His hands came up to cup her breasts and he rolled her nipples gently between his fingers. “I want ye bared to my hands and my lips. I want to feel yer skin against mine.” One hand dipped lower, and Hero gasped when his fingers slid between her legs, parting her. She was agonizingly damp, a testament to how thoroughly his words alone had aroused her. His fingers circled the spot he had found with his mouth the night before, petting her until Hero was panting desperately. Unable to touch him as she liked, Hero clung to Ian’s hips while his hands pleasured her. His teeth grazed the side of her neck and shoulder.
“Will ye come for me, my love? Will ye scream for me?” he urged hotly.
Hero bit back a cry that became a whimper as her body tensed. She ached for him, wanted him within her. She shook her head, fighting back the orgasm that was building in her. “No.”
“No?” His fingers curled into her, and Hero threw her head back against his chest as the waves of pleasure began to sweep over her.
“I want you,” she whispered brokenly. “Come with me.”
“Find yer heaven, my love, then I will,” he whispered encouragingly.
Shaking her head, Hero tore away from him and turned back, throwing her arms around his shoulders and pulling his mouth to hers. She kissed him with all the frenzied passion he had just roused in her, parting her lips and brushing her tongue across his. His reaction was instantaneous. Ian crushed her against him, his hands cupping her bottom and drawing her tightly against him, but the rough abrasion of his clothes against her sensitive breasts reminded Hero of the disparity of their attire or lack of it, and she pulled back, tugging at his cravat. “Now you.”
Ian’s eyes were dark as midnight as he looked down at her and helped her by shrugging off his jacket and unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Is that how it’s going to be then, my love? Are ye thinking to take charge of every situation?”
“No,” Hero murmured. “I’m just thinking that what we do, we do together.”
She could hear his chuckle as he pulled his shirt over his head. “I can guarantee it right now, lass, ye’ll find yer release far more often than I during the course of this marriage. I wouldn’t consider myself much of a man or a lover if it went any other way.”
Shivering at the promise in his voice, Hero relented as she worked the buttons of Ian’s trousers. “Fine, but not tonight. Tonight, I want to share everything with you.”
“Aye, then. Tonight it will be as ye like,” Ian said. He finished toeing off his shoes and lifted her high against him until she wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried her to the bed and lowered them both down, but his fingers had already found her once more, circling and circling once more before his fingers plunged deep within her. Helplessly, she arched against his hand with a tortured moan. He retreated then and his fingers rubbed once more, now slick and wet. Hero cried out in ecstasy. Almost, her body strained.
“Now?”
“Now.” Hero moaned and urged him forward until he was pressed against her. She could feel the turgid length of him probing, then sliding within her slowly. He stretched her, filled her with tormenting languor until Hero was sobbing with the intensity of her arousal. She was trembling with need. Throbbing around his length. Almost. “Now, Ian, please.”
He drove forward then until she could feel him throbbing against her womb. “Yer so hot, my love. Wet. Tight,” he murmured in Hero’s ear as he withdrew and slowly, wickedly, plunged once more, drawing a low groan from her. She kicked her heels against his thighs, urging him on. “Am I going too slow for ye, lass?”
There was humor in his voice, but Hero was beyond caring. She wanted him. This fire might make her a wanton who begged for release, but it was a fire Ian had built. “Ian …”
“Don’t ye want me to make slow love to ye?” he growled. Hero shook her head and locked her legs more tightly around his waist. “Tell me then. Tell me what you want.”
Hero bit her lip but Ian continued with his slow thrusts, keeping her hovering just on the edge of her release. It was there waiting for her. An abyss that her body cried out for. She needed him to take her there. Needed him with her. “Please, Ian. Faster,” she commanded.
And he obeyed, thrusting deeply, almost savagely, as if the dam had broken on his control. Hero lifted her hips against him until they met in perfect rhythm. Heat flooded her core and spiraled outward within seconds, and she cried out as her climax came hard. “Now!” she begged desperately and Ian pumped against her violently with a guttural moan.
She felt his seed flow hotly into her, but Ian thrust again. Again. His body was shaking, his muscles taut. “Never enough,” he groaned. “It will never be enough.”
Hero wrapped her body around his and held him tightly. “I know.”
And she did.
A thousand times. A million.
She would want him just as desperately still.
Chapter Thirty
A sound woke Ian and he tensed, prepared to fight if need be. Fight against the dream that still lingered in his mind. A dream where Hero had been taken from him by force and Ian was left searching, constantly searching for her with a soul left as empty and barren as the deserts of the east. Reaching out for her, Ian found the bed next to him warm but empty, and the fear roused itself again.
A low grating sound broke the silence, and he turned to find Hero standing in front of the empty fireplace in her dressing gown with her back to him. She held a single candle in its small dish-like holder aloft, the wispy flame scarcely cleaving the darkness beyond her. “What are you doing?”
Turning with a smile, she came to his side and sat on the edge of the bed, the candleholder in one hand, her other tightly fisted. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.”
“What have you there?” Ian nodded to her fisted hand and she opened it sheepishly and held up a ring. Her wedding ring that he had given her hours before. It had been his mother’s and his grandmother’s as well before that bonny old lady had given it to his father on his wedding day. Ian’s mother had given it to him before she died to give to the woman he loved one day. It was a beautiful ring with a large central sapphire flanked on each side by two long, diamond baguettes. “Don’t you like it?”
“Oh, I do,” Hero said instantly. “I love it, but it’s a wee bit too big and I almost lost in the bed linens when it worked its way off my finger.”
“I’m sorry I dinnae ha’ time to ha’ it sized for ye,” he whispered regretfully.
“I’m not worried about that,” she assured him. “I just didn’t want to lose it.”
“So ye were throwing it the fireplace?”
Her smile was broad. “Of course not. I was putting it in the safe.”
Ian frowned. “What safe?”
“I have one in here, just like you do in your room,” she answered, then frowned as well. “I guess you were never told about it, were you? No one else knows about them. Not even Mandy or Biggs, Robert’s old valet. Come here, I’ll show you.”
Pushing aside the sheets, Ian rose and followed her back to the fireplace.
“Aren’t you going to put anything on?” she asked, lowering her candle down and up again and giving him a lingering once over. “I wouldn’t want you to catch a cold.”
Grinning, Ian only said, “I haven’t been cold since the day I met you.”
“Not even that day in the dungeon?”
“Nay, I told you that the sight of your …” he began and they finished together, “lovely face is enough to warm me.” With a pleased smile, Hero leaned against his side, and Ian brushed a kiss over her temple, whispering, “Of course, I don’t think I mentioned specifically which parts of me you warmed.”
Hero blushed then and shook her head. “We can discuss that in just a moment. Hold this, if you would.” She handed him the candle and continued, “Now, watch. You see these two flowers here?” Ian nodded, and Hero rotated them to the right, one after the other. “And then this one?” She pushed it and with a click a larger leaf sep
arated from the mantel and jutted outward. Intrigued, Ian pulled at it and it swung outward to reveal a small compartment hidden in the mantel.
“Very clever,” he said as Hero dropped the ring into a small velvet bag and put it inside.
“There. Now it will be safe until we next go into Ayr or Glasgow and can have it sized,” Hero said, pushing the little door shut. “I used to keep some of my more valuable jewels in there as well, but they are all in a safe box at the bank now.”
“And I have one of those as well?” Ian asked curiously.
“You do, but I don’t know the combination, so unless you were to get very bored and very lucky one afternoon, I suppose the secret died with Robert,” she told him.
Ian pictured his own mantel, finding himself intrigued enough to wonder if he might figure it out on his own. He had always liked puzzles and such. “What do you suppose he kept in there? Jennings said all the marquisate’s jewels were accounted for.”
“Probably his best cigars,” Hero shrugged, then smiled when Ian remained fixated on the fireplace. Rounding the bed, she shrugged out of her dressing gown. “Would you like to go figure it out now or can it wait until morning?”
“Would you be so tolerant on your wedding night?” Ian asked with a chuckle, but when he turned, the smile faded away at the sight of Hero standing nude in the light of the single candle. “Ahh, lass, even if you didn’t mind, I’d be a fool to walk away from such a sight.”
Hero smiled a siren’s smile and climbed back into the bed. “I was hoping you’d feel that way.”
Setting the candleholder down on a bedside table, Ian blew it out before crawling onto the soft mattress and gathering her into his arms. “Am I ever destined to get a good night’s sleep again?”
“If you do, then I guess I’ll be doing something wrong,” she whispered in the darkness, but Ian could feel the smile in her voice. “Perhaps when I’m with child you would prefer your own bed and a night’s rest alone.”
The thought seized Ian, and unconsciously he ran a hand down to Hero’s soft stomach, imagining her rounded with his child. She would be even lovelier, he thought. Radiant. Content. His body thrummed with the primal urge to procreate. “Do you want children?”
She nodded against his chest. “I always did. A boy, I think, who looks just like you.”
“A lass as bonny as her mother,” he countered, running a hand over her hip and down between her legs. “Or both, aye?”
“Oh yes,” she whispered, inhaling a trembling breath.
In the next instant, her nose wrinkled. “That wick must still be smoldering. Can you smell it?”
Ian did smell it, but it wasn’t just the scent of a burning wick and he felt his skin prickle just as it did on the battlefield. A warning. Something was wrong. Climbing out of the bed, Ian found his trousers in the darkness and pulled them on.
“Ian? What is it?”
“Stay here,” he ordered and crossed the room silently to the door to her dressing room, which stood ajar. Instantly the smell of smoke became stronger and Ian slid stealthily through Hero’s wardrobe and into his. Through the open door to his chamber, light flickered, and he could see the haze of smoke.
His room was on fire! Ian raced to the door and drew up short at the sight of a short, burly man holding a candle to the draperies still tightly closed around his bed. How was this possible? Ian was agog with disbelief, but with a shout of rage, charged into the room, catching the startled arsonist around the waist and driving him into the far wall, smiling grimly at man’s pained groan.
Catching him by his lapels, Ian thrust the villain back once again. “Who sent you?” he growled. When the answer didn’t immediately come, Ian slammed him back once more.
“Ye bastard,” the man spat out, swinging out with a fist, but Ian ducked it neatly and proceeded to give the man the beating of his lifetime. His fists flew fast, landing hard punches to the man’s midsection and jaw before they could even be defended.
“Ian! What on earth!”
Ian turned to see Hero at the door, clutching her dressing gown around her. “Get back, Hero!”
Of course, she rolled her eyes at that and rushed to the fireplace, pulling the cords several times to call the servants. “We have to put the fire out!”
But their would-be murderer chose that moment to plow his fist into Ian’s ribcage, and with a grunt of pain, Ian turned back to him. Catching the man’s shirt in his left hand, Ian swung a hard right with all the fury that was burning in his soul, catching the man across his cheek, and added another that found his nose with a satisfying crunch.
At his back he could feel the heat of the growing flames but from the corner of his eye he caught sight of Hero pulling the bed curtains down, intent on slowing the fire’s progress. Bloody hell, he needed to get her out of here! “Damn it, Hero, leave them! Go!”
“No!” she shouted, pulling the blanket off the bed and throwing it on top of the burning curtains to smother the flames, and Ian felt an unwelcome rush of pride at her ingenuity.
“Good lass!” A rush of footsteps approached, announcing the arrival of the servants, and secure in the knowledge that Hero would be safe, Ian turned back to the man whose shirt he still held tightly in his fist. The man was holding his bloodied nose in both hands. “Who sent you?” Ian demanded once more, determined this time to have the answers he needed.
“Bugger off!” he spat, spraying blood.
“Wrong answer,” Ian ground out and hit him again, driving the man to the floor. “Who?”
The man gasped in pain and finally said, “A lady.”
“What lady?” Ian snarled, lifting the man up to his feet in preparation for another go round, but the man held out his bloody hands in submission.
“Stop, me lord, I beg ye,” he pleaded. “Her man came about looking for someone to do a job. I never met her. Only saw her once from a distance. I dinnae ken who she was, I swear.”
“You’re lying!” Ian slammed him against the wall once more, feeling impotent fury surging through his veins. He needed an answer! Bloody hell, he had thought they were done with this!
“My lord!”
Ian turned to find his two hired guards, Burr and McCaffey, behind him. A glance beyond showed a handful of servants helping Hero douse the flames with pitchers of water probably drawn from his bath. The air was thick with smoke. His bed was nearly destroyed, all the linens devoured quickly by the fire. If he and Hero had been asleep in it, the flames would have swallowed them whole.
“Where the bloody hell were you?” he demanded furiously of the guards as he lifted the arsonist and threw him bodily toward the men. “How did he get in here?”
“I dinnae ken how this happened, my lord,” McCaffey said defensively. “We were out in the hall all night. Cannae see how he got by us.”
“One thing I needed you to do was keep her safe,” he all but shouted at the pair, trembling with rage and fear that despite all his precautions someone had gotten that close. Too close. Bloody fucking hell! Swallowing his rage, Ian looked around the room once more, taking in the servants, Boyle, Dickson, Mandy and a half dozen others in his room, all stopped, staring at him. Hero was as well. “The door was locked.”
“Aye,” Burr nodded. “Yer man, Boyle, had to let us in.”
Boyle had let them in? Ian frowned and pointed to the bloodied criminal at their feet. “Lock him up and make sure he doesn’t get away.”
“Where would you have us put him, me lord?”
Ian smiled darkly. “The dungeons, of course.” Turning, he strode across the room and caught Hero by the elbow and pulled her out of the room, ignoring her squeal of protest. Once they were in his wardrobe, he released his grip and shared his residual temper with her. “I told you to get back.”
Hands on her hips, Hero simply frowned in return. “And let the fire burn down the entire castle?”
“That’s what the servants are for,” he argued, grasping her around her upper arms but resisting th
e urge to shake her silly.
“I’m not incapable, Ian,” she retorted, thrusting out her chin. “And it would have engulfed the room before they arrived if I hadn’t done something.”
Swallowing a groan, he looked at the ceiling, begging for some divine intervention. “Good God, yer a stubborn lass!”
“Really?” she said sarcastically, crossing her arms over her chest. “Do you think you’re the only one who gets to be intractable?”
His eyes ran the length of her, looking for injury. Her hair and face were sooty, her dressing gown ruined, but she didn’t seem to have gotten hurt. For that he was thankful, but it did not ease the frustration born of fear for her life. Bloody hell, he needed to rid their lives of the threat against them before those machinations reached a deadly crescendo. “You could have been killed, lass. Please, just listen to me in the future, Hero,” he said, drawing her into his embrace. “I could not bear to see you harmed. I only want you safe, protected …”
“Cosseted like a child?”
Ian stroked her hair with a chuckle of defeat. “Perhaps.”
“I’ll be sorry to disappoint again and again in the years to come,” Hero said, finally leaning in to hug him back. “What is going on, Ian? Who was that man? You seem more angry at all this than surprised. Just as you were the other day when Papa’s saddle broke. What aren’t you telling me?”
Ian sighed, knowing that the time for secrecy had come and gone. The whole of it would be out, and Hero would surely give him a lecture with the sharp edge of her tongue for keeping it from her, but Ian had no regrets over his actions. He would do it all again to keep her safe.
Drawing away, he turned to his wardrobe for a shirt, since there were still a half dozen servants milling about as they cleared away the damage from the fire. That was the one detail he couldn’t understand. How had the arsonist gotten into his rooms? How had the servants? “I will explain, but tell me first, how did the servants get in here? The door was locked.”
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