She gathered her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “I am grateful for that, at least. And if you truly wish to protect me, you will continue to be discreet about what you have seen.”
Lachlan decided it was a good time to shoulder his way past the young lad, simply to avoid a fight, because he would have flattened Alex if he stood in his way for another minute.
Lachlan entered Catherine’s room and waited by the fire.
“I appreciate what you tried to do here,” she quietly said to Alex, who remained in the corridor. “You were very brave.”
“I suppose I must have been, my lady, because I seem to have lost all feeling in my legs. I’m feeling a bit dizzy, actually.”
“Why don’t you go across the street and join the others,” she suggested. “And if you say a word about this to any of them, Alex, I promise I will not let you live long enough to regret it.”
She firmly shut the door, turned the key in the lock, and faced Lachlan.
He took one look at her in her nightdress, and his body throbbed with desire. In that moment he knew that if he was not careful, the pleasure he was about to give—and take—could turn out to be the worst mistake of his life.
And hers. For he was completely out of control with wanting her.
Chapter Twenty-six
“You look like you are about to change your mind,” Catherine said, her voice falling to a hush.
“Aye. I’m thinking about it.”
He was disturbed by the intensity of his feelings—not just his desire, but his adoration and affection—and the complete abandonment of his long-established caution when it came to intimacy of any kind.
What had she done to him?
She crossed toward him. “I won’t let you. I’ve been waiting all day and night for you, and I want this.”
“Do you always get what you want?” he asked. “Because I don’t.”
She dropped her shawl onto the back of a chair and reached up to unfasten the brooch at his shoulder. “Well, I promise that you can have it tonight. Some of it, at any rate.”
She set the heavy brooch on the table, and with graceful hands, slid his tartan down over his arm while he kept his eyes fixed on hers and came up with a dozen and one reasons why he shouldn’t allow this to continue.
In the end, however, he lifted his arms over his head so that she could remove his shirt, and when she tossed it to the chair on top of her shawl, he basked in the heat of her sultry gaze.
Slowly unbuckling his belt and scabbard, she regarded him with playful eyes, which aroused him further, then set everything on the table and unraveled his kilt.
“Now see?” she whispered with a sneaky smile. “I’ve removed all your weapons. You won’t be able to fight me.”
“It was never my intention to fight you, lass. All I want to do is love you.”
Her eyes lifted, and neither of them spoke for a precarious moment. She idly dropped his tartan to the floor.
He stood very still, naked before the warmth of the fire, while the pounding of his blood through his veins provoked his emotions and crushed any previous impulse to leave. He wanted this woman with a fury that was too powerful to resist. There was no turning back now. Her beauty compelled him forward, and he swept her up into his arms.
Carrying her to the bed, he kissed her mouth with a passion that bordered on violence. He set her down on the soft mattress and stood over her while he stroked her body with hungry, joyful hands, relishing the fact that he could touch her so freely through the thin fabric of her nightdress.
He slid his palms across her luscious breasts, rubbing the pads of his thumbs over her pebbled nipples, then journeyed down her shapely hips to her thighs, where he gathered the white linen in a hand and began to tug it up over her knees.
“I am going to pleasure you tonight,” he said, “and make you cry out in ecstasy.”
“As long as it pleasesyou,” she purred, squirming lavishly on the bed.
“Ah, it will.”
She lifted her hips and sat up so he could pull her nightdress off over her head; then he crawled onto the bed to lie beside her sweet, voluptuous form.
