Once Upon a Tartan

“One unfortunate encounter does not a lady ruin.”

She did not point out that by his reasoning, she should be entitled to at least one lapse with him, then. “Jasper has put it about that he was sampling used goods, and eager used goods. I did not understand how any woman could be eager for that… poking business, but with you, I think I could.”

“You could…?”

“Be eager. I can’t seem to be anything but eager.”

“For God’s—” He brought her hands up, kissed each palm, and looped her arms around his neck. “My dear woman, if you were any more eager, I’d be lying on the floor, thoroughly ravished. The male mind boggles to consider such a thing.”

The thread of amusement in his voice encouraged her.

“I apparently can’t help myself around you, Spathfoy. I find your attractiveness unlikely and inconvenient, but undeniable.”

This ought to have given him a little purchase on his lamentable resistance, ought to have put him a bit off. But no, Hester realized as he draped his arms around her shoulders and rested his chin on her crown. He was male, and that she was reluctant, even in theory, piqued his interest.

“How will you bear to look at me over breakfast, Hester? I’ve been to all the house parties. I know how to be cordial and flirtatious the next day without it meaning a thing. Despite what Merriman wants you to think of yourself, you are innocent.”

He was a good man, to try so hard to dissuade her. Hester had suspected this; she only hoped he wasn’t too good. “I managed breakfast this morning, didn’t I?”

He was quiet as he held her, and Hester could feel two things. First, she could feel his mind doing some sort of emotional gymnastics, vaulting between the dictates of traditional honor—which would have him tossing her bodily into her own room, as threatened—and the whispered suggestions of opportunity, lust, and maybe even of a different kind of honor.

“Here is our dilemma,” he said, his hands moving slowly over her back. Hester liked that it was our dilemma. “If I take you to bed and avail myself of your charms, I am a cad and a bounder, regardless that you endorse such behavior. Nonetheless, you are in the grip of misguided female notions about proving something to yourself, and one doesn’t speak reason to a lady on such a course. If I send you on your eager, misguided way, you will be disappointed and emboldened to try again, if not with me, then with some other man who might not be at all considerate of you.”

He fell silent while Hester focused her awareness on the second thing she could feel.

His erection, big, hard, and intriguing against her belly. Maybe he was allowing her to experience his arousal in an effort to bring her to her senses; maybe he was so wrapped up in his philosophical debate, he didn’t realize how closely he was holding her.

She rocked her hips forward.

He did not shift away.

“If you get into my bed, Hester, there will be no undoing it, no taking it back in the morning. You’ll know, and I’ll know, and I promise you, there will come a time when we’ll wish we hadn’t. We will both wish we hadn’t.”

“Stop talking.” She anchored her hand in his hair and went up on her toes again to kiss him. Men this size should come with a mounting block if they were going to be so shy about receiving kisses. “I live with regret well enough.”

When he kissed her back this time, it was different. Slower and hotter somehow. He’d reasoned his way to some conclusion that allowed him at least to kiss her, to insinuate his tongue into her mouth and his hands around her derriere.

“Spathfoy, I want—”

“Tye.”

“Tye.” She tried it out against his throat. “Tiberius Flynn.” He was going to be her lover, and he had a name, not just a title. It was a good, substantial name, imposing, like his kisses—and his erection.

She knew a moment of doubt, even as she subsided against him. “Blow out the candles, please.”

Laughter rumbled in his chest. “Don’t you want to see the prize you’ve captured, Hester?”

She did, but knowing him, that would mean he’d expect reciprocal privileges. She felt his chin on the top of her head again, a comforting weight that let her know exactly where he was in a way his arms around her did not.

“Now, she falls silent. Come.” He stepped back and encircled her wrist with one hand. They went on a short progress about the room, with him blowing out all the candles but the one nearest the bedside.

“Do you know, Hester, if you asked me to blow out this last candle, I would?”

She found she did not want him to, though his offer was consideration itself. “You’d proceed in complete darkness?”

“For your modesty, or your courage. And listen to me when I tell you, every man you seek to intimately accost should be willing to do likewise for you. He should let you bind him, blindfold him, or keep your clothes on while you remove his.”

His voice had gotten very stern, leaving Hester torn between pleasure that he was protective of her and irritation that he’d lecture her about future lovers when she hadn’t properly availed herself of him first.

And bindings? “You’ll let me undress you?”

He dropped her wrist and gave her a smile of such riveting sensuality Hester felt the heat of it on her skin. “I did imply that very thing, my dear, and I would love to undress you.”

The game was on, the game Hester had campaigned and pleaded for. She’d lain in wait for him, ambushed him in the garden, accosted him in his own room—his word was appropriate, she didn’t flinch from it—and now she had no idea what to do, didn’t know the rules, didn’t know what would constitute victory or defeat.

He took a step closer. “Or you can watch while I undress for your pleasure.”

Oh, God. She would stare him directly in the eye over breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but she was going to have to cover her ears.

That voice. It was the same beautiful, masculine voice, but grown naughty and lazy with innuendo, and so intimate it ricocheted through Hester’s body to land burning at the feet of her reason.

“Or,” she said, resisting mightily the urge to unbutton his shirt, “you can stand about listing possibilities all night.” And she could listen to him, too.

His smile shifted into a sweet, wicked curve of his lips that lit all manner of mischief in his eyes. And while he smiled, his elegant, nimble fingers went to the fastening of his trousers and stilled.

Hester’s mouth went dry, and she was unable to look away from his hands, hovering over the bulge in his trousers—the sizable bulge.

He caressed himself once, then set about taking off his shirt. She tried to swallow and managed to blink. “You’re teasing me.”

“Turnabout, my dear. If you’d like to get into bed, I won’t stop you.”

He was daring her, or perhaps giving her dignity and self-possession a reprieve. The bed was only a few steps away, though on her unsteady knees, it seemed a long journey indeed.

Spath—Tye—lifted her into his arms, carried her up the steps to the bed, and laid her on the mattress.

Such gallantry restored a measure of her confidence. The earl—Tye—would be kind in bed and generous, even in his arrogance. He would know exactly what to do when she knew nothing, and he’d share his knowledge without her having to ask. This was part of what she needed from him, and that he’d understood it better than she had was reassuring.

So reassuring, she shamelessly watched him when he moved to lock the bedroom door, shed his shirt, and crossed to the washstand.

She lay on the bed and watched while he washed his face and hands and then under his arms. He was unself-conscious about his ablutions, as if demonstrating for Hester exactly how intimate they would be. He used his tooth powder while she watched too, and though his behavior would have been the same if she hadn’t been sitting on the bed, she sensed he was every bit as aware of her as she was of him.

Which was very aware indeed.

“You might want to take off your wrapper and nightgown,” he said, crossing the room to sit on the bed.