prefect complement to his thighs and taut calves. Even his heels pleased her.
Hart looked over his shoulder, arms bunching with the movement, his eyes golden in the sunshine. “Hurry, blast you. I think the ghillie is coming down the walk.”
“Perfect. Do not move, I beg you.”
Eleanor held her breath as she clicked the shutter. Hart was a burnished god, a Highlander of old come to sweep her away. Old Malcolm Mackenzie must have looked much the same, a hard, handsome fighting man, who’d been twenty-five at Culloden field. He’d eloped before the battle with Lady Mary Lennox, stealing her out from under her English family’s nose. Just like a Mackenzie—deciding what he wanted and taking it, even in the middle of war. From the stories Eleanor had heard, theirs had been a wild and passionate marriage.
Eleanor pulled the exposed plate out of the camera and picked up the next. Hart left the window in a hurry.
“That
Eleanor wanted to laugh. He sounded nervous, and she remembered how he’d voiced worry that his body would no longer please her. Poor Hart.
“Very well, then. You decide where to be.”
Hart stood uncertainly, his brow drawn, his head bent a little in thought, his delectable body glistening with perspiration. Eleanor clicked the shutter.
Hart looked up swiftly. “I was not ready.”
“No matter. It will make a lovely picture.”
Hart started to laugh. Ah, there he was, the smiling, sinful man from the earlier photographs, the man who’d laid her down in the summerhouse and taught her not to fear passion.
“All right, minx. How about this?” Hart seated himself on the bench at the foot of her bed, folded his arms, and spread his legs.
“Oh, my.”
The first photos she’d taken would have an artistic touch, a nude man in the sunshine. This one would be blatantly erotic.
Hart Mackenzie was unashamedly naked, his arousal obvious, his smile challenging. He was daring her to have a maidenly fit of the vapors, to look away, to not snap the picture. Eleanor studied the full length of his phallus and clicked the shutter.
“Another like that,” she said, her body heating. “Perhaps with you leaning against the wall.”
Hart rose and sauntered across the room. He leaned on a blank space of wall near the door, folding his arms again. His cock stood out, ramrod straight.
“Stay there.” Eleanor moved the camera closer to him, settled it in, and took the picture. “I must have more.”
Hart laughed. Eleanor caught him like that in the next shot, laughing in true mirth, his body bared for her delight.
“Excellent. Now some with the kilt, I think.”
Hart let her take three more photographs. For two he stood bare-legged in his kilt; for the third, the kilt was off, Hart holding the folds to his abdomen while Eleanor photographed him in profile.
“Now another,” Eleanor began.
Hart snarled. He dropped the kilt, came to her, hooked his arm around her waist, and pulled her from the camera. “No more.”
“But I brought seven more plates.”
“Save them.”
Hart swept her from her feet, swiftly untying the tapes that held her dressing gown closed. He laid her on the bed and peeled the dressing gown from her, careful of her hurt arm. When he found her bare beneath, he smiled, and stole her breath.
Hart climbed over Eleanor, nuzzling the line of her hair, and then inhaling all the way down her body. Eleanor expected him to part her legs, to enter her, but instead, he tasted her.
He drew his tongue between her breasts and caught one of her nipples in his mouth. Fire blossomed from the point he suckled. Hart gave her other breast the same attention, then he kissed his way down her abdomen, licked her navel, and continued down to her thighs. He parted them, kissed the soft skin on the inside of either leg, then fastened his mouth over her tight little berry.
He’d never done that before. Eleanor gasped with the wild pleasure of it. The sight of Hart suckling her, his eyes closed, his hair mussed, made her crazy with passion. His tongue was hot, driving her wild. He had to stop, but Hart wouldn’t stop. He cradled her hips in his hands, opened her to him, and drank her in.
“Hart…”
More words left her lips, but they were incoherent. She rocked into the mattress, and his tongue went on torturing her. Eleanor tried to wriggle away, but he was too strong. She had to lie back and take him licking, suckling, making her insane with pleasure.
Just when Eleanor thought she’d die of joy, Hart lifted his beautiful mouth away, slid up her body, and entered her.
He was filling her now, her handsome, naked Highlander. He laughed at her at the same time he demonstrated how good pleasure could be.
His strokes were strong, his hand on her shoulder holding her down. But he was gentle, making sure he never hurt her, even as he neared his climax.
The combination of him being rough and careful at the same time sent Eleanor into another spiral of pleasure. Ecstasy ignited from where they joined and spread across her body. She shouted with it, and Hart’s shout joined hers.
“El, my El,” he crooned as they wound down. “Dear God, you make me wild.”
Hart and Eleanor developed the photographs together, in a darkroom Mac had set up when he’d experimented with photograph art. Mac had decided that, while photography had its merits, he preferred to slap paint on canvas and had gone back to that.
Hart took Eleanor and her stack of plates to the darkroom, locked the door, and watched her competently print the images from the dry plates. One by one, the photographs of Hart emerged, his body in full sunlight, or he coyly hiding behind the kilt. He looked like a perfect fool, and it made him laugh. Eleanor ignored him and kept on developing. She finished the last plate, gazed at Hart holding his kilt over his front, and pronounced the proceedings satisfactory.
“Good,” Hart said. “Now that you have new photographs for your memory book, you’ll destroy the old ones.”
Eleanor wiped her hands. “Mmm, perhaps. I still have not found all of them. I will continue my quest.”
Hart stepped in front of her. “No.”
“Why not? It was Fenians who wanted you dead, nothing to do with the photographs. I imagine Mr. Fellows is already in London, mopping them up. The Fenians, I mean, not the photographs. The photographs weren’t the danger, and I am determined to find them.”
For answer, Hart closed his arms around her and showed her that darkroom tables could be put to more use than for developing apparatus.
The real world, unfortunately, intruded on Eleanor’s newfound marital bliss, and Hart went back to his study and his quest to win every politician in the land to his side.
Eleanor was busy herself. Now that she was the Duchess of Kilmorgan, her correspondence had multiplied into a mountain, piling up all the more while she’d lain ill.
She had Maigdlin and a footman cart all her letters to the little sitting room off her bedchamber, and she sat at the writing table, sorting through the pile and trying to ignore the continued soreness of her healing arm.
She received many letters of congratulations on her nuptials along with wishes for her to get well, and of course, a growing stack of invitations. In the middle of the pile, Eleanor came upon a rather thick envelope of
