes?"

She nodded toward the blanket still lying squat and square on the beach.

He crossed his arms over his chest. "Come on, then." He trudged toward the blanket, and she scurried after him, sand flying up behind her.

"Your boots are ruined," she called after him.

"But you're safe."

When they reached the blanket, he knelt, snagged her clothes, and shoved them at her.

She took them. "Turn around. I'm going to take off my shift so it doesn't soak my gown."

His gaze, suddenly hungry, ravenous, raked down the length of her body and back up. "The shift covers nothing, Captain."

Her heart stuttered to life, but she ignored it, glowered. "Mutiny?"

He chuckled and turned around, crossing his arms over his chest so that the soaked thin linen of his shirt proved to her just how useless her own white muslin must be. It lovingly contoured every muscle of his chest. She'd imagined he'd be magnificent, and now she knew, and now she wanted to touch, and now her anger-coated sorrow returned.

"Very well, then," she said, throwing her gown to the blanket. She'd show him what he could never have. She had never been a beauty like Lottie—too narrow, too thin. But he seemed to like touching her, so she dragged the hem of her shift up and up, revealing parts of herself she'd never shown to anyone save her maid, her sisters if they were present. Her entire revealed body must be blushing, but she continued, and soon she could no longer see his wide-eyed face, those partly parted lips, because the shift blocked her vision, and then she sent it sailing into the sand with a wet thwack and stood before him naked.

The muscles of his throat flexed with a swallow, and he licked his lips, his green eyes gone glassy and stormy as the sea. "Gown. On. Now," he growled. "Anyone could see."

"We're alone. The beach is deserted, and the sun is setting. Little light remains to see me by. I'll dress when I like."

"Absurd, risky—"

"Like my lending library? Absurd and risky?"

"It's bloody brilliant is what it is, Andromeda." His hands white-knuckled fists at his side.

That sent her reeling like a wave had just slammed her to the ocean floor, leaving her gasping for air. "Brilliant?"

"Four damn years you've gotten away with it, too. An unmarried miss with every married and widowed woman of the ton chasing after her to get what they want. You're a marvel, but when we marry—"

"I can't marry you!" Though she'd not hidden her body before, she did so now, hiding her breasts with one arm and squatting to grab her gown. She turned her back to him to step into it, not simply to hide her body but to hide the tears falling like drops of ocean spray down her cheeks.

"I…" Steps in the sand crunched behind her, a wall of warmth almost met her nearly naked back, then warm fingers stroked down her spine and closed the edges of her gown together, found the tapes, and fastened them. "I reacted poorly earlier. I did not mean to hurt you."

She wiped a tear away. "Your apologies change nothing. Alex—"

"He is my heart, Andromeda. He has been my only home, my only anchor for so long, and I cannot lose him."

She turned and placed a hand on his heaving chest. It seemed small against the broad strength of it, against the stark white of his shirt. "You will not lose him. I am only a means to an end, after all. There are more, better means for your purpose. But you will have to look outside of the Duke of Clearford's sisters for a respectable bride. We're all a little bit involved. Though no one is aware of anyone but Lottie and I, and—"

"Only a means to an end?" He did not scream or roar or even bark the words at her. They came to her on the dark edge of a sheer cliff face—dangerous and chilling and smooth.

"Y-yes. You told me so, and I have always been fine with it. But then, you see, I began to like you. More than like, truthfully. You make me feel alive. It's why I was angry when you found out and backed away from me. I felt tricked. Silly, I realize. You've never tricked me. You told me from the first. So then I became angry with myself, and—"

"Andromeda." His knuckles appeared beneath her chin and nudged it upward until her gaze met his. His other arm wound round her, and he pressed his hand into the small of her back, pulling her close and closer still until her soft belly met his hard one. "As I was saying, Alex is my heart, but now you are too, and if you've kept the bloody library secret for four years, you can certainly do so for another."

She frowned. "Another?"

"One more year of secrecy. I trust you can do it."

"Just one? Why?"

"When Alex is fourteen in nine months and six days, he can legally choose his own guardian, and Lady Eldridge is no longer a threat."

She lost the ability to breathe. Another wave had hit her, this one washing away her sadness and anger and leaving her buzzing with innumerable possibilities, ideas. Where to begin?

"A long engagement then, and we must speak with Alex first. It is his wellbeing we risk, and if he is upset by it, well, the engagement must be secret, but—"

"Andromeda." Her name a laugh this time. "Is this how you respond when a man admits he loves you?"

She blinked. "Alex is of utmost importance to you. To me as well. And—"

He crushed her in a hug, buried his face in her neck and groaned, "I love you, Lady Andromeda Merriweather. If I hadn't known it when Bashton and his damn butler spelled it out for me, I would know it now. I love you. God, I love you. I'd drain the ocean for you and sell every paper I own and—"

"I certainly hope not. That would be silly." Yes, very silly. She burrowed into his chest. But beautiful to know he would do such things all the same.

He released her, only partly, and dropped to his knees, his hands warm around her waist, his face tipped up to her. "Marry me, Lady Andromeda Merriweather? Marry me, Captain?" Her rested his forehead against her belly, and his steady breaths warmed her skin there. "Please."

His fingers found her nape and speared into the wet, loose hair there. "Yes," she breathed, tugging him to his feet. "Yes, I'll marry you."

Victory flashed bright in his eyes, and then he tilted her head and kissed her. He tasted of salt and sea, of wind and ink, of forever. The kiss started sweet and slow, a seeking, a discovering, a kiss of reassurance, but when she flattened both her hands to his chest and smoothed them up and over his shoulders, wrapped them about his neck and popped up on tiptoe to deepen it, he seemed to break. His arms tightened like vises, and he devoured her, gathering her in his arms. Her stomach whooped with the upward motion for a mere instant before her body traveled downward, cradled in his muscled arms. He laid her on the blanket and stretched out beside her and kissed her until the stars just beginning to peek out from their heavenly beds reeled with the pleasure of his lips against hers, demanding and giving in equal measure.

His palm on her belly, his other hand cradling her head, his lips on hers—all anchored her, sheltered her, adored her.

She adored him, too, and wanted to show him.

The shirt clinging to his muscle, revealing though it was, must go, as should the waistcoat hanging, unbuttoned, from his shoulders. She ripped at the latter and yanked up the former, slipping her hands around the chains of his arms to get what she wanted. She grunted, dissatisfied, when the shirt got stuck, and then in one fluid movement, his muscles rippled, and the shirt was gone, shucked aside to join her shift in the sand.

Maybe.

She was not looking for where it landed. She saw only him, broad and strong and tanned beneath her suddenly timid fingers. She outlined the groove running down the center of his chest, tracing that slight trail of hair that disappeared below his riding breeches, and her every touch made his body rigid above her. His hips pressed into hers, and the feel of him—thick and long—bloomed need in her body. She arched her own hips off the ground to meet his, an echo of the act she knew she wanted, she hoped would come.

His hand wandered up from her belly to cup one small breast through the thin gown, to brush a thumb over her nipple, and she arched into the small embrace that rocked her, quite literally, upward to wrap her arms around him, to scratch needy fingertips up and down his hard back.

He gasped, breaking the kiss and closing his eyes. "We should return." Panting. "You deserve a bed."

"I've had beds all my life."

"And a bath."

"I had one before leaving the house."

He rested his forehead against her, his breathing ragged, and she cupped his cheeks. "I want to give you perfect."

"Our first kiss was perfect, and every time you've touched me since then has been better than that. Please, Tristan." She nuzzled his neck. "Here. And now."

He shook his head, a muscle in his jaw ticking. That rogue lock of hair drooping over her eyes as well as his.

"Stubborn man." She took his hand and led it down her body, rested it in the v between her legs. "I ache for you here. Will you deny me? You always get what you want, but what about what I want? Will you give it to me?"

He growled then. A sound that ripped the air around them before his lips met hers again in a clash of teeth and tongue and desire, and he pressed the heel of his palm against her, somehow knowing right where to press, the exact right place to send her reeling into the heavens, far out to sea. She cried out with pleasure, and before she knew it, her legs were bare to the new night sky, and his hand was on her, stroking, teasing, strong fingers making her moan as he dipped his head to nip at the bare flesh above her bodice.

When he slipped his fingers inside her, she bit her bottom lip, tugging at his hair, needing something, needing everything. But his other hand still cradled her head, so she could not get what she wanted. She wriggled, rolled her shoulders, felt the bodice of her gown loosen.

"Off," she managed to say.

And then a huff of breath warmed her chest, and the deep vibrations of his brief laughter shook her, and his teeth took the edge of her loosened bodice and tugged. He tugged until her breast was freed, and then his mouth descended on her nipple, and the spiraling pleasure he drew at her center hummed along her chest, too.

His hard body above her, the warm sand beneath her, his hands… everywhere.

"I love you," he prayed into her skin.

She broke into pieces. Her body became feathers on the night breeze and finally, finally, floated away on the sea. Or would have if matters had not been unfinished.

So, her satiated fingers found the fall of his trousers and flicked open the buttons through their trembling. As the long, hard length of him appeared, she pushed the material down his hips and tugged his body on top of her.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Look at me, Andromeda. Are you sure? Because I am on the edge of chaos. One word from you and I throw myself over. There's no control on the other side. Not for me. With you."

"I am. Are you?"

He placed the head of his shaft at her center and nudged inside, stealing her breath and arching her body. "More than of anything else in my life."

So, she wrapped her arms around his lower back, reveled in the swell of his backside beneath her hands, and urged him forward, farther into her. He made slow work of it, kissing her with each miniscule movement, nipping her earlobe and licking the length of her collar bone, worshiping the space between her breasts, and stroking the hair out of her face. He fit tightly within her, and she did not know to count his slowness as a blessing or a torment, but each kiss and nip and stroke he made everywhere else on her body made her ready, made her more than ready. Need spiraled back into being, winding her higher than before, and when he reached the hilt, she thrust upward to meet him.

He exhaled sharply and spoke on the inhale, "Perfection. You're perfect, Andromeda."

And that, those words, arched her pleasure higher. She was nowhere close to perfect, but that he thought so made her feel it.

He moved then, sliding out, then rushing back home to meet her in a rhythm that roused him as it did her, a rhythm that seemed to dance with the waves crashing near them and heated their bodies hotter than the scorching summer days. But still slow. So slow. Too slow? She curled her fingernails into his back. "More."

But still he kept a glacial pace. "More? Is that all you have to say, Captain? You, who've read so many books?"

She shook her head. "I don't want the books here between us. Just you and me."

"And you want more." He brushed kisses along her jaw.

"How can you be so calm?" Each word a labor as she arched into him, asking without pesky words for more.

"Because we have a lifetime. But"—he bit her bottom lip, spiking a bolt of pleasure and pain through her, releasing it slowly, and placing a gentle kiss on her mistreated lip—"as you wish it, Captain." He pulled out of her, almost, faster than before, and she wrapped her arms around him as he thrust into her hard and fast. Better than the bitten lip, better than his kisses all over her body, and his fingers gently teasing at her nipples.

"Yes," she cried. "Again."

And he obliged. Again and again and again until he lost all control, driving into her, making her his, and making the stars above them spin. Everything she wanted, but not quite enough. Until he slipped a hand between their bodies and found that yearning bit of her, rubbed with a clever thumb, and broke her in two entirely, brought the eternal ocean into her blood and swept all fear and doubt out to sea with the tide. She cried out his name as he earned his release as well, and when her eyes closed with a final glimpse of the twinkling stars, he fell on her, sweaty and murmuring shocking endearments in her ear.

The warm night felt like a lover's embrace, but her lover's arms felt like heaven.