Hope’s sweetness was his life’s essence and as she reached her orgasm, she let out a cracked moan. Graham did not relent as she rode her ecstasy. By the time it finished, she was quivering and he was silently pledging his soul to hers forever.
Slowly, Graham stood up as Hope’s skirts dropped over her legs. She was staring in him with a look of such hazy, heated desire that he knew he could take her right now if he wanted to, without a word of protest from her. The ache in his cock was almost too urgent to ignore, and it had him on the verge of giving in.
But whatever small part of him was still functioning on an honorable level stalled him. He wouldn’t take his future wife in a green house before he’d made his vows to her properly, even if every inch of his body screamed out for it.
He gently helped her down off the table and they stood there, panting for several minutes. Graham wrapped his arms tightly around her frame, and held her to his chest as if she were some sort of precious gift.
“You’re too fine a woman to be taken in a makeshift greenhouse,” he said into her slightly disheveled hair. “But I couldn’t help tasting you.” When she didn’t speak, he pulled back and raised his hand to caress her cheek. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she mumbled, pressing her face against his chest. “It’s just… I never…”
Innate pleasure coursed through his veins. It was plain to see that no one had ever brought Hope to orgasm before, and he selfishly relaxed in the satisfaction that he was the only person to do so.
He dropped his forehead and rested it against hers.
“You’ll not hold it against me, for doing so in a greenhouse?”
A short chuckle came from her mouth. She shook her head.
“No. I never want to be so fine a lady that I refuse to be taken in a makeshift greenhouse.”
Graham chuckled, his laughter reverberating deep in his chest.
“I have to go to Uncle’s house today to check on the rest of my hives,” he said, his thumb brushing her bottom lip. “Come with me?”
She shook her head again.
“I can’t. I meant to speak with Rose about something.”
“About what?”
Hope pulled back slightly and the teasing glint in her smiling eyes made him hard all over again.
“It’s a secret.”
“Wives aren’t meant to keep secrets from their husbands.”
“Then it’s a good thing we aren’t married yet. But if you insist, I’d love to hear your thoughts on lace versus silks.”
Graham sighed. Wedding preparations.
“Ah, well, perhaps you can keep this one secret.”
She hit him in the chest playfully, but he caught her wrist and tugged her forward, planting a kiss on her forehead. It was tempting to capture her lips again…but if he did that, he might never leave. He needed to let her go before he lost control of himself.
“Very well,” he said, releasing her. “I’ll see you tonight?”
Hope nodded enthusiastically and Graham escorted out of the greenhouse and into the garden where she climbed the stone staircase that led back up into her room.
He would have a devil of a time focusing on his work for the rest of the day. Deciding that his work could wait until tomorrow, he set out to return to the hunting lodge that served as his home when he wasn’t in Glasgow.
Nestled in a copse of tall Scotch pine stood the gray, stone hunting lodge. It was a modest building compared to Lismore Hall, though it was certainly large enough to house twenty or so men comfortably. Graham kept a staff of four employed. A cook, a maid, a butler, and a stable hand. Each member of his staff was older than him by at least a decade and they all had chosen the job specifically because of the seclusion of the lodge.
Graham rarely hosted people there, given that he spent much of the year at his Glasgow residence. When he did visit his uncle and cousins, he had rooms at Elk Manor. Still, Belle hadinsisted that he make the old hunting lodge his own and he quite enjoyed the solitude of it.
After handing off his horse to Melvin the stable hand, he climbed the three modest steps and pushed through the green painted door, entering a bright hallway. The walls were whitewashed and adorned with dozens of antlers; trophies of men who had long since passed.
The floors were wooden and darkened by age and use. It was decidedly shabbier than Lismore Hall, but then the hunting lodge had always been a place for men to disregard the fripperies of elegant society. It had suited Graham’s bachelor lifestyle for many years.
