“Do you know what this reminds me of?”he asked, cutting her off.The question was a confusing one.Surely being with her didn’t remind him of a time with another woman?
“What?”she asked suspiciously.
“Do you remember that time in Edinburgh when I was staying at Abby and Richard’s after Moira and Vin’s wedding?”
It was a vague reference but not so ambiguous that Fiona didn’t immediately understand what he was referring to.Her face flushed, not with desire any longer but humiliation.Of course, she remembered.
“I had been out riding,” he continued as if he weren’t aware of how mortifying the memory was to her.He rolled his jacket off one shoulder and then the other as he spoke.“I went up to my chamber to change, and you were there on the bed.Much as you are now.”
It had been nothing like this.
He’d been staying with Richard and Abby the month before the christening ball.Before thedisaster.She’d snuck into his room one morning, waiting—yes, on his bed—for him to return to change after his morning ride.She’d been incredibly nervous, flipping from her side to her back.Skirts to her knees and back to her ankles, striving for a certain provocativeness that she had no idea how to express at eighteen.When Harry finally came in, he’d been appalled to find her there and demanded she leave.
Nothing had happened.
Other than the gross loss of her dignity.
“You need to leave, Fiona,” he’d said.
“I have nowhere else to be,” she had teased as coyly as she could.
“Well, you cannot be here,” he had said bluntly.
He’d lifted her from his bed, his body shaking with anger, and deposited her abruptly in the hall before slamming the door on her.
“Do you remember?”
Fiona nodded, the memory choking her with its humiliation all over again.
“You had tormented me almost from the moment I met you,” he said huskily, working the buttons on his shirt.
Astonishment swept over her, though he wasn’t likely to see it written as clearly on her face as it must have been since he was pulling his shirt over his head.“What?”
Flinging the shirt aside, he toed off his shoes, first one, then the other.“Against my will, I had dreamed of you and imagined you in my bed.Finding you there that day...”
Good God, Fiona thought, so shocked by his admission that she couldn’t even appreciate the sculpted beauty of his bare chest.Were they remembering the same day?
“You ordered me out of your room,” she reminded him.
“You were in my bed,” he continued, watching her as he sat on the edge of the bed and made quick work of his shoes and stockings.“Your skirt was hiked up just over your ankle.Sweet innocence and seduction combined.Just as you are now.”
“You forced me bodily out of the room,” Fiona said slowly.“You deposited me like so much rubble in the hall.”
“Is that how you remember it?”He stood, his hands moving to the buttons on his trousers.Her eyes followed his hands, and she felt frustrated that he was stealing the beauty of the moment from her with such an awful memory.“That isn’t how I recall it at all.”
“You were practically shaking with anger!”
Harry laughed then, a low rumble that began deep within his chest.“Is that what you think?”
Forgetting his half-opened trousers, he crawled up the length of the bed, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunching like a prowling lion as he came.Lifting himself over her, he let her feel the hard length of him brushing against her, pressing the proof of his desire against her core.
“I was shaking,” he whispered, running one rough palm up the length of her thigh and lifting her leg around his hips, “withdesire, my love.I was so taken by pure rapacious lust at the sight of you on my bed that it was all I could do to get you out of there before I surrendered to my most base urges.”
“What urges?”
“To take you for my own,” he confessed roughly.His lips descended, running down the length of her neck.His teeth raked lightly along her collarbone.“You had teased and tortured me for weeks.Months.I couldn’t bear to touch you.I couldn’t even dance with you without wanting you.And then there you were.In my bed.My darkest fantasy made real.All I wanted to do was pounce on you and ravish you like an animal.”
“Unbelievable,” Fiona sighed, holding his head against her as his lips closed over her breast, drawing her sensitive nipple deep into his mouth once more.Arching against him, she felt the pull all the way to her core and gasped out, “Isn’t it amazing how two people can see something so differently?”
