Page 9 of The Scottish Duke
His hands raised her skirts, her legs exposed to the blowing rain.
Where were you when you lost your virginity? Not on her wedding night to a man of good virtue and intent. Not laying there clutching the edge of the sheet with trembling hands, biting her lip with worry and barely disguised fear.
No, nothing so proper or expected. Not as a bride, but as an imposter. A woman dissatisfied by what Fate had brought her, evidently willing to trade the one asset she had for something more important. A memory, not simply of the Duke of Kinross, but of a passion so fiery, unexpected, and shocking, that it decreed what happened in those next moments.
Her legs were bared to the rain until it felt like she was being baptized by nature itself. Perhaps washed and readied, an offering to the duke’s ardent nature.
Do you take this virgin to be your sacrifice?
He reached down and with heated fingers found her, cupped her within the slit of her pantaloons. A gasp escaped her when his finger entered her, an invasion she’d never before considered. She wrapped her arms around his neck and moaned into his collar as his palm pressed up against her, teasing and spreading the moisture. Not nature’s rain, but her own.
He bent, his hands suddenly on her bottom.
The ballroom door opened.
“Alex?”
They froze.
Chapter 4
The duke grabbed her hand and pulled her with him away from the ballroom, through the storm. She ran to keep up with him, her breasts bared to the rain, forgetting about the wig, uncaring if the gold brocade was ruined.
Mary knew her. She paid attention to the maids at Blackhall, if only to criticize their industry to Mrs.McDermott. Mary would have recognized her in a heartbeat.
Evidently, the duke wanted to escape his sister-in-law’s detection as much as Lorna did.
They raced over the terrace and down the stairs. When he led them to the conservatory, she should have been surprised, but it seemed somehow ordained. This was where she’d watched him so often. This was where she’d yearned for him.
Wordlessly, he led her to a crimson velvet upholstered fainting couch tucked among the ferns. She half sat, half reclined, as he bent and kissed the rain from her breasts, paying such close attention to her nipples that she closed her eyes to savor the sensations.
His touch was fire and something more, the ability to weaken her knees and silence any warning. Passion made her a puppet, one without a mind of her own. When he stood and placed her legs up on the couch, she let him. When he slowly peeled back the layers of her skirt, tucking them at her waist, she didn’t say a word.
The lightning illuminated them as he traced a path with both palms from her thighs to her waist, pulling off her pantaloons. He jerked off his jacket, revealing his rain-soaked shirt only seconds before kneeling on the couch above her.
“I’m dreaming this,” he said, twirling his finger into her nest of curls. “Either that or this is a reward of some sort. I must have been very, very good at something.”
He pulled up his kilt.
Although the maids occasionally joked about a footman’s equipment, she’d never before seen a naked man. She reached up with both hands and gripped his penis, marveling at the shape and size of it.
He closed his eyes when she touched him. She squeezed experimentally and his eyes opened, fixed on her.
Now was the time to jump up from the couch, explain that she wasn’t a woman of loose morals. That he had completely misunderstood her reaction to his kisses and his touch.
She didn’t say a word.
Instead, she rose up on her forearms, thinking that she was a decadent picture indeed. She lay before him with her breasts out of her dress, her dress bunched up at her waist, the skirt falling over the side of the couch.
She should have covered herself.
She would be concerned about her lack of maidenly reserve later. Right now she only wanted the ache to ease, and he was making it worse by delicately trailing his fingers along her intimate folds, teasing with a touch.
“Or maybe you’re just a drunken dream. Maybe I’ve imbibed more whiskey than I’ve thought.”
“Is that an effect of whiskey, then? I’ve never heard of it.”
“In this case, yes,” he said. “I wished for a distraction and there you were, standing by the terrace doors, looking as if you’d rather bolt than remain in the ballroom another minute.”
