But she must see if her feelings for him were some South-addled dream, or if they were real. Only home could tell her that.
“You’re doing a fine job,” she said by way of soothing him, and herself. When she looked up at him, he was still frowning at her, so she reached over and took up a glass of champagne in one hand and a strawberry in the other.
“These berries are from the hothouse,” she said.
Somewhat mollified, Harry watched her take a bite. The annoyance in his face soon turned to desire. She could tell because his eyes darkened. But she could not be bothered with his changing moods now, for the combination of chocolate and fruit on her tongue made her close her eyes in ecstasy.
They did not have strawberries in Glenderrin.
Nor did they have Harry.
She opened her eyes and found him watching her mouth as if she might impart the wisdom of the world to him at any moment. She had no wisdom to offer him, but she loved him. She supposed she might offer him that.
She sipped from the champagne, since he had brought it to her, and the fizzing dry wine bit at her tongue, making her blink. Harry took the glass from her and drained it before setting it behind him on a table. It was her turn to frown at him.
“I want more of that,” she said. She turned to pick up the second glass from the low table in front of them when she felt Harry’s lips on the skin of her throat, just beneath her ear. She shivered and almost dropped what was left of her strawberry.
“Leave it for later,” Harry said. “I’ve another way to woo you.”
Her wicked thoughts turned to the sofa they were sitting on, which turned them to the sofa down in the library and the things he had done to her down there. Mary Elizabeth had not been able to make much sense out of pleasure like that, pleasure she had not known existed before Harry touched her. She had tried to put the pleasure out her mind, but now, with Harry’s lips on her skin and his large, warm body tucked close against her, she found that she wanted to feel that pleasure again.
Harry ate the last of her berry in one bite, tossing the bit of green cap into the empty champagne glass behind him. He smiled at her, and she shivered, because his eyes never left hers as he sprawled out on the sofa beneath her, drawing her with him.
“It’s bigger up here,” Mary Elizabeth said.
Harry raised one eyebrow, his eyes growing even darker. Mary Elizabeth felt the flush from the fire and the flush from her skin come together in a conflagration, and she fought to keep her good sense about her, knowing all the while that she was failing.
“The sofa, I mean,” she said. “This sofa is bigger.”
Harry ignored her words, his fingers sliding down along the scalloped bodice of her gown. He did not peel it off her as she hoped he might, but simply slid one finger, and then two, beneath the silk, letting the calluses on his fingertips ride along the edge of her soft skin, caressing the swells of her breasts—first one and then the other.
She wriggled against him, hoping that he might kiss her and that his hand might take one whole breast into it, but he did neither. His eyes lingered on her body, and his fingers lingered on her breast until one of them dipped lower, caressing her nipple until it was standing firm, pressing hard against the silk and lace of her bodice and stays.
Mary Elizabeth was sure he would kiss her then, and touch her other breast, but he smiled, not meeting her eyes, letting his own eyes linger on her body, on the swell of her hips where they pressed against his, over the swell of her behind where it rose and fell, riding his breathing as she might ride an ocean wave. Mary Elizabeth felt the evidence of his desire for her against her stomach, so she did not understand why he did not do something more to make her his.
“Harry,” she said, not sure how to ask a man to kiss her. Instead of asking, she leaned up and tried to kiss him, but he dodged her lips easily, his own landing not on her skin but on her hair.
Mary Elizabeth had begun to smell a rat, but she tried again, wriggling against him. He sucked in a breath, and his arms clamped around her to hold her still. She was sure he would kiss her then, and maybe even draw her down beneath him, but he did not. In less than a moment, his breathing was even again, and while one arm held her still, his other hand explored the curves of her body over the silk of her gown.
“Harry,” she tried again. “I need you.”
“Need me, do you?”
She was not sure, but she thought she heard a little laughter in his voice. If either of her hands had been free, she would have hit him. As it was, she could not even writhe. His body was hard and hot against hers, and a heat was building in her nether parts that needed his attention, and quickly. She had no idea what to do about it, but she knew very well that Harry did.
“And what do you need me for?” Harry asked.
Mary Elizabeth strove for patience, working very hard not to grind her teeth.
“I need you to kiss me,” she said.
“Oh,” Harry replied. “Is that all?”
He kissed her cheek as she had just kissed his. His lips lingered, but when she turned her head to meet his mouth with hers, he pulled away.
“No, Harry, not like that.”
“How, then? You’ll have to show me.”
Mary Elizabeth tried to move, tried to free herself so that she might crawl up his body and take his lips with hers, but he held her fast, and easily, with only one arm. His other hand kept sliding over her, this time caressing the curves of her derriere as if it were new country he was intent on exploring.
She could barely think, but she forced herself to rally. “I canna move, Harry. You’ve got me trapped.”
“Oh, do I now?” He looked down her body as if only just that moment noticing that he held her prisoner. His arm tightened around her. “I like you trapped,” Harry said. “You’re more reasonable when I have you trapped.”
“Now, Harry,” Mary Elizabeth began, trying to sound as reasonable as she might and failing.
He laughed a little then, and she glared at him. “Might my lady wish to do a bit of…what is your word? Canoodling?”
Mary glowered at him, but just then his free hand drew her skirt up a good six inches, so that she could feel the heat from the fire on her stockings and calves. She shivered, almost overwhelmed by that one touch. She wanted Harry so badly that she might swallow her tongue in a minute and not be able to speak at all.
“Yes, Harry. She might.”
“Ah, well, then,” he said expansively, stretching beneath her as a great cat might stretch in the sun. His arm still held her clamped down. He did not let her go. “We’d best come to terms,” Harry said. “Before my lady becomes annoyed.”
Mary Elizabeth did not want to tell him that she was already annoyed and why did he bloody well not kiss her already, but in the interest of success, she held her peace.
“What terms need we discuss?” she asked, making an experimental wriggle. She could not budge at all, save for a bit along her hips. When she used them to brush against his manhood, Harry’s smile did not falter, but he did clamp down on her harder, even as he shifted himself away. All the while, his free hand kept moving, driving her mad.
“Well, now. For starters, we must both concede that you are my lady and that you will be for the rest of your life.”
Mary Elizabeth did not want to think of him with any other, even after she left him, even if he decided he no longer wanted her once she was home in Glenderrin. She also knew that she would never love anyone as she loved him, nor would she want to, whatever the outcome.
“All right,” she said. “I agree. I am yours, for the rest of my life. God help me.”
Harry grew very still at that. His hand stopped moving and rested on the curve of her bum, cupping it so that his fingers rested along the inner curve of her thigh. Distracted by that touch, Mary tried to wriggle against his hand, but he held her f
ast.
He did not smile but stared at her, as if looking into her soul. “And you must concede that you will marry me.”
“I might one day, Harry.”
“You will. Within a week. As soon as I can get the special license in hand.”
Mary Elizabeth leaned her cheek against the softness of his black coat so that she would not have to meet his eyes.
“You will be my duchess,” he said. “And I will love you for the rest of my life and beyond.”
Mary Elizabeth sighed, for she would not lie to him—or to herself. She realized in that moment that she should have been a barrister, so easily did the answer come to her. Perhaps Davy would let her have a look at the next contract they would sign with the East India Company, for she clearly had an eye for detail.
“If the license and I are in the same room at the same time as you, Harry, I will marry you. I give you my word.”
“That is the strangest answer to a marriage proposal I have ever received,” he groused.
“Asked a lot of women to be your duchess, have you?”
“Only you, Mary Elizabeth Waters, and you know it.”
“It’s a better answer than no, isn’t it?”
She raised herself up to meet his eyes.
“Yes,” he said, looking wary.
He stared down at her, as if certain he could see past the hazel of her eyes to her inner litigator. Harry seemed to see something else there, something that gave him hope, something that calmed him.
“I will hold you to your word, Mary, if I have to follow you to the end of the earth to do it. You will marry me.”
“All right, Harry,” she said. His body felt even harder against hers than it had before. His grip had loosened just enough so that she might writhe against him a little—not enough to satisfy her hunger, but enough to let him know that she was still there.
“I love you, Harry. I agree that I am yours for the rest of my life. What else is there to settle between us?”
His blue eyes were as dark as indigo as he stared up at her. His arms loosened just a little, and then he shifted his weight, and hers with it, so that she was sprawled beneath him on the comfortable sofa. He was as quick as a tiger, so quick she did not see the movement coming until he was over her, pressing into her, his great body and all its heat and muscled beauty making her forget her own question and everything else.
“Only this.”
Harry kissed her.
Twenty-six
Harry did not know why he still felt a niggling bit of doubt at the back of his mind as to his fiancée’s intentions toward him. Mary Elizabeth was a woman of her word. She would never break it. But the strange way she had agreed to marry him made him wonder what detail he was missing.
But then he turned over and had her under him, and his body could not care about any detail but the way she felt against him, pressed soft between him and his sofa cushions.
Harry stopped trying to figure a way around this woman and her stubborn pride. He simply gave himself up to the curves of her body, the way her mouth tasted beneath his, the flavor of chocolate and champagne on her tongue. He pushed away his doubts to be dealt with on the morrow.
He knew suddenly, as he drew back for air, that he would solve his own problem. He would rise with the dawn, announce their engagement to the entire household, and then keep her tethered to him by a length of silk cord if he had to until the special license arrived from London.
Or he could always lock her away, like a prisoner in some Gothic novel. That would please him, especially if he locked himself away with her.
Such scandalous actions would set the ton, not to mention his mother, on a roar. Not that he cared, so long as Mary Elizabeth was his.
Being a duke had its privileges.
“I’m not over your knee, Harry.”
Her sleepy words did not match the fire that burned in her eyes. Harry wondered if this woman he loved would ever quit challenging him.
He hoped not.
But Mary Elizabeth had yet to learn that there were times when he was going to be, as she put it, the boss of her. It was time that she found out.
Harry kissed her lips before she could say anything else. The sweetness of her tongue beneath his spoke of dark chocolate and even darker thoughts. He did not linger there, but kissed his way down to her breasts, encased as they still were in peach-colored silk.
Harry raised his head long enough to look into her face, and when she offered no objection, he slid two fingers inside her bodice, while his other hand deftly searched out the ties to her gown. He knew his girl well, and knew that she kept no lady’s maid. Her gown was tied up underneath her arm with silk ribbons, and it took him less than a trice to loosen them and for the silk of her bodice to slide away from her body like a tide slipping over sand.
Mary Elizabeth did not seem to notice or care that her bodice was going, so Harry raised himself off her long enough to let it slip down to the carpet at the foot of their sofa.
His lady smiled up at him, stretching, her breasts straining against the lace of her stays. “That is a world more comfortable,” she said.
Harry felt his hand begin to shake with lust, and he stilled it, as his father had so often stilled his hand against strong drink. He smiled at the woman who would be his duchess, taking in the devilish light of challenge in her eyes. He had not subdued her yet. He thought then that it would probably take the rest of his life to teach her who was in charge in their bed. And he would enjoy those lessons, however long they spun out.
He unfastened her stays then, loosening her laces even as his fingertips played over the soft peaks of her breasts. His lips joined his fingers until she was writhing under him, her hands in his hair, drawing him down to her, urging him on.
He had forgotten all about lessons and dominance as he feasted on her, kissing and fondling first one breast and then the other. The stays simply became a barrier between him and the woman he loved, and he tossed them aside, so that they landed a little farther away from their perch on the sofa.
Harry knew that he was quickly reaching the point of no return, and as he scanned the flushed, pleasure-filled face of the woman he loved, he found that he had to be sure. Dominance in bed was amusing, but he would guard this woman, even from himself and his own selfish desires, for the rest of his life.
So he spoke, breaking the mood like shattered crystal. “Are you certain, Mary? Are you sure you want me? That you want this?”
Mary Elizabeth opened her eyes. Their usual maple brown glittered with buried bits of green. She smiled at him, as if she were twelve years his elder and not the other way around. As if she had seen the world, or all she needed to see of it, and out of all the lands, near and far, he, Harry Percy, was her choice.
For blessed once, the woman in his arms cared nothing for his money, his lineage, his so-called power, or his title. For blessed once, the woman in his arms was there for him, and him alone.
“I love you, Harry,” Mary Elizabeth said. “I choose you.”
* * *
Mary Elizabeth felt a little guilty about the fact that though she was not lying to the man she loved, she was leaving him on the morrow and he did not know it. She wondered if he would take a page from her brothers’ book and follow her into the wilds of Scotland, intent on making her his. He would not be able to catch her and drag her back, as they had done with their errant women, for she was not so foolish as to travel alone. Even Sampson, as fleet as he was, could not catch up to the mail coach to Aberdeen.
Mary Elizabeth pressed herself against her man, sighing as the hard heat of his body touched her naked breasts. Harry’s hands were everywhere, unfastening her clothes in a trice. She would remember to devil him about how he had learned his way around a lady’s undergarments, but she would do it later.
She pushed aside all thoughts of the dawn
as well, and opened her mouth to feast on his. When Harry pulled away to trail his lips down to her breasts, she wriggled against him, her own fingers seeking the warmth of his skin as her mouth could not. Her fingertips brushed his manhood, rising hard and proud against her hand, and he hissed, drawing back.
“Did I hurt you, then?” she asked, a little concerned that he would be so missish at such a time. But she should have known her man better by then.
“Pleasure hurts as well as heals, my lady,” Harry said, trapping her fingers inside the heat of his palm. He drew back and sat up, looking down at her as she sprawled on the sofa. A few cushions had found their way to the rug along with her bodice and stays. With Harry gone, she wriggled out of her skirts and petticoats as well, and pushed them over the edge with all the rest.
One flounce caught under his thigh, and she let it dangle, for all she wore now were her stockings, and they did not get in her way. She wondered if she ought to take them off, as it was her first time, but when she reached for her garters, Harry caught her hand again and stopped her cold.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You’ll keep those on.”
“I will?” Mary Elizabeth asked. She lay back against the soft cushions, feeling like the Queen of Sheba. “You sound as if you think you are the boss of me.”
“In bed, I am.”
Mary Elizabeth laughed out loud at that, and sat up. She went to reach for the second untouched glass of champagne, but Harry was there before her, taking it up in his hand.
He took a swallow, his eyes never leaving her face. Mary Elizabeth reached for it again, but he held it out of reach. “Harry, I want a bit of that fancy French wine.”
“Do you, now?”
“I just said I did.”
Mary Elizabeth wondered why she was sitting there arguing with him in the altogether when she simply could have reached behind her, taken up the first glass, and refilled it herself. But there was the light of joy as well as challenge in Harry’s eyes, and she found that she wanted to join with him in whatever game he was playing, even if she did not yet know the rules.
How to Train Your Highlander Page 19