How could she feel that and fear at the same time?
And she was still unable to move.
‘Do you need help preparing for bed?’ His voice was much softer than she had heard it before.
‘I…’
‘You’ve a lady’s maid at home, have you not?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And usually she helps you get ready for bed?’
‘Of course.’ Her gown had tiny buttons down the back. Getting out of it on her own would be a graceless pursuit.
‘I’ll be assisting you, lass.’
He crossed the small space, coming perilously close to her as he bent and opened the trunk. From it he produced a simple, white night shift and a beautiful ivory hairbrush, far finer than anything she’d ever owned before.
‘Sit,’ he said, gesturing to the vanity that was shoved against the back wall.
And for some reason, now, her feet were capable of movement. And slowly carried her to that vanity, where she sat as he’d commanded.
She could see him behind her, large and impossibly broad. And she could see the reflection of her own fear looking back at her. Her eyes wide, dark half-moons beneath them as though someone had bruised them.
When he touched her, she jumped. Her lips parted and she despised the woman in the mirror. The woman who looked so fragile, so upset by the moment.
But his touch was gentle and it was clear he did not want her fear.
Something about that realisation made her shoulders relax. He said nothing as he began to remove the pins from her hair, curling locks falling down over her shoulders in golden waves.
‘Aye,’ he said, the word full of rough approval. ‘I thought your hair would be a glory.’
He said the words as if to himself and not to her. They did not seem to require a response, so she did not give one. He lifted his hand, the ivory brush clutched tightly, looking far too delicate in a fist that she knew could easily wield a broadsword. Brute strength, leashed, as he began to comb her golden curls.
Her heart fluttered uncontrollably and she felt pain. Real, undeniable pain radiated through her.
For when had someone last been tender with her? She’d had a lovely governess for a while. And she’d had a calm, soothing voice. She didn’t like to think of her, because losing her had hurt.
She’d gone away because the money had gone away.
All the care she’d experienced since the death of her mother had been bought and paid for.
And now her father had…he’d paid a debt with her and it was as though the floor had become the ceiling, to experience this, from him.
She had expected him to be rough. Callous. Uncaring.
He was such a large man. He could easily kill her with a firm press of his thumb to her throat. He had made it no secret he was angry. That he hated her father.
This was not what she had expected. And more than that, she had not expected her own response to it. A deep ache that made her chest feel as if it was being torn in two.
He was compromising every wall she’d built up inside herself. She was stronger than this. She’d had to be. She’d cried all the tears out of her body when her mother had died.
And then there was him.
She hadn’t cried when Lachlan had gone. She’d already let go of tears then. But he had given her a sense of friendship she hadn’t experienced before she’d met him, and at nine his departure had left her devastated.
That he’d come back into her life only to destroy it, only to break barriers she’d built in part because of him, made her want to lash out.
She didn’t want his care.
His care had mattered when she’d been a girl. And he’d left.
It didn’t matter why. He didn’t care for her, why should she care at all for him?
‘I loved him,’ she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth. ‘Just so you know.’
Thinking of the Duke made her feel calm for a moment. Safe.
Until she forgot he was no longer her ally.
His home was no longer her haven.
His family would no longer be hers.
‘No concern of mine,’ he said. ‘It’s not your love that I’ll be wanting tonight.’
‘And you don’t mind if my affections are with another man?’
‘I have a hard time believing it’s him you’ll be thinking of. And it’s not love that will make you cry out with pleasure.’
His words sent an arrow of sensation down low in her stomach. She didn’t understand what her pleasure had to do with anything. She only knew enough about male jealousy and possession to know that it might bother him if she loved the Duke. ‘My heart is with Hugh,’ she said, his name feeling a strange impertinence on her lips.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘But your body’s with me.’
The words felt a betrayal of the tender act of him combing her hair. Yet he kept on, his movements not coming any more hurried, not shifting into anything rougher.
She hated it. She wanted him to be angry.
It was easier to stand strong against anger.
‘Beautiful,’ he murmured as he parted her hair and shifted it over her shoulders so that it hung long and curling below her breasts. Then he began working on the small buttons on the back of her gown, letting the fabric go slack, then fall to her waist. It revealed her stays. Left one less barrier between them.
Her heart pounded a thick and heavy rhythm in her throat.
She fought to hang on to her anger, but fear…and something that felt closer to curiosity, rolled through her, beginning to eclipse it.
‘Do you know of what happens between a man and a woman?’ he asked, his voice rough.
‘I know everything,’ she said, keeping her chin tilted upward, her eyes steady with the mirror. She would not look at him.
And she would not give in to weakness.
‘Everything?’ His words held a hint of mockery. ‘That is quite a lot.’
‘I told you,’ she said, the words wooden. ‘I love another man.’
Perhaps if he believed she was ruined he would send her away. Ruined was the worst thing a woman could be, after all. Ruined was one thing you must never be, as then a man would not want you.
Lachlan did not react.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Then I shall expect you to teach me a few tricks. I have been to some of the finer whores that England has to offer, but I dare say not even they know everything.’
She shivered, disquiet moving down her spine like a wave.
His hands moved to the front of her body, where he unlaced her stays with steady hands and threw the small garment aside, leaving her in nothing but her chemise.
Rough hands went to her shoulders and the garment went down, only her hair covering her breasts. Her entire back was bare and she could feel the heat of him against her skin like a roaring fire.
‘I will make a bargain with you,’ he said. ‘I’ll not punish you for your lies. And I’ll not treat you as you’re asking to be treated. Because it’s clear to me that you are nothing more than a frightened virgin and you don’t know what it is you’re tempting.’
‘And what is my portion of the bargain?’ she asked, the words barely a whisper.
‘Your body.’
It felt an impossible ask.
‘We’re strangers,’ she said.
But that was as close as she could bring herself to ask that he postpone the act. She knew the duties of a wife. She knew what was expected of her. He might not be the husband that she had anticipated, but he was the husband she had.
She knew there were no negotiations to be had. Not here.
Rough hands went to her bare waist and she waged a battle within herself against the desire to run. Against the desire to lean into his touch. She fought to remain still.
‘We are not,’ he said. ‘I helped you save a bird.’
She had nothing to say to that.
No man had ever touched her like this. No man had laid his hands upon her bare skin.
And now these rough warrior’s hands were resting against such an intimate part of her. She felt dizzy with it.
With those strong hands, he guided her upwards so that she was standing. Then he pushed her gown down her body, letting all of it fall to the floor.
He did something very unexpected after that.
He growled.
The sound rumbling in his chest, vibrating through her.
Her entire body went cold, then hot. Shame rioting through her.
She felt exposed and terribly afraid.
She was afraid to look at her reflection in the mirror because the woman there would be naked. While her hair might be concealing her breasts, the rest of her was terribly exposed. She didn’t want to look at his reflection either. Didn’t want to see him impossibly tall and ferocious behind her.
He moved closer to her and she could feel the heat and strength of his body. One hand was still on her waist and it moved, making its way around to her stomach, where he spread his fingers wide and pulled her back against him.
He was solid and hot like a furnace. He bent his head down and pressed a kiss to the back of her neck.
A shocked sound escaped her lips and heat radiated from where his mouth had touched, like the spark from a fire had landed on her skin.
She felt strange. Lightheaded. And then those rough hands moved over her skin, his calluses brushing over her stomach as he shifted and pressed another kiss against her, this time below the first.
Pinpricks of sensation broke out over her body.
His words echoed inside her. Pleasure.
She had never heard pleasure connected with this act. Not for women. She knew that men were not supposed to be held responsible for their desires. But even then, it wasn’t presented as pleasure as much as a natural instinct that could not be denied.
But he spoke of pleasure as if that was something she could expect. As if it were something that mattered.
And it didn’t feel bad, the press of his hands on her. His mouth to her skin.
It didn’t feel bad at all.
She could feel her nipples grow tight and a restless ache began to build between her legs. She looked up at the mirror and her eyes caught his. There was a black flame in those green depths and it startled her. She looked away, but it was no better, because she caught her own reflection in the mirror then. Golden hair cascading over her breasts, her slim exposed midsection with his large, dark hand resting there possessively. The pale thatch of curls just below.
Her heart was thundering wildly, threatening to gallop right out of her chest.
‘Perhaps you don’t know everything?’ he asked.
She said nothing to that. She found strong arms wrapping themselves around her body, her bare skin against his naked chest. Then he lifted her off the ground as if she weighed nothing. ‘You are my wife,’ he said, the word filled with an intent sort of possessiveness.
She found herself being carried over to the bed, deposited in the centre of it. This was it. It would be it. That part that came with roughness and heaving, which she had of course witnessed between horses.
But he did not cover her. Instead, he stood back and looked down on her.
She fought the urge to cover herself, because again, she despised that fear. She didn’t want to show him that she felt vulnerable. She wanted to find a way to go inside herself. To think of something pleasant. To remain passive and to keep herself from reacting. It seemed a better thing than weeping, which was what she truly wanted to do.
With methodical hands he divested himself of the kilt. There was nothing beneath it.
His male member stood out from his body, large and thick, and she knew that was meant to go inside her body and she had no idea how she was supposed to accommodate such a thing.
It didn’t seem possible. Couldn’t be possible.
But hadn’t Her Grace said all a woman had to do was lie back?
That he would know what to do?
She had never heard of a woman being torn asunder on her wedding night, so she supposed she was in no more danger of it than anyone else. Though, he was Scottish. And it was entirely possible he was simply larger than most men. Entirely possible that an Englishwoman was not made to accommodate such…vast maleness.
But when he came down on to the bed, he was beside her and reached out, taking a strand of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. It was not what she had expected. He looked at her, those eyes intense, and she felt she would have rather he’d simply done what he needed to and got it over with.
It seemed preferable to this. This long stretch of time, this suspended moment of agony where her innocence remained and her questions were only half-answered, taking her closer to truths that were hidden from her, without revealing them entirely.
‘Put your hands on me,’ he said.
‘I…’
He wrapped one large hand around her wrist and brought it to his chest. His skin was hot, his heart raging beneath. He had hair on his body. She could feel her own heart thundering the same rhythm in response. But he wasn’t nervous, surely. So why was his heart working in time with hers?
He made that same growling sound he’d done before, then he lowered his head.
His lips had never touched hers. Her lips had never touched anyone’s.
His mouth was firm and masterful, slow, coaxing movements instructing her where words would have failed. He angled his head and then he did the strangest thing of all. He slipped his tongue between her lips.
She gasped and drew back. ‘I don’t think that’s a done thing.’
He chuckled, the sound strained. ‘It is. Believe me, it is.’
‘But why?’
‘You have to let me show you.’ He brought his mouth back to hers again and this time, when his tongue parted her lips, she did not pull away. This time, she allowed him to lead with a slick, startling rhythm. Like a waltz. And she was lost.
Her skin felt hot, her body flushed as if she was sick.
But she didn’t have time to think about it too long, because then he brought his hand to her breast, his calloused thumb moving over the tightened bud there.
It created a restless ache in her that no one had told her about. Was this what he meant? Was this the pleasure?
‘I was told…’ She tried to catch her breath. ‘I was told that I was supposed to think of household chores during this act.’
‘I thought you were going to think of your man?’
Her man? It took her a broad space of time to remember who he was speaking of, because the only man in her mind was the one in this room. The one whose hands were creating dark magic inside her.
‘His mother said I should think of duty.’
‘I’ll have you think of me,’ he said.
His mouth went down over hers again, this time rougher. Harder. Deeper.
Everything he was doing, everything he made her feel, didn’t seem as though it should be possible. Ladies did their duty and that was all.
It was men who had appetites.
Yet he made her feel hungry.
That’s what it was like. Hunger pangs. But in low, intimate spaces.
Then he moved his hand, settled it between her thighs and she arched her hips up off the bed, trying to escape him. But he was too strong. He moved his fingers between her feminine crease, with startling ease. She was slick there. Wet.
It made her feel a blooming sense of heat and shame and she didn’t even know why.
He felt no shame. His hands were sure and he began to move his thumb in slow, decisive circles. And she was lost. Lost in the pagan rhythm that he created there
. She could no longer resist, could no longer find shame in the fact that he was a stranger and the fact that her body was responding in ways she hadn’t known were possible. Somewhere, in the gauzy, confused mists of her mind, she realised that everything she’d ever been told about being a woman was a lie.
This was why women fell.
This was why there was such concern about ruination. It wasn’t about a simple, accidental step into a darkened alcove. No. It was about the temptation that might wait there. She hadn’t realised that. Because the way it had all sounded, it seemed a woman could not be tempted.
But his hands were temptation. His wicked mouth was temptation.
His muscles were a temptation. They were not simply a physicality. They were magic.
A sort of magic of masculinity that called to the feminine in her.
It went so much deeper than societal roles. So much deeper than body parts.
She felt something building inside her, foreign and delicious, and she found herself moving her hips in time with his fingers, chasing that nameless sensation inside her.
It was like a bowstring, pulled taut. And it stretched and stretched until she was certain it could go on no longer.
And that was when the release came. And she soared.
There was a great, gasping sound in the room and it took ages for her to figure out that it was coming from her own mouth. That she was the desperate, whimpering creature she could hear as if from a distance. That she was clinging to him as though he might anchor her to earth. She was shattered. And she didn’t know if she would ever be able to be put back together.
He said nothing. He only regarded her with those eyes. Then he shifted his touch between her legs and breached her, one finger sliding deep inside. The invasion was strange, but not painful. Until he added a second finger to the first and she found herself gasping for breath.
‘Best to make sure you’re as ready as you can be,’ he said, his voice rough.
She felt a flutter of terror in her breast, but then he had moved and was over her, the blunt head of that most masculine part of him where his fingers had been only a moment before. She nearly cried out in protest, but then his hips surged forward and she cried out in pain as he entered her.
Harlequin Historical July 2020 - Box Set 1 of 2 Page 55