Page 28 of When the Laird Claims
Victoria’s chair made a scraping sound against the stone floor as she pushed back and stood up so that she could start to anxiously pace around the room. A frown was carving deep lines of unhappiness into her cheeks, and he hated it.
“After my first escape attempt, the Earl had my sister brought to his estate as a method of ensuring that I would behave and do as he wished. Melody was there when you invaded. I ordered her to a safe location, but I have no assurance that she even arrived safely, and I am worried sick about her.” Victoria worried at her fingers, pulling and tugging at them in an attempt to self-soothe. “If she did, then it does not matter what happens to me, because I know that my friend shall not allow any harm to come to her. She will keep Melody as her ward without question. But… but if she did not…”
No wonder she could not settle. He had no right to complicate the issue further.
“It might be the only chance that she has to find a suitable husband after what I have done,” she concluded. “It is not as if I shall have any marriage prospects if the Earl casts me aside; nobody will want a ruined woman.”
“Daenae say that,” he interrupted. He could not sit here and pretend that he agreed with any of it, or that he understood. There were other options, but they just didn’t fit into the neat box that she had been shoved into her whole life. They didn’t handle things like that here in Scotland.
“What? That I would die? Or that no one would want me?”
Arran reached out and grabbed her forearm gently, just enough to stop her constant pacing. He pulled her closer, and she awkwardly allowed herself to be led to stand in front of him, their thighs practically touching. He locked his eyes on hers, even though he could tell that she was actively fighting the urge to look away.
When he spoke, his voice was lower than he had intended for it to be. “They’d be fools nae to want ye.”
12
“Where I come from, they would be foolstowant me,” Victoria said unevenly.
Speaking had become difficult with his closeness. She was so… aware of him, in a way she had never experienced before: the slight shift as he unconsciously moved his weight from one leg to the other, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, the motion of his throat as he swallowed, the gentle grip of his hand on her scarred wrist, the searching look in his eyes.
“Aye, well ye’re nae in England now,” he said.
Clearly conscious of her injuries, he grasped her around the waist and, eliminating the gap between them, he kissed her fiercely. She had secretly hoped to feel his kiss again, but she had not expected it to happen. As such, it took her a second to respond, and when she did, she kissed him with all the tension and passion and anticipation that had been gathering between them since the last time.
She grasped fistfuls of his shirt and raised on tiptoe, pulling herself further into his embrace. The lock of his arm around her felt like the safest place in the world, not shackles but a promise of protection.
They kissed until they were both breathless. His hands wandered the contours of her body as if she were something to be sculpted, running over the hourglass of her waist, shaping the loose fabric of her dress until it echoed the figure beneath.
Is this what I have been missing?She lamented the opportunities that had been wasted if this was what she could have been experiencing. But she would not allow herself to think of how abruptly he had ended the kiss last time, and how quick he had been to apologize.
This did not feel like something to be sorry about.
“I cannae stay away from ye,” Arran murmured, his hands grasping slightly as they smoothed over the rise of her backside.
He rocked his hips and pressed her closer to him, the movement making it hard for her to catch a full breath. How was she supposed to urge her body to do ordinary things like breathing and thinking when he had her so distracted?
Suddenly, he picked her up, his hand guiding her leg around his waist in a slow brush that made her shiver with delight. Her other leg joined the first in a tight lock, her breath catching as she felt a hardness nudge against the heat between her thighs.
“Were you trying to stay away from me after…?” she moaned, her fingertips sliding through his hair as she pulled his head closer, kissing him harder.
He smiled against her mouth and carried her to the nearest wall, a fresh gasp leaving her mouth as her shoulder blades gently struck the stone. He pressed against her more insistently, his kisses ravenous, feeding her own hunger for more of everything that he could give to her. She was greedy for him, each moment healing more of the wounds that Charles had inflicted with the balm of pleasure that Arran possessed in every kiss and touch, and tease.
When his tongue flicked into her mouth, her eyebrows rose in pleasant surprise. It should have felt wrong, that glide of his tongue against hers, but it was anything but: it was entirely right. A thrill sparked through her. Emboldened, she let her tongue move with his, eager to learn everything there was to learn.
She tightened the grip with her thighs on him, and he pressed her harder into the wall, his hips tilting upward. That hardness was more insistent now, and though she longed to explore what it was, the grip of her legs around him prevented her from putting her hand between them.
The same, however, could not be said for Arran.
“Ye’ve been living in the wrong place,” he growled against her throat as he kissed her there and moved his hand downward in a tantalizing caress.
Her skirts had been rucked up to her hips when she had locked her legs around him, each rock ofhiships pushing them further back. His hand disappeared beneath the gathered fabric… and his fingertips brushed over a part of her that she had not known existed.
A gasp rocked her, her parted lips unable to meet his kiss, such was her intense surprise.
He kissed down the curve of her neck and over the bare skin of her chest as his fingertips slowly circled that center of pleasure. When his mouth found hers again, she kissed him more fiercely than she had ever kissed him before, as if to spur on the bliss that charged through her.
From the wall to her writing desk to the door to the bedpost, he kissed her and touched her, speeding up and slowing down to keep her guessing, to keep her wanting. All the while, she clung to him, clawed at his back, grasped his shirt, and kissed him back with equal fervor when her gasps and moans of ecstasy were not parting her mouth.
