Bridegroom Wore Plaid (29 page)

“How can I help you, Ian?”

“You, Julia, Hester, and Mary Fran, even Fee, you can keep Genie safe. You don’t let her be alone, you don’t let there be a moment when Altsax can pull the same maneuver again. Keep the footmen near at hand as much as you can. I’ll cozy up to the girl, but I can’t be alone with her for more than a moment here and there. You explain to her these stratagems are my doing and not an attempt to coerce her into marriage.”

“But she
is
being coerced.”

“Augusta, I know that, and because she’s being coerced, I’m more certain than ever Altsax is hiding something. If anything, I’m more inclined to caution over the engagement than I was before I met the baron.”

Augusta nodded, trying to keep the relief from her eyes. When she looked up, Ian had shifted closer, so he was sitting at her hip.

“I have no right to ask this of you,” he said, reaching out a hand to tug her braid over her shoulder. “And I had no intention of getting into any mischief when I came skulking in your door tonight, Augusta, but the thought of being wed for years without even affection…”

He fell silent, his hand still on her braid. He used it to gently tug her forward into what Augusta hoped and prayed and wished was kissing range.

“I won’t put demands on you, Ian. I won’t develop expectations, I won’t ever…” He silenced her descent into pleading and begging by settling his mouth over hers.

He touched his mouth to hers glancingly at first, as if a little taste might do, but then on a groan, he was back, his mouth on hers.

“I wasn’t going to…” He spoke against her teeth. “God… Bloody… let me
in
, Augusta.”

She smiled, and he was there, tasting her, smiling in return, and looming up closer until without breaking the kiss, Augusta was on her back amid the pillows, Ian’s chest and his kiss pinning her to the mattress.

“Overdressed,” she muttered, pulling at his shirt.

“Aye.” He levered up to untie the bows of her nightgown, and it was as if a referee had rung the bell at the end of a bare-knuckle round. They separated enough to make eye contact, both breathing deeply, hands tangled in the other’s clothing.

The smile died from Ian’s eyes, but not the heat. “Augusta, if we do this…”

“If we…” was such a long, wonderful way from “we can’t…” but Augusta kept her expression solemn.

“If we do this,” she took up the thought, “it can’t mean anything but some comfort stolen against the circumstances. It can’t lead to anything. It can’t mean anything, whether you marry Genie or some other woman.”

His hand settled against her cheek. “It will mean worlds, Augusta. Between us it will mean worlds, but it cannot go any further, and I’m still not convinced—”

“Shirt off, Ian. Everything off, in fact. If we’re only to allow ourselves one lapse with a bed, pillows, and privacy, then let it be a glorious one.”

Except in the back of her mind, where she had to be honest with herself even when it hurt, she admitted she was thinking one lapse might lead to a few more. She was committing that folly no sane woman of limited means and accumulating years allows herself: she was
hoping
.

“Don’t look at me like that, Augusta.” He stood to pull his shirt over his head. “I don’t deserve it. No mortal man could deserve such an expression.”

His hands went to the waistband of his trousers, and Augusta watched, even as his fingers stilled. “Shall you do this, lass?” One corner of his mouth kicked up wickedly. “I feel like a present wrapped up and waiting for my lady’s gleeful reception of what lies beneath all the decoration.”

“My hands would shake, Ian. You do it.”

“The things you say…” He sat to yank off his boots and socks, then stood again right beside the bed. He turned his body so he was facing Augusta and waited. She pushed the covers aside, divining his purpose, and swung her legs over the side of the bed. While she sat before him, Ian undid the bows down the front of her nightgown. An eddy of night air cooled the heated skin of her breastbone, then lower, until her clothing was parted from throat to hem, the material pooling in her lap.

And yet, he didn’t push it aside, didn’t draw it off her shoulders.

She met his gaze in the moonlight, knowing even in the shadows, her blush must be evident. He held the back of one hand against her cheek as if to confirm it.

“Please, Ian.”

His hand dropped. At a casual pace, he unfastened his trousers, pausing occasionally to glance at her.

As if she could have looked away.

“Unwrap your unlikely treasure, Augusta. I certainly intend to do the same with mine.”

He wanted her naked too. Ah, bless him, bless him. Augusta slipped her hand into the fabric of his loosened clothes, finding her way down the plane of his lower abdomen, over flesh taut with muscle and warm with life. Her knuckles encountered hair—soft, springy, then…

She worked his clothing down another couple of inches and went exploring again. She found the thick column of his erect flesh, rising from a nest of down. Carefully, she extracted him from the clothing, until his penis was angling up along his belly—thick, hard, and oddly beautiful in its unabashed arousal.

“I’d light candles for you if I dared,” he said. “Indulge your curiosity, Augusta. I want you to learn this of me.”

“To learn this part of you?” She drew a finger up the length of him, watched as the muscles of his belly rippled in response.

“That too, but I want you to learn it
with
me. Touch me again.”

“Get on the bed.”

He stepped out of his clothes, becoming a piece of animated sculpture rendered alive by moonlight. There was not a spare ounce on him; he was all muscle and bone, efficient movement and conserved strength.

And he was climbing into
her
bed. “On your back.”

His was so big, he made the entire bed shift and jostle as he moved. The mattress bounced as he flopped onto his back and crossed his arms behind his head. “Do we need terms, Augusta?”

“Terms?” She was becoming drunk on the bounty before her. He ranged the length of her bed, making a large piece of furniture abruptly much cozier. He’d stayed above the covers, so she saw everything from the soft hair of his underarms to the geometry of his chest and ribs, to that lovely, lovely man-part of him, on down to legs thick with muscle and feet larger than any Augusta had studied before.

She leaned in to sniff at his chest.

“Terms, my lady, like nothing said or done, no act or omission between us in this bed tonight will be cause for regret or recrimination. This is a gift we give each other.”

“I get a much larger present than you,” she said, surveying him.

“Give me your hand, Augusta.”

Curious, she did. He took her hand, and without letting her pause or draw back, wrapped it around his erection. “Stroke me, and I’ll tell you how it feels.”

“Stroke?”

He showed her, showed her how tightly to hold him, showed her the parts that were particularly sensitive, the same parts he liked to have touched and cupped and fondled. He showed her how God put together the male organs involved in procreation and explained their functions and habits to her.

It was an initiation of sorts, and she treasured him for making the time for it. She was going to leave her bed in the morning a far wiser and more confident woman—also much sadder, but she pushed that realization firmly to the side.

“I like this,” she said, stroking a finger over the hair at his armpit. “It’s very soft and very dark.” Incongruously soft. “Particularly compared to your chin.” She ran the pad of one thumb over his shadowed jaw. “You are hard in so many places, Ian.”

“While you are soft.” He held her gaze as she traced her hands for the dozenth time down the stair-step muscles along the outsides of his ribs. Lean, powerful, and utterly open to her for these few hours. She’d gathered her courage long enough.

“You want to see me, don’t you?”

“Of course I
want
to.” He smiled but didn’t shift his position. “If you’re feeling too modest, I’ll content myself with learning the feel and taste and touch of you. A canny Scot learns to improvise.”

The
taste
of her?

“Don’t worry, Augusta.” He drew his finger down the crease in her brow then down her nose. “I want only to pleasure you. Keep your nightgown on if you like, or dive under the covers before you take it off. It matters naught to me.”

“You think I’ll want it off soon enough.” And she would. In the next instant, she wanted it off.

“You want it off now, lass. You’re wondering why I didn’t peel you to your skin when I had the chance.”

“Why didn’t you?” She resisted the urge to gather her disheveled clothing around her just to thwart him.

“For two reasons. First, to assist me with my self-discipline, so I might have as much patience as you need tonight.”

“That was flattery. What’s the real reason?”

“Because you deserve to learn some pleasure, Augusta, some little touches of decadent wickedness. I’m guessing you permit yourself on the occasional hot night to leave off the nightgown. Ah, I’m right. But you think it a pragmatic concession, nothing more.”

“I like it, a little, to be honest.” She did gather the folds of her dressing gown over her middle. “But I also feel foolish. For whom am I being wicked?”

“For your own pleasure, my lady. Just as being half undressed is a pleasure of a different order.”

His hand, big, warm, and a little rough, eased along her waist, until he was a sweet, stealthy intruder under her nightgown. “Breathe, Augusta.”

She let out the breath she’d been holding then went still, the better to focus on his fingertips sliding up her ribs.

“Ian…” She closed her eyes as his movements edged her nightgown away from her body, dragging the soft fabric along her breast.

“Hush and let me look,” he said, his burr thickening. “You’re beautiful, Augusta. Never doubt it.”

While she waited in silence behind closed eyes, he slowly parted her clothing, peeling back layers of propriety, loneliness, and uncertainty as he did. “Beautiful,” he said again. Then he went still, his hands framing her on either side of her ribs. She opened her eyes and met his gaze.

“There you are.” He sounded so pleased with her for simply opening her eyes. So proud. He moved his hands up to cover her breasts, his touch easy and reverent at the same time.

“You make me want to be naked all over, Ian MacGregor.”

“Soon.” A single word, enough to inflame and soothe, both. His gaze dropped to her breasts, and she had the courage not simply to allow it but to enjoy him feasting on the sight of her. His hands moved gently, a rasp of his palms over her ruched nipples, a single finger caressing the undercurve of each breast, and then—glory of glories—a slight, glancing pressure to each nipple.

“Ian…”

“I know, love. You can have more of anything you please, but let me learn you now.”

He arranged her on her back as he had been, but made no move to push her nightgown from her shoulders. As fascinated as she was with the intimacies they were sharing, Augusta still kept a drape of cotton over her sex.

“I’ll see all of you when you’re ready to show me.”

He lay full length beside her, wonderfully unselfconscious of his own nudity. When Augusta had thought of being intimate with Ian, she’d had a vague notion of kissing and holding and moving under the covers in a silent, darkened room.

How ignorant she’d been, how unimaginative! This nakedness was a wonderful expression of closeness beyond her experience, a closeness she’d longed for without being able to describe.

“Let’s have some kisses, shall we?” Ian leaned over, and Augusta braced herself for the pleasure of his mouth on hers. She closed her eyes the better to savor what he offered, only to feel his breath on her nipple one instant before his mouth landed there.

The pleasure was… shocking, intimate, so intense she whimpered with it.

“Augusta?” He raised his head to peer at her. “You don’t like it?”

She took his head in her hands, arched her back, and begged with her body for more of those kisses. Any words were beyond her, so dumbstruck was she by what was passing between them.

She gave herself up to him, to his ability to sense when she was becoming overwhelmed, when he needed to veer off to a different touch in a different territory.

“You’re not the chatty kind in bed,” he concluded long moments later, almost as if speaking to himself. “But your body speaks volumes, my love. You like this…” He arched over her and kissed her deeply while he plied her nipple with his fingers. “Though you’re not so sure about this…”

He shifted, letting his hand trail down her midline and dally a little at her navel.

“Augusta?” He addressed himself to the lower curve of her nearest breast, speaking right against her skin. “What does my body tell you?”

His hand didn’t stop moving; it kept on trailing south, to tease the curls shielding her sex. He’d flirted with that before, stroking and patting and even massaging the flesh over her pubic bone. The variety of his caresses inebriated her, the skill with which he plied them…