Cecelia finally opened her eyes, glorying in the sight of him locked within his own skin and strength. Helpless and vulnerable inside her mouth. Arching with a pleasure that looked very much like pain.
This was the beast. This untethered, unselfconscious thing.
This beast was hers. This beast wanted to lay claim to her, as well.
No matter what the man might have to say about it.
* * *
Ramsay was lost. Lost in her generous mouth. In the miasma of pleasure she liberally gave.
His humanity retreated behind this creature of carnality she’d tempted out of his past, and all sense of civility was locked away behind throbbing muscles and veins pulsing with explosive delight.
Never had he experienced such bliss. Never had he hungered so drastically that he feared it would take a lifetime to sate him.
The bone-shattering pulses of his climax finally dimmed enough to lend him back his reflexes. He’d thought he’d be drained. Exhausted by the sheer unparalleled heights he’d experienced in the depths of her mouth.
However, his body recovered splendidly, the animal lust still rippled beneath his flesh, a hunger of his own clawing through him.
She wasn’t the only one who needed a taste. There was so much left to do. To discover.
And the night was young.
A growl of delight rumbled through him as he bent to drag her to her feet.
She gasped, “Wha—?”
His mouth hungrily captured hers, cutting off her protest. Plunging his tongue within her mouth, his essence mingled with her singular flavor tasted of ambrosia.
Of course it did. She was a goddess, after all.
He lifted her from her feet without breaking the contact of their lips and again split her legs to encircle his hips. The delicious weight of her was a delight. Her ass in his hands, her thighs soft and strong around him.
He crossed the room in a few long strides and lowered her to the rocking chair. Dragging the generous mounds of her bottom to the very edge with a smooth motion, he hooked her knees over the arms of the chair, imprisoning them open with the width of his torso.
All this he did while distracting her with his tongue swirling inside her mouth.
Suddenly it mattered not how many men had tasted her before. He didn’t care.
She’d just claimed him with her mouth. He’d felt it with every instinct he’d honed in this cold, feral, inhospitable place.
And he was about to stake a claim of his own.
She’d learned him quickly, her face a mask of dreamlike discovery. She’d made him feel like he was the only man she’d ever wanted. Had ever known.
He was about to repay in kind.
He never broke the kiss as he tossed her skirt over her knees and ripped her undergarments asunder.
She made a startled little sound and he captured her wrist, gently but firmly replacing his mouth with her own fingers against her lips.
“I’m going to make ye scream, lass,” he vowed against her ear. “So bite down to keep quiet.”
Her answer was a delicate flare of her nostrils over a shuddering breath as he pulled away to look at her.
The firelight snapped and sputtered over a particularly dry log, sending showers of sparks into the air behind him.
The light gleamed off where she splayed open for him. Vulnerable. Exposed.
So utterly edible.
Lust threatened to knock him over. Had he not already been on his knees, the sheer force of it would have driven him there.
Her sex glistened with ready moisture. The ruffles of flesh pink and pretty, the little nubbin at their aperture visibly throbbing. Engorged. A soft tuft of dark russet hair protected the secret cove, beckoning to his fingers.
A part of him yearned to see all of her, but there would be time for that. Time to unwrap her as she did those damned truffles. With relish. With delight. With anticipation and impatience.
But now. He must dine. Feast upon her flesh. Sup on her desire and drink of the flood of pleasure he was about to provoke from the warm, intimate depths of her before he staked his final claim.
Christ but she was crafted for sin. Plump and perfect, her long, thick white thighs encircled by garters of green created a flawless cradle for his shoulders.
He glanced up into her beautiful, heart-shaped countenance, and whatever she read in his eyes caused her to tremble. A ripple of diffidence creased her forehead. Her eyes were peeled wide and gleamed with threatening moisture, and her hand was white and bloodless where she clamped it over her mouth.
She reached for him, but he needed no prompting.
He kissed her. There. Luxuriating in her feminine musk. Never had a woman so seduced his every olfactory sense.
She gave an adorable squeak and lifted her free hand to clutch at the back of the chair behind her.
A dark chuckle escaped him, vibrating against her sex as he settled between her thighs. He was just getting started.
Christ, she was soft. And slick.
His hands splayed on the tender skin of her inner thighs before caressing up to where they met. He played in her intimate curls for a moment before spreading her sex wider. Granting him devious, unrestricted access.
She inhaled sharply, and a tremor overtook her, racking through the strong muscles of her legs.
Someday she would ride him with those long legs. Ride his mouth. His cock.
He couldn’t fucking wait.
Nipping and laving at the crests and ridges of her pliant flesh, he glowed with a masculine satisfaction at her every hitching breath and the astonishment in the mewls she couldn’t allow to escape from her throat.
He circled the little pearl with a wicked tongue, leaving it untouched. Lowering his attentions, he dipped into the well of moisture, flattening his tongue to spread it higher.
Her breaths were naught but ragged little puffs. The sinew of her legs flexed and trembled, her hips curling and arching toward his mouth in blind demands.
And still he didn’t relent.
She strained and twisted until Ramsay had to use his strength to hold her in place. The tiny sounds behind her hand turned to pathetic little pleas.
He’d wanted to take longer, to dine until he had his fill, but, it seemed, he was not impervious to her sweet, husky entreaties for release.
Finally, he feathered his tongue over her crest, applying the very lightest of pressure.
She came apart beneath his mouth, smothering a hoarse cry as her legs struggled to close, but were impeded by the sturdy arms of the chair. Ramsay held her down, pleasuring her relentlessly, flicking his tongue just below her nub.
His vision swam and clouded as she came in long, rolling waves. Her sex rolled against his face, hips bucking, flooding his mouth with the slippery moisture he craved. He stayed with her, pressing her thighs wider with his hands, pinning her down. Spilling pleasure from his lips and tongue, not intending to cease until she could take no more.
He had to be certain he’d launched her to the same place she’d sent him only moments before. That place where time and space ceased to exist. Where names were forgotten and consequences were damned.
He’d never forget the sight of her like this. Open and writhing. Tears rolling into her mussed curls as she convulsed beneath his hungry mouth. She bit at the flesh of her palm, and he found that so decadently sensual, he swelled almost to bursting.
The feral part she’d awakened in him wanted to bite her thigh. To mark her as his. But she reached down between them, her fingers plunging into his hair. She yanked and pulled, peeling his mouth away from her sex with a loud, wet sound.
“I can’t…” she panted.
“I know, lass,” he growled wickedly, prowling up her splayed body, allowing her to tug him against her.
“I need you close.” The confession sounded so small. So young and vulnerable as she grasped at him, burying her face in his neck. “That. That was so…” Her breath hit his chest in little puffs as she nuz
zled into him, lifting her knees away from the arms of the chair and locking them around his waist.
He swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand before burying his face against her curls. “Ye’re the most delicious woman,” he crooned. “I’ll forever crave yer taste.”
“Truly?” She sounded both pleased and astonished. If a voice could blush, hers would have done it.
Had no one ever told her that before?
His sex, already hard and hot, slid against her slick flesh, seeking a home in her welcoming warmth.
He could feel the little pulses of her feminine muscles in the aftermath of her orgasm. When he would have thrust forward, she pulled her head back, looking up at him, her gaze searching and uncertain.
“Ramsay?”
He paused, staring down into eyes as deep blue as the Adriatic Sea, and just as mysterious. “Aye?”
“Will you hate me after?”
He only hated himself for ever causing her to fear that.
Tucking a wild curl behind her ear, he welled with such a deep tenderness it soothed the wild beast he’d become. “I never hated ye, Cecelia,” he confided. “Not even when I believed ye deserved it.”
She closed her eyes and sought his mouth for a kiss, which he gave her. Her body rolled against his, her hips arching upward in eager invitation.
He found her opening without using his hand to guide him, and wet the crown of his cock with her abundant moisture before driving forward.
Or … attempting to.
Her muscles clamped down so tightly he couldn’t gain more than an inch. Readjusting her in the chair, he bore forward once more.
This time her cry of distress stopped him before her unyielding muscles had the chance to.
Ramsay’s heart surged. Then stopped. His veins turned to ice.
Holy. Fucking. Hell.
He pulled back to look down at her features, which were distorted with plaintive discomfort.
He disentangled himself from her, rocked back on his heels, and looked down.
Blood.
He made his own sound of distress, meeting her glistening eyes with his astonished ones. “Ye’re … ye’re a…” He couldn’t say it. He stood and turned away from her, stuffing himself back into his trousers and tucking his shirt in as well.
A virgin. His mind screamed the word he couldn’t bring himself to say.
When he whirled to face her, she’d closed her legs and righted her skirts, her hands folded primly in her lap though his face had feasted there only seconds ago.
“But…” He gestured toward the high walls of the loft. “But Phoebe…”
“Is my ward,” she explained, still unperturbed. “Though I have every intention of raising her as my daughter. She deserves that much.”
“But ye just…” Panic seemed to have stolen his ability to finish sentences, so he just jammed his finger toward the door in front of which he’d thrust his cock into her welcoming lips. “I just made ye…” Oh holy Christ, he was headed straight to hell.
“No, no you didn’t.” She stood, holding placating hands out to him. “I wanted to—to do what we did. To bring you pleasure. I needed to show you—”
“If ye say gratitude, I’ll fucking shoot myself.” He jammed his fingers through his hair, tugging in frustration.
“Why?”
He felt like he was drowning. Drowning in guilt as the alignment of reality shifted beneath his feet, causing the earth to become unstable on its very axis. “Ye canna tell me ye never did that before.”
She glanced at the door, the peach in her cheeks already flushed with pleasure deepening in a most fetching, sensual manner. “All right, I won’t tell you that,” she said agreeably. “I mean, I hadn’t done anything we just did before, but we needn’t discuss it just now.”
“Bloody Christ,” he bit out, pacing a room that was becoming tinier by the moment as his mouth filled with every curse in every language he knew. “How did you know what to do?”
“I read it in that book your constable found in Henrietta’s study.” She moved to block his path. “Why are you angry?”
“I just stole yer virginity.” Since he couldn’t roar that to the child who slept in the attic loft above them or the dear old broken butler in his bed, he kept his voice to a minimum, and made up for it with large, exaggerated gestures.
She held up her hands, pressing them against his pounding chest. “No you didn’t. I gave it to you … I mean, I think I did, anyway. I’m not altogether certain I’m rid of it, all told.” She patted his chest in a manner that might have been condescending if it had come from anyone else in the world. “If it makes you feel better, no other man has ever really showed my virginity much interest, and I can’t say it’s ever done me any good. So please, don’t feel guilty on my account. I’m old enough to be rid of it, aren’t I?” She flashed him a winsome, rather tentative smile.
Had the world gone fucking mad?
Had he?
Had every man who hadn’t tried to get up her skirts in the past decade? Surely there had been someone at university who’d been drawn to her pillowy curves and delightful dimples.
Not that he should think about that now.
Or ever, ever again.
He was such a fucking hypocrite.
“You don’t look so well,” she fretted. “Should we … would you like to sit down?”
“I have to go.” Ramsay retreated to the door, swiping his coat from the hook.
“But—”
He whirled on her, his lips pulled back in a snarl. “Ye’ll be safe tonight. Ye have my word. But so help me, ye’ll stay in this house and doona ye dare follow me, is that understood?”
Her expression darkened, her jaw flexing forward in a stubborn motion for a moment, before she deflated with a heavy shaken breath.
He wished he could at least take the pleasure of slamming out of the cottage, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to wake Phoebe or Jean-Yves. And so he closed the door behind him on a very audibly ominous click.
She didn’t follow him.
But her flavor lingered in his mouth, and the pleasure she’d given sang through his veins.
Her virginity stained his body. His soul.
And her silent pain was inescapable, becoming his shadow in the dark.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cecelia’s head throbbed in sync to the sound of Ramsay’s ax splitting wood outside her window.
She’d woken early, having tossed and turned into the wee hours of the morning. Everything ached. Her hips, her back, her head …
Her sex.
Restless and emotional, she’d decided to work on the codex, intent upon distracting herself from last night’s disastrous ending. And from the scorching memories of what had preceded it.
In the hours between dawn and now, she’d gotten exactly nowhere.
Jean-Yves and Phoebe had both woken and needed tending to, and Cecelia found herself eager for a distraction.
To his credit, Ramsay had seen to Jean-Yves’s needs and even hauled and heated water in which the invalid could take a proper hip bath. After, the Lord Chief Justice had prepared a breakfast of hearty bread, fruit, and cheeses in which he didn’t partake with the trio of guests.
Ramsay had barely glanced at Cecelia the entire morning, and in order to contain her smarting emotions, she forced a false brightness into her interactions with the others.
Phoebe was content and chatty, eager to romp about the yard and pick wildflowers with her dolls.
Jean-Yves, who’d known and cared about Cecelia for so long, was not so easily fooled.
Exhausted after bathing, eating, and dressing, he allowed her to help him back to bed and tuck him beneath the covers.
“Did something happen?” he asked alertly. “Your heart, it is bleeding, I think. Is it over this giant, grumpy Scot?” His nose wrinkled with distaste as he eyed the Scot through the open window.
Damn his observant nature.
“Don’t worr
y yourself.” Cecelia smoothed the blankets over him and lifted the opium tincture from the desk. “My heart is more bruised than bleeding.”
His eyes narrowed beneath a web of fine wrinkles. “Do I need to make room for his corpse in the garden?”
She smiled down at him fondly. Had there ever been a man so dear? “No. I do not think he’s done anything wrong.”
“Tell me what he has done, and I’ll tell you if it’s wrong,” Jean-Yves offered as passionately as one in his condition was able.
Cecelia fought the pink creeping up from beneath her collar and shook her head.
Jean-Yves made a face. “On second thought, I find I do not want to know.”
She offered him a contrite little smile that went no further than her mouth, and handed him the laudanum with water at the ready.
Jean-Yves refused the medicine. “The pain is bearable this morning,” he said. “I do not want to develop a taste for oblivion.” He sucked at his teeth, lifting one bushy caterpillar brow up his creased forehead. “Besides, I think this Scot will finish breaking your heart while I am sleeping, no?”
“No,” Cecelia said glumly, slumping into the desk chair. “He’s being logical. In order for any sort of life together to work, I’d have to be other than I am.”
His mouth twisted. “What do you mean?”
“He’s the Lord Chief Justice. I’m a bastard and the owner of a notorious gambling hell.”
She sighed and dropped her chin into her palm, resting her elbow on the desk. “Ramsay would not take my heart if I offered it and so he cannot break it. I do not think it’s worth anything to him.” The thought tore at her raw emotions, stinging her eyes with unwanted tears. She’d been nothing but an open wound since the moment he left, and she hated her own weakness.
“Then he is a fool, an idiot, an incomparable ass.” Jean-Yves’s dudgeon caused his breath to speed, and he clutched at his ribs.
Cecelia leaned forward, her hands hovering over him, finding no place to land. “Please, do not worry about my heart. We’re safe for now, and if Lord Ramsay is anything, he’s a man of his word. He’ll take good care of us.”
All Scot and Bothered Page 22
