Once Upon a Tartan

cheek, hitched himself up around her, and started making a mental list of the ways Jasper Merrihell was going to regret treating Hester Willamette Daniels Flynn badly.

“I am going to impart to you now a truth, Hester. Attend me closely, please, because in about two minutes, I will be incapable of speech.”

She undulated beneath him, her intimate curls brushing against him low on his belly. “I’m attending you closely, and I cannot imagine you being rendered incapable of speech. Not ever.”

If she kept that up… “Becoming intimate with another this way takes time, Hester. It’s like learning a language shared with only one other person. You must instruct me regarding what pleases you, and I will offer you the same insights regarding myself.”

“This is the trust part, isn’t it?” She punctuated her question with a glancing caress to his nipples.

“It’s trust and pleasure, served together to both of us. And if you don’t like what I’m doing, you tell me to desist.”

“I told Jasper to desist.” She said this very quietly, her face pressed to his throat. “He kept saying ‘in a minute.’ It was a very long minute. He did not hurt me, but he did disappoint me.”

Merriman had hurt her, and when Tye could muster the mental focus, he’d determine a way to hold the man accountable. “If I don’t desist when you ask, you simply grab my testes, and you’ll have my undivided attention.”

“Grab your… your command of Latin has me agog, Spathfoy.”

She was talking vocabulary when what was wanted was reassurance. Tye focused on where their bodies were close but not joined. “What about this? Does this leave you agog?”

He pressed forward, not even an inch, and she went still. “Oh, Tiberius.” She gave a luxurious roll of her spine, as if she’d take him into her body all at once. “Yes, please. That leaves me quite, quite…”

He did it again, not enough to penetrate her sex but enough to tantalize. Her legs closed around his flanks, a snug hold embodying reassurances of its own.

The moment of joining his body to a woman’s was a little interval of tedium, usually. It bridged the gap between preliminaries and escalating pleasure, and yet it required focus and patience.

With Hester sighing and moving beneath him, Tye wanted to prolong their joining in all its aspects. He moved slowly, slowly in the advance-and-retreat rhythm of coitus. He offered her kisses; he offered her an embrace that cradled her close and cherished that closeness at the same time. He shoved his own gratification as far from his awareness as he could, listening instead for the signs that her arousal was gathering steam.

“Tiberius?”

“Here.”

“This is… Oh, God.” She convulsed around him with no more warning than that, bowing up to clutch at him while he resisted the temptation to drive into her faster and harder. When her pleasure subsided, he stilled.

“Are you all right?”

“Uhn.” She drew her foot up the back of his leg.

“When you plan your trousseau, you must add a number of pairs of wool socks, Hester.”

“I’m not planning anything at the moment.” She sounded dreamy and sated, poor dear.

“I’m planning something.”

Against his chest, Tye felt her eyelashes flutter open. “You are the sort of fellow who’s frequently planning something. Maybe you’re planning your journey south.”

“My journey to points south on your body, perhaps.” He started moving again, slowly, but with purpose. “Shall you gallop again, Hester, and feel the wind in your hair?”

“Again?” She lifted her face to peer at him by the waning firelight. “Isn’t it time you sprang your own horses, so to speak?”

“Soon.”

For form’s sake, he pleasured her once more without permitting himself to spend; and because he was a gentleman, he did not labor the point any further. Because he was human and male, he in fact could not labor the point any further.

“Tiberius, can we do this all night?”

The wonder in her tone did his heart good. “Eventually, but because you are inexperienced, to persist much longer would leave you sore.”

And himself dead or committed to an asylum for men who’d suffered excesses of self-restraint.

“Sore?”

“You’re going to want a soaking bath in the morning.”

“I see.”

“Hester?”

She nuzzled his neck, which he took for as much answer as he was going to get. He shifted so his mouth was right near her ear. “Hold me.”

She’d long since caught the knack of moving with him, and closed her arms and legs around him. “You’ll fly with me, Tiberius? Take the last fence with me?”

He’d meant to pull out. Coitus interruptus was a term even the scholars failing their Latin knew before they left public school. The sweet, snug heat of her removed this useful phrase from his vocabulary, though, flung it right out of his mind, tossed it far from his heart.

He thrust steadily, hard and deep, and within moments felt her sex fisting around his cock in great, clutching spasms.

“Tiberius, please.”

She sank her nails into his arse, bit his shoulder, and obliterated his awareness of anything save the soul- deep pleasure of joining her in a shared moment of ecstasy. He gave up his seed into the welcoming depths of her body, gave up his self-restraint, his heart, his all in the act of loving her.

* * *

“Aunt Ariadne, what are these trunks doing here?”

Hester examined the brass hasps on three large valises airing out in the hallway of the family wing.

“One never knows when one might go on an extended journey.” Ariadne thumped past at a stately gait. “Perhaps I’ll head south soon and avoid the coming cold weather.”

“Cold weather is still months off.” Weeks, anyway. Hester gave the trunks one more puzzled glance, then followed the older woman to the head of the stairs. “I can’t believe you braved the steps merely on a whim, Aunt. What is going on?”

Ariadne did not have to look up very far to face Hester, but rather than do that, she laid one hand on top of the other on the knob of her cane. “I do believe dear Ian has come to call again, and with more rain threatening by the moment. Go greet him, Hester, I’ll be along directly.”

Something was afoot, something wild horses and handsome Cossacks could not pry loose from Ariadne This puzzle added another touch of unease to a day that was already unsettled, probably because Spathfoy would be leaving in less than twenty-four hours.

While Hester would be remaining behind. She wasn’t going to tell him “no,” she was going to give him a “maybe”—an encouraging maybe, an almost-certainly-yes maybe, but a maybe nonetheless. She could not leave Fiona and Ariadne alone, for one thing, particularly not when the child had been through so much upheaval already.

And she needed time to sort out her feelings, to parse infatuation from deeper attachment, to test her own judgment. How she would convey these things to Tiberius had yet eluded her, but she hoped on the strength of their growing friendship that he would listen and give her the time she requested.

“Ian, welcome!” She accepted the earl’s green-eyed scrutiny and his kiss to her cheek. “You’ve come alone?”

“Aye, my countess says His Bairnship might be coming down with a wee cold, so I’m left to wander the heather all on my lonesome. Has Fee been running you ragged, Hester Daniels? You look a touch fatigued.”

“I’ve been up late reading old journals.” Not a lie, but Ian’s steady scrutiny suggested he understood it for a half-truth. He patted her hand and laid it on his arm. “We’ll feed you some scones and tea, flirt with you a bit, and