Page 87 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
Cat had been full of righteous indignation, fury that he’d spurned her news about his father’s letters, accused her of being reckless—
And then he kissed her, and every reckless impulse of hers came true. It was as if her mind turned off, and her sensual emotions, long denied, just took over her body. She flung her arms around his neck, as if desperate to get closer. He lifted her right off the floor, and she hung suspended against him, the hard muscles of his body an agony and a temptation all at once. Their kiss was hot and wet and rough, his whiskers scraping her chin—she couldn’t taste enough of him, moaned when she lost his mouth, only to fling her head back when he gently bit her neck. She held his head to her, pulled the queue from his hair so that she could grasp the wavy locks.
He roughly set her on the ground, unhooked her cloak, and started pulling up her skirts, as he had the last time. She began to tug at the laces keeping her bodice together.
Duncan froze and watched her, his eyes hot with desire, their darkness full of temptation. When her laces were gone, and the stomacher fell away, he grabbed the edges of her bodice and held them together.
“Stop me, Cat, if ye must, but do it now.”
“If ye stop now, I’ll scream,” she said.
He let her go, and she staggered. Every part of her burned for him, burned for the pleasure he’d showed her, burned to see what she’d been missing. But if he didn’t want her—
“Take it off,” he said harshly, hands fisted at his side, every line of his body tense. “Take it all off before I tear it off.”
A wildness seemed to sweep over her at his rough words. She didn’t think about what he’d done to her. Nothing mattered but this room, this dark place, and the passion that felt like it might consume her.
She tugged at her tight sleeves, and her bodice fell to the floor. She untied the tapes holding her skirt and petticoats and kicked them away from her. All that was left were her stockings and shoes, her stays and chemise. The laces on her stays opened in the front, and her fingers fumbled with them, but he was patient, standing as still as a statue but for his harsh breathing, which made his chest rise and fall rapidly. She couldn’t seem to get her own breath, frustrated, until he pushed her fingers aside and his big hands deftly untangled and unthreaded the laces. She took a deep grateful breath when her stays fell away—and she let the past do the same. She couldn’t think about all the reasons not to do this. She wanted every pleasure she’d denied herself.
“Now this is the chemise ye wore when I found ye,” he said in awed husky tones. “Shiny silk, so fine it shows each delicate curve of ye, and your pretty nipples.”
He tweaked one gently and she shuddered.
“I wondered often if beneath the simple woolen gown, ye still wore this, all feminine and desirable. Let me see ye, Cat.”
She could only nod, trembling as she loosened the drawstring at her neck and shrugged her shoulders to start the downward slide of the garment. It caught briefly at her breasts, and he groaned. She suddenly felt powerful, capable of affecting this man in a primitive, sensual way. If he had a hold over her, then she had one over him.
And then the silk slithered down her body and she was naked.
He stared at her as if he’d never seen a woman before, when she knew that couldn’t be true. He was a man who did what he wanted, who’d once been wild, or so Maeve had told her. He reached out and cupped her right breast with his rough hand, and she closed her eyes and experienced the deep pleasure of it, which expanded outward from her breast and made the center of her thighs hot and yearning. She was trembling, and didn’t know how much longer she could stand to be on display for him.
“I’m on fire,” she whispered.
She felt him shudder through his hand.
“Take off your clothes,” she said.
It was an order, and he obeyed. After removing his sword belt and tossing onto the table his pistol and sword, he unpinned the plaid from his shoulder, and the folds fell to hang at his waist. He peeled off his jacket, his waistcoat, his neck cloth, with such speed that she could have laughed if she wasn’t so breathless to see him completely nude. He unbuckled his plaid and it fell down to the ground, leaving him in just his shirt, loose through the sleeves, long to his thighs, tented forward by the male part of him she was so curious to see. She thought he ripped a button at his throat opening his shirt, and she put her hands on his chest to stop him. She felt his racing heart, heard his frantic breathing, knew he wanted this joining as much as she did.
But she didn’t want it over so quickly.
“My turn,” she murmured, then began to pull up his shirt as he’d once done to her skirts, and slid her hands beneath.
His breathing seemed to come at a rasp, and then he wasn’t breathing at all, just standing all taut as a bowstring ready to let fly. She put her hands on his hips and found them hot and smooth, devoid of the hair that was on his legs. Looking up into his face, she braved a teasing smile and let her trembling hands slide back to find his backside, the muscles hard and twitching, as if he were a great horse held still when it wanted to gallop.
Leaning against his body, she felt the long length of his arousal against her stomach through the folds of his linen shirt, the only thing that separated them. Part of her wanted to rip it away, the other part of her wanted to explore, without all of his nakedness to overwhelm her. Their gazes locked, she let her hands explore him beneath the shirt around to the front. His chest had hair that dwindled as she followed the ridges of his abdominal muscles down. She took his penis in her hands, hot and smooth and hard, saw the pleasure change his expression into a grimace.
“Am I hurting ye?” she asked, loosening her hold.
“God, no.” His words were guttural and strained.
“Take off your shirt.”
He pulled it off over his head while she still held his erection. They were two naked people facing one another in the faint firelight. While she looked down in fascination at the maleness of his body, he reached up and began pulling the pins from her hair. The long locks fell down around her shoulders, brushed her breasts.
“Ye’re such a beauty,” he murmured. “I’ve longed for ye from the moment I first saw ye.”
There was nothing she could say to that that hadn’t already been said—and besides, she didn’t want to think about conflict when she could have this moment of passion. She explored him with her fingers, delicately at first, then with more confidence.
