But she didn’t. This wasn’t her time, where peoplehooked upand it didn’t mean anything. If Nicholas got her pregnant and then died in battle, where would she go? What would she do? Her father wasn’t here to help. Neither were her friends. She had to try to keep a clear head.
Thankfully, he wasn’t trying to pull her out of her panties—though the thought of it made her heart accelerate. She was able to break away without a fight from him.
If he’d given her a fight, she would have left. Finding a place to live in the fifteenth century wouldn’t be as hard without a baby.
“Nicholas,” she said with a worried frown. “I don’t want us to have sex.”
“Ever?” he asked with a disheartened look of his own. “Or yet?”
“Yet,” she reassured, even as his disappointment reassured her that her wishes would be granted.
Now! she wanted to beg.
He nodded and began to swim away, then sank when she leaped on his back. She squealed with laughter when he rose up, lifted her in his arms, and flung her into the small waves.
She came back up laughing and swiped back her hair. “Let’s swim to the falls.”
He was up for it. She didn’t doubt he would be. There didn’t seem to be much that frightened him.
When they grew near, Nicholas said something, but she couldn’t hear him over the water crashing into the basin. They swam into the frothy mist and kissed some more.
“You are beautiful to me, Kestrel,” he whispered with his mouth pressed to her ear.
“And you are beautiful to me, Nicholas,” she answered, but she wasn’t sure he heard. He took her hand and pulled her away.
They swam back to the rocks and Kes heaved herself up first. Nicholas followed and disappeared behind a bush to pull on his breeches.
She was glad for the bright sun to warm her almost naked body. She might try to get a—he reappeared, tying the laces over his abdomen and seemed to take up all the space, all the air.
Shading her eyes with her hand, she couldn’t help but traverse his tall, strong physique from foot to crown.
She’d known he was cut from stone when she’d touched him but seeing him was a feast for her eyes. His long chiseled torso glistened with drops of water dripping from the hair slicked away from his face. Droplets fell from his sparse beard to his hard belly, where a thin rivulet flowed beneath his breeches.
She wanted to fan herself.
His mouth quirked into a scandalous smile when he saw her staring at him. She felt his gaze rove over her lounging on rocks in her bra and panties. His smoky gray eyes were almost chilling as they pierced hers. She lowered her lids to break the power they had over her.
In her century, they would have likely acted on their desire by now and been intimate. Many other guys would have tugged the barrier of her panties and tried to get inside. But not him. He’d stopped when she asked him to stop—though it wasn’t what she wanted to do. It was what shehadto do.
But, oh, to kiss those wet muscles…
“Do you want your kirtle?” he asked, breaking his spell.
She shook her head. “I thought I would work on my tan.”
He chuckled lightly. “What?”
When she sat up and explained, he looked just as perplexed.
Her heart felt as if it had burst and flown off into all directions when he sat down next to her. She didn’t know how to get it back—or if she even wanted it back.
“I forgot how much I missed this place,” he said, looking around.
He said he had come here with Edward’s family. Did he want to talk about them? He brought up Henry Tudor instead.
“So you are definitely going back to fight?”
“Aye,” he told her softly and lay back on the rock. “I must.”