by Lisa Torquay
The Lass
Initiated
The Laird
Erotic Novella
Explosive Highlanders 3.5
Lisa Torquay
Copyright
The Lass Initiated the Laird
Copyright 2018 Lisa Torquay
Published by Lisa Torquay
Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover Art
[email protected]
DEDICATION
To my late grandma who inspired me for being fierce and strong.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I’d like to give my heartfelt thanks to Cheryl Adamkiewicz for her invaluable contribution and unending patience. Your generosity is much appreciated.
TABLE OF CONENTS
FROM THE BACK COVER
HE' S WANTED HER FOR SEVEN YEARS
Samuel McDougal never could take Harriet out of his mind since the first day he met her as a freshman at Oxford. But with his too red hair and too big spectacles, he surely has no chance. He must forget her and move on; though he's not been with a woman before.
AND SHE'S JUST A GOVERNESS
Harriet always knew of Samuel's infatuation with her, expecting he'd grow out of it. For some time though, she's been stirred by his tall and lean person. More than stirred in fact. Albeit he's the heir to a powerful Scottish clan, expected to make a lofty match. As a humble widow, she can only dream of him.
BUT RANKS DON'T COUNT WHEN DESIRE SIMMERS.
Erotic novella
EXCERPT
“Professor Hayley has a book on types of soil,” she replied as she stood up and reached the shelves to her left.
With a forefinger put forth, she looked for the tome. The books were organised by themes, and she remembered the one treating of soil lay on the top shelf. Extending her left arm, she tried to reach it, but her five feet three inches of height made it impossible.
Samuel scrambled from his seat. “Allow me to help you,” and approached her back with a clumsy move.
He reached up for the volume, gluing to her spine in the process as the sandalwood enveloped her in a tempting cloud. The hot, flat planes of him touched her curves, and she froze. She was sure he did not realise it would happen until it did.
His long arm covered her extended one and the heat that suffused her skin made her go boneless. Her right hand grabbed onto the lower shelf edge in a futile attempt to cling to sanity. His head lowered and she sensed his lips so close to her hair. Air halted in her lungs while her heart skipped on a wild race.
Harriet felt something twitch on her hair as the flow of air told her it was his nose sauntering the loose strands. His left hand met hers on the higher shelf, covering it with his warm, big one.
She found nothing to say, found no voice to say it, nor the will. The sensation of his tall, imposing frame on hers was beyond description. And then his right hand spanned her waist to start a slow, so slow, glide towards her midriff, peppering goose-bumps wherever it went. His touch seemed stilted, almost as if he needed to contain himself, and held that white-hot incandescence that melted everything in its wake. But a reverent one, too, like he was touching something sacred, precious that he would find once in a lifetime.
His palm reached her flat, soft stomach, causing ripples of warmth to arrow downwards. Air escaped her in what could only be described as a sigh in the same second his mouth touched the shell of her ear. Without enough will to keep standing, she sagged on his lean chest, her head coming barely to his shoulder. That was when his hand closed on hers still stretched on the higher shelf, effectively trapping her between him and the books. The hand worshipping her midriff inched perilously upwards to the base of her breast. The simple notion that he might cover the puckered tip drove her nether regions to produce scorching, shameful moisture. On its own volition, her other hand covered his to halt it or to urge on, she could not tell.
When had he plastered her this much against the wood she did not know, but it made her realise his body had lengthened, hardened, and nestled on the small of her back.
How could a man display such purity after having been with a prostitute the previous night? The shaft of lucidity that came with the question brought her to her senses. With a sudden push, she untangled herself from him and stumbled to the other side of the desk as if it was a fortress against the sensations he incited in her.
“Harriet?” it came an octave lower than normal, which caressed her senses.
Her eyes languished on the sight of him against the books, wide eyes on her, ragged breath and the bulge, good gracious, the bulge, that led her to wonder how it would feel in its wanted place in her body. The fantasy made her flush crimson.
With a huge effort, she erased the lustful musing and stared hard at him. “Having lain with a lightskirt does not give you the right to touch every woman in your radius,” The wry note on her voice bellied the steep temperature of her insides.
CHAPTER ONE
Oxford, England, 1816
He had been hard for her for the better part of the morning. If you did not count the last seven years that is.
For seven agonising years, he relied on his own imagination and self-relief to keep his sanity in place. Or his insanity in check, more like.
Samuel Bryce McDougal, or Sam as the McDougal and his wife Aileen called him, sat at the desk in his professor’s study with Mrs Stratham. Her role in this household comprised of being the professor’s children’s governess, doubling as assistant when her duties allowed. For now, she was Sam’s assistant, since Professor Walter Hayley travelled to Cambridge on an academic assignment together with Mrs Dora Hayley and their two children.
Which meant Sam and Harriet were alone in the house.
Which meant they had to make progress with the paper he would present shortly.
And it also meant that he was at bursting point for the woman he had wanted since he first set eyes on her as a freshman at eighteen.
He would present the lecture to a group of visiting botanists in a few weeks. The professor had recommended Sam to them as a highly specialised scholar.
The green eyes so like his father’s went no higher than her creamy ample bosom covered by her demure dress for fear of giving himself away. Those prominent mounds had haunted his dreams and carnal fantasies for such a long time. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with them, had he the improbable chance of one day coming within touching distance.
The image almost undid him. His rampant erection engorged to the point he was sure he would shame himself on the spot. The breeches he wore when in Oxford squeezed the poor flesh cruelly. His nostrils sucked in air, twitching his spectacles, his skin flooding with that kind of colour that afflicted only a red-haired person. In short, him.
For years, his fellow students tried to convince him to go with them to those rackety bawdy houses they used to frequent, rich noble heirs that they were. In between lectures, they boasted their prowess with the so-called Cyprians on offer.
Invariably, he declined.
He wanted none of them. He had no wish for a meaningless tumble whe
n there was only one woman who never left his mind.
The result being he remained a virgin.
Perhaps, he should follow their advice and try to assuage the urges of his body with one of those dolls. He careened too close to obsession, and it was getting out of hand.
“Is anything the matter, Samuel?” Even her lyrical voice contained the power to unbalance him.
With no other choice, his stare met hers. Those enormous blue eyes seemed to engulf him in a maelstrom of madness. On an oval face, framed by wheat ringlets, they fairly frayed him.
At twenty-five, his hormones clamoured for the satisfaction that one of his own hands was not capable to offer anymore. Solely, a woman. This woman.
“Not at all, Harriet,” he answered, unable to control his gaze when it lowered to her full lips. Her tongue moistened them, causing his heart to speed up and pump even more blood to the wrong place.
Sam well knew that he would be no woman’s choice—not the first choice, at least. He was too awkward, too red-haired, with too big spectacles, and bookish to distraction. He did not come out as exactly charming or manly. Paying for their favour might be his last resort.
“We should continue then,” she replied but did not bend those blue temptations to their work. Instead, her gaze roamed from the sleek hair falling on his brow, the green eyes fixed on her, to zero in on his lips, which were as red as his— Well…the tip of him, the very leaky tip of him.
The things his friends said a woman’s lips could do!
Fuck!
He needed to leave the room. At this second! Or he risked shaming himself. Worse still, his distended member demanded its due fare. One unavailable to him. So he must go and get the relief at his disposal.
“Excuse me,” he said and stood up fast and clumsy. In shirtsleeves, without a coat to cover his projecting midriff, he turned in a quick motion. Out of the study, he nearly ran to the bedchamber Professor Hayley allowed him to use in his absence. For convenience’s sake, the Professor said, as he would be working late to finish the paper. And also to protect Harriet as she would be mostly alone in the house.
At that instant, he was not so sure she was that protected.
With that thought, he burst into his chamber and shut it with an urgent click.
Harriet followed Samuel’s retreat with interest. She knew exactly what was happening to him, what usually happened to men lusting after a woman.
At thirty-one, widowhood did not intimidate her. Long ago, such status meant she obtained release from a bad marriage. If her late husband understood that drinking and brawling in London’s underworld consisted of the best amusement life could offer—and then die from one of those soused fisticuffs—it was nothing to do with her. Except she had been left poor, indebted, and desperately in need of employment.
The polished education her father, an attorney for the crown, bestowed on her came in as her salvation. One year into her position, the Professor had brought the Scot. Mr McDougal had been barely more than a lad at the time.
She thought the awe with which he boyishly regarded her endearing, certain he would grow out of it. The freshman possessed his own lodgings near the campus, afforded by his powerful Highlander of a father. Academic assignments brought him often into the house to work with the Professor.
He grew into a man before her very eyes. Lean and tall, six feet four probably, the round spectacles did not hide the clear green eyes or the freckles on his translucent skin. As he came into adulthood, though, his hair darkened into a reddish brown and his cherry lips firmed into a sensuous shape. It made him compelling in a distinct way. The fact he treated her with nothing but the utmost respect, despite his obvious desire, counted points in his favour.
Suddenly, her mind had started weaving the most absurd reveries involving her employer’s protégé. Together with shameful body reactions she never ever dreamed of transpiring in her arid and infrequent marriage bed. She noted this awareness of him several months ago, the discomfort of it wreaking havoc with her lucidity and composure. She must be an inglorious wanton to harbour such unacceptable tendencies towards a man who not only was much younger, but also a part of the Scottish lofty aristocracy.
As Samuel took his leave, she did not miss the immense bulge in the front of his breeches. Her fingers itched to undo each button on either side of his hipbones, letting the flap fall to wrap her hand around him. Test the hardness, the heat—tunnel her fingers along its whole extension. The ache and moistness the image produced got her breathless. And eager for any resolution.
Would the hair cradling him between his thighs be lighter or darker than the strands on his head?
The afterthought brought a scalding flush to the surface.
What the deuce!
Not ten minutes had passed when she heard a click on the study door. Her gaze raised to him. His flushed skin and heated eyes, unmistakable even with his spectacles, caused a warm ripple to course through her. To her mind, there was no doubt of why he had excused himself. Images of him finding relief on his own flooded her head. That ripple turned into an incendiary rush to the core of her the likes of which she had no memory. Her cheeks heated with embarrassment
One would think five years of an empty marriage to be enough to douse such eagerness. And they were, considering her deceased, incompetent husband. But this was Samuel, once a boy, now reaching his prime, lusting after her with guileless green eyes and all the force of his ready body.
His attention collided with hers, installing a veritable magnetic field filling the space in between them. If anyone lit a match, they might go up in flames. Her fingers clutched the desk’s edge, else the force of that field drive her to him mindlessly.
Surreptitiously, her lungs drew in air in a feeble attempt to cool her insides and clear her foggy thoughts. Her throat cleared enough for her to utter level words. “You’d better hurry, or we won’t finish this.”
That seemed to bring him to his senses. He blinked, returning his eyes to its usual scholarly expression at the same time his lean frame acquired a more relaxed stance. The engrossed botanist slotted back in place. He resumed the seat across from her, and they succeeded in working the rest of the morning without further incidents.
“I need to know the size,” she asked. Bent over open books and scattered sheets on the solid surface, they did not see the passing of time, soon to be luncheon.
His reddish-brown head snapped up, wide orbs meeting hers. “The size?” A furtive glance darted down his abdomen and back to hers.
A new wave of crimson took over her skin when she realised what crossed his mind. Not even a Titan would have prevented her from looking down his chest, wishing the wood became transparent for her scrutiny to lower further to where his legs lay. Or more precisely, the top of his thighs. Oh, she would love to know the size of him at every stage of the way.
Way to what, you brainless wanton? She berated herself.
“We must list the peak growth of each species of Bromeliaceae encountered so far.” Perhaps she had worded the question incorrectly. Or perhaps she committed a slip. A patently revealing slip.
The paper he would present to other botanists would be about Bromeliaceae, widely known as bromeliad, one of his pet projects as he had been studying the species since before he came to Oxford.
His nostrils flared with the strong intake of air, one hand lifting to adjust his round spectacles unnecessarily, which drew her attention to his darkened irises. “Evidently,” he murmured. “I made notations of other botanists’ observations.” He rummaged in his notebooks and pulled a sheet of paper from inside one of them. “They’re here.” He extended it to her.
She reached for the paper, making their fingers touch. Both froze. The sheet transferred to her hand, leaving his free. In the brief moment it took for her to react, she felt his forefinger twitch as if it wanted to test the texture of her skin. Their gazes clashed, her breathe stalled. The air around them almost sizzled with
pent-up energy. Still locked in each other, he slid his hand slowly from hers, causing a trail of lightning to climb up her arm, goose-bumps in its wake. Her breasts puckered, her middle fluttered, and she thanked the fact she was sitting, or her knees would not have offered a secure support. Seeking to disguise her reaction, she lowered her head to the paper. “What about your own observations?”
“I never took measurements myself.” The hand that had wreaked havoc with her skin hid under the desk.
He had told her that there was the one sample in the hot-house in the campus. Those dimensions he had written down had come from the specialised literature. “Why not?” she asked, blue eyes still glued to the sheet.
“I…failed,” he answered in a hoarse tone.
Naturally, hot-houses plants had a different development from those blooming in their own environment. The list he had produced contained data regarding the latter.
Her head whipped up to him. “How could you possibly have done that?”
The pencil rolled around his fingers restless. “I took it out when it was big,” the pause stretched as his Adam’s apple bobbed. “But I had no time to—”
Narrowed eyes studied his every move. Were they even talking about a plant any longer? “You should do it when you next go there,” she suggested.
“Certainly. I’ll do so before it spurts—I mean, before it wilts,” the ruddy colour on his face and the pressed lips told of a slip. And not hers this time.
Goodness gracious! Her mushed brain fumbled for something to say but fairly got stuck in the process. Utter silence grew like a huge snowball that took up all the space between them.