“That,” she gulped, “exceeded my expectations.”
Now he took off his other glove and had both hands on her face. Such gentle hands with those careful long fingers. They smelled of soap. She stared at his mouth. Those generous lips. She could not wait to hear what he would say next.
But he did not speak again. He cupped her face and kissed her once more. A longer kiss this time, his mouth slightly more firmly on hers. And then again. And again.
And each time, between each kiss, he would pull back and look at her with his green eyes as if he were performing a test and assessing her reaction to it. She hoped that her reactions were encouraging to him. Perhaps she should convey her appreciation of his efforts.
“Dr. Andrews,” she said as softly as she could. “My expectations continue to be exceeded.”
There were stirrings down below, a wetness between her legs, a piercing in her breasts. But she told herself to ignore those. Just, for now, let there be kisses. There could never be enough kisses for her. From him.
In time, Alasdair noted that their breathing grew more ragged as their kisses became longer and longer. Arabella’s gloves were removed and she had her hands in his hair. Their breaths mingled and the windows of the carriage became steamed. And then, just before the carriage began to slow for a stop, Arabella let her mouth open a little wider and he felt the moistness of her mouth and the lightest brush of her tongue. It was unbearable, delicious, tantalizing. He had to push away thoughts of other lips and other penetrations, of what she might permit him, with marriage and time.
And then the carriage was halted completely and they had pulled apart and were putting on their gloves and trying to calm their breathing.
And after they had walked a bit around the ferry landing and eaten something and performed necessary but unspeakable functions and spoken to Paterson and Ewen MacEwen about the plan for the afternoon and where they might stop at nightfall, they got back into the carriage.
He handed her in and when he climbed in himself, he hesitated. Beside her? Across from her?
“It’s growing colder,” she said, taking off her gloves, seemingly unaware that her actions made no sense in the context of her words. But then she patted the seat next to her. “Sit next to me, Dr. Andrews.”
Itwasgetting colder. He was glad of it, if it gave him even more reason to sit as close to her as possible. And as he sat beside her, she moved over so that her body was touching his from knee to hip and she leaned forward and he quite naturally put his arm around her and drew her upper body into his. And she put her hand on his leg, on the inside of his thigh, just above his knee.
Her warm hand sat there as the carriage loaded onto the ferry, along with a few other carriages and some wagons. He suffered through that and the crossing. And then the unloading and finally the carriage was moving at a good clip and no one could possibly be looking in.
She turned her head and he turned his and again their mouths met.
Dozens of kisses later, he felt that wetness and a brush of her small tongue again. He opened his lips wider and briefly she licked his tongue. He then did the same to her and her taste was so sweet and it was even softer inside her mouth than on her lips.
And warmer and wetter.
And then, he felt a surge of lust, his cock was like a cricket bat in his trousers, and he wanted to press into her, to ravish her with his tongue, to take her mouth, to fill it and conquer it and make it his.
To mark it. To own it. Like a savage might.This is my woman, my woman’s mouth. No one else can have it. Mine.
He very nearly growled.
But as he simultaneously pulled her even closer to him and pushed into her so that she was forced down and against the seat, he felt Arabella tremble and gulp.
He took his mouth from hers and pulled his body away, taking his arm from her shoulder so that she was free to move away from him. But she did not. In fact, she sat up with him. So he kept his face close and kissed her cheek with closed lips. Now her other cheek. Her forehead. Her trembling stopped, and he kept his hands by his sides and looked into her blue eyes.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I grew too frenzied.”
“I did as well.”
“Shall I sit across from ye now?”
“No! But perhaps we should not kiss anymore.”
It was over.
He had offended her, had shown her that she was at his mercy and that he was a beast not to be trusted with her. After three and a half years of executing perfect, and perfectly craven, propriety in relation to her, he had lost control. In a matter of two hours, he had gone from having no expectations to having every expectation to once again being shut off from the physical closeness and affection he craved with every ounce of his lonely being.
He screamed inside.
As Alasdair ravished her mouth with his wilder and wilder kisses and he leaned into her, she heard him groan and the ache between her legs that she had felt all day ever since that first very tentative kiss, that ache became overwhelming until she felt she was on the brink of losing control, of pulling up her skirts and begging for him to touch her wetness with his hand, his phallus.
Anything.
