Page 47 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“It’s yours,” she gasped, past all pretence. “God help me. It has always been yours.”

Something in him came undone at that.

He took charge of her utterly, one broad hand cradling her jaw to hold her exactly where he wanted her, the other sliding down the length of her, learning the curve of her waist, her hip, and all the while his mouth worshipped her throat as though she were the only holy thing in the whole of England.

He murmured against her skin between kisses, praise and want tangled together, telling her how bonnie she was, how long he’d wanted this, how she undid him.

“Let me,” he breathed, and it was a command and a plea at once. “Let me show ye what ye’ve been missin’. Let me be the one, Rosaline. Just tonight. Let me.”

“Yes. Please, Magnus.” The words left her before she could think, and she felt him groan against her collarbone.

His hand gathered the midnight silk of her skirts and slowly drew it up, baring her stockings, the ribbons of her garters, the warm bare skin above.

He did not hurry. That was her undoing. That even now, with his breath ragged against her throat and his heart hammering under her palm, he took his time as though she were something to be savored rather than seized.

“Look at ye,” he murmured, and there was wonder in his voice, want, something close to reverence. “All that fire, and ye’d have handed yerself to a man who’d never once have gone lookin’ for it.”

His palm trailed, unhurried and sure, up the trembling inside of her thigh, tracing slow patterns against skin that had never been touched so, and every inch of the ascent drew a shiver from her she could not have stopped for all her pride.

She was coming apart by degrees, every careful thing in her loosening, and she heard herself make a sound she had never made in her life, low and pleading.

“Aye,” he breathed against her jaw. “There she is. Let me, lass. Let me unravel ye.”

His hand climbed higher to her aching heat that had wanted him since a dark garden a year ago, and she quivered before he had even reached it, undone by the promise alone.

When his fingers found her folds, she tensed.

“Already so wet for me. Heavens, Rosaline…”

His thumb teased the little pearl at the apex of her sex, and she felt pleasure gather low in her belly, sharp enough to steal the breath from her lungs.

She grabbed his shoulders as the pleasure grew, leaving her no room for modesty, and even less for thought.

Two fingers slid inside her. She moved against his hand before she could think better of it, drawn by the steady, intimate rhythm of his touch.

A moan slipped past her lips, and she buried her face against his shoulder as her pleasure tightened until she could scarcely breathe.

“Nay. Daenae hide from me.” His mouth found her ear, his voice low and rough at the edges. “Let me hear ye. Ye’ve been quiet yer whole life, lass. But nae here. Nae with me.”

She could not have refused him. The sound came out of her regardless, and he made a low approving noise against her hair that undid her further.

“That’s it. God, but ye’re bonnie like this.” The words came between kisses pressed to her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth, and his hand never once lost its rhythm. “Flushed and shakin’ and past carin’ who hears ye. This is what they’ve kept from ye all these years. This is yers.” His forehead came down against hers. “Daenae fight it. Let it come. I have ye.”

He held her through every trembling rise, his touch patient and sure. It built past anything she had a name for, a pressure gathering in her core that climbed and climbed and would not crest, until she heard herself say his name.

“Magnus…”

Once, helplessly, like a prayer she had no business making.

“Aye,” he breathed. “Again. Say it just like that.”

She said it again, and the word broke in the middle, and everything careful in her broke with it.

The pressure snapped in a rush that arched her clean off the door and into him, her fingers fisted in his shirt. Wave after wave of it rolled through her while he held her fast and murmured to her through all of it, endearments and nonsense and her own name, gentling her down as though she were something wild he had no intention of letting go.

“I have ye.” His mouth moved against her temple, her hair, the corner of her jaw, the words low and unhurried and steady as a hand on a frightened horse. “That’s it. Let it take ye. I’ve got ye, Rosaline, I’ll nae let ye fall. Bonnie thing. My bonnie, brave girl. Breathe for me now.”

A rough, wondering murmur, half a laugh against her skin.