Chapter Nine
ROBERT HAD ACHED to kiss Lucy from the moment he had ended the massage and she had opened her eyes, so cloudy blue with sensual pleasure, and looked at him with such innocent lust and confusion.
He had been waiting for this and he had thought the moment would never come and now it had.
He would have to be damned careful not to waste it because if he could not persuade Lucy MacMorlan to wed him after this, then there was no hope for him.
Her eyes were closed now, her eyelashes a thick black crescent against the perfect curve of her cheek.
He touched his lips to hers again, keeping the kiss gentle, keeping ruthless rein on his desires, because he could tell that this was still new to her, a revelation, and he wanted to show her just how perfect it could be.
When he had kissed her in the library at Brodrie Castle, he had wondered if she had ever kissed anyone but him.
Her hesitation and inexperience suggested she had not.
Her betrothal had evidently been completely passionless and she had had no idea of sensuality.
At Brodrie he had give her a taste of passion. Now it was time to awaken it properly, awaken her. His body, already hard, tightened further at the thought, but he ignored the demand of his senses and concentrated on Lucy.
His lips moved over hers with soft persuasion, nudging hers apart so that their breath mingled. Hesitantly she followed his lead, opening to him. His tongue slid across her full lower lip and touched hers and she sighed with pleasure.
“Perhaps I can persuade you,” he murmured. “We need not be at odds.”
She opened her eyes. They were the color of the Scottish summer sky and midnight, a deep blue, slumberous and soft.
She looked dazed, lost in an unfamiliar world.
Robert felt so sharp a pull of desire that he almost groaned aloud.
Yet it was not merely lust. That was too inadequate a word for what he felt for Lucy.
It did not begin to describe his emotions, nor the expression he saw in Lucy’s eyes.
Her lips parted. He succumbed completely to temptation and kissed her a third time, this time long and deep.
She gasped with shock at the intimacy of it.
Yet already she was opening to him, offering her mouth to him, her tongue entangling with his, her body softening against his with instinctive surrender.
It was all he could do not to wrench her up into his arms and carry her over to the chaise longue and strip her of the neat debutante’s gown to expose her once again to his sight and his touch.
Instead he pressed his open mouth to the sensitive hollow beneath her ear.
He felt her body shudder. She was so responsive.
And she had no idea of the passion locked up inside her.
Or perhaps she was beginning to suspect it.
He had no intention of seducing her. To ravish her now, when so much lay unresolved between them, would be a true scoundrel’s trick.
But he wanted to show her how well suited they were physically.
That might persuade her to change her mind about accepting his hand in marriage.
He could show her pleasure, unlock her feelings.
Oh yes, and he would enjoy it too. He was not so much of a hypocrite as to pretend this was all for Lucy’s benefit.
He dropped his lips to the lacy edging of her bodice.
The lace was soft and fine, but her skin was softer.
She made a sound in her throat, a sound that called to everything primitive and possessive in him.
He raised a hand to skim the underside of her breast. She shivered deliciously, stretching up to meet him, seeking the press of his body.
She was all artless desire and willing sweetness, far more than he could ever have imagined.
He circled her breast, his thumb brushing her nipple through the thin muslin of the gown, feeling it tighten at each repeated caress.
He could sense the tension coiling in her until she made a keening sound, and he kissed her again, harder this time, demanding.
She met the demand, tasting him eagerly now, pulling his head down to hers, her tongue tangling with his.
It was too much, too dangerous, without her consent to marriage. Another kiss and he would rip the gown from her shoulders so that he could replace his hands with his mouth at her breasts.
He wrenched himself away from her. Both of them were panting. Her lips were stung deep red from his kisses, shiny, parted. Her nipples jutted beneath the filmy gown. She looked tumbled and wanton and Robert’s body hardened to near-intolerable arousal.
“Are you sure I would not make a good husband?” he asked. It had all felt pretty damned perfect to him.
Lucy’s eyes were huge and shadowed. She looked bewildered, shock shimmering in her eyes. She took a deep, shaky breath, one hand pressed to her chest as though to steady herself.
“I do not want my husband to kiss me like that,” she said. Her voice was soft. “I do not want my husband to kiss me with passion and heat and—” She waved her hands about in jerky little gestures. “With desire.”
“You don’t want your husband to desire you?” Robert said. There were enough marriages that were colder than the Scottish snows; a dose of lust made an arranged match a great deal more tolerable.
Lucy shook her head in a brief, emphatic gesture.
She was regaining her composure, drawing it about her like a protective cloak.
High color still burned in her cheeks, but she had recovered a measure of self-control.
Robert could feel the distance between them stretch, feel her slipping away from him.
“If I ever wed, it would be a match of intellects, not passions, my lord,” she said.
“Why?” Robert said. He took a step closer to her again, but she moved back, tacitly forbidding him to kiss her again.
“It’s what I want,” she whispered.
Robert took her by the shoulders and turned her to face the long pier glass on the wall.
She still looked deliciously tousled, like a fallen angel, dazed and thoroughly kissed, his for the taking.
He lowered his head and ran his tongue along the hollow of her collarbone and felt her shiver in response.
It was as easy as that to shatter her serenity and awake the passion in her again. Her composure was wafer thin.
He slid her sleeve down over the curve of her shoulder. The skin there was almost translucently pale, scattered with freckles. He bit down gently on the point of her shoulder and heard her gasp.
“Look at us,” he said, raising his head. “Do you deny you want this?”
Their eyes met in the glass. Hers were full of confusion and something else. Fear. It was a fear so harsh and stark that it struck Robert like a punch in the gut. His hands fell to his side and he straightened.
“Lucy?” he said.
“I don’t want to feel passion,” she whispered. “Never.”
Before he could say anything else, she turned from him and ran. The tap of her footsteps increased in pace as she reached the door. It closed behind her with a sharp snap, leaving him alone in the sudden quiet.
His instinctive reaction was to go straight after her and demand an explanation. He was halfway to the door when he stopped. She had run from him because she did not want to speak to him. He had to give her time or very likely he would get nowhere at all.
He flung himself down on the silver chaise where Lucy had lain earlier.
The faint bluebell scent of her perfume drifted from the cushions.
It sent a tight, instinctive spike of desire through him as he remembered her pale nakedness against the velvet, so he got up again and stalked across to the table, lighting the candle that stood there.
The room flooded with golden light. It sparkled from the long mirror, and suddenly Robert could see again Lucy’s reflection and the terror in her eyes.
He had frightened her. He felt shocked, horrified, a complete blackguard.
And yet...
And yet the quick heat of her response to him spoke of a desire as strong as his own. For a while she had lost herself in his touch and in his arms. Which made no sense if she was afraid of him.
With an oath he splashed a generous measure of wine into the dusty glass on the side table and drank it down like medicine, then threw his long length down in the fireside chair.
The grate was cold and empty and smelled of old ashes.
He wondered where Lucy had run. No doubt that fierce little maid would be back soon to berate him for his appalling behavior in frightening her mistress.
She could not make him feel more of a scoundrel than he already did.
He wondered if it had been the taste of passion that had frightened Lucy, the fact that he had shown her how it might be between them.
She had had no experience of desire until he had kissed her.
She had read about it and written about it, but she had never known it.
Then, without warning, lust and wanting had become a reality and had overwhelmed all her ideas of perfect gentlemen and platonic matches.
He wondered about MacGillivray too. It seemed that Lucy, fresh from the schoolroom, had idealized the man, so much older than she.
He had been a mentor, a father figure, rather than a lover.
He had perhaps made her feel safe. And now she had discovered for the first time that physical love was not safe or gentle or scholarly and she was afraid.
It was plausible. Yet for some reason the doubt still hovered in his mind. The depth of terror in Lucy’s eyes argued something else. It reflected pain and intolerable memories. He recognized it because he carried with him his own share of unbearable guilt and grief.