“Aye.” Marmaduke would’ve sworn he caught a flare of disappointment flash across her face.
“I only want you to massage the knots from my back.” She turned her face to the sea again. “It will feel better without my chemise in the way.”
“Indeed.” Marmaduke narrowed his good eye at the back of her fair head, his desire to woo her, to win her love and ignite her passion with careful and leisurely deliberation, at war with the beast she’d unleashed with her boldness.
“Bare flesh is more sensitive,” she said then, her gaze still on the dark night beyond the tower windows. “’Tis an ancient truth.”
“You are full blunt,” he said, his voice tight with the cost of his restraint.
“I told you, I am a woman of plain words,” she reminded him. “I am also practical.”
“So I believe.”
“Life has taught me so,” she returned, and leaned forward, no doubt aware that a swath of moonglow spread slowly down the length of her naked spine.
“Please,” she urged, the softness of her voice near as bewitching as the satiny skin awaiting his attentions. “My back aches and your touch is soothing.”
He swallowed.
His hands obliged her.
Smoothing, stroking, kneading.
Spending her every ounce of pleasure his roving fingers could supply, and driving himself to the brink of madness.
“Think you I can do this and not desire to caress the breasts you’ve bared as well?” A certain unruly part of him borrowed his tongue. “Be warned, lovely, I am not a beardless youth to be teased and-”
“Nor do I wish to provoke you. We are soon to wed, are we not? I do not mind if you touch me,” she said, and his manhood strained again.
He stood silent, unable to speak.
Or move.
His hands stilled on the small of her back, his entire body tighter than a full score of tautly drawn Welsh bowstrings.
“I am coming to know you.” She twisted her head around and peered up at him. “You want to know why I do not mind.
“The reason,” she went on, her sapphire gaze as earnest as her tone, “is because it felt good when gazed you upon me just now. My breasts, of course.”
“Guidsakes,” Marmaduke borrowed another word from his MacKenzie clansmen.
“The moment was pleasurable,” she added, making things worse.
“I see.” He did, and the knowledge saw him swelling to such a painful degree he almost embarrassed himself.
A lesser man would have.
“You enjoy suchlike?” He could scarce push the words past the dryness in his throat.
“Perhaps? I do not know. With you, it would seem.” She looked at him, her face shadow-cast in the moonlight. “I have not known much physical pleasure. I would like to address that deficiency,” she said, the words coming out in a rush.
As if, despite her boldness, she sought to have done with them before they could damn her.
“You understand what you are saying, my lady?”
“Of course.”
“I must be certain.”
