The taste of her?
“Don’t worry, Augusta.” He drew his finger down the crease in her brow then down her nose. “I want only to pleasure you. Keep your nightgown on if you like, or dive under the covers before you take it off. It matters naught to me.”
“You think I’ll want it off soon enough.” And she would. In the next instant, she wanted it off.
“You want it off now, lass. You’re wondering why I didn’t peel you to your skin when I had the chance.”
“Why didn’t you?” She resisted the urge to gather her disheveled clothing around her just to thwart him.
“For two reasons. First, to assist me with my self-discipline, so I might have as much patience as you need tonight.”
“That was flattery. What’s the real reason?”
“Because you deserve to learn some pleasure, Augusta, some little touches of decadent wickedness. I’m guessing you permit yourself on the occasional hot night to leave off the nightgown. Ah, I’m right. But you think it a pragmatic concession, nothing more.”
“I like it, a little, to be honest.” She did gather the folds of her dressing gown over her middle. “But I also feel foolish. For whom am I being wicked?”
“For your own pleasure, my lady. Just as being half undressed is a pleasure of a different order.”
His hand, big, warm, and a little rough, eased along her waist, until he was a sweet, stealthy intruder under her nightgown. “Breathe, Augusta.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding then went still, the better to focus on his fingertips sliding up her ribs.
“Ian…” She closed her eyes as his movements edged her nightgown away from her body, dragging the soft fabric along her breast.
“Hush and let me look,” he said, his burr thickening. “You’re beautiful, Augusta. Never doubt it.”
While she waited in silence behind closed eyes, he slowly parted her clothing, peeling back layers of propriety, loneliness, and uncertainty as he did. “Beautiful,” he said again. Then he went still, his hands framing her on either side of her ribs. She opened her eyes and met his gaze.
“There you are.” He sounded so pleased with her for simply opening her eyes. So proud. He moved his hands up to cover her breasts, his touch easy and reverent at the same time.
“You make me want to be naked all over, Ian MacGregor.”
“Soon.” A single word, enough to inflame and soothe, both. His gaze dropped to her breasts, and she had the courage not simply to allow it but to enjoy him feasting on the sight of her. His hands moved gently, a rasp of his palms over her ruched nipples, a single finger caressing the undercurve of each breast, and then—glory of glories—a slight, glancing pressure to each nipple.
“Ian…”
“I know, love. You can have more of anything you please, but let me learn you now.”
He arranged her on her back as he had been, but made no move to push her nightgown from her shoulders. As fascinated as she was with the intimacies they were sharing, Augusta still kept a drape of cotton over her sex.
“I’ll see all of you when you’re ready to show me.”
He lay full length beside her, wonderfully unselfconscious of his own nudity. When Augusta had thought of being intimate with Ian, she’d had a vague notion of kissing and holding and moving under the covers in a silent, darkened room.
How ignorant she’d been, how unimaginative! This nakedness was a wonderful expression of closeness beyond her experience, a closeness she’d longed for without being able to describe.
“Let’s have some kisses, shall we?” Ian leaned over, and Augusta braced herself for the pleasure of his mouth on hers. She closed her eyes the better to savor what he offered, only to feel his breath on her nipple one instant before his mouth landed there.
The pleasure was… shocking, intimate, so intense she whimpered with it.
“Augusta?” He raised his head to peer at her. “You don’t like it?”
She took his head in her hands, arched her back, and begged with her body for more of those kisses. Any words were beyond her, so dumbstruck was she by what was passing between them.
She gave herself up to him, to his ability to sense when she was becoming overwhelmed, when he needed to veer off to a different touch in a different territory.
“You’re not the chatty kind in bed,” he concluded long moments later, almost as if speaking to himself. “But your body speaks volumes, my love. You like this…” He arched over her and kissed her deeply while he plied her nipple with his fingers. “Though you’re not so sure about this…”
He shifted, letting his hand trail down her midline and dally a little at her navel.
“Augusta?” He addressed himself to the lower curve of her nearest breast, speaking right against her skin. “What does my body tell you?”
His hand didn’t stop moving; it kept on trailing south, to tease the curls shielding her sex. He’d flirted with that before, stroking and patting and even massaging the flesh over her pubic bone. The variety of his caresses inebriated her, the skill with which he plied them…
He’d asked her a question. “What?”
“What does my body tell you?” He’d gone a little Scottish on her, “ma bodie.”
She opened her eyes. “Your body tells me you know far more about this business than I dreamed there was to know.” A whole sentence, clearly spoken while he tugged a little here and there.
“What else?” He didn’t bother to hide the smug humor in his voice.
“That you’re patient and naughty, also inventive.”
He smiled, teeth gleaming in the darkness. “Such flattery.” He took her hand and guided it to his erect penis.
“You’re aroused. Still.”
“Seems I am.” His finger dipped lower—when had she parted her legs? “Seems you are as well.”
She was… damp. Augusta frowned, some of the erotic haze lifting from her brain. With… Oh, she forgot his name—the anemic blond fellow with the clammy hands—she’d thought something must have been wrong, because it had felt like he’d been pushing sandpaper into her body.
“Is it bad that I’m aroused?” She could ask Ian that, now.
“For God’s sake, woman. Do you think I’m turning m’ balls blue…” He stopped and smiled crookedly.
“Do they really turn…?” She could not imagine such a thing, but there had been so much she hadn’t imagined.
“No, hinny, it’s a phrase to describe when a fellow’s asked too much of his patience. When do you bleed, Augusta?”
She didn’t even blush at his inquiry. The question was intended to protect her from dire consequences—her life among the yeomanry had provided at least that much insight.
“Soon. I expect I won’t be joining the shoot.”
“You are a woman of providential good timing, my heart. There’s more I’d share with you, but it grows late.”
Was he leaving? She bundled into his long body, hiking a leg over his hips in a display of need that would have been unthinkable an hour earlier. “I don’t want you to go. Not yet.”
“I’m not leaving this bed until I’ve attended to your pleasure, Augusta Merrick, and my own as well. But I’m debating…”
She loved hearing his words rumble in his chest while he held her. Loved the scent of heather clinging to his skin, loved the solid warmth of him. But this debating…
“What are you debating about, Ian?”
“When you were with your beau, how was it?”
She drew slightly away. “Surely this is not a fit topic…?”
“Love, we’re abed after midnight with my clothes in a heap on the floor. There are no unfit topics except for how quickly a Scottish summer night passes. Did he cover
you, put you on your knees before him, sit you in his lap, have you ride him—?”
She put her hand over his mouth while her mind’s eye tried to picture the wild things his words suggested. “I sat on the edge of a desk, and he stood between my legs. I got a cramp in my leg all three times, and my stomach hurt because I had to hold my skirts away and there was nothing to balance on.” And the desk had been hard, and the entire business furtive, hurried, and worst of all—disappointing.
“A cramp… Damned English. It’s a wonder there are any wee English babies about. I suppose we’ll go with tradition then, unless you decide you want something else.”
“Tradition?”
He shifted, looming over her on all fours. “All you have to do is spread your legs a bit and hold onto me. You tell me if I’m getting it wrong. Pull my hair, swat my backside, bite my ear.”
“Skelp your bum?”
“Aye.”
“Ian?” He went still while the covers settled around them.
“Love?”
“This isn’t what I expected.”
He shifted back, frowning. “I’m not a formal man, Augusta. The earl isn’t who I am, it’s a responsibility…”
“Hush.” She had to brace herself up on one elbow to lay two fingers over his mouth. “This is so much more than I’d envisioned… What was I thinking? To imagine I had anything to give you under circumstances like this?”
“Ah, but you do. You give me so much, Augusta.” He caged her body with his, and now, now when he’d set about kissing her, his mouth on hers, his body blanketing hers, she wanted to tell him things, to make sure he understood that this was the greatest gift… trust, tenderness, and pleasure. These few hours would illuminate decades of a solitary life in the prosaic shires to the south, give the years meaning, give Augusta herself meaning.
For these few hours, she loved and she was cared for by a good, worthy man.
She wrapped her arms around him, fiercely glad to feel the warm, blunt head of his erection graze the skin low down on her belly. She wanted this, wanted him, craved him. Craved to be as close to him as she could be.
“That’s it…” He probed lower, an easy nudge and retreat a little off target. “Hold me, Augusta. We’re in no hurry.”
Oh, yes they were. “I want…”
“There.” He found his mark but barely seemed to notice. “That’s what you want, aye?”
“How can you…?” She fell silent as he did it again, a friendly little greeting between bodies, almost something more, but not… “Ian… please.”
“Hmm?” He dipped his head to kiss her, giving her his tongue to draw into her mouth. She put her demands to him orally, undulating her hips in counterpoint to his movements.
“Greedy,” he growled. “Lovely quality in a naked lady.”
“Ian MacGregor.” She tried to lunge at him when next he came nudging and whistling around the neighborhood.
“Bossy is a verra dear quality too.”
She ran her hand down his arm, found his hand, and brought it to her breast. Bossy, indeed.
“A woman of discernment.”
With her fingers over his, she closed his grip on her nipple, and abruptly, all the teasing went out of him. She’d beat him at his own game, if a game it had been, and then the only sounds in the room were the rustle of the sheets and the sounds of their breathing.
He crossed the line from teasing to penetration. Crossed it by small, slow increments, while Augusta made demands on his tongue and kept his fingers closed on her breast. A tantrum was welling up inside her, a hot ball of undifferentiated wanting for him, for his body, for closeness so consuming…
She went up in flames, the conflagration sparked by the indescribable pleasure of his body joining with hers. When she started a low keening against his neck, he added power and depth to his thrusts, until Augusta felt as if each push and retreat ricocheted not just through her body, but through her soul as well. The pleasure built until she didn’t know if she was straining toward it or away from it, until she became the pleasure itself—incandescent, consumed, and consuming.
When she was limp and panting beneath him, Ian kissed her cheek. “My dearest, impatient love, did you think I was trying to be aggravatingly deliberate for the hell of it?”
Without warning, Augusta found herself weeping. Blast him to perdition—for the tears were Ian MacGregor’s fault. She wept for all she hadn’t known, wept for years as no one’s dearest anything, wept for reasons that had no words. He was too generous with her, too patient, too caring, and this joining was much, much more than anything that had passed between them before, more intimate, more precious.
“Augusta Merrick, what am I to do with ye?” He angled an arm under her shoulders and enfolded her in his embrace. “You must stop putting it about that you’re English. Such tender sentiments belie the Scot in you.”
He pattered on, about she knew not what, and all the while, the heat of him throbbed inside her, and his callused fingers brushed away her tears. He moved lazily from time to time, sending spikes of renewed wanting through her.
“Ian?”
“Love?”
“I’m all right.”
“Tears aren’t unheard of in bed,” he said, bending his head again to brush his mouth over her forehead. “When it’s a good, honest loving, there can be tears.”
He was trying to explain something to her, but she couldn’t hold it in her mind. The din was growing in her body again, the need and joy and courage were cresting higher and higher, and now she knew the destination could be shared, knew the intensity of the pleasure he offered her.
They developed an entire bodily language of intimate caresses and sighs, smiles and teases. Worlds and worlds opened up for Augusta, until a snake slithered into her garden with the first gray glimmerings of approaching dawn.
“You should be going,” she said. It was easier to admit this because Ian was spooned around her, his chest to her back, while she faced the French doors with their relentlessly lightening shadows.
His lips brushed her nape. “I don’t want to leave you, Augusta.”
She’d told him she wouldn’t cling and cry, so she reached deep into the wells of self-respect and determination Ian had replenished so generously for her. “I’ll help you dress.”
He went still behind her, then she felt the covers lift and forced herself out of the bed. In the gloom, she passed Ian his boots and socks while he tugged on his breeches. He let his hands fall to his sides while she buttoned a few of his shirt buttons, and then, with no further ado, their time was over.
Still he didn’t go. He sat on the bed and caught her by one wrist. Her braid had long ago fallen victim to his clever fingers, so when he pulled her down onto one hard male thigh, her hair spilled over her shoulder between them. He swept it back.
“I have something to say to you, Augusta. You’ll not want to hear it.”
“Then say it quickly. If you’re found in here, there will be no dealing with the consequences.”
He nodded and pushed her head to his shoulder. “We agreed this time together can’t change anything, can’t make a difference, but, my lady”—he brushed his lips over her temple—“do you recall your description of the times you were with that sorry Englishman?”
“I do.”
“Augusta, I very much fear that if I’m forced into that sort of proximity with any other woman but you, I’ll be the one with a cramp in my heart and nowhere to balance.”
She smiled despite the lump in her throat. He was lying. He’d make it as beautiful for Genie—or whatever woman he married—as he had for her, damn him, damn Genie, damn, damn, and damn.
“I’m not coming down to breakfast,” she said, rising from his lap.
“Sl
eep in, then, and may your dreams be sweet.” His tone was so sad, so tender, Augusta didn’t trust herself to answer him. She walked with him to the French doors, where he paused and gathered her to him. “Augusta…”
He said something else, in Gaelic. She understood him, and she understood as well he would think the sentiment indecipherable to her.
“No more words, Ian, except thank you, and I will cherish this memory more than you’ll ever know.”
He nodded, kissed her lingeringly on the mouth, and then she was alone.
“You will always be my dearest love.”
In solitude, she said again aloud the words he’d given her. They lit a determination in Augusta she hadn’t known she was capable of. She could not be his wife, but she’d be… bloody damned if she’d allow him to consign himself to a life of heart-cramps and self-denial. Let him find another wealthy bride, a woman willing to love and laugh along with him, to be his friend and his countess both.
Rather than Genie, who—a fool a thousand times over—loathed the very thought of marriage to Ian.
***
Ian considered going to his room for an attempted nap, but when a man’s world had been stood on end by a violet-eyed lady who sought nothing from him but memories and discretion, a nap would not serve.
He saddled Hannibal and lit out of the stable yard like the demons of hell were after him.
Which they were. Marriage to Genie Daniels had been a difficult but necessary duty before; it loomed like torture now. Impossible, unthinkable torture. Coupling with Augusta just now had crossed a line. They weren’t reeling from a brush with death; they weren’t deceiving themselves or each other about the probable outcome of their situation.
If nothing else became clear during Ian’s ride, he headed home knowing what his options were, and what they were not.
Connor leaned on his muck fork and frowned as Ian swung down. “Have you taken to abusing your only decent mount?”
“We walked the last mile.”
“And galloped five before that.”
The Bridegroom Wore Plaid Page 22