Seducing the Highlander (27 page)

That seemed to leave him at a loss, which she guessed didn’t happen often. His gaze wandered downward for one betraying moment, over the bodice of her gown, lingering briefly on the curve of her breasts before jerking back upward. Earlier, he’d called her beautiful, and Gillian fought a blush, reminding herself the whiskey bottle by the hearth was half-empty.

To her surprise, she felt a flicker of purely female triumph over how she affected him. What was more, she couldn’t help but notice she could see his muscled chest through the gap in his unfastened shirt. It looked hard and wide, and intriguingly male.

“May I sit down?” she asked, unsettled by her reaction to this man, but not enough to prudently return to her room. He’d risked his life for her, and then concerned himself with her future. If she could help him, she wished to do so.

He lifted his brows. “If you desire, though I warn you I am not the best of company at the moment. You’d do better to go back to bed.”

She ignored the warning and took the other shabby chair by the fire, lifting her skirts enough that she could warm her bare feet. “Is sleeplessness a normal affliction for you?”

“For the past several years, aye.” He didn’t sit but went to lean against the mantel, his gaze steady, the amber liquid in his glass shimmering in the flickering firelight.

“It happens to me also sometimes,” she admitted.

“I doubt somehow an innocent lass like yourself has my demons to keep her awake,” he said sardonically, lifting the whiskey glass to his mouth.

Carefully, she considered him. “What demons in particular?”

For a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer, but then he laughed without mirth. “Are you always so direct?”

“Usually. My aunt always told me I am insatiably curious. I suppose it is true.”

She was curious about
him
; that was for certain, and in a way she hadn’t anticipated. Her aunt had been a remarkable woman with many facets to her personality, and one of them was her forthright approach to life. When Gillian was old enough to comprehend the subject, Aunt Eugenia had described matters between men and women in very frank terms. There was pleasure in the joining, she’d been told, if the male in question knew what he was doing and took care with his partner.

From under the fringe of her lashes Gillian studied the curve of Adain Cameron’s finely molded mouth, the strong column of his neck, the fascinating width of his shoulders. She was drawn to this man, and it wasn’t all because of his timely, gallant rescue.

Yes, she was
definitely
curious.

“Let me just say I lost something precious to me, and I still wonder, as I look back, what I might have done differently.”

“A woman.” Gillian did not phrase it as a question, for she somehow knew the answer already.

“Aye.” He stared at his whiskey glass, his expression bleak.

“What a fool she must be.”

“Not at all.” He said the words with fateful resignation. “She had her reasons to distrust me and she married another.
I
am the fool who cannot seem to forget her.”

“Can I help?” Almost beyond her will, her heart beginning to pound, Gillian rose and closed the short distance between them. “After all, I am here . . . and she is not.” As she’d been wanting to do since the moment she’d walked into the room, she reached out and touched his bare chest between the parted cloth of his open shirt. His skin felt hot under her fingertips.

“Don’t.” He said the one word in a clipped tone, but he didn’t move, and his lean body gave a small quiver of reaction.

“Is there some reason I shouldn’t touch you?” She asked the question softly, not understanding herself why she was doing what she was doing. But she was compelled just the same. Maybe it was the nature of his suffering, which aroused in her both compassion and an inexplicable need to give something back. This evening, he had saved at the least her virtue, and also her life, if what he knew of Lord Kleiss was true.

If she was honest with herself, he was also a very attractive man, and she had experienced a fateful thrill the first time she had looked into his remarkable eyes.

She wanted to ease his pain.

She also
wanted
him, and it was a very exciting sensation.

Adain’s heart pounded under her splayed fingers. “Yes,” he said unevenly, “quite a few reasons. You are a lady and, if I am any judge at all, a virgin. I am not a knave who takes advantage of innocent young women, Scottish or English. I’m foxed, but not that far gone.”

The words were said with conviction, but his gaze strayed again to the swell of her breasts underneath the thin material of her gown.

She tilted her head back, aware her nipples tingled, the unfamiliar excitement intriguing. “If I give myself freely, you are not taking advantage, sir.”

Long fingers curved around her wrist, but he still didn’t pull her hand away.

“Your gratitude does not have to take this form,” Adain told her almost roughly. “When I offered my protection, it was done honorably.”

Gillian smiled tremulously. “I know. If you tried to exact a payment for what you have done for me, I would have resisted you. Can you not see I wish to be here with you?”

“Your maidenhead should be taken in your marriage bed, lass.” His voice had a husky timbre.

She arched a brow and said wryly, “That is an entirely male sentiment. I prefer it be given as I wish to a man of my choosing. It is mine, after all. Do you not want me?”

His eyes glittered suddenly. “I am breathing, last I knew. Yes, you are very desirable, and I want you. But defiling you because I cannot control my lust is hardly admirable.”

“If you take me to bed, I will be defiled?” Gillian gave him what she hoped was a provocative smile. “I think just the opposite. If I didn’t, I would not be here.”

To emphasize her words, she boldly reached up and touched his mouth, running her fingertips along the curve of his lower lip. She couldn’t believe she had the nerve, and was a little embarrassed, but also exhilarated.

Adain Cameron gave an audible inward hiss of breath as he stared at her, his eyes going the color of a winter sky.

At that moment, she won the debate and he abruptly swept her into his arms.

The small, shabby room felt overwarm, but that was probably just the raging need spiking straight to his groin. Adain strode toward the bed, the delectable—and infinitely persuasive—Lady Gillian cradled against him, and he no longer cared about the dishonor of his actions.

From that first moment on the road, he’d wanted what her uncle had sold to Kleiss, which might make him not the better man. He wanted her wet and willing underneath him. He needed to feel his cock sink deep into her inviting softness, and to lose himself in pleasure and desire.

Except, he vowed as he held her slender body in his arms, he would take care with her. Not just take pleasure, but also give it.

He
needed
to go slowly. She was untried. One look in her eyes had told him that the moment they met, and seducing her was bad enough. He didn’t want the experience to be painful for her.

Actually, he had the feeling
he
was the one being seduced.

The sensation of her small hand, so dainty and smooth, pressed against his chest would stay imprinted in his mind forever. The image of her standing just outside his door—silken hair in a loose pale tumble of gold around her ivory shoulders, and her eyes dark with an emotion he couldn’t quite comprehend—would not be easily lost either.

He might be a thrice-damned fool for doing it, but he was going to bed her anyway. This night, he would lose himself in her arms, her scent, the silky feel of her mouth and skin, and forget, even if it were temporary, about what he had lost.

The consequences could be addressed in the morning.

For an untried maid, she didn’t seem so much nervous as a little shy, and when he laid her on the bed and removed her gown, she blushed but still held his gaze. Her shift was disposed of just as promptly, and he found the perfection of her body was just as he had waywardly imagined all evening: beautiful firm breasts, a narrow waist, slim hips, and long legs. Her blond thatch gleamed in the meager firelight that was the only illumination, the delicate triangle concealing her sex.

He sat down on the edge of the bed to tug off his boots. “You’re lovely, lass. Lovelier than any I have seen.”

Lovelier than Julia?
He didn’t know, for he had never seen his intended bride nude, though he had certainly imagined it a thousand times before an ill-fated misunderstanding caused her to break their engagement and marry another man.

Gillian gazed at him with a soft look he did not quite understand on her face. “I am glad I please you. You are also very . . . appealing to me.”

By the gods, he was rock- hard already, his erection painfully stiff as he shrugged out of his shirt and unfastened his breeches. His cock rose high, drawing his testicles into a tight sac, the engorged tip beaded with semen. As he slid in beside the woman lying so compliant and expectant in his bed, his erection brushed her smooth hip. He stifled a groan, wondering how long, after months of self-imposed abstinence, he would even last.

Gazing into her eyes, he lightly touched her cheek and said with raw honesty, “Soon it will be too late to change your mind. All men have limits of self-control, and mine is weakened by drink. If you wish to dress and leave now, we can pretend you never came into my room or my bed. Once I touch you, I may not be able to stop.”

Blond hair, so gloriously soft and shining, moved against the linens as she shook her head. “I am not going to change my mind, Adain. I want to give you pleasure.”

He liked the way she said his given name, her soft English accent endearing. It was arousing, and he was already aroused as hell anyway. “So be it.”

His hand glided over her smooth shoulder and down to her hip, cupping the satiny curve and pulling her close so her pelvis nestled against his groin. As he lowered his mouth to claim hers, he could feel the pulse of his erection where it lay like a sword between them, pressed hotly against the softness of her belly.

It had been too long since he’d felt the fierce rush of such desire, since he’d wanted to find satisfaction in a woman’s body and hear her cries of enjoyment as he took her
.

There was little doubt of Gillian’s physical innocence, for though she rested willingly beneath him, he discovered quickly that she had never even been so much as kissed before. Gently, he forced her lips to part so he could taste her mouth, and she was obviously startled at the first brush of his tongue against hers.

The kiss was long, and as leisurely as he could make it with his rock-hard cock clamoring for an invasion of a more carnal kind. Innocent she might be, but also responsive, for she slipped her arms around his neck and pressed closer, the enticing softness of her full breasts pliant against his chest. A part of him was astonished at her lack of fear, but he’d downed enough whiskey to not be capable of deep analysis, especially when his hungry body held control over his mind.

“Ah . . . lass.” He nuzzled her neck, kissing the small hollow beneath her ear. “You smell sweet, like a Scottish summer meadow.”

“Do I?” Her hands slid down his back and she sounded breathless. “And you feel very large and hard, like the warrior you are, yet your touch is gentle, as I knew it would be.”

“I would that you enjoy this as much as I do.” Adain meant it, his voice husky. “Let me ready you to accept me, Gillian. Lie back and trust me in what I ask.”

“If I did not trust you, I would not be here,” she pointed out with a charming candor he was coming to recognize was part of her personality. Obligingly, she rolled to her back, an expectant light in her long-lashed eyes. Her mouth was damp from his kiss, and her nipples already tightened to small pink buds.

There was no doubt he enjoyed and admired every part of the female anatomy, but he was particularly enamored of women’s breasts. Hers were spectacular, the fullness almost a surprise, because otherwise, she was girlishly slim. Ivory skin showed the faint blue threads of the veins beneath, and her nipples were perfectly shaped and delicately tinted a soft rose color. He cupped one breast in his hand just as he lowered his mouth to take the other nipple into his mouth.

She gasped, a small sound as he began to suckle, and her hands clutched his upper arms tightly. “Oh.”

Earlier, he’d tried to drink himself into oblivion to escape his personal hell, and now he was in heaven. How had it happened so quickly?

He lavished attention on first one breast and then the other, licking, kissing, stroking as he savored the swelling soft flesh, gratified at her growing restlessness as she arched and moved in response. When his hand slid lower, he briefly caressed her hip and whispered, “Spread your legs, my sweet.”