He looked at her. She was watching him play with her hair.
“And he likes blue eyes. And fair skin. Like yours, Helen.”
Her voice was low and breathy. “So will ye school me, Jack?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?” He arranged her wavy hair around her shoulders. One finger stroked her earlobe. “What is everything?”
She shuddered. “Ye are going to make me say it? Kissing . . . touching . . . anddàireadh.”
“And that last one is?”
“Rutting.”
Rutting. His cock throbbed.
He should have taken Helen when he first met her, outside, with the sheep. Down in the mud, her lean hips in his hands, rain streaming off her rump as she pushed back into him and he thrust into her. Like a ram tupping a ewe.
The tenting of the blanket over his lap became more pronounced.
He ran the tips of his fingers along her hairline, to the back of her neck. “My lady, you would not need to know rutting. A simple kiss can be enough reason to force a marriage.”
I would love to rut with you. Ask me again to rut with you.
She jerked under his touch of her nape. “If the duke dinnae marry me, I will have to wed Lord Reeves or some other man like him. I cannae think his kind cares much about pleasing a woman. And I think I should have one experience of pleasure in bed before a lifetime of duty.”
“You think I would please you?”
She shook her head. “Ye are more in need of compliments than any woman I know, Jack Pike. Ye peacock. Aye, I know ye will please me.” Her voice became raspy. “Looking on ye pleases me. And when ye touch me . . .”
He rested his hand on her collarbone. “And when I touch you?”
She looked straight at him, her eyes boring into him. “Ye drive me mad with desire.”
“I do?” He had never had a woman confess her lust to him like this. With no coyness, no blushing, no downward-cast gaze.
“I cannae think.” Her black pupils were enormous, overtaking her blue irises. “My heart goes so fast, like now.”
He lowered his hand to her upper chest. He felt her ribs moving with the thump of her racing heart.
“I feel piercing pains in my . . .“
“In your what, Helen?”
“In . . . in my breasts and . . .”
He slid his hand down to her small breast, almost lost under his palm. His fingers scrabbled over her nightdress and found a nipple and pinched it lightly. “And where else, Helen?”
She moaned and her whole body undulated as the nipple became stiff under his fingers and her head went back. “And . . . pains down below.”
He moved his hand farther down her body and pressed against her mound with the back of his hand, feeling her maidenhair under the nightdress, pushing her thighs apart a little with his thumb and his pinky.
“Pains? Does it hurt?”
Her eyes were closed. “N-nae. But it drives me mad, the ache. I . . . I cannae think . . .”
