“Pretty,” Niall said. He no longer smiled. “These things a woman keeps hidden tell so much about who she really is. Teasing little flowers. They tell the truth, don’t they? And the austere gown is a lie.”
His fingers kneaded higher—and higher.
“Don’t,” Grace said, but heat welled in her veins. “I should not be here.”
“But you are here.”
“Only extraordinary circumstances make it so.” She swallowed. “Unchaperoned …”
“Unchaperoned, indeed, thank God. How tedious a hovering chaperon would make moments such as this. Kiss me, Grace.”
“I have never before been left alone … I mean, I have never before been in such a situation.”
“No?”
“Oh!” Shock traveled the length of Grace’s spine. “What are you doing?”
He was, she already knew, cupping her bottom in his broad hands.
“Kiss me, Grace,” he said, bringing his parted lips closer. “I like what I feel. You are round and firm and warm—and so smooth. I can easily imagine how every other part of you is as smooth, and warm—and inviting.”
Grace shook her head. Each twitch of her muscles served to tighten his grip on her. His fingers found a most sensitive crease. Leaning toward her, lifting as he did so, Niall pressed himself firmly between her legs and dragged his tongue along the outlines of her mouth. “Open for me.” His fingers found an even softer spot, and a small, sharp, raw sensation penetrated Grace. She felt … wet. “Open,” he murmured, and nibbled her lips apart. He kissed her deep, and long, and hot, until she grasped his shoulders and kissed him back.
His hands supported her. His fingers sought places she had never thought to feel touched by another human, least of all a man.
With his lips still on hers, Niall worked his clever hands to the small dimples at the base of her spine, and then forward over her hips to her belly.
She tore her mouth away. “Please.” Struggling, she attempted to work her gown down. Impossible.
“You do not have to plead. I have no intention of stopping.”
Grace turned her face away. He seared her, stripped her nerves open, made her want to close out the denials and give herself up to these wonderful sensations.
“Not even a shift beneath your gown?” he said,
close to her ear. “Such a very passionate woman. You wished to be ready for me as quickly as possible.”
“I … I was not coming,” she told him weakly. “I changed my mind and there was not time for … Oh, I have never felt like this.”
“Good. I want you to tell me that again and again. And I want you to make me feel the same—again and again. And you are to do exactly as I instruct you, do you understand?”
Dazed, disoriented, she returned her gaze to his face. Glittering eyes. Lean features. That sensual mouth promised more of what she’d already come to need. Once, not so many years ago, when he’d been very young, his looks must have hovered on the brink of beauty. In potent maturity, he was the dark embodiment of angel become fully man. In Niall’s mesmerizing features, Grace saw how sin had somehow touched beauty and made it a study in the image of impure desire’s fascination.
“Do you understand, imp?”
She nodded, not remembering what he’d asked of her.
“Good. Undo your gown.”
“No.” Shaking her head vehemently, she plucked at her skirts again.
Niall laughed, a low, possessive laugh. “But I think you will.” And his thumbs delved into her most secret folds.
Panic brought Grace’s hips writhing up from the chair.
“That’s right,” he said, rubbing back and forth over velvet skin turned mortifyingly slick. “You are wonderful. The most accomplished performer I have ever encountered.”
His words only grew more confusing.
“Undress. Undress, Grace.”
She started to speak.
“Do as I tell you. “ A flush crept over his cheekbones. Perspiration shone at his temples. “I could not have expected such fortune.”
“Fortune?”
“As you are, sweeting. As you are. The gown?”
With fingers that felt stiff, Grace touched the silk bow at her neck. “The ruff?”
“No. I think not. I’ve decided the ruff will do well where it is.”
Undoing the hook and eye took both of her hands.
“And the next one,” Niall said as it parted.
She did as he asked.
“Go on.”
The gown was open to her breasts. Grace slipped out another hook.
Niall’s iron hands left her body and he gripped her wrists. “Velvet was meant to entice men,” he told her. “Feel how your breasts respond to me through their soft covering?”
He rubbed her with flattened palms, hooking his fingers inside her bodice to graze the fullness he found there.
Grace caught at his arms. He ignored her and pushed his flattened hands inside the gown and over her shoulders whilst he kissed her again, fully, possessively.
He left her gasping.
“Carry on.”
It took seconds for her mind to focus once more, and when it did, it was to the vision of Niall unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it off. His muscles flexed in the firelight.
“You should not.” Grace looked into her lap, gasped at her near nakedness, and quickly turned away. “It isn’t appropriate.”
“Appropriate!” he shouted. “My dear little miracle. You enthrall me. I want to see you without the dress.”
“You cannot.”
“Yes, I can. Undo it, or I will undo it for you, and if I do, I might tear something. That would be hard to explain.”
Hesitantly, her eyes still averted, Grace released another fastening, and another—and another. Slowly the gown fell apart until she knew her nude body was his to stare upon.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She wanted to. Turning up her face, she studied every line of his and found nothing there that did not pump fresh heat into her blood.
“Look at yourself.”
Grace shook her head.
“Yes. Yes, Grace. Look at what it is that makes my manhood swell with its need for you.”
She glanced down and her face throbbed with rushing blood. Between the tumbled folds of amber velvet, her body was white. The dark gold curls between her legs glistened, and whilst she watched, he touched her there, slipped a finger within and worked back and forth. “What is that?” she cried, her hips bobbing up from the chair. Such a feeling had never before been hers.
“It is good, sweet. And you are good. I do believe I am having difficulty containing myself. But I shall try. Do not look away.”
Swiftly he bent and drew a nipple into his mouth, suckling so insistently that Grace gasped—with sweetly painful pleasure. Her hands found the curling hair on his chest and held on. Niall made a growling sound in his throat and turned to running his tongue around the nipple while he squeezed the other between his fingers. Then he shifted, drawing his beard-rough jaw across tender skin until he could nuzzle and nibble on her other breast.
Grace clamped his head to her and forgot everything but the waves of fire that shot from her breasts, deep into her belly. That place between her thighs throbbed.
“I need,” she panted. “Niall, I need.”
“What do you need?” he asked, pulling away from her once more. “Look now. See now.”
As soon as she saw her rosy, wet nipples, swollen from the attention of his mouth, she tried to cover herself.
“A virtuous maiden,” Niall said in that odd tone she did not understand. “Take the gown all the way off, my virtuous maiden.”
“It is … it is almost off.”
“I want you absolutely naked before me. Do as I order, Grace.”
His expression was implacable, and her heart tripped in her chest.
When she did not move, he began undoing his breeches.
Grace’s hand flew to her
mouth.
“I’m glad you are excited,” he said, stripping the doeskin down to his knees.
Amazed, Grace gripped the arms of her chair and stared at him.
“Yes, indeed, your enthusiasm is gratifying.”
“It is … huge.”
“It is very ready.”
“Y-Yes.” How strange that men were so differently made. “Angry-looking, too.”
“Its rage is to possess you, sweet one. To enter your warm, wet, ready body and possess it. But that’s what we both want, isn’t it?”
She nodded slowly. “I expect so.” His condition did not appear comfortable. Had she caused such an extraordinary effect?
“The gown, Grace.”
Unable to look away from this new vision, she struggled awkwardly to work the bodice from her shoulders and down her arms. Tight sleeves, together with her position in the chair, made the task difficult, and by the time the fabric strained at her elbows, Grace was desperate to be free of restraint.
“Allow me,” Niall said. He lifted her, but instead of pulling away her sleeves, he tugged the gown tight behind her, trapping her arms at her sides. “A delectable picture.”
Her slight weight made it simple for him to settle her astride his thighs.
“Oh, no.” Grace struggled helplessly. “Oh, Niall. This is … this is …” But she didn’t know what this was, except heat and searing need, exquisite pain that must never end, and encroaching blackness that seemed bent on claiming her mind.
The smooth, swollen mystery he’d bared pressed against her sensitive woman’s place. He pushed her backward over the seat of the chair and lavished her nakedness with kisses. Tender, whispering kisses. Biting, demanding kisses. Sucking kisses that drew small screams from her throat. Her mouth, her shoulders, her breasts, her belly, he missed no fraction.
She heard his rasping breath and felt the powerful rocking of his hips against her.
“There is more?” she panted.
“Oh, yes. We both know there is more.”
Niall rose abruptly to his feet, leaving Grace kneeling, her back bent over the chair. Standing above her, he stepped out of his breeches and braced his legs apart.
“You are …” Her mouth grew dry. “I never knew there could be such power.”
“And you want my power.” His smile was cruel but served only to excite her more.
Very deliberately, he drew her up against his length and stripped away the robe. “Can you tell me exactly what it is that you want now?”
She could tell him nothing.
Niall stepped back and surveyed her. Grace’s hand went to her neck and she fiddled with the ruff. She made to undo it.
“No,” he commanded. “Leave it. Prim spinster chignon. Governess ruff. And the rest is perfect, naked wanton—all the way to those, those …” He waved at her legs in the lace stockings and satin garters that made her feel even more revealed. “You are the stuff of a virile man’s fantasies. You inflame me, imp. Wicked, wonderful imp. But you already know that. Your body is small, yet voluptuous, and it weeps as no cold woman’s body ever weeps.”
He took her by the shoulders and turned her around. “I want to say things you are to carry with you always.” He pulled her to lean back against him.
Grace closed her eyes. This should not be happening, but it was, and she was glad. Could it be that she truly had, in the strangest of manners, met the man with whom she would eventually share all of her life? Could it be that she should tell him now that he owned her heart?
“And I want to give you feelings to remember always—to want always,” he said, his voice deep and rough.
He slipped his hands beneath her arms and covered her aching breasts. He covered and teased and aroused them before pressing downward to her belly and beyond. With his rough jaw resting on her shoulder, he drove a fmger against her feminine flesh and began an inexorable stroking that sent Grace sagging into the support of his arms.
“Remember this feeling, Grace.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He dipped and that frighteningly engorged part of him drove forward between her thighs. It drove and drove again. And his fingers brought once more the singing black bliss.
“Niall! Please. I want to lie down. Lie with me.”
The stroking, delving drive, stopped. Grace turned in his arms and pressed her breasts to his chest. “We will bring great comfort to each other.” She reached up to run her hands into his long, tangled black curls. “I could not have hoped for such good fortune.”
His hands settled over hers. “Good fortune, indeed. Infinitely better than could be expected.”
She would tell him what she hoped could exist for them—together. “There is even more than this for us, Niall.”
“No doubt.” He pulled her arms from his neck. “But there are things that can only be improved by restraint.”
“What things are those?” She did not understand him.
With fluid grace, he stepped back into his breeches and caught up his shirt. “They are things that are the essence of control, Grace. Things that allow one human being power over another. No doubt you get my meaning.”
“I don’t.”
“Oh, I think you do. Does your body still ache, my dear?”
Blushing, she nodded.
“Good. That is one of the feelings I wish you never to forget. And I want you to remember how you look with your prim hair and governess ruff—and your stockings and garters and nakedness. Then there are your breasts, sweeting. Your lovely, begging breasts with nipples still glistening from my mouth. Think of them often.”
“Niall!” She covered her mouth.
“Should it be your face that you cover? What of the pulsing place that yearns to feel my fingers again—and my rod that excites you so? Fear not, you shall feel it.”
Her eyes widened. He mocked her, and she was powerless to hide her shame.
“And these are the words I want you to remember me speaking: I can do again to you what I’ve done tonight. I can do it whenever I please, wherever I please. And, as I did tonight, I can stop when I please and leave you still wanting.”
“You cannot!” The words broke from her lips and she backed away.
“Charming. Such an intoxicating vision. If I had more time, I would indeed lie with you here and now and finish what we have started.”
“You frighten me. Don’t say these things.”
“Oh, but I will. I say to you that whenever you see me, you will know that I am imagining you naked before me, seeing you exactly as you are now. You may be sipping tea with your mother, or chattering stupidly with my … with Father Struan, or Calum, and when you look into my eyes, you will see your reflection and wonder if they can all see you as I do.”
“Stop it!”
“Never. The nature of your kind of woman demands a man’s dominance, and you shall have it. You shall have mine. Does that please you, Grace?”
She wanted her gown.
Niall approached the door. “I have other matters to attend.” He bowed low. “Thank you for a most wonderful interlude. Stimulating, my dear.”
Grace snatched up her robe. “Why are you tormenting me? You have changed. I thought we might become friends.”
“We will. The best kind of friends. Friends who learn how best to use one another. In the meantime, there are two more thoughts with which I leave you. I meant it when I said I can have you whenever and wherever I please. That is absolutely true. You will never know when or where I may decide that I want
you just as you are now. No place will afford you safety from me. Not that you would desire safety from me, would you, my pet?”
Bemused, she shook her head.
“I thought not. I have met women like you before, although never with quite your magnificent appetite.” With the door open, he pulled on his shirt. “And last of all for tonight; I will be the one to decide the nature and frequency of our entertainments. I leave you craving satisfaction. That satisfactio
n shall not be yours until and unless I decide to give it to you.”
Grace could only stare at him.
“Be here tomorrow night.”
He was mad.
“Sleep well.”
Fascination Chapter 8
She had not come to him last night!
She had not come.
“Hold hard, Arran!” Calum’s voice came to him on the cool dawn air, and Arran reined Allegro in beside the river.
He did not turn in his saddle.
“What in God’s name ails you?” Calum galloped to his side, his big gray snorting into the mist that still hung in gauzy ribbons above the moorland. “Neither Struan nor I saw you all day yesterday. Neither did McWallop. You’ve banished us all from approaching you in the gallery. Now we receive this bloody rude summons.” He flapped the note Arran had sent via Shanks, who had trembled visibly at being called to Arran’s chamber—something that had never before happened to the butler.
“Arran? Is something wrong?”
“In God’s name, Calum, let me think in peace.”
“Gladly. It was you who sent for me hours before I might have left my bed. I’ll happily doze here while you make up your mind what it is you want from me.”
“Do that.”
Arran had spent all day yesterday burning from the memory of the previous night’s near ecstacy with Grace. Last night he’d gone to the music room anticipating another delightful interlude. And he’d waited for her until almost dawn—in vain. Then he’d sent word for Calum to meet him at what had been their favorite boyhood fishing spot.
She had not come to him. Unbelievable.
He’d played his game so well. The girl was his to do with as he wished, he’d been certain of it.
Arran was still certain. The little witch had decided to spice the chase even more. She would discover that Arran, Marquess of Stonehaven, had been used once and would never be so again—not by any manipulating female.
“Good morning, brother.”
Arran glared around and saw Struan, elegant despite his hated cleric’s garb and comfortable as always astride a chestnut he’d favored since adolescence. “You’ve not forgotten how to ride, then, Father?”
“I’ve forgotten very little, particularly in the area of your foul temper.”
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