Page 59 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

And then he kissed her.

There was nothing careful in it. A year of wanting went into that kiss—the maze, the corridors, the cleared parlor, the library door. Every stolen minute they had ever had to steal and now none of it stolen at all, all of it theirs, licensed, blessed, entirely their own.

She made a soft, startled sound against his mouth, and he swallowed it as he drew her up out of the chair and into him. She came, her hands fisting in his shirt, rising onto her tiptoes to meet him the way she had learned to and the way, he understood now, she had always wanted to.

He slid an arm beneath her and swept the end of the table clear with the other. The good porcelain, the ruined fish, and the whole of the interrupted dinner went to the floor in a loud crash neither of them heeded. Then he set her on the bared wood in the candlelight, stepped between her knees, and kissed her until she was breathless and pliant.

There was a dish of strawberries that had survived the wreck. He caught it up without breaking from her and slowly drew a strawberry across the seam of her lips until they parted for it. He fed it to her and followed the sweetness with his mouth, tasting it off her lips, her chin, the soft line of her throat where her pulse ran wild.

“Magnus,” she gasped.

He tugged her bodice down, baring her to the candlelight, and reached for the little jug of cream. He poured a slow, cool ribbon of it across the swell of one breast and followed it with his mouth, unhurried, until the sound she made was one she had plainly never made in her life.

“Delicious…” he murmured, and then he did it again, to the other, chasing every trace of sweetness from her skin while she fell back on her elbows with her head thrown and her breathing ragged.

“Magnus…” It was half a plea and half a warning.

“Aye,” he murmured against the tender inside of her knee, drawing the last of the sweetness up her trembling flesh. “I’ve got ye, lass. I’ve got ye. Let go.”

His hand followed the curve of her thigh, higher, and settled where she most wanted him, and at the first slow, certain stroke of it her whole body went taut as a bowstring.

He circled her pearl with exquisite slowness. He coaxed her, patient and certain, over an edge she had never in all her careful life allowed herself to reach and felt her come apart under his hands and mouth in the guttering candlelight, gasping and shaking.

He had never in his life seen anything like the sight of her wanting, unafraid, and finally, gloriously free.

When the shudders had eased, and she lay boneless and dazed against the wood, he gathered her up off the table and into his arms. She turned her face into his neck with a small moan.

“Nae here,” he said softly against her hair, and felt her mouth curve against his throat. “The first time I have ye proper, wife, it’ll nae be on the dinner service.”

He slowly carried her out of the ruined candlelight and up the great dark stairs, toward the warm dark of her chambers and the night still ahead of them.

CHAPTER 26

“You must be quiet,” Rosaline whispered, her arms still locked around his neck as he shouldered through the door to her chambers. “The servants will hear. They will know.”

Magnus laughed, low and warm against her hair, and the sound of it moved through her. “Rosaline, darlin’, we were wed this mornin’ before God, a parson, and half of the London gossips. There’s nae a soul under this roof who doesnae ken exactly what I am about to do tonight, and nae one of them the least scandalized by it.”

He set her down slowly, letting her slide down the whole length of him until her bare feet found the cool floor.

“Let them hear. Let them ken their new mistress is well and thoroughly wanted. It’s the happiest news this old house has had in years.”

Then he hooked one boot behind the door and pushed it shut.

The click of the latch closed the whole world out. There was only the low fire, the turned-down bed, and Magnus looking at her in the amber light as though she were the only thing in the world worth looking at.

Her nerve nearly failed her then. She had been undone on a dinner table moments ago, and still, standing here in the hush of her own chamber with his eyes moving over her, she felt the old wallflower rise in her throat: the girl who stood by pillars, who had never once in her life been looked at like this and did not know how to bear the wanting in it.

“Come here.” His voice had gone quiet and rough.

He did not reach for her. He waited, the way he always did, until she closed the small distance herself, and only then did he lift his hands to the laces at her back.

He unfastened her gown slowly. There was nothing hurried in it, no fumbling, only the patient work of his fingers loosening her stays one lace at a time. With each one, she felt herself come looser too, the careful armor of a lifetime unpicked lace by lace in the firelight.

He bent as he worked and set his mouth to the nape of her neck, to the knob of her spine, to each new bared inch of her, and she felt her head fall forward and a sound escape her that she did not recognize as her own.

The gown slid down her shoulders and pooled at her feet. Her shift followed, pulled off by hands that shook very slightly, she noticed, and the noticing undid her more than boldness ever could.

He was not unmoved. This great Highlander who had faced down her brother without a flicker was not composed at all.