Page 104 of All Scot and Bothered

Cecelia allowed her wrapper to slip off her shoulder, and watched his control disappear with every increment of skin unveiled to the moonlight. “You couldthoroughlyguard every inch of me beneath the stars.”

“Ye’re killing me, woman,” he said through increasingly harsh breaths.

She sidled closer, her face to the sky. “I’d rather be kissing you.”

He stood still. His nose flaring, his every muscle locked as though he violently grappled with invisibleshackles. “Ye should run, Cecelia.” His voice became impossibly lower. More growl than groan.

More animal than human.

Her loins bloomed at the sound, a delicious thrill of excitement mingling with her arousal. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Ye would be if ye understood what I wanted to do to ye.”

A bizarre instinct overtook her, much like that of conquered prey about to be devoured. She felt both powerful and passive. Like a lioness surrendering to her mate. She wanted him to unleash the beast growling through him and devour her. She yearned to be his prize, his temptation.

His indulgence.

Instead of reaching for him, she watched him through lids half closed as she lifted her hand to the collar of her wrapper, drawing her fingertips down to separate the folds in a move both bold and bashful. As she undid the garment, she unbound the man, and as soon as it pooled into a puddle of silk at her feet, she knew the last shreds of his control joined it.

Before she could breathe, his arms clamped like steel around her, his hands bunching in the thin lace of her nightgown. His hips and mouth crashed against her at precisely the same moment in an ardent, almost violent claiming.

His tongue burrowed past her lips in an erotic intrusion as he fused their mouths and their bodies. The ridge of his sex ground against her belly. The heat and girth and taste of it a scorching memory she yearned to reacquaint herself with.

His restless hands splayed on her back, creating a gentlecounterpoint to the ardent kiss as they slid down her spine, dipping into the dramatic curve of her waist and shaping over her hip. He stopped there, toying at the curve as though searching for something.

“Yer drawers,” he whispered against her mouth.

“I don’t wear them to bed,” she admitted shyly.

He said a few things in a language she’d never before encountered and fisted her shift in his hand. “If ye keep surprising me like this, woman, tonight willna last long.”

“I’m sorry,” Cecelia said contritely, deciding she loved when he called her woman.

His woman.

“Doona ye dare apologize,” he commanded before swooping to claim her lips once more. He distracted her with drugging kisses as he attacked the ribbon keeping the wispy sleeves of her garment around her shoulders. Once he’d untied it, the cotton and lace slid away from her curves to join her robe.

The chill of the night air caressed her everywhere, and she burrowed against him, suddenly shy and anxious. Though this man had already turned her most private places into a banquet, Cecelia had underestimated what being naked in front of him would feel like.

She thought of her breasts, a pendulous burden two times the size of Alexandra’s. She thought of all the places she was round and soft and large, now unshaped by a corset.

What if Ramsay saw her true shape and was repulsed?

He made to step back and look at her, but Cecelia clung to him like a burr, pressing their mouths so firmly together their teeth met.

His fingers ventured where his eyes could not, gliding down her shoulders and stroking across her chest until he angled away enough to fit his palms to the weight of her breasts.

They shared a gasp that broke the kiss, and Cecelia stared in unblinking awe as he palmed her bosoms with the appreciative sound of a man finally given reprieve. “I’ve dreamed of these in the night,” he confessed as his thumbs moved to caress the hard and sensitive points of her nipples.

“You did?” she squeaked. “You have?” A start of pleasure trilled from her breasts down her belly and landed in her sex.

“Och, aye,” he groaned. “Mythical breasts, these.”

He gave her a look so hot, so full of erotic promise, Cecelia swayed, clutching at him as her legs trembled and melted.

Then Ramsay did something no man had ever done before.

He bent to hook his hands beneath her knees, then swept her up in his arms.