Chapter 31
Why do I continue to try? Harry has humiliated me (I know you know nothing of it, diary. I wrote only that I could not bear to even write of it here). But be assured that it is so. Then he ignored me quite rudely. Still, I am placing myself in his path at every turn.
My head calls me a fool. My heart, however, will not be denied.
––––––––
“Harry...”
“Do you know what this reminds me of?” he asked, cutting her off. The question was a confusing one. Surely being with her didn’t remind him of a time with another woman?
“What?” she asked suspiciously.
“Do you remember that time in Edinburgh when I was staying at Abby and Richard’s after Moira and Vin’s wedding?”
It was a vague reference but not so ambiguous that Fiona didn’t immediately understand what he was referring to. Her face flushed, not with desire any longer but humiliation. Of course, she remembered.
“I had been out riding,” he continued as if he weren’t aware of how mortifying the memory was to her. He rolled his jacket off one shoulder and then the other as he spoke. “I went up to my chamber to change, and you were there on the bed. Much as you are now.”
It had been nothing like this.
He’d been staying with Richard and Abby the month before the christening ball.
Before the disaster. She’d snuck into his room one morning, waiting—yes, on his bed—for him to return to change after his morning ride.
She’d been incredibly nervous, flipping from her side to her back.
Skirts to her knees and back to her ankles, striving for a certain provocativeness that she had no idea how to express at eighteen.
When Harry finally came in, he’d been appalled to find her there and demanded she leave.
Nothing had happened.
Other than the gross loss of her dignity.
“You need to leave, Fiona,” he’d said.
“I have nowhere else to be,” she had teased as coyly as she could.
“Well, you cannot be here,” he had said bluntly.
He’d lifted her from his bed, his body shaking with anger, and deposited her abruptly in the hall before slamming the door on her.
“Do you remember?”
Fiona nodded, the memory choking her with its humiliation all over again.
“You had tormented me almost from the moment I met you,” he said huskily, working the buttons on his shirt.
Astonishment swept over her, though he wasn’t likely to see it written as clearly on her face as it must have been since he was pulling his shirt over his head. “What?”
Flinging the shirt aside, he toed off his shoes, first one, then the other. “Against my will, I had dreamed of you and imagined you in my bed. Finding you there that day...”
Good God, Fiona thought, so shocked by his admission that she couldn’t even appreciate the sculpted beauty of his bare chest. Were they remembering the same day?
“You ordered me out of your room,” she reminded him.
“You were in my bed,” he continued, watching her as he sat on the edge of the bed and made quick work of his shoes and stockings. “Your skirt was hiked up just over your ankle. Sweet innocence and seduction combined. Just as you are now.”
“You forced me bodily out of the room,” Fiona said slowly. “You deposited me like so much rubble in the hall.”
“Is that how you remember it?” He stood, his hands moving to the buttons on his trousers. Her eyes followed his hands, and she felt frustrated that he was stealing the beauty of the moment from her with such an awful memory. “That isn’t how I recall it at all.”
“You were practically shaking with anger!”
Harry laughed then, a low rumble that began deep within his chest. “Is that what you think?”
Forgetting his half-opened trousers, he crawled up the length of the bed, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunching like a prowling lion as he came. Lifting himself over her, he let her feel the hard length of him brushing against her, pressing the proof of his desire against her core.
“I was shaking,” he whispered, running one rough palm up the length of her thigh and lifting her leg around his hips, “with desire, my love. I was so taken by pure rapacious lust at the sight of you on my bed that it was all I could do to get you out of there before I surrendered to my most base urges.”
“What urges?”
“To take you for my own,” he confessed roughly.
His lips descended, running down the length of her neck.
His teeth raked lightly along her collarbone.
“You had teased and tortured me for weeks. Months. I couldn’t bear to touch you.
I couldn’t even dance with you without wanting you.
And then there you were. In my bed. My darkest fantasy made real.
All I wanted to do was pounce on you and ravish you like an animal. ”
“Unbelievable,” Fiona sighed, holding his head against her as his lips closed over her breast, drawing her sensitive nipple deep into his mouth once more.
Arching against him, she felt the pull all the way to her core and gasped out, “Isn’t it amazing how two people can see something so differently? ”
“I guess we shall just have to reexamine every conversation we’ve ever had,” he murmured against her breast as his palm covered the other. “But not now.”
“No,” she agreed. “Not now.”
“Right now, I would rather show you what I would rather have done that day.”
She shook her head, pushing him away until he was on his back. “No, Harry. I want to show you what I would have liked to do that day.”
Pressing the heels of her hands against his shoulders, she rolled over on top of him, straddling his hips.
Smoothing her palms up the ridged muscles of his abdomen, she swept them over his chest and back down the sides of his ribs.
Allowing herself to touch him, enjoy him as she had always wanted to.
Harry was spread before her like a gift she had waited for too long.
His skin was hot and smooth beneath her hands, his muscles quivering at her slightest touch.
She had the power. Her mind scrambled over how to best use it.
He liked her undergarments, she could tell, so she wouldn’t disrobe as he had, but he seemed to enjoy her breasts as well.
Uncertainly, Fiona pushed open a couple more hooks on her corset, spreading her chemise wider until her nipples were barely exposed by the lace edge.
His hungry gaze was fastened there, his lips parted.
A promising sign, she thought, when his palms cupped her breasts once again, his thumbs flicking back the lace, grazing her hardened nipples.
Pushing her hair over her shoulder, she leaned over him, eager to have his lips on her once more. He nipped at nothing more than air when she pulled away.
“You are truly about making me regret what I did. Aren’t you?”
Why not? She had him there, laid out before her, and he seemed content enough to let her lead the way. What would she have done that day if he hadn’t set her aside? Would she have waited to see what he would take? Fiona smiled. Even at eighteen, she would have been too nervous to do anything else.
She was still nervous now, but there had been a long while in between for her imagination to rework that day with what-ifs. What if he had let her stay? If he had looked like this? What if he had looked at her like this?
“Yes, I am. Now hush. There’s only a dressing room and a bathing chamber between us and Connor’s room.”
“I doubt he’s in.”
“Do you want to find out the hard way?”
Running her hands over him again, Fiona explored the breadth of Harry’s shoulders, the strength of his arms and the shape of his muscular chest. A tight sprinkling of dark hair started there and trailed down over his stomach.
Brushing her thumbs over his nipples as he had hers, she reveled in his harsh intake of breath and leaned over him to run her tongue across them as well while her hands worked their way down his ridged stomach, marveling at the way the muscles coiled and jumped as her touch dipped and cut in so definitely.
With so many men in her life and home, he’d seen more than one bare chest before and knew the amount of hard labor it took to build such massive muscles. Her brothers rode hard, boxed, and worked the estate alongside their tenants.
“What do you do?”
She ran her fingers over the rippling muscles while his rough palms skimmed up her thighs and under the hem of her knickers before his fingers closed over her bottom.
“Rowing,” he murmured. “Skulling. Cambridge.”
“Ah, so that’s why you gave in so easily when I told you where I wanted to go today.”
“Yes, and I wish I hadn’t.” He squeezed her bottom, pulling her down as he arched up against her. Fiona gasped and lifted herself.
“None of that, this is my turn.”
“Who said so?”
“I do. A thank you for saving my life.”
Boldly, she dipped her hand into Harry’s open trousers, closing her fingers around the thick, rampant erection that she found there.
It startled them both. He groaned, straining against her hand, and Fiona moaned softly herself.
He was so hot, so hard. Unable to help herself, she ran the circle of her fingers down the turgid length, savoring the low rumble that shook his chest as she did so.
“Fiona.”
His husky plea only encouraged her to continue.
Sitting back on her heels, she tugged his loosened trousers down, easing back farther until she was able to pull them off.
Straddling his ankles now, she ran her hands up to his knees, wondering at the texture of the black hair covering his legs against her palms. His thighs were hard, bulging as she slid back up, dropping kisses along the way.
Nipping at his thighs. He was beautiful in his nudity, every tense muscle shadowed and highlighted in the light of a single lamp as he waited for her assessment, his eyes piercing hers.