Page 38 of My Scot, My Surrender
He could practically see the flames coming out of her ears. “Ye…you…conceited, arrogant—” She broke off in suffocated rage. “I very well ken my own mind.”
“Ken means know, correct?”
She snarled at him, and Brandt laughed. Her face turned the color of a ripe apple, but he did not heed the warning. The sight of her impassioned, ferocious glower made him ache all over, particularly in his nether regions as he succumbed to the most erotic arousal of his life. Brandt reached for her reins and her eyes widened. He pulled them to a stop, and before she could make a sound, he set his mouth to hers.
Their lips met in a tangle of lust and heat and simmering mutual hunger. Her tongue circled his, drawing it into her mouth. He gave it to her, and she sucked it deep, eliciting a strained groan from his throat. Sorcha tasted like honeyed ale and sunlight, fire and ice, and everything in between. She made him see entire constellations and feel like his body was no longer his own. Brandt clutched her closer, losing himself in the heady sensation. Without breaking their kiss, he plucked her from the saddle into his lap.
Her pliant thighs—the sight of which he’d gorged himself on for days—pressed delectably against his stiff groin. Sorcha moaned into his mouth, her hips wriggling as if she, too, sought the satisfaction that only the merging of those two parts could bring. She experienced pleasure in the same way she expelled anger—with unabashed fervor. Panting softly, her lips parted wider as they sipped and stole from each other. Brandt wanted her mouth, her heart, her soul.
His hand cupped her breast, and his greedy fingers sought her taut nipple beneath the linen of her shirt. God, he loved the shape of her…the soft round weight of her in his palm. Plucking the ruched tip between his fingers, she arched hungrily into him. He needed that pebbling peak in his mouth, but he did not want to release the sweet cling of her lips or the marauding, bold tongue of hers that set him aflame.
Lockie whinnied softly, and reason pierced through his lust.
“Sorcha,” he gasped, pulling apart. “We must stop.”
“Who says?” she asked, banked blue flames simmering in her eyes.
Her mouth was so deliciously pink that he had to kiss her again. It was a mistake; it only made him want more. With reluctance, he dragged his mouth away. “We can’t. We shouldn’t.”
“You want this as much as I do.” She wriggled her bottom atop his jutting length, making his head spin. “It’s just kissing, Brandt.”
Her words made him want things. Impossible things. Things that were out of reach for someone like him. With her, it could never bejustkissing. He understood that as well as he knew his horses. She was as lethal as opium…one taste, and he would be lost. Willingly and forever.
And he would drag her down with him.
Brandt reached for the restraint that had never failed him until lately. “I know,” he said hoarsely, “but I also know where this leads, and we have to do what’s best for you.”
“What’s best for me or what’s best for you?”
“They’re the same thing.” He drew a shuddering breath. “And not just so you can have the chance to marry a man of your station. I’m not the man for you.”
Sorcha’s body went still. “Why?”
He did not speak for a prolonged minute, the demons of his past choking him. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m…not worthy of you.”
“Because you’re illegitimate?”
He went still, though he was unsurprised by her candor. He’d come to learn that she was not a woman who played word games. “That’s the least of it. I never wanted a wife. I’m not fit for marriage, Sorcha. Not atruemarriage.”
“And there is nothing true about any of this?” There was no hurt in her question, simply quiet curiosity.
“Our deal was real,” he said, avoiding her question. “You had something I wanted.”
“Lockie.”
Brandt nodded. “Yes. At the time, I thought it an acceptable trade.”
A shallow breath lifted her shoulders. “And now?”
Now it was dangerous. More than dangerous.
In the beginning, it had been a neat, quick transaction—a name for a horse. The spark between them had been there from the start. Stupidly, he’d hoped to throttle his desires as he’d done countless times in the past with other females, but then, he’d never met a woman quite like her. Even now, his body’s tension against her soft thighs hadn’t abated in the least. Passion had a way of blinding people to reality. And the reality was he should never have married her.
“Now, everything has changed,” he replied softly.
Something indecipherable flickered in her expression before she hid it. “You told me earlier that what we want and who we are sometimes do not coincide. But sometimes they do. Sometimes things make sense.” She put a hand on his arm, and his pulse leaped beneath it. “What I feel now makes more sense than anything has in days. And I know you feel it, too.”
“That’s lust, nothing more.” He felt her flinch at the vulgarity of his words, but he closed his eyes, knowing she would not let the matter rest. “This is not what you’re imagining it to be, Sorcha,” he said. “I am not your savior, and the emotions you’re feeling are…misleading, brought upon by recent events. Trust me, your gratitude and your misplaced esteem will fade.”
