When a Scot Loves a Lady

body. Good God, it hadn’t been that long since he’d been with a woman that he should feel this burn, this blinding urge to drag her shift to her waist and her to the floor and get inside her without delay. He was finally the barbarian he’d pretended to society for years, ravenous for a woman and intent upon making her his.

She slipped her hands down his chest, moaning softly, and he plunged into her mouth. She was a lady yet he was treating her like a whore. It mattered little what rumor claimed. Kitty Savege was nothing of the sort. Her touch of eager hesitation and sighs of sweet innocence gone astray told him so.

He mustn’t do this.

He broke the kiss. She allowed it, not seizing him as she had earlier in the day, not pulling him close again. Instead she trembled and looked up at him through thick lashes.

His hands gripped her shoulders, his brow pressed to hers. He forced out words.

“Kitty, lass, we’d best be saying guid nicht.”

Her breaths came in soft, jagged pants, tickling his chin.

“I daresay we had best.” The tip of her tongue passed along her lower lip. Leam sucked back a groan. By God, he wanted to taste her unto eternity. To lick every inch of her mouth and throat, her beautiful breasts, the palms of her hands, and her hot womanhood.

“But— No.” She said upon a little choke. “What I mean to say is—What are you doing?” Her voice quivered. “Are you merely teasing me?”

“A’m slowing it down for ye, lass.” What was he saying? There was no it, and he didn’t want any slowing down. He wanted to haul her up to his bed and do to her everything he’d been imagining. And more. Plenty more. Then he wanted to leave her in this little village and return to Scotland and sanity.

Her hands dropped. She backed away.

“Well, then. Good night, my lord.” She gathered up her garments, held them to her middle as though they were a fur muff and she was strolling through the park, and hurried up the stair in nothing but her shift and loosened stays.

Leam swallowed a full five times, hard, like the rock in his trousers. He took a step forward.

He halted.

A few sessions of groping might pass. But anything more would not suit him. His heart had never beat so furiously, swift with sheer warning. He had been down this mistaken path once before, thrown himself headlong into peril that remained unmatched in the following five years he’d spent working for the crown. Peril he had spent those years trying to forget.

He did not want that.

But he wanted her.

He swiped a hand across his face. He was no celibate, by God. He could enjoy a tumble with a beautiful woman without fear. She wanted it, and he would give it to her. He wasn’t the foolish youth who had lost himself so thoroughly to a woman that he became blinded to everything around him, including her. And Kitty Savege might not be a doxy, but she was no virgin to be misled.

Yet he stood, paralyzed, no shoes, no shirt, and staring at nothing, unable to move a single muscle.

Kitty barely made it to her bed. She sank onto it, strewing her garments at her feet and covering her face with her hands.

What horrid, nasty, taunting divinity had provided her with a man who looked and kissed like a god yet seemed to possess an astounding ability to detach himself from an unclothed woman throwing herself at him? Despite her remaining scruples she wanted his touch, his kiss, the sensation of his hot skin and hard muscle beneath her palms. She had tried to win at cards although she ought never to have played. But when he removed his shirt she’d nearly died.

Good heavens, were all men so beautiful beneath their clothing, so perfectly proportioned like Greek statues? It couldn’t be. She felt certain at least ten gentlemen of her acquaintance wore stays and another half dozen purchased buckram padding by the bushel.

Leam Blackwood did not do either, obviously. Everything in his coat was defiantly real man, broadly structured and muscular yet slightly underfleshed, an athletic man who ate perhaps not quite enough.

She had touched that. She had touched him.

It made her weak inside. It made her feel insane.

Why didn’t he want her? Or did he, and he was too decent to take full advantage of her? They called him a flirt. Was this flirting, teasing with kisses and touches until she could think of nothing but him? He said he was slowing it down for her. Why would he do that for a woman of her besmirched reputation? Did it mean he wanted more from her—eventually? As she did. Oh, Lord, as she did. How could that possibly be?

She yanked off her wretchedly confining stays that he had begun to remove yet had not, turned onto her side, and wrapped her arms about her middle.

Why must he be decent? Why must he be even a little bit gentlemanly? She wanted him to be a barbarian, the lout he’d said he was. She wished he had not followed after Emily on the stair to protect her from possible danger. Kitty wished instead that he’d made quick, careless love to her in the parlor, on the sofa, the floor even, wherever rogues had their way with loose women, so that she could revel in being known by a man who could not touch her profoundly. So she could revel in running away from the cold, controlled woman she had come to be.

But if she did, if she took him as her lover, she would be precisely what the gossips of society believed her already.

The door creaked. Her hands jerked away from her face. The panel opened a crack and he came into her bedchamber.

She leaped up.

He was absolutely beautiful, his eyes dark, his jaw firm and hair tousled. A triangle of male flesh was revealed by his shirt, recalling her palms to the taut smoothness of his skin, the texture of dark hair descending in a line to his trousers, the strong beat of his heart.

She shook her head. “But you said—”

“Kitty—”

“I cannot.” The words slipped through her lips.

His chest rose and fell hard. He tilted his head.

“That moment when you—” She gulped in thick breaths. “You said you would slow it down for me, which I believe is an excellent idea. And—and—” She stuttered. “And when Mr. Cox went to follow Emily upstairs, and you were ready to…” Would he understand? She hadn’t really until now.

“Don’t you see? You are no longer a stranger and it changes everything. I know that must make me the greatest wanton this side of—” He moved to her swiftly and covered her mouth with his palm, warm and encompassing and sending her heartbeat flying. He bent his head and spoke above her brow.

“An A’d hae kent this afore.” His voice was low. “A woudae gladly left the bairn tae her fate wi’ him.”

Kitty laughed, muffled against his skin. He released her.

Her tongue stole along the edge of her lips, tasting him there. “You would not have.”

His gaze dipped to her mouth. “Aye, A might have.” It turned quite sober. “Lass, ye dinna know me frae Adam.”

“But I—”

“Than pretend ye dinna.” A note of haste colored his words now, or perhaps desperation, like hers.

His dark eyes shone. “Pretend for the nicht.”

“Oh, God. No,” Kitty groaned, feeling him without even touching him. Knowing everything was changing now.

He knew it as she did. He had tried to put her off before, but he had succumbed below stairs, and again now. He had come to make love to her although it could not be wise. They were not for each other despite this thing that drew them together, the hot familiarity that should not be there between them.

But perhaps he was merely a man, unknown to her as he said, who would say anything to gain entrance to a woman’s bed. She would depend upon it. She would pretend there was nothing else, nothing she could feel each