The MacGregor's Lady (27 page)

She wore only nightclothes, no stays, no corsetry or bustle. Nothing but cotton, Hannah, and the scent of sweet lavender. When he gathered her closer, she tucked herself against him with every indication of complicity.

“You are falling asleep, my dear. You are worn out.”

She muttered something that was not a protest, so Asher scooped her up and rose, crossing the room with her in his arms. Without her evening finery, she was a smaller package, also more…

Simply
more
.

“I hate it here.”

“Love, I know that. You’ll like Scotland, though.”
Love
it
, he hoped.

He laid her on her bed, drew the covers up over her, then turned to tend to her fire lest he linger overlong on the sight of her. Her braid was a thick, burnished rope against the pillow, her eyes lambent by firelight. He wanted nothing—nothing—so much as he wanted to get into the bed and simply hold her.

And to hell with the riot starting up in his trousers.

“Asher?”

He made sure the logs and coal were pushed to the back of the andirons and the screen was snug up to the bricks. “Go to sleep, Hannah. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Kiss me.”

The last of his sadness on her behalf vanished.

She was prepared to immediately enjoy the fruits of her surrender, a notion he wholeheartedly endorsed. This much, he could undertake happily, and so could she. They could bring each other joy and pleasure in abundance, and with marriage looming, they could do so without reservation.

And yet, he hesitated. “You are tired, Hannah, and it’s late, and we still have much to discuss.”

From drowsing in his arms, she was now quite awake and wrestling off her dressing gown. “I miss your kisses. If I’m to be pilloried for being a wanton, and you accused of worse behavior than that, I will at least have a kiss.”

He did not trust himself to stop at a kiss, and like an angelic chorus bursting into song, his male brain produced the thought:
Nor
did
they
have
to
stop
at
a
kiss
. An engaged couple was permitted all the liberties of their married counterpart, provided they were discreet.

He could be discreet, his cock cheerfully assured him, as discreet as hell.

Fifteen

Hannah assured herself that catching a ship from Edinburgh for Boston would be no effort at all. Asher would take her North, she’d linger long enough to ensure no one could accuse her of carrying his child—Though what would that matter, given the even worse conclusions Polite Society had already drawn?—and she’d leave this godforsaken land with or without Enid’s companionship.

That Asher understood how badly she needed to go home—finally, finally, understood—had to be what explained his capitulation to their mutual attraction. Hannah was too pleased at his belated attack of sense to congratulate him on it.

She regarded the man standing beside her bed, the man whose reputation was now at risk because of her. Of all the times they had sinned, an innocent situation would be what had landed them in trouble.

The thought broke her heart in four different pieces, only one of them for him.

“We can discuss anything you want in the morning, Asher. For now, please kiss me.” More explicit than that, she could not be, not with words.

When he might have subjected her to another spate of his infernal reasoning—wonder of wonders—he unbuttoned his waistcoat. Anticipation and relief started a duet in Hannah’s body in close harmony: a sweet melody and a throbbing rhythm. She shamelessly gawked at him as he hung his waistcoat over a chair then sat to remove his shoes and stockings.

His shirt came next, and because he’d turned back the cuffs, he could undo a few buttons and pull it over his head.

“That’s cheating, Asher.”

He looked up from undoing his trousers. A slow male smile revealed white teeth and impending trouble. “Shall I put the shirt back on, Hannah? Would you like to undo me buttons, then, unwrap your prize button by button?”

Ah, the burr. She adored the burr. “Now you’re stalling.”

A man could shuck out of his trousers and underlinen in nothing flat, and then he could stand there, all shadows and strength not three feet away, while a woman ached to touch him.

“I want you, dear heart, verra much.” His desire was made evident by the erection arrowing up along his belly. A peculiar male endowment Hannah wanted to study—some other time.

“I want you too.” She’d told him she wasn’t a virgin, and she had not lied—not in the medical sense—but her prevarication was making her anxious to get matters under way. “Come to bed, Asher, please.”

She was using please rather a lot. She’d use it more, willingly, if it would get him under the covers with her. What followed now, and possibly in the next several weeks, would be hoarded up against the rest of Hannah’s life, against all the arguments with her stepfather, all the maneuvering with the lawyers. She could endure those battles if she could have these pleasures with this man for herself
now
.

As he climbed into the bed, dipping the mattress so heavily Hannah rolled to his side, she admitted one serpent to her garden: consummating her dealings with Asher was a two-edged sword. She would have the pleasure and joy of the memory, but she’d have the torment of it too.

“Now, madam”—he slid an arm under her neck and brought her flush against his side—“did you say something about kissing?”

“In a minute.” She wrestled free of his embrace. “You distracted me, flaunting your wares. I have a few wares of my own… what?”

He lay on his back, his arms laced behind his head to reveal dark tufts of hair at his armpits. “Slowly, my love.”

Comprehension dawned. When Hannah would have drawn her nightgown straight over her head, she instead slipped a button at her throat through its buttonhole. “This nightgown has a lot of buttons, my lord.”

“I’m a patient man, though I’ll no’ tolerate any me-lording nor Balfouring when we’re abed, Hannah.”

A
patient
mon.
She hoped he’d speak Gaelic to her when their bodies were joined, hoped he’d say naughty things in any language—and mean every word. More buttons came free, and all the while, Asher watched her. When she would have crossed her arms to lift the nightgown away, he stopped her by using her braid to tug her down to him.

“Kisses, madam?”

The things he knew… How could Hannah have guessed that kissing him with her nightgown half-on, half-falling off her shoulders would be more inflammatory than were she stark naked? Soft, worn cotton took on sensual powers, dragging over Hannah’s chest, back, and arms as Asher levered up to set his mouth to hers.

He held back. She’d kissed him enough to know that this delicate tasting of her lips was intended to part her from her reason, and it was working.

“Stop teasing, sir.”

He shifted, and in a blink, Hannah was on her back, pinned by a grinning Scottish earl apparently in no mood to take direction. “Stop managing. It’s a habit ye’ll give up, Hannah, at least when we’re abed.”

“The day I—”

Now the kissing began in earnest, a wondrous onslaught of male guile intended to convince Hannah she didn’t
want
to manage him in bed, not ever. She decided instead that she’d learn to tease him, to enjoy the wares she wasn’t quite sure how to flaunt—and to enjoy his wares.

“That’s better, love. We’ll go slowly, and take our time, and all the pleasures—”

She pinched his derriere, not hard, but enough to take
pleasure
in the resilient abundance of muscle on his backside as her toes stroked along the curve of his calf.

“I’ve never petted a man with my feet before.”

“Blessed saints, I hope not.” The humor in his voice sounded strained. “What other wee tricks would you like to try out on my poor, unsuspecting self?”

“I’ll give you a list—later.” For now, the feel of his erection, warm, smooth, and heavy against her belly, distracted her sorely. She rolled her hips to remind him of the point of the proceedings, though the perverse man raised himself off her and shifted to his side, taking his weight and warmth away.

“Did I do something wrong?”

He kissed her nose. “Between two people sharing a bed like this, Hannah, there’s no right and wrong. There is only what pleases us.” He drew his callused finger slowly down the midline of her face: forehead, nose, lips, chin, throat, and on down.

“Are you going to draw on me or make love to me, Asher?”

“Draw on you”—he nuzzled her breast—“for now.”

He drew on her nipple with the wet warmth of his mouth, and Hannah nearly came off the bed. “That is… that is
wicked
.”

She gripped his head, fingers fisted in his hair while heat leapt out from where he touched her. “That is wicked, and lovely. I can’t…”

His hand drifted over her chest, tracing the bones of her sternum, covering her other breast, teasing, tormenting… teaching her that whatever she’d envisioned sharing with him, it was going to be much more personal and of much greater impact than she’d imagined.

For a time, they drifted between kisses and caresses. Hannah discovered that her hands pleased him too—on the angles and planes of his face, over the warmth and power of his chest, down the sinewy length of his arms. He sighed, his breathing hitched, he murmured in unintelligible Gaelic, and he made not one peep of protest when Hannah wrapped her fingers around his engorged member.

How long she mapped the feel of him she could not have said. She acquainted herself with downy, masculine hair, the smooth length of his shaft, the curiously silky head of his cock, and all the little twitches and inhalations that went with her touching him.

“You’re braced in some regard, Asher MacGregor. You’re enduring this.”

“I’m wallowing in it. You are very thorough in your explorations, Hannah, and that pleases me. I would not want you to think otherwise.”

He was being honest with her, though still… She trusted her sense that he was waiting for her to look her fill, waiting for her to gather her courage.

“I’ve explored this part enough.” She tugged on his cock gently. “
For
now
.”

He shifted up again while Hannah, as naturally as dancing, subsided onto her back. “I will be the judge of what’s enough, woman, at least this time.”

His kiss was different, more uncivilized. Hannah took that as an invitation to reciprocate, to explore his mouth with her tongue, to breathe through him and undulate up into the hand he traced down her ribs. Something inside her was coming undone—wonderfully, completely undone—and she wanted him undone with her.

This time, he did not linger at her breasts or stop his quest at the soft flesh low on her belly. He brushed his fingers through her curls, gently, gently, a caress as maddening as it was arousing.

“Asher, that’s all very—
good
gracious
.”

She went silent, let her knees fall open, and waited to see what he’d do next. One leisurely pass of his fingers up the crease of her sex, a little pressure on a particular spot, and words deserted her.

“Shall I do that again, love?”

“Mm.” She grabbed him by the back of his head and fused her mouth to his. He chuckled—the dratted beast—and repeated that most interesting caress, this time with a hint more pressure.

Hannah pushed into his touch, and Asher smiled against her mouth. “She likes it. She likes it verra much.”

She liked it so verra much she caught a rhythm as he explored for them both all the folds and creases of a woman’s most intimate parts. She liked it enough to growl into his mouth and to nearly tear his hair from his scalp.

“You’re wet for me, Hannah. I adore that you’re wet for me. Shall I love you now?”

She couldn’t
even
beg. She tried to scoot under him in answer, to wrestle him over her, and he allowed it, covered her with his heat and strength, braced himself up on his forearms, and went still.

He hitched close, brushed her hair back from her forehead, and spoke right near her ear. “There’s no undoing this, my love. No turning back or forgetting it. This is forever.”

“Please, Asher…” She sought him with her sex, and there he was. Big, blunt, hot, hard, and everything she wanted, forever and in the next instant.

“Please you, I shall.” He eased forward, just that. Hannah’s body gave easily at first, welcomed him into soft, damp heat. The next part had her opening her eyes.

“Aren’t you going to move?”

He sighed and pushed forward a bit more, to the extent that Hannah’s grasp of how intimate they would be underwent a transformation.

“Ye must relax, Hannah. I will linger right where I am until ye do.”

He could do it. He could stay right where he was, kissing her brow, her temple, bumping his nose along hers while she lost her mind on the battleground between anticipation and anxiety.

“Asher MacGregor, you’re killing me.”

“We’ll die together.”

This time, he shifted to brace one hand under her backside while he propped himself on the other forearm. A short, sharp nudge, and Hannah was wonderfully impaled on his fullness.

“That’s better,” she began, ready to reassure him that things were proceeding in an acceptable direction.

“You approve?” He started to withdraw, of which she did not approve in the least.

“Don’t you d—”

“Then this might be to your liking as well.” He glided more deeply into her body, retreated, and eased forward, waltzing his way past her wits and even her ability to think.

“Asher MacGregor, I love”—
you
—“it.”

His movement picked up intensity without becoming any faster. “I’ll tell ye a secret, Hannah.”

He
was
telling her secrets. Wonderful secrets about the body she’d inhabited for nearly a quarter century, and secrets about his body too. “Mm?”

“In this, with me, ye can be greedy. Ye can have all ye want and more, as often as ye like, because my desire for ye will have no end.” The blessed man dropped into Gaelic, his tone promising wicked bliss, his body turning the promise into a vow.