Page 60 of Reclaimed By Her Scottish Duke

“God above.” He said it on a breath, taking her in, bared to the firelight and to him. “Look at ye. And ye spent three Seasons hidin’ this behind a potted palm.”

His hand rose to trace her figure slowly, reverently, from her dark brown hair to the curve of her hip, and she trembled under it and did not look away.

“Ye’ve no notion, have ye? No notion at all what ye are. I’ll spend the rest of me days makin’ certain ye do.”

Rosaline reached unsteadily for the buttons of his shirt. He let her, standing patiently under her clumsy fingers until she had bared the broad warm plane of him, the old white scars she did not ask about, the heat of him under her palms. Then he gathered her up against all that warmth, skin to skin at last, and the shock of it stole whatever she had meant to say.

He laid her back on the wide cool bed as though she were something precious and followed her down. He braced above her and looked at her for one long moment in the firelight with a question plain in his eyes even now, even here, giving her the choice.

In that suspended moment, she thought of every version of this she had ever dreaded, all the cold arranged futures her brother had held over her like a blade.

None of them had looked anything like this. Unhurried. Reverent. Hers to grant or refuse.

She had spent her whole life being taken from, but this was hers to give.

She answered by drawing him down to her.

Magnus pressed a hot kiss to her throat, then his lips trailed up to capture her mouth. She opened for his tongue and arched against him.

Magnus touched a fingertip to the valley between her breasts and trailed a fiery path past her belly button until he reached the damp curls hiding her sex.

Rosaline raised her hips, forcing his fingers to slip down and glide across her pearl, before they plunged into her.

“Yes,” she groaned, her head falling back.

“I cannae wait, lass,” Magnus whispered as he slid his fingers out of her, eliciting a whimper of protest, before he plunged them back into her.

Rosaline arched against him, craving more. Her hands slid down until they reached the top of his kilt. With trembling hands, she pulled it down his legs. When she finally freed him, he kicked them off.

She took his hot length into her hand, and he moaned. She moved her hand up and down, watching him from beneath her lashes.

“Ye’ll break me, lass, if ye continue.” He grasped her hand lightly, then put it above her head. Magnus leaned in and captured her mouth as he maneuvered himself to her center. He slid his fingers out and replaced them with his length. She parted her thighs to allow him better access, whimpering.

“Hold onto me, lass,” he growled as he thrust into her.

Rosaline bit back a cry at the burning sensation.

“I daenae mean to hurt ye.” Magnus lifted his head and gently kissed her. “I promise ye, it’ll only hurt for a moment.”

She curled her fingers against his shoulders and moved against him. The pain turned into bliss as he thrust into her once more. Her hips began to match his thrusts, meeting them with the same ardor.

White-hot pleasure spread through her veins, and she cried out as sheer ecstasy crashed over her. Magnus continued rocking his hips into her, each thrust deeper as her inner walls clenched around him, until he groaned and collapsed on top of her.

Afterward, she lay in the wreck of the bedclothes, with her cheek against his chest, and could not have said where she ended, and the warm dark of the room began.

She felt clean. Remade. Every careful line she had held her whole life had come undone in his hands, and she waited in the drowsy quiet for the shame to arrive, the way she had been taught all her life it must.

It did not come. There was only his heartbeat slowing under her ear, his hand drawing idle circles down the length of her spine, and a stillness in her chest so unfamiliar that it took her a while to realize it was peace.

“Ye’ve gone quiet on me.” His chest vibrated beneath her cheek. “Should I be worried?”

“I am thinking.”

“Aye, ye’re always thinkin’. It’s me favorite and least convenient thing about ye.” She felt him press his mouth to the crown of her head. “What is it, then? Tell me.”

She was quiet a moment longer, tracing an idle pattern through the hair on his chest, gathering the courage for honesty the way she was slowly learning she could, with him, in the dark.

“I did not expect that… that you’d be gentle with me,” she admitted. “After. I did not know there was an after. I thought it was a thing that was done to a woman and finished, and she straightened her gown and went on being useful.” Her fingers stilled. “I did not know a person could simply be held. That it did not have to be earned first. I… I just did not know that.”