She stroked a hand over the trousers covering Matthew’s burgeoning erection. “I suppose pleasure and companionship are an improvement over oblivion and desire.”
Abruptly, what he’d intended as a gift to her—a gift to them both—felt inadequate. “Are you asking me to stop?”
Her brows knitted as she shaped him through the fabric and sent pleasure shuddering through him. “Matthew, I’m asking you to hurry.”
He hurried. He hurried
When she lay beneath him, her clothing and stays pushed aside—thank God for the old-fashioned, front-lacing country variety—the moonlight turning her breasts, ribs, and belly to so much living alabaster, Matthew took her hands and settled them on his chest. “My turn.”
“Close your eyes, please.”
He obeyed, which meant he felt the little tugs and twists as her fingers worked at his neckcloth, then at his waistcoat, and finally, his shirt. He could not be naked with her in the sense of revealing his past, but he could share the simple pleasure of physical nudity with her.
“You are such a braw, lovely man.” Her burr had thickened—a
“I’m a man in need of kisses.” He shrugged his shirt off and shifted to prop himself on an elbow beside her. “Moonlit kisses taste the best.”
They felt the best too, particularly when Mary Fran’s hands roamed his person as if she’d sketch his soul with her touch. She lingered in the oddest spots—his nose, the soft skin inside his elbow, her thumbs in the vulnerable hollow of his armpit—and her hands felt as though they warmed not just his body, not just his lust, but his soul.
“Ye are no’ hurryin’, boyo.”
“I’m pleasuring.” A fine idea, one his conscience took to with the dreadful enthusiasm of a martyr. Mary Fran wasn’t particularly objecting either, so Matthew stroked a hand up her long, shapely leg, baring calves and knees and muscular thighs as he did. “I have the oddest urge to worship your knees.”
“Ye daft Englishman.” Such affection she put into her scolds. Matthew felt an abrupt pang of pity for the departed Gordie Flynn. The man had bungled badly, irrevocably, but had probably been unable to help himself.
Matthew knew exactly how that felt. “Spread your knees a bit, love. Pleasuring takes a little trust.”
She spread her knees more than bit. “And far too much time.”
He’d decided to keep his pants on, which meant the feel of her nails digging into his buttock was muted, a teasing hint of the intensity he craved with her—more damned martyrdom.
“Matthew Daniels, when are you going to bestir—Oh, that is…” Her hand relaxed on his bum and smoothed over him in a languorous pat. “That is lovely.”
Lovely was an understatement. To his questing fingers, the folds of her sex were dewy and hot, soft and sweet to the touch. He wanted to feast on her by moonlight, visually, orally, tactilely, but did not indulge himself beyond what would pleasure her directly.
“Shall I stop?”
She shifted to flat on her back and kissed him as his fingers dallied between her legs. When he dipped shallowly into her heat, she moaned into his mouth.
“More?”
Her grip on Matthew’s hair was fierce enough to distract him from the lust racketing through him.
“Aye, more. Now, if you please.”
“Always in a hurry. Don’t rush me, Mary Fran. I’ve things to see to.”
She was exquisitely responsive, and Matthew had the sense she wasn’t sensitive merely from long abstinence. Despite his own period of self-enforced celibacy, he found the resolve to drive her mad with arousal, then soothe her with petting and kisses, then drive her mad again.
“Matthew, I canna… I willna… Ach, damn ye…” She trailed off into muttered Gaelic, most of which Matthew understood, thanks to Scottish grandparents on his father’s side. She called him daft and damned and dear, among other things. Lest she reveal unwitting confidences, Matthew increased both the pace and the pressure of his caresses.
“You can have your pleasure, and you shall, my lady. Fly free, Mary Fran.”
He infused the last admonition with a touch of command, despite himself, and though he wanted to watch her face as pleasure overcame her, he instead bent and took her nipple in his mouth.
When he drew strongly on her, she started bucking against his hand in short, sharp rolls of her hips. He thrust two fingers deep into her heat and felt her body fist around him in pleasure. The sensations were in some ways more intimate than coitus, more punishing than a shared climax would have been. Inside his breeches, he was undergoing torture, but in his heart, he flirted with something approaching absolution.
“Ye wretched, pestilential mon.”
“You’re welcome.” He pushed her over to her side and spooned himself around her. “You’ll take a chill in a moment.”
“Not with your great, lovely self draped around me. You make me rethink my estimation of the English.”
“Don’t.” He tucked his arm around her, cradling a full breast in his hand.
She kissed the back of his wrist. “Are you giving me an order, sir?”
“I’m begging you not to trivialize this shared pleasure as some exercise in international diplomacy. Are you all right?”
He was not all right. He was suffering the pangs of unsatisfied lust, which he’d suffered often enough in his life, but he was also suffering more of that need to cherish a woman—this woman.
“No, I am not all right, Mr. Daniels. A relatively harmless, well-mannered if gorgeous fellow has just sashayed out under the stars with me and plucked from my grasp not only my very dignity, but also the one thing I could keep—”
Her voice caught a little. Matthew threaded an arm under her neck and gathered her closer. “The one thing you could keep?”
“Damn and blast you, Matthew.” She heaved out a sigh and shifted. For a frustrating moment, he thought she was going to sit up and start dressing, but she instead shoved him to his back and straddled him. “What just happened—inside me, between us—it has happened before.”
“Frequently, I hope.”
She left off nuzzling his throat to frown at him in the moonlight. “Only when I’m drowsing, ye ken. More asleep than awake. It never happened with my husband. I wouldn’t allow it.”
“Mary Frances MacGregor, you probably drove the poor bastard right out of his mind, which is exactly what he deserved for entrapping you.”
“I drove him to Canada.” This was said miserably, the words muttered against Matthew’s shoulder.
He recognized guilt and recognized even more when guilt had been carried too long. “Gordie had choices too, Mary Fran. A marquess’s second son has a damned lot more choices than an eighteen-year-old virgin has. He could have transferred to a ceremonial regiment, could have apologized, could have wooed you properly, could have admitted he’d been desperate to secure your hand at any price because he was smitten. You would have let him serve out a reasonable penance and then taken pity on him.”
She went still in his arms, her whole body in an attitude of listening. “I might have. I have a terrible temper, but I’m not unjust, usually. Fiona would say as much.”
Matthew traced the bones and muscles of her back, marveling at the texture of her skin, wishing he could count the freckles on her shoulders. Her silence suggested she was still thinking, reconsidering matters she’d long ago arranged in the optimum configuration for self-torment.
He knew how that felt too.
“When he took ship, I saw him off. The night before…”
Matthew gently squeezed her nape, and she sighed. “You forgave him. It’s good that you forgave him, Mary Fran. Men are much in need of forgiveness, particularly young men who’ve been spoiled their entire lives, and men afraid of losing their heart’s desire.”
