Page 61 of A Scottish Bride for the Duke
“Yours,” she repeated.
“Yes. You are mine.”
“And are ye mine?”
The question halted him for a second, and he paused, the blunt tip if his finger poised to enter her. “Do you want me to be?”
“Aye,” she said immediately, as though the question required no thinking about. “Even if ye are the one to restrain me, I am the one ye are touching. Ye aremyhusband. And that makes you just as much mine as that makes me yours.”
He considered that, breathing in the scent of her arousal. The force of his own lust ripped his thoughts into shreds. “Very well,” he said. “If you want me to be yours, then I will be. But you will submit to me.”
In answer, her hips rolled against his, and his finger slipped inside her. Her eyes rolled back in her head.
“If I do anything that pains you, tell me,” he said. “And if you tell me to stop, I will do so.”
The words were difficult to force out, but they were necessary. He liked force, but he liked said force to be pleasing to his partner.
“Aye,” she said. “Do what ye will with me, so long as ye do not stop.”
With such an invitation, he could hardly turn it down. With his free hand, he fumbled with his breeches, pulling out his erection.
A bead of moisture gleamed on the tip, and for a brief moment, he considered how ridiculous it was that such a lady had inspired such a response in him.
He, a man of experience, whose tastes courtesans had catered to for years. And she, an innocent, a Scot—a lady whom he did not even trust.
Yet the evidence of his desire was too much to ignore.
He rolled onto her, pressing her body into the bed. She softened under him, wrapping her legs around his waist.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, and kissed her again.
Chapter Seventeen
“Do not stop,” Isobel breathed, and the duke thrust into her.
The stroke long and smooth and just forceful enough that when it encountered a little resistance, he didn’t stop until he was seated fully inside her.
She released a shuddering breath at the sting of pain. She knew it would hurt the first time—her peers had mentioned such things, although she had not expected it to feel precisely likethis.
A sting that faded into a throb, and the feeling of fullness.
Adrian ran a comforting hand along her side.
“Does it hurt, my sweet?” He used the endearment without seeming to realize he had done. “I am not in the habit of bedding virgins,” he said, his voice wry.
Well, no, she supposed not. He was an honorable man, at least. This was no doubt his first time deflowering a lady, and was right, it was his wife.
She rolled her hips experimentally, and the pain faded still further, the ache replaced by more of that sensation of fullness. Almost to the point of burn—almost so it was too much—but not quite.
“It’s all right,” she said, not quite recognizing her voice, all breathless.
“Good.” He gripped her wrists, holding them on either side of her head. “Remember, tell me to stop whenever you wish,” he said, and withdrew from her, pushing back in.
Gently at first, as though to accustom her to the sensation, but when she merely moaned, the sensation like lightning firing in her veins, a white-hot kind of pleasure that sparked through her body in violent spurts, he increased his pace. His hips dug into her thighs, and his chest brushed against her breasts. They ached, and she arched her back, pressing more firmly against him.
“Oh, isthatwhat you want?” He looked down at her, a gleam in his eye. “Can you keep your hands there?”
“Aye,” she whispered.
