Amanda Scott (48 page)

Without waiting for a response, he picked her up and carried her there. As he tucked the coverlet up to her chin and turned to add fuel to the fire, she watched him with a loving smile but thinking that she would have to teach him not to make all her decisions for her. Heaven knew, that would never do.

When he returned to the bed, stripped off his clothes, and climbed in beside her, she forgot everything except what he could teach her.

She still trembled at his touch, but as his hands moved lightly over her body, caressing her, she began to calm and then to stir in new and delightful ways.

His body was so warm against hers that it was like having a fire right there in the bed. His touch ignited her
senses, and the joy she felt at being alone with him so was unspeakable.

His lips possessed hers and his tongue quickly penetrated her mouth. She welcomed it and teased it with her own, playing lightly with him, wondering what he would do next.

Hugo could not believe the soft silkiness of her skin. His hands moved all over her, delighting in its smooth texture as he kissed her. As one hand moved to cup and stroke one soft breast and then the other, he shifted his position slightly to watch his thumb tease a nipple. Then with a last, lingering kiss for her lips and another for her neck, he shifted lower to capture that nipple with his mouth.

She arched her back in response to his continuing caresses, and as she did, his right hand moved lower to the joining of her thighs. Heat seemed to radiate from every place he touched her, but especially there. With a finger, he gently parted the lips there and although she gasped again and tensed, she did not object.

She was breathing heavily, and with his right ear so near her chest, he could hear her heart thumping. She made a little sound in her throat when his finger penetrated, but she was moist and nearly ready for him.

He had no illusions that she would enjoy every step of their first coupling, but he wanted her to know something of the pleasures before she felt the pain, and he knew that the more he prepared her for him, the less pain she would feel.

Even so, her caresses, tentative at first but more
passionate now, had stirred his body until it was clamoring for release. He knew he had better begin before his exploding lust overcame his good intentions.

Accordingly, he shifted to recapture her mouth, pressing his finger farther into her hot, moist depths as he did. She gasped beneath his lips and arched against him. When she reached lower to touch his belly and below, he caught her hand and moved it to hold him, groaning as her slim fingers grasped his penis.

She turned her head a little, and he raised his. “Am I hurting you?”

“Nay,” she said, “but will you fit there?”

He chuckled. “Aye, I’ll fit, but it may not all be pleasant for you the first time. After that, it will get easier. Ah, lassie, you are so smooth and warm.”

“You are warm, too,” she said. “I have noticed that before now, but this… this, I never imagined.”

He moved over her then, easing first one knee between her soft thighs to spread them, then the other. His whole both thrummed like a tautly strung bow, ready for release.

She was tense now, her lips parted in anticipation, her expression wary but curious, too. Her beautiful breasts, golden in the light of the cressets and firelight, rose and fell quickly with her breathing.

He kissed her, then carefully eased himself atop her, spreading her gently to accommodate him. He hesitated briefly, then eased into her. Hearing her breath catch, he knew she felt pain, but he pressed forward more before easing back. In this manner, he continued until the way felt lest constricted, and then at last, thrust firmly into her. Exerting stern control over himself even at her faint cry, he continued smoothly and steadily until he could no
longer deny his lust free rein. With quick, furious movements, he reached his climax, gasping.

Rolling off her, he saw that she lay wide-eyed, lips parted again, breathing almost as hard as he was.

“Are you all right?”

“Aye,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“Know what?”

“That a woman could feel like that.”

“Didn’t I hurt you?”

“Aye, but you said it won’t hurt again. And the rest…” She grinned at him.

“I love you,” he said, moving to get up. “I’ll get something to clean us.”

“You say that now, but I’m guessing that the first time I defy you, you’ll say something else, sir.”

“I was going to show you more pleasuring,” he said, returning with a cloth he had dipped into the still-warm water in the ewer. “But if you are going to talk of defiance…” He let the thought hover between them as he began to cleanse the blood from her thighs. “Are you going to defy me again?” he asked.

“Oh, I expect so,” she said, then gasped as he parted her thighs again to clean her there. “It… it seems to be a part of me. I expect it comes of having a father who issues orders and then forgets he’s issued them. Oh, my, don’t stop!”

He chuckled again as he moved away to pour water into the basin to clean himself. “Macleod should have beaten you soundly when you disobeyed,” he said over his shoulder.

“Well, he did sometimes,” she said, relaxing against the pillows again. “But his furies were quickly over, and
then there would always be something else I wanted to do. So, you see, even if I try not to, I’ll probably make you angry again.”

“I see,” Hugo said. Then, grinning as he climbed back into bed with her, he said, “I should confess to you, Skelpie, I once had a vision of a perfect wife.”

“I’m afraid she was not like me,” Sorcha said with an exaggerated sigh.

“She bore not the least resemblance to you,” he agreed.

“What was she like then?”

“Just a boring woman of pleasing looks and figure who could manage my household and bear children who would all be as well behaved as their mother.”

“Are my looks not pleasing?”

“You are beautiful in every way imaginable. But, sithee, I anticipated a married life of perfect peace and amity. No strife, no fuss or ado.”

“And what was your contribution going to be to this perfection?”

“This,” he said with another chuckle as he held her and began kissing his way slowly down her body until his lips met her nether ones.

“Oh,” Sorcha said with a gasp as his tongue began to tease her. “If you do that as often as you scold and correct me, I vow, sir, you may scold me all you like.”

A
MANDA
S
COTT
, best-selling author and winner of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA/Golden Medallion and the Romantic Times’ Awards for Best Regency Author and Best Sensual Regency, began writing on a dare from her husband. She has sold every manuscript she has written. She sold her first novel,
The Fugitive Heiress
—written on a battered Smith-Corona—in 1980. Since then, she has sold many more, but since the second one, she has used a word processor. More than twenty-five of her books are set in the English Regency period (1810-1820), others are set in fifteenth-century England and sixteenth- and eighteenth-century Scotland. Three are contemporary romances.

Amanda is a fourth-generation Californian who was born and raised in Salinas and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from Mills College in Oakland. She did graduate work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in British history, before obtaining her master’s in history from California State University at San Jose. After graduate school, she taught for the Salinas City School District for three years before marrying her husband, who was then a captain in the Air Force. They lived in Honolulu for a year, then in Nebraska for seven years, where their son was born. Amanda now lives with her husband and son in northern California.

S
mile, Adela. A bride should look happy on her wedding day!”

Lady Adela Macleod turned slightly to face her younger sister, Sorcha, who was certainly beaming brightly enough for both of them. But although she tried to obey the command, she knew the attempt was feeble at best.

She had hoped that her second wedding, unlike her first, might proceed without undue fuss or drama. But although she could still hope to avoid the sort of drama that had attended her first one, there had already been far more fuss and ado than she liked, and she knew that before the day was over, there would be more.

Not only were there now two brides and bridegrooms instead of a single couple but when one’s hostess was a powerful countess in her own right, one had to expect such an occasion to merit extraordinary pomp and circumstance. And when one’s younger sister had married
the countess’s favorite nephew by declaration little more than a sennight ago, one could scarcely cavil when the fond aunt one’s own fond parent insisted on a double wedding to sanctify both marriages properly.

But even her father, Macleod of Glenelg, whose word was law back home in the Highlands, had had little if any say in today’s wedding plans—not that he had tried to interfere, for he had not. Nor had Adela expected him to, because the royal court was in residence less than ten miles away in Edinburgh, and he was himself planning soon to wed a widow in comfortable circumstances, which included a fine house in that royal burgh.

Adela had therefore understood from the outset that she must expect a larger, grander wedding than that first attempt, which had taken place in the Highlands just weeks after the death of the first Lord of the Isles. Nonetheless, the result exceeded anything she might have anticipated, because Isabella, Countess of Strathearn and Caithness, and the rest of the powerful Sinclair family had spared no expense to arrange a truly splendid affair. Adela had not mourned the lack of splendor on that first occasion, but after all her hosts’ effort and expense, she thought it a great pity that she could not seem to stir up more enthusiasm for this one.

As she waited near the elegant little chapel’s entrance with Macleod and the other members of the wedding party for the select, noble audience crammed into the chamber to quiet down, she wondered why she did not care more. After all, other than the much larger group of friends, kinsmen, and others unable to squeeze into the chapel but assembling now in the castle’s great hall for the wedding feast to come, nothing but the setting had
changed—except for Sorcha’s role, of course, and Sir Hugo Robison’s presence today at Sorcha’s side.

Adela’s bridegroom remained the same, and a generous, kind man Ardelve was, too. He was fond of her and would make few demands with which she would not willingly comply. So far, he had asked only that she run his large household in Kintail, near her own home, a responsibility with duties familiar enough that she expected to manage them easily and to enjoy them far more than she had the years of running her father’s much less manageable household and family.