Since Catriona had joined him for dinner, looking utterly beautiful in a gown of dark rose and with her deep auburn hair secured in loose curls at her crown, his cock had remained permanently hard and throbbing inside his pantaloons.
Having so much of his blood pumping and churning hotly in one place caused him to feel slightly light-headed.
Which perhaps explained why he had spoken so bluntly to her of his desire minutes ago.
Perhaps.
Truth be told, Andrew was naturally a blunt and decisive man. Traits he’d had to curb during this past ten years of trying to restore the decency of his Belgrade family name and the Essex title.
Catriona made him forget all caution.
Made him ache.
Want.
A want that, after so many years of restraint apart from the release he gave himself, Andrew no longer had the physical strength or desire to deny. It was Catriona’s hands he wanted on him. Caressing him. Stroking him. Giving him the pleasure his cock currently throbbed and ached for.
His gaze continued to hold hers captive now as he pushed his chair back noisily before standing. He maintained his hold on Catriona’s hand as he moved swiftly round the table. She was light as a feather as he pulled her to her feet, allowing his arms to at last move about the slenderness of her waist as he drew her close to him.
Andrew gazed intently into those dark blue eyes for several seconds, giving Catriona a chance to object if she wished to, before he lowered his head and claimed her lips with his own.
Those soft and perfect bow-shaped lips parted invitingly beneath the onslaught of his as he first took and then claimed.
Those same lips Andrew had more than once today imagined wrapped about his cock as this little Cat knelt at his feet and he thrust his hardness rhythmically into and out of the welcoming heat of her mouth until he could bear the pleasure no longer and pumped his release down her slender throat.
After years of refusing to even think of physical pleasure, just the thought now of burying his cock in Catriona’s heat was enough to harden his cock to a painful level. He could also feel his drawers becoming damp as pre-cum leaked from the slit at the bulbous tip.
“Miss Catriona— Oh.”
Andrew was barely aware of the interruption of a third party, but the woman in his arms reacted immediately by wrenching herself away so quickly, he was sure his fingers would leave bruises on the creamy skin of her arms.
Cat was mortified.
Not only at what Mrs. Munro must think at finding Cat being kissed by a man she had obviously met only hours ago, but also because she was shocked by her own response to a man who had hitherto been only cold and distant. Toward everyone and everything.
There had been none of that coldness and distance when he kissed and touched her. Kisses and a touch Cat knew she had responded to. To a degree that if they hadn’t been interrupted when they were, Cat dreaded to think where they might have found themselves.
No doubt in my own bedchamber or Andrew’s, a voice inside her head taunted.
Bad enough she had responded to a relative stranger at all, but it was made worse by the fact Andrew was also the man who threatened the life of peace and harmony she and Malcolm were building here together in the Highlands.
That it should be Esme Munro who had chanced upon the two of them kissing, a distant relative of Cat’s own dead husband, made it doubly devastating.
Cat had known the Munro family all her life, Ewan most of all, because the two of them were of an age. His brother, Alec, now the Munro heir, was a year younger than them. Much to Alec’s disgust, the two of them had always left him behind when they ran wild together amongst the loch and glens.
It had seemed only natural Cat and Ewan would gravitate toward each other at the dances and assemblies they attended when they were both old enough to do so. Their romance had blossomed, and Cat had begun to fantasize about their future life together. Of possibly years of being happily married to each other, with children and, later, grandchildren.
She had been furious with Ewan when he announced he felt duty-bound to join a Scottish regiment of the king’s army to rid the world of Napoleon’s tyranny. Cat had sympathized with his feelings about the latter. Even in the Scottish Highlands, they had been affected by hardship brought about by those years of war. But still, she had hated the very idea of Ewan going to France. Of his possibly dying there.
But as there had been no formal arrangement between the two of them when he joined his regiment, she could only kiss Ewan and wave him goodbye when he set off to join in the fighting.
Cat had missed him dreadfully while he was away, and breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief when word reached them that the fighting against Napoleon had ended with the Corsican’s surrender and subsequent incarceration on the island of Elba. To her relief, Ewan’s regiment had returned to the Highlands shortly after.
He was a slightly different Ewan than Cat remembered.
He had seemed taller, definitely broader, and his nature seemed to have hardened too. No doubt from the terrible things he had seen and been a part of.
Cat’s heart had lightened somewhat when, within days of his return, Ewan had asked Hugh’s permission to marry Cat.
She had accepted, of course, having loved Ewan all her life.
But there had seemed no need to rush the wedding when his regiment was to remain in Scotland. Instead, they spent the winter and spring months becoming reacquainted with each other before their wedding, arranged for the end of April.
A wedding that had quickly been brought forward after Napoleon escaped from Elba and seemed set on sweeping across France to return to its capital as its
