“You may be. I always speak plain.”
“So it would seem.”
She smiled. “So it is.”
“Well, then…” Marmaduke rubbed his hands together, warming them. Then, encouraged by her consent, her surprising and delightful eagerness, he let his fingers roam again, but kneading less and caressing more. Sweeping in ever more intimate circles up and down her back, itching to slip round her ribcage and brush against the side swells of those lush and creamy breasts.
Above all, he ached to glide his fingers lower, dip beneath the bunched folds of her undergown and explore the sweetness he knew awaited him betwixt her thighs.
He pushed the thought aside, fought against the growing tightness in his chest, a discomfort spreading all through him. And that was a shame, for he needed every breath to form the question searing the tip of his tongue…
“So, my lady…” he began, looking down at her bowed head, her night-bared shoulders and back. “Shall I speak as baldly?”
“That is my wish, aye.”
“As it pleases you, then.”
“Good.”
And it would be.He’d make certain of it.If he didn’t awaken to find himself sprawled across his pallet, her persuasive words spinning away, figments of a dream.
But he wasn’t asleep.
And she was definitely curled before him on the window bench, her sweet body only half-clothed, her acceptance of him, her eagerness for his touch, as real as the bedchamber around them, the vast, moon-lit sea stretching away to the horizon.
“You may say anything to me,” she said then, her voice soft, carrying a slight hitch. “Whatever comes to you.”
Marmaduke’s heart thumped, her word choice sending a jolt of heat to his loins.
“Well, then, sweeting,” he said, wondering if she could hear the rushing of his blood. “You wish to know pleasure?” The words came low, but seemed to hover between them, and not even the night wind could sweep away their portent.
As if she knew, she scooted around to face him. Moonlight bathed her, including her magnificent breasts, still wondrously bare. She met his gaze, her own serene, as calm as if she’d merely nodded in casual greeting.
“Aye, my lord, I wish to experience such things,” she said, the admission – and the view – turning him to molten fire. “Desire, as Lady Rhona once told me, is something my life has lacked. She said I am sorely in need of passion.”
“She told you that?”
“She did.” She nodded and the movement caused her breasts to sway. “She suggested as much the day she told me I’d best send for a champion.”
“And you did.”
“Nae, she did.”
“And now you have one.”
She smiled. “Aye. A champion, a soon-to-be husband, a man.”
A besotted fool, Marmaduke added silently.
“That is the way of it.” Her gaze slid over him. “I have decided I am as much in need of the third as the first two,” she said, leaning back on her hands so her breasts lifted slightly upward, their chill-tightened tips thrusting right at him.
Just as unsettling, her eyes gleamed bold as Bathsheba’s. “For good or ill, I am not a shy woman,” she explained, taking his hands, lacing her fingers with his.
“My body has been seen and …used… by too many to hide behind false modesty. Now, before I become a withered crone, I find I would enjoy exploring the fleshly delights kitchen maids and laundresses sing of when they think all ladies have left the hall.”
“Lady, you are as far from a crone as summer from the coldest winter,” he said as she guided his hands toward her breasts, holding them mere inches from her lush, creamy skin.
So close, he could feel the heat streaming out from her.
