Page 32 of A Two-Faced Laird
His voice was gentle, and although he was rejecting her, Edina could tell that his heart was not in it. He wanted her as much as she wanted him, and she was not ready to give up. However, she had to be subtle about it, since men did not like to be told what to do.
“You do not want me?” she asked sadly. “I thought…”
She shook her head and began to turn away, but her words had the desired effect.
Aidan hauled Edina roughly into his arms and gave her another hard, hot kiss, which left them both breathless.
“Does that seem as if I do not want you?” he growled. “I want you at this moment more than any other woman I have ever wanted in my life, Edina, but your future has to come before my desires. I am a man, and we are selfish creatures, but I do not want to be selfish with you. You-you mean too much to me.”
Edina took a moment to understand what he had just said.
“You love me?” she asked gently, for fear of scaring him.
The last thing she wanted was for Aidan to think she was trying to pressure him into a relationship.
“I care about you, but let us not say it is love because it is too big a burden to deal with right now,” he answered. “We are bothunder pressure from our families, and perhaps now is all the time we will ever have.”
“If you are worried about my maidenhead, well, it is not really your problem, is it?” Edina asked. “It belongs to me, and I may give it away to whomever I choose. If I choose to give it to you, that is my business, unless, of course, you do not want it.”
Looking into Edina’s smoky violet eyes, Aidan knew he was lost.
“I do want it, more than anything I have ever wanted before,” he replied huskily, then, as he had known he would, he gave up trying to resist. “But Edina, are you sure?”
“Be quiet and kiss me, Aidan,” she replied, smiling at him mischievously.
Aidan needed no second bidding. He kissed Edina almost savagely and cupped the cheeks of her backside so that he could pull her towards him, then began to undress her, peeling off her dress and chemise so fast that he almost tore them. When he came to her corset, however, he frowned in frustration.
“I did warn you,” Edina said, laughing, before turning over to allow him to undo her laces.
After that, it took seconds before she was naked, and Aidan was transfixed by the sight of the most desirable woman he had ever seen.
“Oh, god,” he said huskily. “Edina, I knew you would be beautiful, but now I see you are more than that—far more.”
He drank in the sight of her, from her silky tawny hair spread out like a banner on the pillow, to her long slender neck and the perfect orbs of her breasts topped with rose-pink nipples. Her waist was slender, and flared out into curving hips and long, shapely legs, between which was the thatch of tawny hair that covered the source of her femininity.
Aidan tore off his clothes as though they were burning him, and in a moment he was as naked as she was.
Edina looked at him in astonishment. She had never seen a naked man before, and had no idea how different their bodies were from those of women. Everything about him was different from her; where she was soft, he was hard, where he was square, she was curved, and where she was smooth, he was hairy. Yet, this contrast was what called out to the primitive animal inside her. He was everything she was not, and she wanted him with every fibre of her being. Already she could feel her nipples tingling and moisture flooding between her legs.
Aidan’s chest was muscular and flat, and looked quite unlike that which she had imagined. There was a line of tiny muscles on his stomach leading down to his navel, and his hips were much narrower than hers. His thighs were powerfully muscled, but Edina could not take her eyes off what was between them, and for the first time she felt afraid.
Surely, her body would be unable to accommodate this long, thick column of flesh? It was far too big, surely?
Lewis, having seen the fear in her eyes, followed her gaze as he lay down beside her again.
“Edina, if you would rather not?—”
“I have never wanted anything more in my whole life than I want to be with you right now,” she murmured. “This is new to me, but I want to feel you inside me. I want to know what it feels like to be a woman at last, and I want you to be the one to teach me.”
Then she said mischievously, “I promise not to scream too loudly.”
She ran her hand across his chest, loving the feel of the soft dusting of hair under her palms, so different from the rough stubble on his face. As her eyes moved over every delicious inch of him, she felt the need inside her building, and she moaned as his lips captured hers again.
However, as he cupped his hand over her breast again and gently teased her nipple with his thumb, Aidan realised that he might not have this time with Edina again. If his father and mother had plans to marry him off to someone else in his brother’s place, he would have to stay away from her, because he would never dishonour himself or her by becoming an adulterer.
As Edina arched her hips up to him, Aidan murmured, “Edina, wait.”
He cupped her face with one hand and looked deeply into her hypnotic violet eyes.
