This was not what he’d had in mind when he’d resolved to teach Clarissa to swim. Quite the opposite—he’d only meant to insure that if she did, in fact, try to escape, she would not end her life at the bottom of the river. The last thing he’d planned on tonight was seduction. But then, who was seducing whom? he mused, his eyes tracing the fluid sway of her hips in the darkness. Clarissa had known—she must have known—what she was doing to him there on that moonlit ledge. Yet she had been as cool as the first autumn frost, standing there with his achingly aroused passah-tih risen hard against her hips. The memory of that moment seared his face and his conscience. He should have moved back at once, easing them both away from the danger of the precipice. So, why hadn’t he? What had he been thinking when he stood fixed to the ground, cradling her against him? Was he blundering into moon-madness? Still visible below, the lights on the river glimmered through the evening mist. The night was warm for spring, the wind whispering like the breathy voice of a woman in love.
