How to Seduce a Scot (20 page)

Alex usually did not need to be told to kiss a woman. Usually, he did not need to be led to his own bed as a lamb on a rope. But this was no ordinary woman. This was the woman who would bear his sons, the woman who would lie by his side in that bed, and every other, for the rest of his life. It was a heavy moment, full of portents and of the future. Still, his body raged on, his lust like the background music of an opera, when all he wanted to do was stand and take in the beauty of the woman about to open her mouth to sing. His songbird stood before him, waiting. In the end, it was she who once again stepped close, rose on the tips of her toes, and kissed him.

She had learned a bit since the last time. Her knowledge seemed to grow by what it fed on, and now her lips danced over his with their own innate rhythm—not the steps he had taught her, but new ones, entirely her own. He could taste her desire and her innocence together, a heady drug.

She pressed herself against him and he could feel the soft contours of her breasts against his chest. His arms went around her in spite of his better judgment. He knew he would have to choose: surrender or send her away. But he also knew himself. He had locked both doors, not just to keep her in, but to keep the rest of the world out. He intended to have her, and to make it such a night that the priest's blessing to come would seem like an afterthought. This was their true wedding night, and he would vow himself to her before he took her under him.

He pulled back from her, and when she moaned in protest, he pressed his lips to hers once, swiftly, in consolation. “I must speak, my angel, before we go on.”

“Must you?”

She wriggled against him, trying to give her hungry body solace, trying to find a way to assuage the need she felt. But she rubbed hard against his nether region, and he felt desire spike in his blood and in his chest like a lance. He took a deep breath, thanking God he was a man, and in control of himself.

He looked into her fevered eyes. The mossy green had burned away, and brightly lit emeralds had taken their place. He almost said to hell with it and kissed her again, but this moment between them was sacred. Impatient as she was, she would thank him for it later.

“You must know that I have a special license. We will be married tomorrow, by my uncle, the Bishop of London, quietly. Your mother and sister will attend, as will Robert and Mary Elizabeth. You may even have Mr. Pridemore there, if you prefer.”

The last was a sad attempt at a joke, but his angel did not think it was funny. He could see that he was dampening her ardor with all this talk of planning. She pressed herself against him again, no doubt in an effort to distract him from his folly. He swallowed hard, his lust beginning to rise like a flash tide that would never go out.

“But this night is our wedding night, for all that a priest has not blessed us yet. My uncle is Church of England, and good for little other than to circumvent English law. But I will marry you again in the Highlands, at Glenderrin, with both our families present, before a true priest of the Church.” Alex realized he'd been issuing orders as if she were his valet. He swallowed hard, and watched the firelight as it played over the gentle planes of her face.

She was as still as a rabbit in his hand, a rabbit who hoped to deceive the hunter into passing on.

“Will you marry me, Catherine Middlebrook?”

She swallowed hard and kissed him, fiercely. She looked into his eyes. “The day we find ourselves before a true priest of the Church, I will wed you, and bless the day as the best of my life.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. It was an odd way to agree to be his wife, when all she had to do was say
yes
, but nothing was easy with his girl.

“All right, then,” he said.

It seemed that there was a shadow in her eyes, dimming the emerald brilliance. But she pressed herself against him as if she were drowning at sea and he was the last rock in the world. He kissed her then, and wondered how he was going to coax her nightgown off without frightening her when she wriggled out of his arms and walked away.

* * *

Catherine could not bear one more moment of talking about a marriage that would never be. She knew now that she would be breaking his heart as well as her own. Once she was safely wed to another, she would write to Alex and explain all she had done, and why. No doubt he would curse her, and all the love he felt for her now would turn to bitterness. Catherine knew that she was selfish. She should leave him where he stood, even now. The key waited for her. All she had to do was pick it up, and turn it in the lock. But she knew that she would not do it.

She walked to his bed and climbed up on it. She was no siren, and had no way of knowing how fashionable ladies got their husbands to come to them when they were reluctant. She would have to simply be herself, and improvise.

She drew her borrowed nightgown up and over her head, tossing it down on the thick rug. She felt a blush rise, but for once it was not from embarrassment. Alex's jaw went slack from shock, his eyes darkening almost to black with desire. A sudden wave of triumph broke over her, and she felt drunk with power. That she could make the man she loved look at her like that by only taking off a cotton gown was a miracle.

Next, she undid her braid.

He did not move to her side but watched her as a cat watched a mouse hole. Something new and strange seemed bound to happen when he leaped on her as that cat might. She had no doubt that he would make sure that she enjoyed it.

She knew a little of what went on from watching the birds dance and the sheep cover each other in the fall, but she was not ready to turn her back on him and let him mount her yet. As much as she wanted his body on hers, she wanted to keep looking at him even more.

Her hair fell about her shoulders and down her back like a curtain. She sighed at the feeling of the softness of her own hair against her skin. Her hair was always up, except when she brushed it out. She had never felt it against her naked skin before. She rolled her neck back and forth and her long hair moved with it, sliding over her back and shoulders like a blessing. She almost forgot about Alex for a moment of sensual pleasure, but he was beside her then, reminding her of his presence.

“You are the most beautiful woman God ever made,” he said. He placed his hand gently against her cheek, leaning down to kiss her. He did not devour her, as she wished he would, but skated his lips across hers, then down her cheek, to her throat, where his mouth caressed the beat of her pulse.

He laved his tongue there against her skin, and she shivered, grabbing on to him. She rose up on her knees, trying to draw him closer. But he was much bigger than she was. There was no doubt from the moment he touched her who was in control.

She let him draw her down onto the bed, the soft sheets and blankets cushioning her as she fell. She smelled the scent of bergamot all around her then, both from the heat of his skin and from the sheets beneath her head, and she knew in that moment that she had come home.

He lay down on top of her, and she moaned as his lips closed over her nipple. It had never occurred to her that a man might do such a thing, but she was so happy that he did. His other hand closed over her other breast, so that she was assaulted with pleasure on all sides.

She tried to keep her eyes closed, so that she could concentrate on nothing but how it felt to have him touch her, but she could not stop looking at the way his dark hair fell against the white of her skin, reveling in the feel of his lips on her body. She started to tremble beneath him, and he smiled up at her.

For one awful moment, she thought he might stop what he was doing, but he simply kissed her over her heart, then leaned down and went back to his work on her other breast.

His lips closed over her and his tongue twirled in some magical way across her flesh. When he bit down, once, very gently, she cried out from the pleasure, and he did it again. There was a wicked gleam of triumph in his eyes when he looked up at her.

She was breathless, but she found she could still speak. “Don't be too full of yourself, Alex Waters. You're getting too big for your britches.”

He laughed out loud at that, and she felt the delicious vibration of it all the way down her body. “I am definitely too big for my britches at the moment, sweet Catherine, but that is all your doing.”

She was not sure what he meant, until he pressed his hips to hers and she felt the swelling of his manhood against her. Catherine took a deep breath, reaching for her courage even as she ran her hand over him through the thick wool of his trousers. She was well rewarded, for Alex groaned, then hissed between his teeth. She liked to watch his face change as she ran her palm over him. Her hand was small, and he was large, but her ministrations seemed to bear fruit, for when he opened his eyes again, all the laughter had been burned out of them.

For one moment, she felt a thrill of fear, much like she had when she'd told him he might take money from her. His face was all hard planes at that moment. With his long, dark hair falling around them, he looked more like a warrior bent on plunder than a gentleman.

Thank God for that.

She knew not where that irrational thought had come from, for it fled just as quickly. For he stood up and left her. She opened her mouth to protest, but he started undressing, and she found that her breath was gone.

He stood over her supine, naked body, his eyes running over her skin from her toes to her face. She closed her mouth and took in the beauty of him as he stood above her, his wide chest dusted with a coating of dark hair. As he leaned down to strip off his trousers, she reached up and ran her hand across his chest, very lightly, to see how that hair felt against her skin. Her palm warmed from his scented flesh and his hair felt soft and prickly at the same time. She was about to tell him this when he fell on her again, his great body one large, heated brick against her.

She wriggled in pleasure at the warmth of it, knowing now how Scottish women stayed warm through the depths of those long, cold winters.

Alex looked down into her face, and she felt the pleasure at his warmth taking second place to the pleasure his lust brought her. He spoke then, and she felt tears of joy come into her eyes.

“I love you. I will love you all my life, and beyond, if the priests are right. I want you to know it.”

She pressed her hand against his heart, and felt it thundering above her. She leaned up and pressed her lips where her palm had been, the wiry hair of his chest soft against her cheek. She kissed him, then rubbed her face against him like a cat.

“I love you, Alex. And I always will.”

He lowered himself to her, and she shivered as she felt all of his weight come down on her. His manhood was high against her belly, but she could not reach down to touch it, because he had taken both of her hands in one of his. He raised her wrists above her head so that her breasts stood at attention close to his mouth. He blew on them with his heated breath until the nipples peaked, calling to him. She wriggled and moaned, but he did not move to give her relief.

“You are mine, Catherine Middlebrook. Don't forget it.”

His lips sealed this promise by pressing over hers just as his chest pressed down on her breasts. He let her wrists go then, for his hands smoothed their way down her body, rising to cup her breasts in a heated caress, and moving lower over her thighs.

She left her hand above her head in abject surrender as he lowered his mouth to follow his hands all the way down her body, from her breasts, across her belly, to between her thighs, where at long last, he kissed her.

Her nether lips smelled like jasmine, warm woman, and desire. He laved his tongue across the folds of her flower until it opened beneath his mouth. He plundered it, searching for the sweet spot that would bring her the most bliss. He found it almost at once, for she was the most responsive woman he had ever had the privilege to touch.

He had primed the well, for she was at the brink of pleasure when he put his mouth on her. It took very little to coax her over that edge.

She cried his name and fell apart in his arms. He held her down and his mouth did not stop moving over her, his tongue running over that place between her thighs until she bit her lip, as if trying to suppress her own noise—and almost succeeded.

She fell silent finally, hoarse and trembling. He felt her soft hands on his hair, and he raised his head to smile at her.

“What was that?” she asked him, her breath still gone.

“That was fun and pleasure both,” he said.

She laughed a little at that but tapped him on the crown to let him know he had better answer her, and quick.

“It has a Latin name, but I've never been over fond of Latin. Let us simply call it kissing the quim, and leave it at that.”

“Quim?” she asked, looking thoughtful.

“Yes,” he answered, raising himself on one elbow so he could better enjoy the play of her thoughts as they crossed her face.

“Hmmm…” she said.

He leaned down and hummed against her belly, making her writhe. “Hmmm indeed,” he said.

She laughed again, as he had meant her to.

“I am still hungry,” she said.

“I'll sneak down stairs and get you a snack,” he said, his body protesting fiercely as he started to rise from the warmth of hers.

“No,” she said, smacking him lightly again, as if he were an unruly schoolboy and it was the only way she could get his attention. “My body is still hungry for you. How can that be?”

He raised himself to meet her halfway and kissed her lips gently. “Your body is still hungry because we are not done yet.”

Her eyes widened and he almost laughed at her sweetness. He was about to take her innocence, and gladly, but there was a great deal about it he would miss. Of course, the compensations would more than make up for the loss.

“I love you, Catherine Middlebrook. Don't forget it.”

Tears came into her eyes, and when one rolled down her temple, he kissed it away.

He smoothed his hands down her body, feeling the supple curves and the softness of her skin beneath his hand. She shivered under his touch, and the desire rose again behind her eyes, rising off her flesh like the heat from a peat fire. He leaned down and kissed her lips, and when he drew back, he met her eyes.

“If you wish to turn back, tell me now.”

She smiled at him, her eyes still bright with tears and lust together. “I don't want to turn back.”

She wriggled then, so he gave her room and let her get her bearings. But she did not rise from their bed. Instead, she turned her back to him and rose on her knees and hands, presenting her beautiful, rounded derrière for his view.

He kissed her bottom, running his hands over it. “My angel,” he said, “what are you doing?”

“I'm presenting my backside,” she answered pertly, “so you can mount me.”

He bit his lip hard so that he would not laugh at her. He coughed instead, and moved to the cup of water that sat by on the bedside table to take a sip from it. She looked at him over one shoulder, puzzled, and he offered the cup to her. She shook her head, but her eyes were beginning to lose their gleam of lust and take on the light of embarrassment.

“Catherine,” he said. “I will take you that way once or twice in our married life, I warrant. But not this time.”

Her look of embarrassment began to fade, and intrigue began to take its place. “There is another way?” she asked. “I have seen the horses and the pigs and the sheep do it like this.”

“As man, we are closer to God, and as such, we have other options. Why don't you let me lead, as if we were waltzing, and let's see where we end up?”

She turned back and sat next to him, as trusting as a foal. Her breasts pressed against his side, and the scent of her jasmine skin filled him with light. He was overwhelmed with love for this girl, and thanked God for her, even as she sat there. She took the cup from his hand then and drank the cool, clear water that had come up from the duchess's well.

“You had better lead,” she said. “I don't know what to do, other than what I've seen at home in the barnyard.”

He smiled and pushed her blonde curls out of her eyes, pressing his lips to the corner of her mouth. “Why don't you come sit in my lap, and see what you find?”

She looked down at his burgeoning manhood and smiled at him. It had subsided a bit while he was struggling with laughter, but the sight of her naked, pressed against him, beautiful and innocent, made his lust rise again.

She crawled into his lap and wrapped her arms around him. She sat on him as she would a horse, sidesaddle, with her legs dangling down. That would not work for their purposes, but he did not mean to take her that way her first time at any rate. He let her sit as she would while he kissed her, trailing his lips down her temple, over her cheek and jaw, and down her throat.

“Alex,” she said, her breathing not as ragged as he had hoped it might be, “this is lovely. But might we lie back down and do it your way?”

He laughed and kissed her full on the mouth. “You'd like me lying down then, would you?”

“I like it when you lie down on top of me,” she said. “I feel safe from the world.”

“And so you are.”

He lingered over her lips until her tongue joined him in the dance. When he drew back, her breath was short at last. His hand caressed her breasts, first one and then the other, until her nipples were hard against his palm. Catherine arched a little, writhing on his lap, brushing against his manhood while pushing the softness of her breast deeper into his hand. He had made her wait too long already.

He ran his hands over her body, from her breasts to her quim, and back again. She pressed her hips against him in earnest, and as she trembled, he felt her lust catch fire. He lay her down then, not wasting time to chat or canoodle any further. He laid his body over hers, just as she had requested, and instead of trembling and closing her knees, her thighs fell open instinctively to cradle him between them.

“I love you, Catherine,” he said again. The words had become his new catechism, and he repeated them so that she might not forget.

Her response filled his heart with joy even as she wriggled beneath him, trying to get closer. “I love you, Alex. Now, show me what to do.”

He laughed low, pressing his lips to her heart so that she could feel the vibration of it in her breast. She shivered, and he laved her nipple one more time, his questing hand seeking her warmth and wetness. She was damp and ready, and he could wait no longer. He had been as much a gentleman as he might. When they rose from that bed, he would place his ring on her finger, the ring he had purchased yesterday. But now he let all else go, and rested his body and his mind on her.

“I will do my best not to hurt you,” he said.

“No more talking, Alex,” she said. “I need you.”

He slipped his manhood between her thighs and pressed inside her relentlessly, in one smooth motion. He felt her maidenhead give, and she tensed beneath him from the pain. He stopped moving and kissed her temple. “I'm sorry,
leannan
. It won't happen again.”

“It won't?” she asked, looking horrified and wounded at the same time.

He kissed her lips. “The pain won't.”

She relaxed beneath him when he said that, and her passage made way for his intrusion, as if she had begun to learn his dimensions already. He was a big man, and she was a good deal smaller, but her body fit him like a well-tailored glove. He moved in her a little, raising her hips so that he might brush over her secret place within. He knew he had hit the spot when she gasped. “Alex!”

Once found, he moved against it relentlessly, ruthlessly ignoring his own needs and focusing solely on hers.

She came apart in his arms as she had when he kissed her nether lips, but this time, her screams were so loud that he had to kiss her to silence her. She shook beneath him as if she had been taken over by an earthquake that affected only her, though her passage tightened around him so that he had to breathe deep to keep from losing the last vestige of his control. But he was not a man and a Scot for nothing, and he managed to bring her to the peak of bliss not once but twice before he gave himself up to the way her body felt around and beneath him.

He lay on top of her afterward as if slain by a giant, struck down by a force greater than himself. He had taken his first lover at fifteen. He enjoyed women, all of them, whether he had them or not. But if he needed more proof that this woman was different, he had it as he held her in his arms after their mutual climax had passed. Unlike before, he did not want to flee. He was not thinking of where he needed to be on the morrow, what he needed to do or what tasks needed to be seen to. He thought not of how to ask her to leave, but how to get her to stay.

But then he remembered: he had locked all the doors, and Catherine had sworn not to pass beyond the door without him. This time, his girl would not walk away from him. This time, he had her.

He kissed her and brushed her hair back from her face. “Are you all right?”

She was weeping quietly, as some women were wont to do after their pleasure had passed. He kissed her tears away, but they fell too quickly, so he reached for a handkerchief and wiped her eyes for her.

“I hope these are tears of joy,” he said.

She kissed him then, and he tasted her sorrow. Perhaps she was worried about what Lord Loverboy would say, or her mother, or how the world would look at her from that day on. Since they were to marry in the morning, the world had better keep a civil tongue in its head. He had no interest in letting anyone speak ill of his wife, that day or ever.

“I love you, Catherine. My angel, do not weep. You hurt my heart.”

She stopped then, and sniffled against his chest. She lay quiet against him, and he held her close until her breathing turned even, and for many minutes after. When he knew she was asleep, he allowed himself to drift off as well.

They lay together on that borrowed bed, as if adrift on an island in a silent sea. All he could hear was the sound of her breathing, and the sound of the wind as it blew against the house. The tree next to his window rattled a bit against the glass, but the sound was soothing, for she was in his arms, as if she had always been there, as he knew she always would be.