Chapter 11 #2
And he was climbing into her bed. “On your back.”
His was so big, he made the entire bed shift and jostle as he moved. The mattress bounced as he flopped onto his back and crossed his arms behind his head. “Do we need terms, Augusta?”
“Terms?” She was becoming drunk on the bounty before her.
He ranged the length of her bed, making a large piece of furniture abruptly much cozier.
He’d stayed above the covers, so she saw everything from the soft hair of his underarms to the geometry of his chest and ribs, to that lovely, lovely man-part of him, on down to legs thick with muscle and feet larger than any Augusta had studied before.
She leaned in to sniff at his chest.
“Terms, my lady, like nothing said or done, no act or omission between us in this bed tonight will be cause for regret or recrimination. This is a gift we give each other.”
“I get a much larger present than you,” she said, surveying him.
“Give me your hand, Augusta.”
Curious, she did. He took her hand, and without letting her pause or draw back, wrapped it around his erection. “Stroke me, and I’ll tell you how it feels.”
“Stroke?”
He showed her, showed her how tightly to hold him, showed her the parts that were particularly sensitive, the same parts he liked to have touched and cupped and fondled. He showed her how God put together the male organs involved in procreation and explained their functions and habits to her.
It was an initiation of sorts, and she treasured him for making the time for it. She was going to leave her bed in the morning a far wiser and more confident woman—also much sadder, but she pushed that realization firmly to the side.
“I like this,” she said, stroking a finger over the hair at his armpit. “It’s very soft and very dark.” Incongruously soft. “Particularly compared to your chin.” She ran the pad of one thumb over his shadowed jaw. “You are hard in so many places, Ian.”
“While you are soft.” He held her gaze as she traced her hands for the dozenth time down the stair-step muscles along the outsides of his ribs. Lean, powerful, and utterly open to her for these few hours. She’d gathered her courage long enough.
“You want to see me, don’t you?”
“Of course I want to.” He smiled but didn’t shift his position. “If you’re feeling too modest, I’ll content myself with learning the feel and taste and touch of you. A canny Scot learns to improvise.”
The taste of her?
“Don’t worry, Augusta.” He drew his finger down the crease in her brow then down her nose. “I want only to pleasure you. Keep your nightgown on if you like, or dive under the covers before you take it off. It matters naught to me.”
“You think I’ll want it off soon enough.” And she would. In the next instant, she wanted it off.
“You want it off now, lass. You’re wondering why I didn’t peel you to your skin when I had the chance.”
“Why didn’t you?” She resisted the urge to gather her disheveled clothing around her just to thwart him.
“For two reasons. First, to assist me with my self-discipline, so I might have as much patience as you need tonight.”
“That was flattery. What’s the real reason?”
“Because you deserve to learn some pleasure, Augusta, some little touches of decadent wickedness. I’m guessing you permit yourself on the occasional hot night to leave off the nightgown. Ah, I’m right. But you think it a pragmatic concession, nothing more.”
“I like it, a little, to be honest.” She did gather the folds of her dressing gown over her middle. “But I also feel foolish. For whom am I being wicked?”
“For your own pleasure, my lady. Just as being half undressed is a pleasure of a different order.”
His hand, big, warm, and a little rough, eased along her waist, until he was a sweet, stealthy intruder under her nightgown. “Breathe, Augusta.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding then went still, the better to focus on his fingertips sliding up her ribs.
“Ian…” She closed her eyes as his movements edged her nightgown away from her body, dragging the soft fabric along her breast.
“Hush and let me look,” he said, his burr thickening. “You’re beautiful, Augusta. Never doubt it.”
While she waited in silence behind closed eyes, he slowly parted her clothing, peeling back layers of propriety, loneliness, and uncertainty as he did. “Beautiful,” he said again. Then he went still, his hands framing her on either side of her ribs. She opened her eyes and met his gaze.
“There you are.” He sounded so pleased with her for simply opening her eyes. So proud. He moved his hands up to cover her breasts, his touch easy and reverent at the same time.
“You make me want to be naked all over, Ian MacGregor.”
“Soon.” A single word, enough to inflame and soothe, both.
His gaze dropped to her breasts, and she had the courage not simply to allow it but to enjoy him feasting on the sight of her.
His hands moved gently, a rasp of his palms over her ruched nipples, a single finger caressing the undercurve of each breast, and then—glory of glories—a slight, glancing pressure to each nipple.
“Ian…”
“I know, love. You can have more of anything you please, but let me learn you now.”
He arranged her on her back as he had been, but made no move to push her nightgown from her shoulders. As fascinated as she was with the intimacies they were sharing, Augusta still kept a drape of cotton over her sex.
“I’ll see all of you when you’re ready to show me.”
He lay full length beside her, wonderfully unselfconscious of his own nudity. When Augusta had thought of being intimate with Ian, she’d had a vague notion of kissing and holding and moving under the covers in a silent, darkened room.
How ignorant she’d been, how unimaginative! This nakedness was a wonderful expression of closeness beyond her experience, a closeness she’d longed for without being able to describe.
“Let’s have some kisses, shall we?” Ian leaned over, and Augusta braced herself for the pleasure of his mouth on hers. She closed her eyes the better to savor what he offered, only to feel his breath on her nipple one instant before his mouth landed there.
The pleasure was… shocking, intimate, so intense she whimpered with it.
“Augusta?” He raised his head to peer at her. “You don’t like it?”
She took his head in her hands, arched her back, and begged with her body for more of those kisses. Any words were beyond her, so dumbstruck was she by what was passing between them.
She gave herself up to him, to his ability to sense when she was becoming overwhelmed, when he needed to veer off to a different touch in a different territory.
“You’re not the chatty kind in bed,” he concluded long moments later, almost as if speaking to himself. “But your body speaks volumes, my love. You like this…” He arched over her and kissed her deeply while he plied her nipple with his fingers. “Though you’re not so sure about this…”
He shifted, letting his hand trail down her midline and dally a little at her navel.
“Augusta?” He addressed himself to the lower curve of her nearest breast, speaking right against her skin. “What does my body tell you?”
His hand didn’t stop moving; it kept on trailing south, to tease the curls shielding her sex. He’d flirted with that before, stroking and patting and even massaging the flesh over her pubic bone. The variety of his caresses inebriated her, the skill with which he plied them…
He’d asked her a question. “What?”
“What does my body tell you?” He’d gone a little Scottish on her, “ma bodie.”
She opened her eyes. “Your body tells me you know far more about this business than I dreamed there was to know.” A whole sentence, clearly spoken while he tugged a little here and there.
“What else?” He didn’t bother to hide the smug humor in his voice.
“That you’re patient and naughty, also inventive.”
He smiled, teeth gleaming in the darkness. “Such flattery.” He took her hand and guided it to his erect penis.
“You’re aroused. Still.”
“Seems I am.” His finger dipped lower—when had she parted her legs? “Seems you are as well.”
She was… damp. Augusta frowned, some of the erotic haze lifting from her brain. With… Oh, she forgot his name—the anemic blond fellow with the clammy hands—she’d thought something must have been wrong, because it had felt like he’d been pushing sandpaper into her body.
“Is it bad that I’m aroused?” She could ask Ian that, now.
“For God’s sake, woman. Do you think I’m turning m’ balls blue…” He stopped and smiled crookedly.
“Do they really turn…?” She could not imagine such a thing, but there had been so much she hadn’t imagined.
“No, hinny, it’s a phrase to describe when a fellow’s asked too much of his patience. When do you bleed, Augusta?”
She didn’t even blush at his inquiry. The question was intended to protect her from dire consequences—her life among the yeomanry had provided at least that much insight.
“Soon. I expect I won’t be joining the shoot.”
“You are a woman of providential good timing, my heart. There’s more I’d share with you, but it grows late.”
Was he leaving? She bundled into his long body, hiking a leg over his hips in a display of need that would have been unthinkable an hour earlier. “I don’t want you to go. Not yet.”
“I’m not leaving this bed until I’ve attended to your pleasure, Augusta Merrick, and my own as well. But I’m debating…”
She loved hearing his words rumble in his chest while he held her. Loved the scent of heather clinging to his skin, loved the solid warmth of him. But this debating…
“What are you debating about, Ian?”
“When you were with your beau, how was it?”
She drew slightly away. “Surely this is not a fit topic…?”
“Love, we’re abed after midnight with my clothes in a heap on the floor. There are no unfit topics except for how quickly a Scottish summer night passes. Did he cover you, put you on your knees before him, sit you in his lap, have you ride him—?”