Page 50 of A Dash of Scot
Her cheeks flushed pink.
“I desire your mind, your laugh, your gaze. I desire your kiss, the feel of your body against mine.”
She gasped slightly.
“Dinna doubt my desire for ye, I beg ye. And there is nothing more important in my life than ye. ’Tis why I dropped everything in Edinburgh to chase after ye. I ran from ye once, and I’ll never do it again. From this day forward, wherever ye are is where I want to be.”
“I wanted to believe you when you said that earlier.”
“Do ye believe me now?” He cupped the side of her face, stroking her soft skin with the pad of his thumb. “I want ye to trust me. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove that I’m true.”
Poppy stared into his eyes. “I want to.”
“’Tis all right if ye’re still a little skeptical. I will make it my mission to change your mind and solidify my trustworthiness.”
She nodded. “I’m…” She let out a breath. “I admit to being overwhelmed. So much has changed in so little time, and it’s hard to grasp all of it.”
“I can understand that.”
“My father’s death. Leaving my childhood home. Being unwelcome in Edward’s home. You being back in my life.” She shook her head and swiped at a tear that slipped from the corner of her eye. “Sometimes it just feels as if the things I want are only fleeting.”
Dougal nodded. “I canna bring your father back. Nor your childhood home. I canna change Mary or Edward, though I would happily try. What I can offer and give freely and lavishly is my love, a new home to make your own, and anything else ye might ask of me.”
“Thank you, Dougal.” She did smile then. “You’re making good on your promise to woo me.”
“This is only the start.”
With her face turned up to his, Dougal wanted nothing more than to kiss her. To feel the lips he’d dreamed about for a year against his own. To taste the sugary sweetness of her mouth, the soft sighs of her breath on his face. He cupped her cheek, swiping his thumb over the soft arch, the tiny smatter of freckles.
“I want?—”
But before he could finish his statement of desiring to kiss her, Poppy leaned on her tiptoes, tossed her arms around his shoulders and pressed her mouth to his.
Poppy thought, too late, of course, that she probably shouldn’t be kissing Dougal. She’d asked him to court her, woo her, prove to her that he was true, and now here, she’d gone and pressed her lips to his.
The kiss was sweet at first, a softness giving way to something deeper, something hungrier. The year that spanned their last kiss and this moment melted away as they sighed into each other, the familiar feel of his mouth sliding over hers, his breath on her face.
And the all too familiar coil of heat in her belly, the curl of her toes in her slippers and her fingers against his jacket. How a simple kiss could ignite flames inside her was puzzling, but a puzzle she didn’t feel she needed to solve, only one to keep in pieces where it would remain mysterious and cloying.
Dougal’s arms came around her waist, the weight of his muscled limbs sinking into her frame like the comfort and spark of a long-lost lover. She imagined herself a heroine from a book, her lover gone so long at sea he had been feared dead, only to walk out of the ocean in one piece and fall to his knees before her.
This was going to be their fairy tale ending. This kiss on a salt-spray cliff, with the sounds of birds hovering in the clouds and the ocean crashing against the rocky crag. She would be quite happy to remain here forever. To make this very spot their world and his lips her home.
But just as all fairy tales come to an end, so, too, did her happy imaginings, as she picked up on something that Dougal had said earlier.
He had to marry by his twenty-ninth birthday, which was a fortnight away.
Doubt started to creep in. Was he only wooing her, kissing her, to get her to say yes because she was a better option than Lucia Steventon?
“What’s wrong?” Dougal’s hands pressed to her cheeks, his hooded gaze on hers, as he pulled away from their kiss to meet her eyes.
Poppy bit her lower lip, holding in her mind’s fearful road.
“Poppy, please. Tell me.”
“You need to marry by your twenty-ninth birthday. Am I just a convenient choice?”
Dougal groaned. His hands slipped from her face but didn’t leave her as they settled on her shoulders.
