Lucy nudged his plate gently toward him. “Go on now,” she chided. “Have a taste.”
She had already broken a tiny point from her diamond-shaped biscuit. His gaze fell helplessly to the slight parting of her full crimson lips.
His chest tightened.
Her even white teeth closed around the piece.
Arran’s chest tightened.
The elegant column of her throat worked with a slow, languid swallow.
He could sooner snap his own arm off than look away from the erotic glide of her throat.
Wicked thoughts rooted themselves fast—what he could teach her with that mouth. What she’d taste like. What sounds she’d make.
His eyes drifted shut on a wave of hunger so sharp it bordered on pain.
God in heaven. It was a plea to a Savior Arran doubted had time for a man as ruined as he was. The Lord, however, wasn’t finished testing him.
Lucy darted out her tongue—light, quick—and licked a trace of sugar from the seam of her lips.
Heat slammed through him like molten metal.
“Well?” she urged, her Scots brogue thickened from the mulled cider. Elbow on the table, she leaned in. “What of it?”
A bead of sweat crept down his brow. “Delicious,” he rasped.
She’d be even more delicious spread beneath him, offered up as the only feast he craved.
Lucy laughed—a low, smoky sound that fed the fire in his blood. “Still afraid I’ll poison ye?”
Afraid he’d lose his mind with wanting her.
“Go on. Put it in yer mouth,” she coaxed softly. “Ye’ll not regret it.”
It took all his strength not to groan outright. With a strained smile, he bit into the biscuit. “Delicious,” he said again, the gingerbread thick on his parched tongue.
Her smile faltered.
Christ. She knows. All she needed was to glance down and see the unmistakable erection he’d sprung against the fall of his trousers.
“Ye dinnae like it.”
Nay, he despised the lust he felt for his cousin’s future wife.
Arran hated himself even more.
But what he abhorred with the entirety of his being was the sadness that’d threaded Lucy’s words.
Arran popped the rest of the sweet she’d labored over into his mouth. He closed his eyes so he could block out the sight of her and focus on just tasting.
Get a bloody hold of yourself, you blackguard. You’re not a green lad with your first woman. You’ve had countless lovers—wanton widows.Clever courtesans. Skilled mistresses. Experienced women who knew exactly what Arran liked and how he liked it.
Those reminders to himself didn’t make Arran’s hunger for Lucy any less potent.
But the sweet cinnamon and spice biscuit on his tongue came a very distant second.
“Bloody hell, this is good,” he exhaled his praise around the bloody finest dessert he’d ever tasted.
