Page 34 of A Scot for Bethan
Chapter Ten
Well, Cameron Campbell did indeed make love in a bed—and left his partner bewildered by the onslaught.
Bethan lay on her side, naked, warm and more content than she had ever been. The interlude in the room by the solar that morning had been explosive, but this lovemaking had been her every dream come true. Slow and gentle, hard and fast, hot and wild, and everything else she could think of, so much so that Cameron had fallen asleep almost as soon as he had rolled off her pulsing, sated body.
Though she was drowsy with an excess of pleasure herself, she could not fall asleep just yet. Instead, she watched him sleep in the moonlight, fighting the urge to caress his chest, with its smattering of copper-colored hairs, his arms, corded with lean muscles, his jaw where a dark ginger stubble had started to grow. So beautiful, so manly… She drank him in in one of his rare moments off guard. Not many people would have seen him in such a moment of abandon, only his mother when he was a child, and then the women he’d taken to bed later on in life.Had there been many? Probably. One didn’t become so skilled in the art of pleasuring women without some practice. Besides, he looked too good not to attract attention, and he had no reason to resist temptation. Thank God she had not been an inexperienced virgin, and able to please him as much as he had pleased her.
He stirred a moment later, blinked as if trying to remember where he was, ran a hand though his tousled hair, then smiled when he saw her and it came back to him. Her heart melted at the same time as her core heated. How could anyone manage to look so adorable and virile at the same time? She had no idea.
“How long have I been asleep?” he rasped.
“Not long. It’s still the middle of the night.”
“Mm. Odd, I can’t even remember falling asleep.”
Bethan smiled. There was nothing odd about that, considering that after reaching his release in a storm of passion, he’d whispered that she’d killed him and then rolled off her in one heap, already half-asleep.
To her surprise, he took her hand and, interlacing his fingers with hers, brought it to his lips to kiss the inside of her palm. The gesture was incredibly tender. Did he behave thus with all his conquests she couldn’t help but wonder? It mattered not, as long as he behaved like this with her, she decided, pushing the question out of her mind.
“Tell me. How do you choose your lovers?” She could tell the question had been on his mind since the moment she had admitted to not being a virgin and he thought that the intimacy they had shared that day allowed him to finally ask it. It did. “I know from your encounter with Sir Alan that you do not throw yourself at all the men who are interested in you.”
“No.” Her lips quivered. How she loved that he still wanted to tease her, even now that he had taken his pleasure. She would have hated to see him lose interest in her as a person after he’d possessed her body. “And I have not taken nearly as many menas you seem to think to my bed. It is not always easy to entice the ones I want.”
“Come.” Cameron scoffed. “You won’t make me believe that for a moment. Any man in his right mind would give an arm to take you to bed.”
“Not quite so. The first one I tried to seduce, my friend William, refused me on the grounds that he preferred men. There was a man who would have given an armnotto have to bed me. Besides, I’m hard to please,” she added with a wave of the hand. “Most men repel me rather than attract me.”
“Repel? Are the men in Wales that ugly?” Cameron smiled, stretching his long limbs with cat-like grace.
Bethan watched his muscles contract with the movement then stole a glance at his perfect profile. She smiled to herself. Compared to him, yes, most men seemed like pitiful imitations of manhood. She could not think of a single man who possessed half of Cameron Campbell’s appeal. In any case, their appearance was not what had weighed the most in the balance when she had decided to refuse their offers.
“Most of the time, it was not their looks that was the problem. You would understand why I refused them if you hadheardthem. I had the distinct impression that all they were interested in was my beauty.”
“I see.” Cameron turned to his side, propping his head in his hand, the posture relaxed, the gleam in his eyes mocking. Like her, he was completely at ease with his nudity. “What else should they have been interested in? Your ability to swear better than they do? Your refusal to be cowed? Your willingness to discuss women riding their lovers and kneeling at their feet? Aye, there is much to like about you, Ealasaid, besides your beauty.”
“And there is much to like about you,” Bethan whispered, tracing her finger around Cameron’s full, sensual lips. She hadnot known that such beauty could exist, or that it could affect you just tolookat a man you desired.
“Who was the first man you took to your bed?”
Another woman might have taken exception to his question, but she did not. Betrothed women did not take lovers and surrender their maidenheads, nor did they tell other men about their love life. But she had done all this. Considering how open she had been with him, it was only fair that he should ask.
Besides, she was gratified to see that he was not so hypocritical as to pass judgment on her past affairs.
“I was seventeen when I shared my first kiss. I asked one of Castell Esgyrn’s grooms to kiss me,” she said, hiding her face in the crook of his neck. She had no idea what had made her confide this to him now. It was not what he’d asked.
Against her lips she felt the low rumble of a laugh. “So that was how it all started. Seventeen! Well. No wonder you’re so accomplished in the art of pleasing a man.”
Heat invaded her cheeks. This man really gave the most unusual compliments.
“It’s not what you think,” she explained hurriedly. “The three years since the signing of the marriage contract had just ended and I thought Dougal would arrive any day… I panicked, and went to the first boy I found, to give myself the illusion I had some say in what happened to me. In any case, it was a sweet, innocent kiss. I never asked him for more.”
“Why didn’t you?” Cameron pressed, drawing back to look at her in the eye. Bethan shook her head, refusing to answer his question.
A heartbeat later she found herself lying on her back, her wrists pinned on either side of her head, her body trapped under his much bigger one. The warmth, the weight of him was wonderful, the contact of his naked skin against her equallynaked skin shocking, delicious. It made her think of all they had done earlier.
All she wanted to do now.
“Why, Ealasaid?” he repeated, eyes alight with amusement when she arched her back in supplication. “Why did you not ask the groom for more than a kiss?”
