Page 2 of To Dance with a Devil

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Jerome sighed, content and stretched in the sun like a lazy cat. He considered himself a simple fellow with simple tastes, and it took little to please him. A sunny day, convivial company, and good food, and he wouldn’t have swapped places with a duke or a king. He certainly didn’t envy his brother the responsibilities of the earldom. No, no, the life of a younger son was by far preferable. No accounts ledgers and tenants bleating about this problem and that roof and the price of barley, no expectations to marry well and provide an heir and a spare, though it seemed Jasper had that in hand, the sly devil. Harry Stanhope, who would have thought it?

Why hadn’t he seen it earlier, he wondered? It was as clear as the besotted grin on his brother’s face. The two of them adored each other. They’d been at each other’s throats for years and all the time… well, it just went to show, no one knew for sure what went on in another fellow’s head. Probably for the best, too, he thought, suppressing a smile as he turned his own thoughts to a comely new barmaid he’d spotted down at The Swan in the village. She was blonde and pretty, slender as a reed but with curves in all the right places, and she’d given him a smile that might have stopped short of come hither, but only just.

He’d just settled himself down to indulge in an agreeable daydream of how to get an invitation to come hither, when a shock of icy water hit him in the face, and he jolted up with a yelp. For a moment he just sat, dripping, too stunned to react further, and then he saw her.

“Why you little brat!” he thundered, as his outraged glare fell upon the culprit.

Who else?

“I’m going to throw you in the lake, Bonnie Campbell,” he warned, pushing to his feet as she hitched up her skirts and gave a shriek.

Jasper cursed and set off in pursuit. Bonnie glanced over her shoulder to see him belting after her and crowed with laughter. She turned and stuck out her tongue at him.

“You’ve got to catch me first, clod pole,” she taunted, before running off into the trees.

Despite his annoyance, Jerome laughed and charged after her into the cool shade of the woods. Bonnie squealed as he lunged for her and twisted out of his grasp before running on again. She was faster than she looked, though her face was flushed now, her eyes sparkling with devilry.

“Wretch!” he yelled, before snagging his toe on a root and falling heavily to his knees. “Curse it,” he muttered, hauling himself up to discover Bonnie had vanished.

He could still hear her, so he ran on, following the sound of crunching leaves and snapping twigs. After what felt like a lifetime, he paused, gasping, to lean against a tree. Good Lord, but his lifestyle was taking a toll on his stamina. He had to make an effort to exercise more often, before he ran to fat like his friend Cholly. Forcing himself onwards, Jerome broke from the tree line where it gave out onto the edge of the lake.

There was a small inlet here, out of sight and secluded, which was just as well as he took in the sight in front of him and froze with shock.

“Bonnie Campbell, you’ll be the death of me yet,” he murmured as his gaze held on the woman before him, standing on a large rock that jutted out into deeper water and wearing nothing but her shift.

She turned to grin at him.

“Bonnie, no!” he called, but too late. With quite remarkable grace, considering what a hoyden she was, she dived in.

Jerome ran to the lake’s edge, his heart in his mouth as he stared down into the dark water. It was deep here, so deep neither he nor Jasper had ever swum to the bottom. Not so much as a ripple disturbed the surface and panic gripped him.

No. Oh, no, no, no.

He stripped off and dived in, swimming down and down until his lungs were bursting and he was forced back to the surface, coughing and spluttering. About to take a breath and dive once more, he almost screamed as a hand gripped his shoulders and dunked him under.

It was only for a second, but when he came up, he found Bonnie shrieking with laughter and he had to fight the urge to throttle her.

“Plague take you!” he shouted, wiping water from his eyes. “That’s not funny, you diabolical creature. I thought you’d drowned, curse you.”

“In this little puddle?” she said, pulling a face and obviously unimpressed. “I hardly think so. I’ve been swimming in lochs since I was a bairn, far deeper and darker and colder than this. This is like taking a bath.”

“Perhaps I’ll drown you myself, then,” he muttered, and swam after her.

She gasped and tried to evade him, but she was too slow this time and he grabbed her about the waist.

“Let go,” she protested, wriggling in his grasp, but Jerome was too incensed to do as she bade him. Though she had likened the temperature to bath water it was icy and, in normal circumstances, enough to cool any man’s ardour. Having a generous armful of barely clad female in his arms, however, was all the encouragement Jerome’s body required to sit up and take note of the situation.

Behave, he told himself sternly. Bonnie was out of bounds. He knew it. If he hadn’t known it, his brother had hit him over the head with the fact so repeatedly that there was really no escaping it. Jasper had warned him his last amorous adventure was the final straw and the last one he’d bail Jerome out of. To be fair, it had cost a pretty penny and hadn’t been his finest hour, and Jerome had been trying to behave himself since. Besides, Bonnie wasn’t his type at all. Yet when she turned in his arms, the fine fabric of her shift doing absolutely nothing to make a barrier between her nearly naked form and his own, his cock didn’t seem to be of a mind to make a distinction.

Though the water was too bloody cold, her breasts were warm and plump. They pushed against his chest, and the hard little nubs of her nipples against his skin made his blood heat despite the frigid lake. She gasped with surprise as his erection pressed into the softness of her belly and Jerome held his breath, waiting for her to shriek in horror and slap him. Except this was Bonnie—bold, wicked Bonnie—and he ought to have known better. She wrapped her legs about his waist, and pleasure jolted through him as his cock nestled between her thighs, and her mouth pressed against his. The sensation was so intense and so unexpected, that he forgot to swim, and they plunged under the water again.

They came up a moment later, coughing and splashing. Jerome threw back his head and roared with laughter at the insanity of it and Bonnie watched him with delight ablaze in her eyes. He saw the devil in her then, recognised it as it called out to the devil in him, a terrible siren song which would lure them both into deep water and destroy them on the rocks if they weren’t careful. It was why they ought to stay far, far away from each other, and why it was so hard to keep her at bay. They were alike, two wicked peas in a pod, and all too ready to go to hell together.

With regret, Jerome turned away from her and swam back to the shore, stumbling across the rock to the grass and sitting down in a heap, gasping for air and willing his arousal to perdition. He looked up then and knew that would never happen as Bonnie emerged from the water. Her long dark hair clung to her body, thick coils dripping about her shoulders and framing the mouth-watering abundance of her breasts. Jerome’s tastes had never run to excess—a tidy handful was quite enough for any man in his opinion—yet he wondered now if he’d not been a bit hasty as he took in Bonnie’s lush curves. His breath hitched at her all-but-transparent shift, which left nothing to the imagination. Her nipples were clearly defined, as was the dark triangle of her sex.

Heat exploded under his skin and his body throbbed, all the hotter and more insistently for knowing she’d welcome his advances. She’d made that plain enough. Yet she was an innocent, a young lady, not a willing petticoat or a Cyprian. There were rules. His father had imparted that much to him before he’d died, and Jasper had taken up where he’d left off. This particular rule had been drummed into Jerome from the moment he’d first been caught casting a look of longing at a pretty girl. If one did not expect to offer marriage, one had no business in dallying with virgins.