Page 43 of What a Scot Wants
Unlike the revolted disgust Silas’s presence inspired, Ronan’s nearness made her only want to move closer. Like a chilled body toward a furnace. Her legs wouldn’t stop moving toward him. She longed to feel the heat radiating from him. Use him to fight the panic spreading inside of her…the necrosis brought on by self-preservation. She raked at her lips. She would start with them.
“Well…perhaps this is the Imogen I want to be. Confident. Bold.”
A fighter. Just like this man.
“Ye’re already those things,” Ronan replied.
“Then I suppose this is the true me,” she said, finally close enough to touch the front of his silk waistcoat. His breathing hitched. Hers, too.
“Is this what ye want?”
What she wanted was to forget the man who had just touched her without permission. Who’d pressed his lying lips to hers. She wanted to push every ugly, destructive thought out of her head and replace them with pure, physical sensation. She didn’t want this with just anyone. She wanted it with Ronan. Sheneededit with him.
“You told me at the opera, all I had to do was ask,” she whispered, lifting her eyes to his.
His pupils dilated in the dim corner of the box, and they watched her now with hawk-like focus. “Are ye asking?”
“There were other things, too,” Imogen went on, bolder as the chill in her heart receded. “Things you wanted to do to me.”
Ronan’s eyes closed, and for a moment it looked like pain gripped him. He made a low groan in the base of his throat. “Say the words, Imogen.”
“Kiss me.”
Ronan’s mouth came down over hers before his hands could even wrap around her hips. He dragged her deeper into the corner of the box, shifting her so that her back was flush against the wall, his legs bracing the pair of hers. His tongue clashed against hers, the kiss more primal than the one they’d shared in her office at Haven. Probably because he hadn’t taken her by surprise. She’d asked for this, invited him in, and as she pushed her hands under the lapels of his tailcoat and gripped his broad, muscled shoulders, the heady boldness she’d felt earlier only strengthened.
She moved her leg out from between his and cursed the tight hug of her skirts when she tried and failed to hitch her leg around one of his.
“Allow me,” he said, breaking their kiss to reach down between them.
Imogen gasped as Ronan yanked up her skirts, exposing her legs to the knee, but also giving her free movement to do exactly as she wanted. His gloved hand lifted her leg and guided it around his hip, and then a moment later he ripped off his opera gloves and tossed them to the floor. One hot, calloused palm gripped her thigh while the other cupped her nape. She was lost. She wanted to be lost. Entirely.Wholly.
“Tell me which desire of mine ye want most,” he said, his lips brushing lightly over her lips, his tongue tracing the swell of her lower lip.
“All of them?” she replied, trying to capture Ronan’s mouth for another searing kiss. His spicy, masculine taste had done what the champagne couldn’t. And she wanted more of it, more of his mouth on hers. But he shook his head.
“Choose one.”
Imogen’s brain could barely remember how to breathe as his palm rubbed the back of her thigh, under the lace of her silk drawers and over the curve of her buttock. His fingertips were perilously close to where she throbbed at the juncture of her legs. Imogen rolled her hips forward, wanting them closer. She’d never felt anything like it…nothing so consuming. So raw and aching. Her body had been a tool to feed and nourish, a useful tool. Not one dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. All centered at the heart of her…the warm, damp heart he’d wanted to touch.
“I ken what ye want,” he said, his teeth nipping the lobe of her ear, his breath hot and ragged. “But I want ye to say it, lass.”
“Touch me,” she said, though it was more of a whimper.
“Where?”
Imogen angled her face so that she was looking fully up at him, his expression intense and sharp and determined. A small, wicked grin curved her lips. “I believe you referred to it as my warm, damp heart.”
Ronan went still, a handful of heartbeats passing between them as Imogen became utterly aware of a hard ridge pressing against her stomach. And then his hand moved, pushing into the crux of her. Imogen held her breath, her eyes locked with his, as one finger drew along her sex.
“Tell me to stop, and I will,” he said, the intensity of his stare changing to something surprisingly tender.
He glided into her, and Imogen tilted her hips. The pressure of his touch, of the slow and pulsating motion as he filled her and withdrew, then pushed forward again, wound through her like twisting rope. Her head fell back, and Ronan bent to kiss her, clasping her tongue, licking and thrusting in time to the rhythm of his hand.
Imogen rocked against him, her leg clamped around his hip, uncaring if anyone in the opera house could see their wanton display, though she knew they were in the shadows and blocked by his big body. She couldn’t have told him to stop if a hundred opera glasses were focused on them. It was absurd. Irrational. But lust dulled her senses as thoroughly as it seemed to sharpen them; she couldn’t hear anything beyond the sharp intake and exhale of their breaths, but they were loud and consuming, and she was certain the rest of the theater could hear their gasps and small groans.
Ronan’s scent filled her head and throat, and she sighed into his mouth as a second finger joined the first, the exquisite pressure somehow too much and at the same time not enough.More.Imogen felt need curl through her, both bliss and the unknown colliding around her, through her, tearing her apart.
She reached for it, craving the chaos of what this man was doing to her. And then it broke over her, shedding through her like sunlight after a storm. Imogen went limp in Ronan’s arms, her leg suddenly heavy and unwieldy as he withdrew from her. He held her close, his arms a pair of iron beams around her.
