He expelled a long breath full of so many things left unsaid. She heard it leave his lungs through the ear she’d pressed against the warm muscle of his chest.
“I didna mean to sleep, all told. I was going to keep watch,” he muttered. “Although, after what I put ye through, perhaps the dirt is what I deserve.”
“But don’t you see?” She pulled back, craving the sight of him. Wanting him to witness the depth of her gratitude as well as hear it. “I don’t even care that you were cruel. Every time I’ve needed you, you’ve been there, quite literally lifting the burden from my shoulders. You can’t know what that means to me.”
The glaciers that had once been his irises melted into dark pools of azure before he hid them beneath his lowered lids, turning his face away.
“You’ve barely glanced at me all day.” She reached up to cup his cheek, tugging gently at his stubborn jaw.
“Cecelia.” He resisted her pull, the bristle of his evening stubble sharp against the soft flesh of her palm. “Doona make me. Not now.”
“Do I still disgust you?” she challenged. “Because I cannot tell. Sometimes you look at me like you did that night you kissed me. As though I am extraordinary, or perhaps worthy. And sometimes … I see storms in your eyes. Hatred. Wrath and—”
“Nay. God, woman, ye canna think that.” He lifted a hand as if to silence her, but the knuckles that brushed the bruise on her cheek were infinitely tender. “I canna look at ye without wanting to bring the man to life who did this, just so I can have the pleasure of killing him again. Slower this time. That is the wrath ye read in me. A bruise on yer skin is like an open wound on my soul. It hurts me to look.”
Cecelia was so startled by the fervency of his words, contrasted with the reverence of his touch, that she could summon no reply. She stood beneath his gaze, the curves of her body still pressed to the planes of his, and gloried in the sensation his touches provoked within her.
Her hand still shaped to his jaw as his fingers ventured up her cheek to her temple and then threaded in her hair.
Without meaning to, she leaned into his palm, seeking his touch like a cat hungry for affection.
“Christ,” he breathed, turning his head to press his lips against the thin and tender skin on the inside of her wrist. “What are ye doing to me?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cecelia hadn’t the first idea what she was doing, but her body certainly seemed to. It responded so intuitively to his proximity. Blossomed and ached where he touched her.
Ramsay exerted a gentle pressure against her scalp, drawing her closer.
His head lowered incrementally toward her, eyes glazed with intent.
At first, the kiss was a ghost haunting the space between them. A specter of what might have bloomed before all of the chaos ripped their worlds asunder.
Her eyes affixed on his lips, finding a hint of the divine where malice had once been. A glimpse of the eternal. An echo of forever.
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 elevated beat 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 and wickedness, 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 of need, 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.
His blood was closer to the beast’s than most. His ancestors fought off Romans, Vikings, and a plethora of would-be invaders. That savagery lived inside of him, and he caged it. Fought it. Starved and smothered it beneath propriety and determination.
Yet it endured to pace behind the iron bars of his will like a hungry lion.
God, but she yearned to set it free. To offer herself as his next meal.
Driven by an exceedingly powerful primitive need, Cecelia tangled her tongue with his. Meeting his passion with a claim of her own. Her legs parted over his knee, driving their hips closer. She rubbed against his sex, allowing him to feel the tremors of
pleasure rippling down her body.
She purred in triumph when his hips ground against her.
Ramsay broke contact. His breaths, harsh and ragged, landed against her cheek in hot, wine-scented bursts. “Tell me to stop,” he panted.
Cecelia stared at him mutely, her breasts heaving against him. She knew what he was asking. He needed her practicality as he battled his lust. He wanted her to tell him that they were still enemies. That they would regret each other. He was asking for the reminder that this heat between them was wrong, somehow.
She could give him none of that, because her reason had been replaced by nature. By desire. She was more aware than ever before that tomorrows were not guaranteed, and yesterdays didn’t matter as much as everyone seemed to think.
“Cecelia.” Her name on his lips was both invocation and benediction. This moment between them either a beginning, or an ending. Either way, they stood at a cataclysmic divide searching for the bridge across.
She could bring herself to say nothing. They’d talked and talked and that had gotten them almost nowhere. It was time to allow their bodies to do the communicating, to soothe the singular pain of children born of loneliness and the lifelong shame of being one of the unwanted.
That was their common ground. The place where their souls might meet and merge.
She stared up into his savage, brutal beauty, aching to say so many things, yet unable to make herself vulnerable to his rejection.
Pleasure me, she wanted to plead. Take your pleasure from me. Fill this emptiness and enmity between us with something we both want. Lend me your strength and I’ll give you my softness.
The dirtiest demand leapt to her tongue. She even curled her bottom lip between her teeth but bit down hard, unable to bring herself to say it.
Fuck me.
A whimper of need escaped her, and that was all it took to break down his last defense. A dark mask covered his features, this one dangerous and unrestrained. Cecelia gasped out as a pang of delicious fear pierced her before he dove for her mouth. His fingers plunged into her hair, all sense of gentility replaced with feral lust.
Their kiss became a battle, each of them driving against the other, shoving closer, demanding heat and friction.
He devoured her with strong plunges of his slick, velvet tongue, his hands dragging down her rib cage to mold to her bottom. With one swift flex, he lifted her from where she’d risen on her tiptoes to reach his mouth with hers and curled her legs around his waist.
He pinned her to the door with his hips, his erection trapped against her sex, pulsing with insistent demand through the many layers of her skirts and his trousers.
For her part, Cecelia attacked his shirt, ripping the buttons from their bindings until she could peel it away from his wide shoulders, smoothing her appreciative hands down the rippling cords of his long, beautiful arms.
He was built like an Olympian, his flesh smooth as marble poured over mounds of iron. Blood pumped through thick ropes of veins beneath his skin, warming all the earth and clay of him, animating his every impulse with strength and life.
Her greedy hands danced over him, taking advantage of their position. She raked her fingers through a soft wealth of golden hair over his chest, finding the flat, masculine nipples that pebbled beneath her touch.
He made a noise that wasn’t entirely human and allowed her to slide down his body until she stood again so he could gather her hands in his own.
No, she thought, pulling her hands from his grasp. No, you don’t get to control this.
She wanted him like he was now. Free and wild, uninhibited and mindless. She wanted the man to give way to the animal beneath. If almost every one of their interactions had been a battle, this one would be different in a very unmistakable way.
This was a battle she’d win.
She’d bring the Lord Chief Justice to his knees by what she could do on hers. Her intention caused her both anticipation and anxiety. She’d seen the act and read about it in the volume in Henrietta’s library. The one that’d fallen open to her the day they’d met as enemies.
This was a man’s ultimate pleasure. The questions remained, was it the giver of pleasure, or the one who received who maintained control?
She’d just have to find out in the practical application.
Cecelia lowered herself until she was no longer on her tiptoes, and then bent her knees slowly, dragging her lips from his mouth to his stubbled jaw and down the thick column of his neck. She was certain to leave a slight trail of moisture, so her intent could be unmistakable.
She stopped to kiss his clavicles and run her cheek along the fine fleece of his chest hair.
Breath sawed in and out of his massive chest as though he’d run a league. He said nothing. Made no move to encourage or deny her.
His rough hand stroked her hair with absent fascination.
Ramsay reminded her of both predator and prey. A hare frozen in the presence of a red fox, too stunned with uncertainty to leap away. A lion hunkering in the bushes, shoulders tense and ready to strike.
Cecelia proceeded with her marvelous discovery of his body as she sank to her knees. She counted his ribs on the way down, dragging curious fingers over the corrugated ripples of his abdomen.
Ramsay caught at her arm, his eyes burning down at her with a blue fire.
Blue flames burned the brightest, the hottest.
“My protection doesna come at a price,” he hissed out. The skin of his features stretched taut over his raw bones.
Cecelia settled into the wide cloud her skirts made around her knees and stared up at him with all the anticipatory resolution she felt. “I want this. I want you.”
Her fingers fell to the placket of his trousers, trembling but sure. A light-headed anticipation swamped her as she undid each button, brushing at the swollen length concealed beneath.
She reached inside, her cool fingers unable to completely encircle the scorching circumference of him.
Ramsay gasped. His hand hit the door and he leaned on it heavily, as though it were the only thing keeping him from buckling.
Cecelia paid him no mind, mesmerized by this part of him. Drawing the engorged member out of the vee of his trousers, she weighed the heft and length of him in her hand. He was thick. Large. The thin skin of the shaft—darker than the rest of him—pulsed with veins, and the hardness beneath was astonishing. Unyielding and inflexible as bone or steel.
She made a husky sound in her throat as her mouth watered, and he stopped breathing entirely. His free hand wound into her hair once again and this time his fingers curled into a fist, tugging the strands to the edge of pain and forcing her to look up at him.
His shirt gaped open, trapped at his elbows, revealing the stone-smooth pallor of his Scottish complexion.
She gazed up over the cords of his stomach and the mounds of his chest into gilded lightning glinting down at her from eyes that no longer held a hint of winter. His skin was flushed with arousal. His lids at half-mast.
He bared his teeth in a show of dominance, though his hand was gentle as it urged her mouth toward the column of his sex.
He thought he was still in control.
How adorable.
Cecelia tentatively wrapped lips moistened by his kisses around the rimmed crest of his cock.
His hips jerked forward, doing mesmerizing things to the hard ridges of muscle and sinew leading down to his shaft.
A very feminine triumph welled within her at the illicit nature of the act she now performed upon the so-called Vicar of Vice.
He tasted of salt and sin.
She felt no shame, but a hesitant pang thrilled through her that caused her eyelids to fall. She couldn’t watch any longer. She couldn’t see his eyes, or she might faint from the heady giddiness of power and lust.
Her own loins throbbed with the preponderance of her blood, as she was sure none reached her extremities any longer.
No, she could not watch. She simply needed to feel and taste.
To experience this dance of desire and gorge like a glutton on his sex.
His fingers flexed in her hair, guiding her down further, thrusting the head of his cock past her teeth, seeking her tongue.
Yes, she thought. Show me what you want. Tell me what to do.
She explored him with her tongue, licking at the rim before finding a vulnerable vein on the underside of his shaft. Following a rhythmic, throbbing instinct, her hand stroked the length of him that wouldn’t fit past her lips, gliding up and down in moist parody of lovemaking.
She experimented with pressure and speed, allowing the hitches of his breath and the hand on the back of her head to guide her.
She rested her other hand on his thigh. His legs, long and thick and corded with strength, had always enticed her, and she loved the feel of them twitching and straining beneath her palm.
His intrusion into her mouth caused it to ceaselessly water as she feasted on his hard flesh. Sensuous liquid sounds permeated the night as she tended to him. They each fought to stay as silent as they could, aware that others slept in different parts of the house.
Cecelia found a curious saline drop of slippery liquid at his tip. She laved at the slit, seeking more.
A raw groan escaped him.
Her answering sigh of appreciation vibrated against his cock, causing him to buck and swell inside her mouth.
Gasping, he curled his hips back, seeking to withdraw. But Cecelia didn’t let him. She, too, could be relentless, and was determined to see this through to the end.
She employed the strength of her jaw, sucking him in, taking him as deep against her throat as she could. Her tongue flattened to make room for him, rubbing at the underside of his rod as she pumped faster.
“Nay,” he gritted out. “Ye canna.”
Yes, she thought. I can. You’re mine. This is mine. This wicked intimacy they would always share regardless of the outcome of their current nightmare. At least she’d owned him with her mouth. And he was the man whose lips she would never forget.
A sound the cross between a snarl and a whimper forced its way out of him as he swelled inside her lips impossibly larger, releasing a slippery warm pulse of moisture. The illicit substance tasted both musky and sweet as it slid down her throat.
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