Page 31 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

He removed her stays, but left her adorned in her shift. The areolas of her breasts, large and dark, pressed against the fine material, nipples protruding. He touched one with a tender exploring finger, and it felt hot and hard.

She didn’t look away when he glanced upward at her face, but her cheeks deepened in color once again.

“You’re blushing, Mary,” he said, placing his hand on her back.

He pulled her forward, pressed his mouth against the material.

Her nipple strained against his lips as if to find a way through the fabric.

When he drew back, there was a circle of moisture there.

He did the same to her other nipple, then sat back to survey his handiwork.

They looked at each other, the moments stretched out and waiting.

Finally, Mary spoke. “What do you want from me, Hamish?”

“You must kneel now,” he said gently.

She knelt on the floor between his legs, reaching up to place her hands on each of his thighs, her thumbs pressing against the swelling of his erection behind the cloth.

He smiled at this sign of her eagerness.

“You must release me.”

Unbuttoning his trousers, she freed him from the constriction of the fabric, brushing her fingers down his length. “Am I going to put my mouth on you, Hamish?”

His smiled broadened. “I fervently hope so. But first, make a ring of your thumb and forefinger and wrap it around me.”

She did, slipping her fingers around the head of his penis, her thumb on the bottom of the underside ridge.

But before he could give her any further instructions, she made another ring with her other hand and slipped it below the first. She slid her top hand up while the bottom one exerted pressure downward. The sensation was indescribable.

Her gaze was rapt as she studied him, and he felt himself lengthen in her grasp. He was fully dressed, his engorged erection being tantalized between her busy hands. She kept up a steady rhythm, smoothly driving him slightly insane.

He reached out and pulled her to her feet, but she didn’t relinquish her grasp.

Only when he pulled her atop him did she release him.

Bracing herself with her hands on his shoulders, she lowered herself slowly over him.

He entered her firmly and selfishly, grateful for the wet heat that welcomed him.

When she would have moved, he shook his head. When she would have kissed him, he pressed two fingers to her lips, and when she would have spoken, he kept them there.

He whispered something soft and comforting to her, closing his eyes at the feeling of being deeply in her. Slowly, he lifted her with one hand and removed himself from her.

Her eyes looked confused as he lowered her to her knees once again. Only then did he kiss her gently. Short, darting kisses that made her open her mouth for more. But he pulled back when she placed her arms around his neck.

He ran his fingers delicately over her hard nipples beneath the fabric of the shift.

“A taste,” he said softly. “It must last us for a while.”

“You intend to drive me wild,” she said, her voice husky with passion. “Am I to beg you?”

“Never,” he said firmly. “Not here and never between us.”

She braced her forearms on each of his thighs and reached down and touched his erection again, her fingers smoothing up and down the shaft and pressing gently on the underside ridge.

Once more she made rings of her fingers, repeating a stroke upward and downward at the same time.

Just when he decided that he was the one who would beg, she re moved one hand, sliding it downward until she cupped him gently.

One finger slid behind, pressing tiny circles while she kept up the stroking of her other hand.

“You never told me you were so talented,” he said in a voice that sounded unlike his own.

“It’s not something one boasts about,” she said, so close that he could feel her breath on his stomach.

“My curiosity is vying with my self-preservation,” he confessed. “I’d like to know what else you know, but I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“Perhaps I should show you,” she said.

“Will I survive the demonstration?”

“Perhaps you won’t,” she admitted, a small, teasing smile appearing on her lips.

“But then, perhaps we should wish to die in such a fashion. I can see the epitaph on my tombstone now. Here lies Hamish MacRae, the victim of a beautiful woman.”

“But he died with a smile on his face?”

“As your husband did?”

She stood, so quickly that he was jarred by her movement.

One moment, he was being teased by her talented fingers, entranced by her husky voice.

In the next, she was standing on the other side of the room, her back to the wall, her gaze on him so cold and distant that he felt as if she’d turned into another person in a matter of seconds.

He felt uniquely vulnerable in the face of her rage. Perhaps because he recognized that he deserved it.

“Are you bereft of sense? How dare you bring my husband into this moment?”

“I agree, it was unwise of me.”

He stood, tucking his recalcitrant member back into his pants with difficulty. It seemed to have a mind of its own, straining toward Mary as if it could erupt at the sound of her voice alone. How had delight turned to antipathy so quickly?

“Was he such a saint, Mary, that the very mention of him turns you grief-stricken?”

She didn’t respond. Her arms were folded in front of her, and her gaze was directed not at him but at the floor.

“What is it, Mary?” he asked, taken aback by her sudden change of mood. In one moment, she was a siren. In the next, she was a flaming virago. Now she looked as if she might weep.

“What is it?” he asked again, cupping her face and lifting it until her eyes met his.

“Nothing.”

“Hardly that,” he said, irritated when she didn’t confide in him. “Tell me.”

“A command that I’m to obey, Hamish?” She pulled away from him, slid a few inches to the left on the curved wall.

“Please.”

She studied him for long moments, her gaze peering into places he’d rather she not see.

Dusty vaults of thought where remorse lingered in shadowy corners.

Did she know that she was the only recipient of his pleas?

Other than God, and He had been stoically silent in response.

Hamish couldn’t bear it if she remained mute as well.

“I should have loved him more,” she said, the words hesitant and so obviously reluctant that he almost pressed his fingers against her lips to spare her the revelation.

“I doubt a man could have been loved more than you loved him,” he said. “You always speak of him with fondness.”

“I respected him,” she said, turning her head and staring beyond him to the far wall. “I liked him. But I never felt the passion for him that I do for you.” Her gaze turned to him. “Make of that what you will, Hamish. I’ve given you a weapon to use against me.”

She’d never been held captive. She’d never escaped from imprisonment.

Nor had she been guilty of a deed like the one that kept him awake.

But the result was the same. She knew herself well, and knew him too quickly.

In that fleeting moment, he resented the knowledge she had so easily gained of herself. He’d suffered for his.

“Do you know why I wanted to lie with you, Mary?”

She shook her head slowly from side to side.

“For forgetfulness. To be able to submerge thoughts and memories beneath pleasure.”

“Has it worked?”

“So much so that it might well prove to be an addiction.” There, he’d neutralized her figurative sword with a confession of his own.

“Then my epitaph might well read Mary Gilly, done in by her sins.”

“Perhaps we should be buried side by side, exiles in the same churchyard. People will walk over our graves, and whisper about our decadence. He was a rogue, they’ll say. And she was a wanton.”

There, she finally smiled, and it was payment enough for his effort.

“Shall I tell you how much a rogue I truly am?” he said, picking up her hand, and bringing it to his lips to softly kiss her fingertips. They were talented hands, soft and delicate, capable of bringing him a great deal of pleasure.

He pressed her hand to the front of his trousers, where he swelled hard, stiff, and impatient.

“Make me forget, Mary. Can you do that?”

Her smile slipped. In its place was a look too somber for his mood. “I can,” she said softly. “But I think we would be wiser if I returned to Inverness.”

There, she had put into words his secret thoughts. She had an uncanny ability to do that.

Suddenly, he didn’t want any more conversation. All he desired was the comfort she offered him in lust.

He pressed her hand harder against the bulge in his trousers, and she took on a rhythm of her own, stroking up and down with firm fingers. Unfastening his trousers, she inserted one hand inside, and he almost sighed in relief, needing her touch.

She was the one to lead him to the bed and remove her shift, baring her body in one swift movement while he undressed feverishly.

But this time, she didn’t remove her stockings, only draped herself over him like a half-clad nymph.

She took his erection in her hand and rubbed it against her, teasing him by sliding it back and forth against her moisture.

Finally, she guided him inside with one hand, before leaning forward and resting her hands on the bed.

At one point she straightened up and clasped her hands behind her, a position that thrust her breasts forward.

Reaching up, he cupped one and then the other, his fingers gently pinching the nipples.

She slowly lifted herself up and then down, then slowly from side to side.

She rode him like a horse, and like a beast of burden he lay, letting her use him as she will.

A fitting punishment, perhaps, for his earlier crudeness.

His body had once betrayed him, giving out when he needed strength.

In India, his mind had refused to remain rational, sending him traveling through dark corridors of nightmares accompanied by the faint reverberation of his own screams. He had begged God toward the end, for them to kill him.

The fact that the words were never uttered aloud was due more to the fact that he’d lost the ability to speak than to any remnant of courage he might have possessed.

He’d waited for death to claim him, barely clinging to life, like a drowning man treading water.

Now, however, he gloried in his life, in this moment, in the sheer joy of feeling all the separate sensations flooding his body.

When the end came, his gaze darkened as if it were death itself coming to claim him.

Or a rapture so deep that his bones shook.

He heard Mary cry out, and some errant thought matched the sound with an earlier comment, making him feel vindicated that he, too, had made her cry in release.