Page 80 of All Scot and Bothered

Perhaps he could learn how to forgive.

Her heartbeats stumbled, colliding into one another and bouncing off her ribs. Her nerves still clamored. Anxiety throbbed through her veins with every elevatedbeat of her heart. She closed her eyes and held her breath, unable to watch.

What if he came to his senses before he kissed her?

She needn’t have worried.

Ramsay’s lips were hot and dry, full and utterly sensual when he pressed them to hers. Tentative and deferential, he brushed light swaths of desire against her mouth, soothing away the fear and replacing it with an equally powerful emotion.

One that would not be ignored.

He skimmed the seam of her lips with his tongue in a warm caress as his hand covered hers on his jaw. He laced their fingers in a motion that sent shivers rocketing through her entire frame like the waves of a sea gale. One crashing over the other with no sign of a break.

She finally released the breath she’d been holding.

He inhaled it, taking it deep into himself.

Was this temptation? Was this the seductive sin the Vicar Teague had warned her about, this inescapable, unrelenting ache? This drive that went deeper than logic or reason ever could. That welled from a part of her so instinctive, so primal, that even language didn’t exist within. From a place that only understood what was unspoken.

The vibration of his moan against her lips demanded entry.

Entry she granted with a sibilant sigh.

Apparently, this was a language she spoke too well. Because at her first sign of submission, she found herself against the door, held captive by a mountain of muscle.

He caught both her hands above her head. His tongue delved into her mouth, not just gaining a taste, but claiming territory in hot, silken slides. He tasted of wine andwickedness, a flavor so incredibly intoxicating it threatened to rob her of what little reason she had left.

Cecelia tried to move her hands from where he’d imprisoned them. She wanted to push him away. To pull him closer. To thread her fingers in the silk at the nape of his neck.

And to tug at it with claws.

She wanted him to consume her as his eyes had done so often. With his mouth. His teeth.

His tongue.

She wanted him to lose control with her. To dive into that place where reality fell away. Where no conversation was needed, and no analysis of morality belonged. Where they might only communicate in grunts and groans and cries and screams.

Ramsay didn’t allow her to move. He maintained control of the kiss, driving her mad as he licked at the tears that had settled into the corners of her mouth before laving into the depth of her. Leaving the flavor of salt and sadness behind before replacing it with seduction and sin.

A taste she never wanted to be rid of.

His body surged against her. Big and hard and lethally strong. His spine rolled as if a wave poured down his back, ending with a curl of his hips, thrusting the evidence of his desire against her belly.

Long and hot, his sex branded through the layers of their clothing.

A warm rush released at her core, and her intimate muscles swelled and flexed, clamping almost painfully around emptiness.

Her body undulated in a sinuous, unbidden arch, enjoying the feel of him against her sensitive nipples, even through their clothing. She became one long pulse ofneed, craving his touch everywhere. Longing to explore the masculine mounds of his topography uninhibited.

His imprisonment of her hands was a delicious frustration as he devoured her lips, bruising them with the force of desire so long denied. Of passion left unspent.

Suddenly she felt very much like the cauldron heated over the cookfire. Simmering with a sensual, aromatic potion of ingredients.

Helpless against this craft, urges she’d struggled to keep dormant bubbled to the surface. An intrinsic female sensuality burst forth, luxuriating in the feel of such a ferocious male laying siege to her senses. Claiming her body as his. She felt as she imagined one did in antiquity, when people lived in huts and were swathed in furs and skins. When the rules of civility did not apply, and the greatest of warriors claimed his chosen maiden by right of might.

Ramsay was just such a man. She understood that as she submitted to the delicious demands made by his mouth.

In his soul he was a Scot. Barbaric and tribal. Fierce, independent, and ruthless.