“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.
Cecelia wasn’t given warning, or time to protest, so she kept her hands locked about his neck and buried her face into his shoulder.
He knelt with her in his arms, only breaking the kiss to settle her onto the makeshift pallet of blankets.
A self-conscious wave threatened to douse her ardor, and she instinctively lifted her arms to cover her body, curling in upon herself. Strange explanations bombarded her tongue, apologies for the roundness of her stomach, the length and girth of her thighs, and the unsightly dimples at her knees. She couldn’t seem to lend any of them voice, as they threatened to choke her.
To make matters worse, Ramsay didn’t join her on the blankets. Instead, he sat back on his haunches and gazed down at her with those features carved from stone.
She reached for him, feeling suddenly needy and unsettled. “You don’t have to look,” she said. “Just come here.”
“How can I not look?” he asked her as though she’d gone mad. His growl had deepened another impossible degree, to that of a Gregorian monk at prayer. “I didna know such perfection existed.”
In that moment Cecelia didn’t care if anything subsequent proved to be folly, she merely realized she was falling for this strong giant brute, with all the subtle grace of a landslide. Plunging artlessly into love with him even though every logical thought told her she should not.
Logic didn’t belong in this mysterious Scottish forest.
Only this. Only them.
“Christ,” he panted. “Ye are a goddess, Cecelia. Ye should be wooed in a gilded bed, not on this pile of blankets.”
She rose and locked her arms around the back of his neck, stopping his mouth with a desperate kiss. She opened her lips, this time not in submission or invitation, but for the purpose of her own exploration.
His blankets and furs on the ground were more than comfortable, but now that she was without her wrapper the evening summer air chilled her to her core.
She shivered and pulled him closer.
And then he was upon her, covering her with his body like a blanket of sensual need. He pressed her into the earth, kissing her with fervent urgency. His restless hands upon her. Touching her everywhere. Discovering her with rough and masculine delight.
Cecelia’s legs parted of their own accord to make room for his bulk. His loins pressed against her sex, separated only by his trousers. The intimate pressure turned her hot all over and he ground against her with a wicked roll of his hips, all the while trading deep velvet licks into each other’s mouths.
Her hands found the buttons of his shirt and released them one by one.
Ramsay ripped his mouth from hers and stared down at her with intent eyes, darker than she’d ever seen them. Dark as midnight and magic and the depths of the sea.
“God,” he said with a halting breath, trembling as though the weight of his own body might prove too much. “If this be a dream … I swear to Christ…”
“This is no dream,” she promised, tentatively reaching into his shirt to brush the mounds of his shoulders with hesitant hands. “Though I’m not excited for morning to come.” Her fingers drifted lower, sweeping through fine gold hair to find the hard disks of his chest. Lord but he was solid. Heavy and hewn from some other clay than most men.
He crouched over her like a giant cat intending to spring at his next meal.
But she was already caught. Already imprisoned beneath him and ready to be devoured.
A fingertip traced at the waist of his trousers and he pulled away, capturing her hands in his own. “Let me taste ye first,” he crooned. “Once ye release me, I willna be able to stop myself.”
“You?” she teased, pushing sparkle into her eyes. “The paragon of willpower?”
“Not anymore,” he grieved. “Not when it comes to ye.”
His full mouth began a maddeningly slow journey down her body, stopping in the strangest places to brush hot kisses and sample her skin with his curious tongue. He nuzzled into the hollow between her jaw and her ear. Nipped at her clavicles. Lingered over the downy trail between her breasts.
He did stop there to cup the orbs once again, tracing his tongue over the white skin to circle the pink ridge of an areola before opening his lips over the peak of her nipple. He stroked and laved in a hot spiral, until Cecelia arched her back off the ground with a hungry moan.
Her hips rose of their own accord, begging for his attentions.
Taking a moment to pay equal courtesies to her opposite breast, he charted her curves with impatient hands.
Her belly quivered as he stroked it, and she squeezed her eyes shut. For a man to whom she’d attributed so much coldness, he certainly could evoke trails of fire on her skin with his skillful fingers.
She’d heard tell of substances so cold they would burn. She wondered if Ramsay’s passion was thus. Invoked from a place so bleak and lonely it sought her warmth, but would only leave her singed and wounded in the end.
When his fingers trailed through the soft hair at the apex of her thighs, all worries vanquished into the vaporous mist, replaced by carnal instinct and indescribable need.
Cecelia whimpered when coarse male skin met her slick intimate flesh. Not because it was uncomfortable; quite the opposite. The tip of his finger cleaved through the petals of her sex, gliding through the abundant moisture he found there.
Her mouth fell open in astonishment as he synchronized the motions of his tongue on her pebbled nipple and his finger on the tinier pebble protected by folds of pliant flesh. He worked in wet circles around the swollen places, teasing them with tender little flicks before darting away. Then he would linger in lazy strokes, leaving trails of slick wetness.
Her hips lifted off the ground as a flood of liquid fire drenched her loins. Pressure built low in her belly and he groaned against her breast, succumbing to a tide of his own lust.
He dragged his mouth away from her nipple and lowered himself further down her body.
Cecelia instantly missed his heat. She reached for his shoulder to draw him back up, but her
fingers made no indent in the bunched muscle there. “You don’t have to—”
“Aye,” he said, splaying his big hands on her thighs, pressing them open and down to expose her utterly. “I get to.”
She shivered before a bloom of sweat beaded on her as a sensual heat turned her blood to molten honey.
He stopped to gaze at her for a moment, harsh features tightening with a look she would recognize anywhere.
Hunger.
His head lowered beneath his shoulders as he delved into her with one long voluptuous lick up the center. His inhale was deep and slow, as though he savored a fine vintage of wine.
Cecelia might have been embarrassed if he hadn’t scandalized her further by teasing the snug little ring of flesh at her opening with his fingertip. The muscles there immediately seized, pulsing and clenching around emptiness.
Her fingers likewise clenched at his shoulders, his neck, and then laced in his hair with rhythmic, desperate little claws as he kissed her sex before chasing the little nub of her pleasure this way and that. She gasped in delight or disappointment depending on whether he caught it or not.
His hot breath against her moist folds devastated her beyond all ability to speak, to reason, to think beyond the next motion of his tongue.
And then he sank his finger inside of her.
Cecelia separated from herself. Perhaps she floated above their bodies in the mist watching someone else perform this incredible act.
She threw her head back for a moment as bliss threatened to overcome her, but she didn’t give in to it. Not yet.
Who knew how long she’d get to have the forbidding, wintry-eyed Scotsman dining at the very core of her? As much at her mercy as she was at his.
Looking down her body, she watched him with that detached part of herself. Her hips bucked and twitched with pleasure. Her loins rushing with heat and demand. Tendrils teased at her as he gave her a few barely there licks.
Ramsay’s eyes were closed. His eyelids fluttered with a singular delight. His tongue rolled and dipped, slipped and slid around her like a truffle.
Dear God, she realized, a stab of ultimate pleasure lancing through her, as she was able to hold it off no longer. He might be a man endlessly able to deny himself. But in this moment, she was his chocolate and champagne.
She was his indulgence, and she very much hoped he might develop a craving.
“Give over to it, Cecelia mine.” The words landed warm against her core. “Doona fight this, there is more to be had. I’ll pleasure ye until ye beg me to stop.”
“Don’t stop.” The plea came out more plaintively than she’d liked. “Never stop.”
He didn’t.
He feasted as she writhed. He groaned when she sighed, the vibration against her sex bringing all the stars in the firmament that much closer.
One finger was replaced by two inside her as his tongue centered just below the little pearl and Cecelia detonated.
She came apart in sparks and shards and quiet screams. Shattered into euphoric spasms of pleasure that replaced her body with incandescent light and the heat of the cosmos.
Cecelia, mine.
Her heart beat the words. They pulsed through her, riding waves of pleasure augmented by hope, lifting, lifting, lifting her higher until she might have flown beyond their little glade had a large and rather weighty Scot not ruthlessly held her thighs to the earth.
When the immolation passed, she collapsed back onto the blankets, unaware that her shoulders had left them. She struggled to regain her breath, trembling and shuddering with the aftermath of ecstasy.
She waited for Ramsay to climb up her body and take his pleasure, but he didn’t get higher than her belly.
Wiping his mouth, he rested his head just below her ribs, the scruff of his cheek abrading the tender skin there. His arms plunged beneath her and he found a perfect place to release his weight and lounge upon her as she suspected they each fought to regain their senses.
Cecelia stroked through hair gilded by moonlight with soothing fingers, unable to form words as of yet.
And truly, there was nothing to say.
His lashes skimmed her skin with languid blinks, though his heart pounded somewhere in the vicinity of her nether regions.
How could she have thought him cold? Or empty? When the silence between them was so full?
He was a man who didn’t comprehend the complexities of the human emotion with his mind, but his body did with interest. How had she not seen it before? He was a creature of instinct. Of primal, primordial blood that belonged to this feral land. And he’d locked that part of him away for so long, he no longer knew how to connect with it in his conscious mind.
Because it could control him.
Poor Ramsay. Cecelia gave a flushed and pleasured sigh, patting him on his shoulder before tracing the shell of his ear with fondness. He had so much to learn about connection, and communication, but wasn’t this an oh-so-excellent place to start?
“Never lose yer soft places, woman,” he commanded tersely.
“I shan’t,” she promised with a yawn, thinking it would be the easiest vow she’d ever made. “Ramsay?”
“Aye?”
“Don’t you want to…” She swallowed, suddenly shy. “I mean, shouldn’t we possibly…” She lifted her hips, unable to say it.
He rose to his elbow, his eyes two azure beams of fire that stripped her lungs of breath. Though when he shook his head, he befouled the moment. “I canna tonight,” he bit out. “I will ravage ye, Cecelia. Ye’ve siphoned my control and reduced me to a rutting beast and it’s best if I doona come anywhere near ye with my—”
“Oh for the love of my giddy aunt!” she laughed. “Stop treating me like I’m some sort of virginal damsel who will break beneath your attentions!”
He reared back even further, frowning down at her. “But … ye are—were a virgin. I took that from ye.”
“I survived,” she shrugged, the movement of her breasts snagging both their notice.
His because … well, breasts.
And hers because she realized she was dressing down a man while completely naked and spread beneath his torso.
“I hurt ye,” he rasped, though it was his gaze that contained a wound. “Ye should have heard the sound ye made.”
Cecelia shrugged again, this time distracting him in purpose. “Oh tosh, I’ve made more distressed sounds getting dressed in the morning.”
He tilted his head to the side in that way he was wont to do when befuddled.
Cecelia took pity upon him. “My corset hurts me, my boots hurt me. Riding sidesaddle hurts me. Every time someone offers me a more judicious portion of food, it hurts me. I am a woman, Ramsay, I am used to pain. The loss of one’s virginity only happens once and I’m certain it’s worth the cost. I’m even more certain I’ll bear it better than most. Now.” She wriggled beneath him. “If you please.”
His golden brow rose over eyes alight with myriad things, most chiefly a mystified sort of surprise warring with a boyish mischief. “If I please … what?”
“Oh, don’t make me say it,” she pleaded.
A dark chuckle overtook him as he lowered his great body to nuzzle into her hair. “Ye confound me, woman,” he purred into her ear. “Tell me what ye want, and I’ll give it to ye.”
“I want you.” Cecelia turned her head, sifting her fingers through his hair as she returned her breath against his ear. “And you can have me, Ramsay,” she offered gently, reaching in between their bodies to stroke his hard length over his trousers. “In whatever way you want me. I can take it. I can take you. All of you.”
Her words were like a spell, summoning forth something dark and demonic he’d kept chained in the deep place he hid from the world. He grew impossibly larger beneath her fingers, stretching to an intimidating size.
A sound reverberated from low in his chest, and all sense of control drained away in an almost tangible rush.
He captured her lips with his in a viole
nt kiss as he grappled with the fastenings of his trousers.
Cecelia’s hands landed on each side of his massive jaw, but it truly was too late for all that. She’d reap her just deserts, and something inside her told her it would be the most delicious experience yet.
Once the final barrier between them had been stripped away, he wrenched her beneath him, a creature of frenzy and lust, pushed her thighs wide, and angled his hips between them.
There was a moment of fright. A single, breathless knowledge that once he’d claimed her this night, neither of them be the same. His weight was both a comfort and a burden, and she did the only thing she could think of to release a sudden rush of anxiety.
She bit the muscle between his neck and his shoulder.
He snarled and drove forward, pressing inside.
She cried out and, heedless of her claim, her body bore down against his intrusion, but to no avail. He sank deep into the tight heat of her, nearly spearing her in two.
The stinging of tears in her eyes was more pervasive than the stinging pain in her core.
He stilled. Froze. Staring down at her with eyes both inhuman and alarmed.
“Christ,” he hissed between a jaw locked completely shut. “Christ. Fuck. Christ.” He was quaking. Sweating. And his eyes threatened to burn a hole into hers.
But he didn’t move.
Cecelia closed her eyes and pulled him against her, breathing deeply, needing his strength flush against hers.
He scooped her close to his body, enfolding her in his warmth and strength. Crooning a lyrical language in harsh, throaty groans.
She splayed her fingers down the brackets of his spine, tracing the flexing muscles as her own finally accommodated his intrusion.
The moment her body accepted him fully, his hips moved. They rocked slowly for a few tender moments, before everything accelerated. His breath, his heart, the wet glide of his shaft inside of her.
Lord, it was lovely. An aching sort of delight coiled within her. Lighter and less intense than what she experienced beneath his tongue. There was something unparalleled about this act. The rhythm of it. The wild impatience. The fierce gleam of possession in his gaze as he took her again and again, pushing deeper each time.
All Scot and Bothered Page 27