Hewas supposed to be the one in control…so why was his heart suddenly racing faster than they just had on horseback?
He needed to remind himself of the reason he’d traveled to Scotland—to tease and tempt Amelia until she could take it no more, to make her ache with a fraction of the desire he’d held onto.
But any thoughts of revenge aside, he still longed to make her yearn for him.
It was painful, but Dorian forced himself to step back.
Amelia tried tohide her flushed cheeks while she looked over her horse, carefully tilting her head in just such a way. She’d felt Rory stumble slightly shortly before stopping, and she wanted to be sure there wasn’t a stone lodged in his hoof. When she lifted his foot and rested it on her thigh, however, what she saw made her curse aloud.
“My, my, but that is an unladylike word,” Kempton said, amused, as he looked over her shoulder. One of the horse’s shoes had been thrown.
“I cannot ride him back, and this monument marks the boundary three miles from the castle.” Amelia groaned. She took a bracing breath and released a sigh of resignation. “We’d best begin walking.”
As if to underscore her misery, a rumble of thunder rolled across the sky.
“Ride with me,” Kempton said. “Maximus can easily handle our combined weight. We can make better progress this way, instead of trying to outrun the storm.”
Amelia wasn’t keen on being so close to Kempton again—it made it too difficult to think clearly.
“A true gentleman would give me his horse and offer to walk mine back on his own.”
Kempton gave a loud bark of laughter. “And risk getting lost on my way back? I am not that chivalrous, my lady, nor am I that stupid. No doubt, you cannot wait to be rid of me, but I refuse to make it that easy for you.” As he lifted her into the saddle, Maximus shifted at her unfamiliar weight.
“What if I ride and you walk beside me?” she suggested hopefully, but Kempton knew her game. It seemed he was not going to allow her to flee that easily.
“Maximus isn’t that fond of riders he does not know,” he said as he lashed her gelding’s reins to his stallion’s saddle. “And I’ll not be left to walk these three miles alone while you and your hound take off with both horses.” Rather than mount before her, he lifted himself behind her, so his powerful thighs bracketed hers and her bottom nestled between his legs. She tried to slide forward as much as possible, but the sheer stature and build of the man behind her meant there was no room to retreat, and she would have to ride the rest of the way home pressed against him intimately.
Right where it seemed he wanted her.
And right where her traitorous body longed to be.
They rocked insilence, both swaying gracefully to the stallion’s steady gate. Faye trotted along beside them. Amelia sat in stony silence, seemingly focusing on anything and everything exceptthe intimate cradle created by Dorian’s legs and the hard, solid wall of his chest behind her. If she settled back just a little, then she could lean into him for support—in fact, he silently willed her to do just that. However, she stubbornly kept her spine ramrod stiff and straight, jolting upright each time she rocked a little too closely to him. He couldn’t resist a short chuckle.
“I promise not to bite,” Dorian said, his breath warm and close to the dainty shell of her ear. She held herself unnaturally still, as if barely resisting the urge to shiver. He could not resist wrapping his arms around her, shifting the reins to one hand, handling Maximus with decades of skill and earned trust. She was so warm and soft in all the right places. Delicate and strong at the same time. She fit against his front as if she’d been made for it—as if he’d been made to fit himself around her.
“It is not your bite I am trying to avoid,” she grumbled beneath her breath. She shifted her seat, bumping the curves of her bottom against his groin again and again. It was all he could do not to press her pelvis back against his, to grind against her and rock his burgeoning erection along her cleft. She seemed unable to sit still in her agitation, and it was wreaking havoc on his senses.
Dorian inhaled deeply against the top of her head, filling his lungs with her essence. It was a grave mistake. From somewhere deep in the recesses of his memory, all the emotions associated with Amelia’s intoxicating scent came flooding back to overrun his veins. They flowed through him like the headiest of elixirs, invading his senses and causing his arousal to rage to nearly uncontrollable levels. His free hand stilled on her hip.
“You may want to stop your wriggling,” he growled against her hair. “It matters naught what my head feels; I’ve little control over certain reactions taking place in my body.”
He recognized the moment Amelia understood his meaning, because she froze as still as a marble statue—she was a widow,after all, and she surely must have understood the implications. What followed was painfully stoic silence and a woman who seemed to take great pains to move as little as possible. That, along with some very intentional breathing on Dorian’s part, went a long way toward gradually dampening his arousal; however, it made their progress back to the castle unbearably slow. She returned his every attempt at small talk with either agonizing silence or monosyllabic responses.
“Is the weather always this fickle?” he’d asked when another, louder rumble of thunder rolled over their heads.
“Yes,” she’d replied flatly, effectively killing that avenue of conversation.
“Have you owned your gelding long? You seem quite the pair.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you have had him for many years? What is quantified as a ‘long time’?”
Silence.
“How old is he?”
“Nine years.”
