"You’ll like this."
"I’m sure I will. But you’re staring."
"That’s because you’re so damned beautiful."
She’d been blushing since he’d suggested kissing her…there. Now her cheeks went as hot as fire. "I can’t imagine…"
"Believe me, you’re beautiful. Everywhere." As if to prove he meant it, he leaned in so close, she felt a humid puff of breath on her mound. The sensation summoned a deep liquid response from inside her that left her gasping.
Brock growled with approval. "Lean back and tilt your hips forward."
Selina obeyed, reaching to hook one trembling hand through the strap dangling from the roof. She tried not to think how this new position exposed her even more blatantly. As the vehicle bounced along the rough road, she caught her breath and held it.
Every muscle tightened while she braced for his mouth to touch her cleft. Instead he began to kiss her thighs, nipping, licking, tasting. On an audible gust, she exhaled. With possessive caresses that made her quiver like a sapling in a gale, his hands ran up and down her legs.
Only when she was shivering with need did he spread her legs wider and place his mouth over her center. Fire raged through her, threatened to incinerate her to smoking ash.
"Brock!" she cried out, bucking up toward him and releasing her creased skirts to grab his hair.
When his tongue started to explore every intimate fold, shock held her motionless. Then he found the place that turned her to quaking jelly. He teased her until pleasure swelled in a great wave. She’d been reaching for her peak before he pulled out of her. This time, the crest of sensation flung her higher and higher.
Selina cried out again in joy and gratitude as a spasm of rapture cramped every muscle. When she returned to the world, he remained kneeling between her legs. His green eyes were heavy with satisfaction, although he’d done nothing to take care of his own release.
"That was…wonderful." Her voice was thick with the lingering effects of her climax. She untangled her hand from the strap. At the height, she’d clutched it so hard that the leather had bit into her palm. Astonishment made her stammer. "I had no idea."
Brock bent his head to place a kiss on her curls and shifted back. Through dazed eyes, she watched him wipe his mouth. Something about his ease with what they’d done banished her excruciating embarrassment. "Shall we try the other again?"
She felt like she’d been racked upon the stars. She felt like her bones had dissolved into hot syrup. "I doubt I could sit up."
"I’ll hold onto you." He regarded her with steady interest that summoned another blush. "The decision is yours."
When she’d surrendered to that searing release, she’d assumed she’d feel sated, at least until they reached the hunting lodge. Now staring into his intent dark face, fresh restlessness stirred.
Because when his big body united with hers, she’d felt whole for the first time in her life. It was dangerous to lend an emotional slant to what she and Brock did. She’d find it difficult enough to reconcile herself to a future without sensual satisfaction, especially after what she’d just discovered. Only a fool would talk herself into a broken heart as well. But even knowing the risk, something in her soul had yearned toward him when they joined.
And she’d wanted more.
"In that case, I’m all yours."
He rose to resume his place on the seat. This time, she kept her balance better and her movements were less awkward as she placed herself over him.
Nor was he in such a furious hurry, although the bulge in his breeches betrayed his fierce need. Instead of opening his front fall and pulling her down onto him, he began to kiss her with languid pleasure, as if time had no meaning.
Selina let him draw her into a game of lips and tongues and teeth. While she treated this affair as deadly serious, she found herself ready to tease, too. Nipping at his lips. Dipping her tongue into his mouth. Advancing and pulling back in a flirtatious dance.
His hands roamed up and down her back, tracing her spine, shaping her hips and descending to cup her buttocks and crush her into his hardness. She gasped as she felt the pressure of his erection. He hadn’t yet caressed her breasts, already heavy and aching for his touch.
She started her own exploration of his body and cursed the barriers of clothing, although she kept enough grip on reality to know that they couldn’t go naked in a coach on the King’s highway. But through the black superfine of his coat, she felt the sinewy muscles of his shoulders and arms and the hard expanse of his chest and back.
Brock kissed her as if he couldn’t get enough of the taste of her mouth. She’d never kissed anyone like this in her life. Roderick hadn’t seen the point in kissing. This revelation of the pleasure lips could conjure charmed and beguiled her. And compelled her to the edge of desire.
Selina was the one who lost patience with this seductive game. She crammed closer and tried to extend each kiss beyond playful enjoyment to passion. When he kept up the teasing, she growled in frustration. She’d been tunneling her hand through his hair. Now she tugged hard and held his head as she stared into his glittering eyes.
"You’re driving me mad, plague take you."
He was panting, and a flush marked his slanted cheekbones. His lips might tease, but his heavy gaze told her that he rapidly moved past kisses, too.
"So what are you going to do about it?"
She realized then that while he might make allowances for her inexperience, he expected her to play the full partner in this seduction. "You want me to take the lead?" she asked, her voice shaky with a resurgence of nerves.
"If that appeals to you."
For a bleak moment, Roderick’s scathing response to her attempts to please him echoed in her ears. Then she dismissed the memory. Brock wasn’t Roderick. Brock had given her more delight in the last two hours than Roderick had given her in nine years together.
"Tell me if I do anything wrong."
"Do what you like, and you won’t go wrong."
"I don’t know what I like." She paused, cheeks heating. "Well, I like it when you’re inside me. And I like it when you touch me…down there."
His smile conveyed the tenderness that cut straight through to her heart like a knife through butter. "That’s a start."
She paused. "And I like kissing you."
Selina suited her actions to her words and dragged his head forward until their lips met once more. This time there was no teasing. Naked passion flared, and the desire coiling in her stomach expanded into a sharp ache.
When she shifted on his knees in an instinctive attempt to find some surcease from that throbbing, needy emptiness, he groaned against her lips. The hands holding her hips tightened to the edge of bruising. She waited in an agony of suspense for him to take it further, until she recalled that what happened next was up to her.
Selina retreated far enough away to suck in a breath tinged with the musky scent of arousal. Hers as well as his. The smell of his skin had taunted her since last night, when he’d made his wicked proposition. Now that heated male essence set her senses on fire.
She wanted Brock to plunge into her. She wanted him to fill her, until every barrier between them dissolved. She wanted to reach a climax while a man she desired was inside her.
Her vision was blurry with need when she released the shoulder she clutched so frantically. "Hold onto me."
"Always."
Even in her urgency, she knew that was just lovers’ talk, not to be trusted. But she trusted the firmness of his grip enough to reach down with both hands and fumble with the buttons of his breeches.
"You’re killing me," he ground out, bucking his hips up.
She had the giddy feeling that she might tumble to the floor. Biting her lip, she struggled to concentrate through the blood pounding in her ears. "I’ve never undressed a man before. Be patient."
At last, she found the trick of it. Not that the fastenings were complicated. But clarity of thought was impossible when she
was in such a fever.
They both heaved a sigh of relief when his rod rose from his open breeches. She curled a shaking hand around him, marveling at the heat and power in her grip. He groaned again and closed his eyes as if he were in pain.
"Am I hurting you?" Selina asked, despite his earlier assurances.
"I’m dying," he muttered, then opened eyes that gleamed with wicked humor. "For want of you."
She stifled a giggle and squeezed, until strain tightened his striking features. "You’ll have to teach me how to touch you."
Humor twisted his mouth. "You’re doing a fine job on your own."
Gripping more tightly, she slid her hand up and down, feeling the hard veins pulsing under the silky skin. His organ fascinated her. It seemed a privilege to discover Brock’s nakedness.
With his wife, Roderick had been a modest man, although she couldn’t imagine he was half so shy with his whores. All she’d known of her husband’s genitals was as a hard and painful presence shoving into her.
In gratitude, she kissed Brock. His unabashed desire set off another of those hot surges of craving. She shifted until she clasped him tight between her spread legs. Moving with the carriage, she descended to take him with remarkable ease. It was as if she’d been created to fit him.
"Selina…" he said on a long drawn-out hiss of pleasure, as his hands flexed on her hips under the fall of her skirts. He looked eager and hungry, but she caught the ghost of something more profound in his eyes.
The vehicle’s sway shifted her over him in a most arousing way. She’d never thought of enjoying a lover’s touch in a speeding vehicle. The experience proved…piquant.
Cautiously she rose, drawing a long, guttural groan from him. His grasp tightened as she lowered. She curled her hands over his shoulders, although she knew he wouldn’t let her fall.
"Use me," he said in a gravelly voice.
"I will." She hardly noted what she said. She was too aware of the hard, throbbing flesh filling her. Pleasure spiraled as she settled into a rhythm that matched the carriage’s lurching and her own impulses. She gasped for air as her movements grew faster, uncoordinated, desperate.
The need for release coiled tighter and tighter, as the sweet friction of their union pushed her toward the edge. Brock tilted his hips and went deeper.
"Let me," he said.
"Yes." She cried out as he reached beneath her skirts to find her sex. The world dissolved into cascading stars. Hurtling through an agony of delight, she clenched hard around him.
Brock caught her up for a carnal, openmouthed kiss before he lifted her off him. She lay back, struggling to keep her place on the seat as the coach swayed.
He fumbled for his handkerchief and spilled into it. When he’d finished, he released a quivering sigh and collapsed against the red leather upholstery.
Tremors of bliss still shook Selina. She’d just soared to heights of rapture she’d never imagined existed. "You’re a considerate lover."
"I promised." Weariness weighed his answer, as he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
He took care of her, as he vowed he would. It was rank stupidity to feel cheated at the waste of his seed outside her body. Yet cheated she felt. But she wanted him so much. Part of that wanting was for him to give her everything.
"Is it satisfying to pull out like that?"
Without opening his eyes, he raised expressive black eyebrows. "I find it preferable to using a sheath."
"What’s a sheath?"
A hint of fondness softened his smile. "You’re such a damned fascinating mixture, Selina. You take me to heaven and back by riding me like you were born to service me. It makes me forget how innocent you are."
"I’m unworldly," she said with a hint of grimness, sitting up gingerly and sliding her feet to the floor. "Not innocent. There’s a difference."
This time he focused those acute green eyes on her. "Aye, you’re right. Nobody who has been through what you have could be called untouched."
"So what’s a sheath?"
"Sewn sheep gut that covers the cock and stops the seed reaching the woman."
"Ugh!" she said with a grimace. "Doesn’t it slip off at the height of…"
His grunt expressed amusement. "You tie it on with ribbons."
She couldn’t contain a giggle. "Good Lord."
"Aye, it’s quite a sight."
Selina stared down to where his organ lay flaccid. Even now, it was impressive. Brock must have noted her concentrated attention, because his rod twitched and began to harden.
She’d have thought the prospect of further congress would hold no immediate appeal after that last volcanic encounter, but even so, a spark stirred. She loved having him inside her. The degree of intimacy in their joining had astonished her. Whenever Roderick had used her, she just felt lonely and awkward. After what she’d just shared with her wicked lover, she felt like a goddess.
Brock fastened his breeches and pulled his watch from his pocket. "Later. We’re too close to the hunting lodge."
She blushed, which was absurd given she’d just passed the most abandoned hours of her life. "You’re turning me into a libertine."
He smiled at her with a lazy appreciation that only bolstered her sensual interest. "I do hope so, lassie."
Still blushing, feeling ridiculously shy, she bent to pick up her drawers then wondered what to do with them.
"Put them on," he murmured. "I want to watch you."
"Brock…"
His smile intensified. "It would give me untold pleasure to see you cover up the places that I have plans to uncover again as soon as I can."
"Very well," she said, but her hands were unsteady as she wriggled back into her drawers. Brock had to help her with the tapes. The brush of his fingers on her bare skin set off little explosions of arousal inside her. He seemed to find the experience just as titillating.
By the time he finished, they were both breathing in uneven gasps. He rested one elegant hand on her mound then released her.
"Will you help to make me decent?" she asked. "I must look like you’ve dragged me through a hedge."
His eyes appraised her with more of that unfettered approval. He could have no idea the potent effect that expression had on her. Both Roderick and Cecil viewed her as a project that required constant improvement. Whereas Brock acted as if he beheld an unparalleled masterpiece.
"I have no interest in making you decent, my darling." Another of those secret smiles. "Not when I’ve just discovered how ravishing you are when you choose to be indecent."
Selina laughed, knowing she should feel guilty or self-conscious, instead of giddy and elated. After all, she’d just been thoroughly debauched by a man to whom she wasn’t married.
In the middle of the day. In a carriage.
The angels must weep for her. But while heaven might abhor her fall, she was a mere mortal and she’d never felt so happy.
"Well, at least help me with my bonnet."
With amusement narrowing his eyes, Brock was so handsome that her heart performed somersaults. "Why didn’t you say so?"
Chapter 5
The short December day drew to a close when Brock’s carriage pulled up outside a neat two-story house in gray stone in the middle of a salt marsh. Selina stared with dazed eyes across the flat, rather desolate landscape. She assumed the continuous thunder in the distance was the sea.
Brock leaned across to unlatch the door. "I promised you privacy for our week."
"I see you’ve delivered."
He stepped out and extended his hand. She stumbled on the step as the freezing salt-tinged air struck her like a blow. After all they’d done in the carriage, long-unused muscles protested when she moved. Her grip on his hand tightened, as she feared her knees mightn’t keep her upright.
"Hold tight." He swung her up into his arms.
She’d felt dizzy leaving the carriage. She felt even dizzier now. Brock’s delicious scent enveloped her, along with a radiant heat. It w
as bitterly cold. She wasn’t surprised to feel a few soft flakes of snow brush her nose.
The door to the house opened, and a middle-aged man and woman bustled down the steps toward them.
"My lord, welcome, welcome." The man had a thick Scottish accent, much more noticeable than Brock’s attractive lilt. "And to the lady also."
Selina stiffened in Brock’s arms. Cringing with embarrassment, she buried her face in his shoulder. She hadn’t expected the house to be staffed. Although common sense said it must be. She supposed the coachman must know why she and his master sought out this isolated place, but the idea of a host of people witnessing her fall from grace made her flinch.
"Jock and Mary, how good to see you after all this time. Let me get Mrs. Martin inside out of the cold."
Selina muffled a protest at the use of her real name. "It’s all right," Brock murmured, as he strode up the shallow flight of steps leading to the open door. He paused at the top to turn back to the coachman. "Thank you, Erskine. I’ll wager you’re looking forward to a warm fire and a good meal, too."
"Aye, my lord. It’s going to be a braw cold night." The coachman sounded as Scottish as Jock and Mary. "The horses made good time."
"Aye, they’ve earned their oats. Well done, laddie."
"Come away in, my lord," Mary said with a wide smile. Jock was busy lifting the bags from the back of the coach. "I’ve got fires going in the bedroom and the drawing room, and a good hot dinner on the way for ye. With all that traveling, ye both must be tired and half-starved. We got your letter, and all is as ye asked."
"Excellent. I knew I could rely on you, Mary."
Her cheeks on fire, Selina barely dared to glance up as they entered the modest hall. Behind them, she heard the coach trundle away. She assumed there were stables and other outbuildings behind the house.
"I can walk," she muttered into Brock’s coat, as it became clear he intended to carry her all the way upstairs.
His hold firming, he started to mount the steps. "I like to carry you."
She liked it, too, although the act held a disturbingly bridal air. It was as if the earl brought a new and cherished wife to the house, instead of a woman he used for his pleasure over the space of a week.
The Highlander's Forbidden Mistress Page 6
