How to Seduce a Scot (23 page)

Alex led her by the hand all the way up the stairs. He stopped in the kitchen and poured a glass of red wine. She did not protest that he poured only one, for she had already had one glass, and it had made her feel light-headed. Wicked French wine was known to do that.

He brought her into a little room that was almost completely filled with a great four-poster bed. The bed curtains were drawn back, as were the lace curtains on the windows, so that as Catherine stood there in the light of one glowing lamp, she could see the moon rising over the river below. She did not think she had ever seen anything so beautiful.

Alex brought her fingers to his lips, and kissed them. “Wife, I think I need to see you naked now. Is that shocking?”

Giddy laughter bubbled up inside her and spilled out, as champagne overflowed a fluted glass. She leaned up and kissed his lips, a brief, glancing butterfly of a kiss. She stepped back deftly out of his reach before he could draw her close and under him.

“Very shocking, husband. And I have a shocking confession to make as well.”

“What confession might that be, wife?”

Alex's voice was even, but she could see the banked heat rising in his eyes. She shivered as she stood under his gaze and started undressing, freeing her breasts from the modest gown Mary Elizabeth had lent her. His eyes glazed over as her breasts peeked out at him, their nipples hard, from beneath the filmy lawn of her shift. Her skirt fell next, and she felt the first hint of delicious power.

She stepped out of her gown, where it lay on the floor at her feet, and stood before him in only her shift and stays. The stays fell away next beneath her hands, and he moved toward her, forgetting her confession, the light in his eyes brighter, and full of desire. She took one more step back, and eluded him.

“My confession, husband, is that I like those black gloves you always wear. You were wearing them the night I first met you, if I recall.”

“My gloves?” Alex's eyes clouded over for a moment in confusion. “I'm happy you like them, wife, but what has that to do with us, here and now, on our wedding night?”

“I want you to wear them,” she said. “I want to feel those gloves against my naked flesh, with nothing else between you and me but that black leather.”

He swallowed hard, and closed his eyes as if to ward off her words. But when he turned and left her without another word, she knew he was not repulsed. She listened as he stumbled in the dark downstairs, looking for those gloves.

“You left them on the kitchen table,” she called to him down the narrow staircase. “Between the crock of butter and the bread knife.”

She listened for a moment longer as he found them in the half dark below. “Don't take off another stitch of clothes,” he called up the stairs. “Not until I get there.”

“I make no promises,” she said, though she did not move to take off any more of her under things. As she listened, she could hear Alex moving stealthily along the hall downstairs, and his boots as they sounded on the wooden staircase.

He burst into the room, only to find her where she was, without her having moved a muscle. This show of obedience seemed to please him, in spite of his breathlessness from rummaging downstairs. He had his leather gloves clutched in one fist, and the sight of them made her lose her breath.

She did not relinquish control to him, as she had the night before. She was enjoying herself far too much for that.

Her voice sounded rough in her own ears, deeper than it ever was, and slightly more musical, if the music were played by a bassoon. “Husband,” she said, “I fear you are wearing far too many clothes.”

He tossed the gloves down on the bed. “Indeed, wife.” He started to strip, but she stopped him as he tossed his waistcoat aside. She moved close to him, and slipped her hand over his broad chest, taking pleasure in the heat and the muscled firmness of it beneath her hand, the thin lawn of his shirt the only thing between them. She had been so overwhelmed the night before that she had not thought to touch him. But she was a married woman now, and less overwhelmed—so far, at least. She reached down and drew his shirt from his breeches.

“Alex, let me help.”

She slid her hands beneath his shirt, drawing it up to his shoulders. She was too short to pull it over his head, so he did that bit for her, tossing the shirt away onto the borrowed floor.

His hair curled in tight furls that surrounded his nipples. His chest hair was as dark as the hair on his head, but curly and springy. She moved close and rubbed first her hand over it, then her cheek. He moaned when she leaned up and suckled him, his flat, taut nipple rising a little to meet her questing tongue.

“Catherine,” he murmured, his usually precise English crumbling into the lovely brogue she had heard in his voice when he'd taken her to bed the night before. That was true music in her ears, for she knew that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

She did not take pity on him, but ran her hand down his flat abdomen to his breeches, where she began to work at the placket. The first two buttons came undone easily, but his manhood was swelling beneath her hand and she could not get the other two buttons free. She simply began to move her hand over him with the wool of his breeches between them. He stopped her then, cupping her hand in his great one and drawing it up to his mouth, where he planted a kiss in her palm that made her shiver.

“Catherine,” he said, “I'll finish stripping for you now.”

She smiled at him, pleased that he was so amenable to her suggestion, but when she saw the hot light of desire in his eyes, she shivered. His tongue flicked out and caressed her palm. She remembered what his tongue had done to her body the night before, when he had kissed her between her thighs, and she wondered if he would do that to her again. She had asked for the gloves. Maybe she could ask for that, too.

She felt daring and brave as she stood in front of him in her thin, almost transparent chemise. She also felt completely protected and cherished. She had found a safe harbor in the world for the first time since her father had died, perhaps for the first time ever, and she was giddy with the joyous feeling of freedom it gave her. She might do anything, and Alex would love and care for her anyway.

It was a heady thought.

His breeches hit the wooden floor then, and his smallclothes followed, along with his boots and stockings. Catherine found herself staring at his manhood, something that looked altogether too large to fit into her tiny sheath. Perhaps it shrank inside her. Or perhaps her sheath was larger than she thought.

She pondered this question, running her fingers gently over the head of him. He groaned out loud as her fingertips fondled him, and she stopped moving, checking his eyes. His face was a mask of what looked like pain.

“Does it hurt you when I do that?” she asked, worried for the first time that night.

“No.” His voice sounded a bit like broken glass being driven over by a slow coach. He swallowed hard, and she touched him again, making him moan. “It is overwhelming pleasure, angel, that threatens to undo me.”

She took her hand away, and smiled up at him. “We can't have that,” she said. She turned to find his gloves where they rested on the bed. She looked at him coyly over her shoulder as she bent down to pick them up. She felt the short hem of her chemise rise across her derriere and felt as well as saw his eyes follow the curve of her behind. She even wiggled it a little, to tempt him, and he laughed.

“Minx, you are going to kill me. Can I touch you now?”

“Not just yet,” she said. As soon as he touched her, she would lose all reason. She was enjoying the game they played, though she saw from the growing heat in his eyes and the way his hands had started to shake that she did not have much time left. The thought made her shiver almost as much as the sight of his beautiful naked body.

“You look like a statue from one of my father's books,” she said, admiring him even as she slipped the gloves over his hands. “Not the Roman ones but the Greeks.”

“I don't have much truck with the Greeks, angel.”

He smiled to himself, as at a jest, as he helped her in her progress. Alex flexed his fingers into the taut gloves, drawing them on for her with a manly, practiced grace that made her tongue suddenly cling to the roof of her mouth. She watched his one gloved hand for a long moment, her mind distracted, along with her body. A great well of heat and want was rising inside her, and she had no idea what to do with it.

Thankfully, he did.

He took the second glove from her nerveless fingers and drew it on, never once taking his eyes from hers. The power inherent in his form, the latent potency of his gaze, made her forget language altogether. She simply stood and watched him, his beauty all but overwhelming her. And then he smiled his wry smile, and he was Alex again.

“I'm the only one naked, my beloved. I don't think that's at all fair. Do you?”

She still could not speak, so she shook her head. He stepped close to her then, so close that his body was like a raging furnace that she wanted to press herself against, a heat she wanted to warm herself on for the rest of her life.

His hands, gloved now in the black leather she loved, slid slowly down her arms, leaving goose bumps in their wake. Her heart started to hammer, and she gasped for breath as those hands flirted with the edge of her chemise along the tops of her thighs before he very slowly, very carefully, drew it off and over her head.

Her body was on fire from the glancing touch of his leather on her skin. He did not touch her again right away, but took her hand and seated her on the high mattress with an almost courtly gesture.

“Are you teasing me, Alex, now that your gloves are on?” she managed to ask.

He smiled down at her and leaned close, his lips the only thing touching her temple. They grazed her skin, and he took her earlobe between his teeth. “As you teased me, stripping me of my clothes one thread at a time? Aye, lass, I might at that.”

She laughed then, and his lips were on hers, his tongue delving into her mouth as she opened to welcome him. He devoured her, but drew back almost at once, very much in control of himself. She wanted him to lose that control—on top of her.

She shook with need for him, and was gratified to see that his hands shook also as he knelt before her, his black leather drawing one of her silk stockings off, slowly. She raised one foot and caressed his bare thigh with it.

He quirked a brow at her and smiled, bringing her foot to his mouth even as he leaned down to meet it. His breath was hot on her sole, and her second stocking disappeared under his hands. His mouth moved back over her arch, to the secret place behind her knee, to her inner thigh.

When he was that high on her body, she fell back on the mattress, stretched out before him, not certain if he pushed her down or if she melted onto the bed of her own accord. But he rose over her, his breath hot between her thighs. “I would kiss you there,” Alex said. “But I can't wait. May I have you now, and kiss you after?”

She shook with the need for him. “I need you inside me, Alex. Hurry.” She heard the tone of command in her voice, and she thought to soften it, if belatedly. “Please.”

He laughed and joined her on the bed. She sighed in pleasure as he raised his knee to part her thighs, and she wriggled against his heavy muscled leg. He kissed her deeply, running first one hand and then the other over her body, covering her breasts with his black leather palms. She shivered at the touch of that leather on her skin. It was far more delectable, far more wonderfully sinful than she had thought it would be.

“You must always wear these in bed,” she said.

“I'll get a special pair, just for this,” he answered.

“No,” she said, “I like these.”

He groaned as one of his leather-gloved fingers played between the curls that rested between her thighs. She felt herself heavy and damp with wanting him already, and when he touched her with two fingers, she almost flew off the bed. He smiled a wolfish, pleased smile, and added a third to the brigade set to torment her with pleasure. She did not rise off the bed again, for he put his whole weight on her, and she was crushed by the delicious feel of him all the way down her body. He whirled his fingers against her one last time, and she came apart in his arms, screaming his name.

She trembled as the pleasure crested a second time under the heavy press of his palm on her body. She shook and thought that she might lose the ability to speak at all, ever again. Not that she cared.

She watched as the pleasure spiraled away from her, going back to the magic realm from whence it came. But, in spite of her sated joy, she was still unsatisfied.

Catherine did not recognize her own voice in that moment, it was so deep and throaty. “Alex, I need you inside me.”

Her husband needed no more encouragement. He slid inside her in one smooth motion. As big as he was, her body took him in greedily, as if it had been waiting for him since the moment he had left her that morning. She shuddered with a new pleasure as her body drank him in, and she milked him as he moved inside her.

He tried to hold on to his usual calm, his usual focused patience, but then on impulse, she tightened her inner muscles around him and he groaned long and loud. “Witch,” he said against her hair.

She laughed. “You love it, Alex.”

“I do. God help me.”

“Keep moving, Alex. I still need you.”

Catherine raised her hips against his and squeezed again. He shook hard, and for a moment, she feared she had lost him. But he rallied and plunged into her, over and over, as a man possessed.

Catherine gasped under the onslaught of his passion, her body accommodating him without her consent, without her conscious thought. She could no longer find the focus to press him with her inner strength, for he was battering away at her as the high waves pummeled the rocks during a storm. She shook beneath him, her pleasure building again, this time from a deeper place inside her, a place where all the joy in the world seemed to live.