She ought to be saying prayers of thanksgiving. She should be so grateful they hadn’t been killed she could think of nothing else. Though what would a life of ought-to-be and should-be get her, but more years, more decades tending her chickens in Oxfordshire?
She kissed him. Found his mouth with hers and anchored her hand in his thick, silky hair to keep him from turning his head. A young girl purporting to be a wealthy heiress got kissed from time to time—Augusta wasn’t a complete tyro—but kissing Ian mattered. This kiss had no pretensions to it about comfort, goodwill, incipient familial affection, or anything else polite and excusable. She was desperate for him to kiss her back.
He growled, and she panicked, twining an arm around his waist to prevent him from leaving her. She drew back only long enough to pant two words.
“Please, Ian…”
“Augusta, love, we shouldn’t…”
And then she was giving thanks after all. His mouth settled on hers gently but firmly. Her desperation became something else entirely, and she realized she was going to be well and thoroughly kissed by a man who knew exactly how to go about it.
His mouth explored hers, moved over her lips slowly, like a weather front passing over the land, then moving on. She felt his nose grazing over her cheeks and forehead, her eyebrows, her jaw. She’d never been nose-kissed before, and it made her insides flutter wonderfully.
Then he was back to business, his mouth on hers, his tongue greeting her lips.
“Open, love.”
This was novel and more wonderful still, to taste the tea-sweet essence of him, to feel a part of him making its way delicately into her awareness and into her body.
Between them, she felt a rising ridge of male flesh against her belly, felt it pressing against her in a way that aroused wanting in places female and secret. She moved into him, felt his hand cradling the back of her head, felt sealed to him and still not as close as she wanted to be.
“Kiss me back, Augusta.”
His voice, low, harsh, and so very male, sent the wanting out from her depths to her breasts and her mouth and even the palms of her hands. She used her tongue as he had, to trace the contours of his mouth, to learn the taste of him, to join them in a way that felt so right, she wanted to weep with the beauty of it.
And still, it was not enough. Augusta kept one arm lashed around Ian’s waist and used her free hand to stroke the wool of his kilt. The fabric was smooth and soft beneath her palm, his hip a lean, elegant curve. He widened his stance, and Augusta realized that a man in a kilt was a man who might be intimately explored. She slid the kilt up along his thigh, bunching the material between their bodies.
His mouth went still on hers while Augusta raised the fabric higher.
The flesh of his erect member was hot. She drew the backs of her fingers up his length, thanking God and Scottish national pride for a fashion that allowed a woman to indulge in such daring.
Her almost-betrothed had not allowed her to touch him. In their furtive joinings, Augusta had been told to hold up her skirts, to be quiet, to be patient for just another minute. The only thing she’d desired was for him to finish before somebody came upon them.
With Ian, her curiosity and desire were going to set the hillside on fire. She wrapped her fingers around his shaft, wanting to tear the kilt off his body.
Only to go still as she felt a breeze on the back of her calf.
Yes. A thousand times, yes.
“So verra soft, ye are,” Ian murmured against her neck. He bunched up her dress another few inches, and more cooling air hit Augusta’s legs. She’d worn drawers, of course, but they were thin with age and many washings, little protection against Highland breezes or lapses in sanity.
“Ian, please—”
“Wheesht, love.” He drew his hand up the back of her thigh, hiking her leg around his hip. Augusta had never hated fabric more—the thick wool of his kilt, her cotton drawers, her petticoat, her dress—all of it was so much frustration.
And none of it, apparently, enough to daunt Ian.
Augusta felt the brush of his fingers across the slit in her drawers, felt the brush of his nose across her cheek.
“Don’t you dare stop, Ian MacGreg—”
His mouth settled over hers, a lazy, knowing mouth full of kisses and mischief. Wonderful, glorious mischief.
“Just this once,” he whispered. “Ya ken?”
She nodded, knowing exactly what he was demanding. Through all the fabric bunched between them, she found him with her fingers again. “I understand.” He was going to permit them a lapse—one lapse here on the hillside, while the clouds tried to crowd all that bright, brilliant sunshine away.
His arousal was warm, like his fingers as they brushed across Augusta’s mons. The blessed, heartbreaking intimacy of that touch left her sagging against him, needing both the man before her and mountain at her back for support. He was touching her, touching her where no other man had touched her and no other ever would.
“Hold on t’ me, Augusta.”
She heard fabric rip, felt Ian’s fingers brush her sex. He was not in a hurry, nor was he the least fussy about acquainting himself with every fold and secret of her intimate flesh.
She wanted him. She wanted him, and she would have him, just this once. Augusta hitched closer, hitched her leg higher on Ian’s hip, determined to climb him and scale all of his objections too.
His fingers traced her sex again, a touch so intimate, Augusta shuddered with the pleasure of it.
“Shall I pleasure ye, my heart?” He repeated the caress, and while Augusta wasn’t sure what he was offering, she divined it was something short of her goal.
“You shall love me.” To emphasize her determination, she stroked along his member, going slowly, like he went slowly, then again when she realized her touch had made him go still—or maybe her words.
“Hold tight, Augusta.” He shifted them, raising Augusta up a few inches, securing her leg against his hip and anchoring her against the vertical rise of the earth at her back. The ease with which he did this suggested to Augusta he could have held her there all day.
He fused his mouth to hers, sundering her wits with the heat of his kiss. His tongue pushing past her lips held no deliberation or strategy, nothing but lust and a desperation to match Augusta’s determination.
“Ian, I can’t—”
“Hush.” He swept all the offending clothing from between their bodies, jerked his kilt one way, Augusta’s dress and petticoats the other. With one strong arm, he settled her more firmly against the hard earth at her back; with his free hand, he traced his fingers around her hip, to the gaping tear in her drawers.
Augusta closed her eyes, the better to savor the scent of good Scottish earth, heather, and Ian. At variance with the harshness of his breathing, she felt Ian’s arousal, blunt and warm, probing at her sex.
The sensation of joining with him was a satisfaction of cataclysmic proportions. This was what loving should feel like—an easing together of two bodies for shared pleasure, two bodies ready, willing, and eager to become as intimate as they could be.
While Ian retreated and surged more deeply into Augusta’s body, she spared a pang of sorrow for a young woman trying to balance on the edge of a hard desk, her middle cramping with the awkwardness and strain of what should have been beautiful.
“Augusta, are ye crying?”
“Love me, Ian.” For she surely loved this, loved the intimacy and power of it, loved that they joined by the broad light of day.
“I am.”
She wanted to speak to him of the pleasure he brought her, of the singing, rising, bodily joy that coursed higher moment by moment. She wanted to move with him, to do more than cling to him and revel in an intimacy that felt both inevitable
and unprecedented.
All she could manage was a harsh, desperate whisper against his neck. “Ian—”
“Let go, my heart.” He went on in rough Gaelic, the sound of it joining with the throbbing of Augusta’s blood and the rhythm of their joined bodies.
She fought against the pleasure as it coiled more and more tightly, fought against anything resembling a conclusion to this joining, and yet, she was not strong enough to withstand that conclusion for more than a handful of moments.
Dizzying, soaring joy filled her soul while pleasure wracked her body. She clutched at Ian shamelessly, held him hard with everything in her while he buried himself inside her again and again.
And then, silence, except for the pounding of Augusta’s heart. Inside her body, Ian was still; around her, he was a solid, warm presence. Too late, Augusta realized a wide, warm bed, where two people could curl up and catch their breath, had a lot to recommend it.
Her jacket would be filthy, and she did not care.
“Ian?” She brushed her hand over his hair, which still sported a dusting of earth and grit from their near miss.
He let her leg slide down his flank and withdrew from her body. Augusta’s skirts drifted down over her legs, propriety trying to fall into place with them, and failing. Ian braced himself with one hand on the earthen wall above Augusta’s head.
With the other, he held his arousal, now wet, glistening, and to Augusta’s eyes, larger than ever.
She watched while Ian’s hand moved on his shaft, an up-and-down stroke that stirred the embers of Augusta’s desire.
This was intimate too, particularly when she looked up and saw that Ian watched her mouth as he stroked himself. The look in his eyes was stark with lust and despair, a nigh-animal longing revealed, as well as an even fiercer discipline.
“Kiss me, Augusta. For the love of God, please—”
Rather than stare into those desperate, hopeless green eyes, Augusta kissed him, putting every ounce of passion she had into it, pleading with him to vanquish the despair for at least a moment.
His body shuddered, and Augusta felt the tension go out of him and his hand go still between them. She dropped her head to his shoulder, the heat of him growing more necessary than ever as the sun passed behind the thick gray clouds.
He remained over her for long moments, and then he shifted, though he kept Augusta close in his embrace, his palm angling her head so her face was against his throat. She could feel the pulse there, wanted to touch her tongue to it.
“We canna engage in such folly again, Augusta.”
He sounded not angry so much as despairing. Augusta raised her head, wanting him to see in her eyes that she could never regard something so beautiful as pure folly. “You’re not engaged to anybody yet, Ian MacGregor.”
He huffed out a great, long sigh, one Augusta could feel against her chest. And then he lifted away, far enough that Augusta could feel the chill of the air between their bodies while he stood heaving like a bellows a few inches from her and wiping at himself with a handkerchief.
“I can’t be courting your cousin and dallying with you.”
Of course he could not, hence the just-this-once aspect of their folly. And yet, she had to argue with him, maybe as a way to remain close. “This isn’t dallying, Ian.”
“Then what would you call it?”
He pushed away, but his feet didn’t move. He stood glaring down at her, and even as Augusta understood he had to be angry now, had to find his balance with some emotion saner than desire, she felt the loss of him.
The grief.
“I would call it allowing ourselves a small, temporary taste of happiness, Ian. We deserve that much. Genie doesn’t want to marry you. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life teaching squires’ daughters how to draw bowls of blasted fruit.”
“Don’t cry.” He said something in Gaelic that Augusta would have sworn was an endearment. He hugged her, an embrace very different from the one before it. “I’d end up breaking your heart, Augusta. You’re not a lady who can dally and be done with a fellow.”
“I told you, this isn’t dallying.”
“Oh, fine then.” He shifted away again, ran a hand through his hair, and aimed a look at her both affectionate and exasperated. “You’d break my heart, all right? That’s the God’s honest truth, woman. I don’t know why it should make you smile. We’re in a… pickle here. A blasted, damned pickle.”
As declarations went, it was only a start, but Augusta took it and held it to her heart.
“I’m not sorry, and neither are you, Ian. That means it’s not an entirely bad pickle.” She wanted to smooth his hair back again, to finish dusting away the bits of dirt. As if he knew she was harboring silly notions, Ian caught her fingers and glanced up at the slope.
“It’s bad enough. Come along. The rain will start any moment.”
He kept his hand in hers while they made a hasty descent. When they reached the trees at the base of the slope, he dropped her hand to escort her very politely back to the house.
By the time they got there, Augusta had stored up an encouragingly fulsome vocabulary of Ian’s muttered Gaelic curses. It might take her days to puzzle out translations for them all, and the rest of her life to come to terms with what she and Ian were never going to have a chance to share again.
***
“I will not ruin ye. We’ve had this discussion, and ye’ll not sway me to yer schemes!”
Gil kept his voice down with effort, but the urge to scream, punch something, break small objects of great value, or run like hell made it difficult.
“And I will not marry your titled brother,” Genie hissed. She glanced around, and Gil honestly didn’t know if she wanted someone to come upon them in the library or if she had a shred of sense left to dread that possibility.
“I locked the door, Genie. If we’re to have a proper argument, we can’t be disturbed.”
She looked startled, then a calculating gleam came into her eyes.
Gil took a step back while she advanced on him. “You have to talk to Ian, lass. Whatever bee you’ve got under your bonnet, he’s to be your husband, and he’s the man to take on your troubles.”
“No titled man hand-selected by my father will take on my troubles.” She advanced another two steps; he retreated two and a half.
“You say that like men are worse than offal.” And yet, Genie Daniels wanted to be intimate with a man, one man in particular—him, may God have mercy on his soul. Though maybe she didn’t want him in her bed. Maybe she just wanted him to compromise her with some silly kiss, but the girl needed to understand even kisses could be risky.
“Some men are worse than offal,” she said, her voice low and taut with anger. “Maybe just a few men. A few is enough.” Her expression became determined. “But not you.”
“And not Ian!”
She pounced, fusing her mouth to his in an inept mashing of teeth, lips, and will. Gil was too shocked to bodily shove her aside, and then her arms were around him, clinging desperately while she murmured, “Oh, please… Please…” against his mouth.
“For the love of…” His hand came up to cradle the back of her head; his fingers plunged into silky blond hair without his willing it. He drew back his head a half inch.
“Not like that, lass. Ye’ve got it all wrong.” Holding her still, he brushed his lips across hers, once, twice. “Ease into it, steal into it. Like moonrise and summer breezes.”
He settled his mouth on hers gently, introducing her to the taste of him, the soft, teasing feel of a kiss meant to convey respect and tenderness along with a generous helping of desire. His mouth pled with her to understand, to consider the possibility that kissing could be lovely beyond description.
She held still for hi
m. That alone was enough to tell him she was considering. Her lips parted on a sigh, and he offered her his tongue, seaming her lips as further evidence that kissing was the farthest thing from the plundering she’d initiated.
For long, sweet moments he coaxed her into relaxing, into pondering what a kiss could be, and then he touched his tongue to hers. She startled at the contact. She clung to him so tightly he could feel surprise go through her then drain away into a languor that made him want to…
Good God.
He was gentleman enough—and aroused enough—not to tear his mouth away and stomp off. Maybe he was besotted enough.
No. Not besotted. This was Ian’s intended. An innocent young lady who knew a great deal less about getting herself ruined than she thought she did. Gil laid his cheek against her temple and let his embrace loosen.
She didn’t step back. She merely shifted to rest her forehead against his chest. “Do all Scotsmen kiss that well?”
“Yes.” National pride demanded he be honest, but now in addition to wanting to scream and throw things, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Ian’s had more practice than any of us, so his kisses will be even better. You need to take your concerns to him, Genie. I won’t tell you again.”
And still, she made no move to leave his embrace. Maybe she was so innocent—so ignorant—she couldn’t feel the nascent erection rising against her belly. Maybe she was as aroused as he—
He stepped back. “You can’t go around kissing fellows willy-nilly, lass. You’ll get more than you bargain for, and a great deal less.”
The look she shot him was brokenhearted, angry, and hopeless. “I know what I’ll get, Gilgallon, and I know it would be substantially better than the marital bargain my parents are determined to strike for me.”
She thought she knew, anyway. Scottish girls grew up early. Gil wasn’t sure spoiled English girls grew up at all, and lingering with this one behind a locked door was the stupidest thing he’d done since…
It was the stupidest thing he had done, ever.
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