Page 44 of The MacGregor's Lady
“Wee, managing baggage,” he muttered, but he was smiling. She could hear it; she could feel it as he brought his mouth back to hers.
But the damned man was possessed ofstrategy, for just as Hannah gathered up her courage to trace Balfour’s lips with her tongue, his hands landed on her shoulders, and then… moved. He began by massaging her shoulders gently, little squeezes with his big fingers that urged Hannah closer to the heat of his body. When she was plastered against him, his hands went questing down her back, slow, easy sweeps of his palms making her want to—Shedidgroan, softly, right into his mouth. He hitched her closer by virtue of widening his stance and gripping her derriere in a firm, ye-aren’t-going-anywhere hold that felt so blessed good Hannah sighed with her whole body.
When she touched her tongue to the soft, damp recess between his lips and teeth, he went still. She did it again, a little sweep of a hidden part of him, and his stillness became something more, something considering.
“Don’t stop now, lass.”
She let him support her while she focused on learning more of his hidden places, his hidden tastes. Up close, she could smell not only the wool of his clothing, but also the scent of a clean male still warm from his exertions. His mouth savored of cinnamon and nutmeg, a pleasant exotic taste, while against her belly, Hannah felt the solid, unmistakable evidence of his arousal.
Hewantedher to feel it, too. Made no move to put a polite distance between them, didn’t try to furtively adjust himself in his clothing, didn’t shift off to the side in embarrassment.
She paused in her invasion of his mouth to focus more clearly on the feel of him, big, hard, and unapologetically aroused simply from kissingher.
“It happens when a man kisses a pretty woman—a woman he could bed.” Balfour’s chin came to rest on her crown. “This does not disgust you?”
Disgust? Oh, it was wicked of her and shameless, but disgust was the farthest thing from Hannah’s mind. Rather than confess that she wanted to see him, to touch him—she barelyknewBalfour, for pity’s sake—she shook her head and rested her forehead against his chest.
He held her for a long moment, a moment during which Hannah expected him to step back, grin at her, and resume his lecture about her needing a man to kiss her out of her foolish loyalty to her grandmother. A moment when she should have been stepping back, informing him that a single kiss proved nothing, and a westbound ship was infinitely preferable to being slobbered over in a London back alley.
Balfour’s hand stroked over Hannah’s hair, a slow, soft, soothing caress—maybe an apologetic caress—while his arousal became less evident against her belly.
And still, Hannah didn’t step back.
Nine
Hannah Cooper was breathing hard simply as a result of kissinghim…or maybe as a result of being kissed by him.
Asher stole another whiff of the sweet lavender scent of her hair and tried to locate enough sense to make his feet move. Hannah threw her whole self into her kisses. She devoured him with her mouth, took him captive with her questing hands, and used her body to obliterate his reason.
And such a body… She did not indulge in the idiot fashion of cinching her waist to sixteen inches to enhance the appearance of her bust. She didn’t need to. Her curves were natural and generous, and she used them to strategic advantage when she undertook her kissing.
Great God in heaven…
“Love, we ought not to linger here.” The endearment slipped out, a common form of address between common strangers here in England, but not the speech of a belted earl to a female guest under his protection.
She rubbed her nose against the wool of his jacket. “I did not mean to kiss you, but if you expect me to apologize, you’re going to have a long wait, Asher MacGregor.”
She also, apparently, did not intend to turn loose of her prisoner.
His lips wandered to her temple, all without him planning it, stirring memories and heartache. “And if I apologized to you, Hannah?”
“I should have to be offended. My kissing needs work, I’ll grant you, but in Boston, the gentlemen don’t take liberties that often. My opportunities to practice have been limited.”
He gave up trying to follow her logic. That would require ratiocination, of which he was not capable with her plastered so warmly against him.
“I’ll not apologize then.”
“Thank you.”
Hehadto turn loose of her. By now every stable hand in the entire block had probably seen the Earl of Balfour taking liberties with his guest, and had seen that guest returning the favor. The chambermaids were likely gawking from the middens, and the nannies in their nursery aeries were dragging their fascinated young charges away from the windows.
And yet… how long had it been since a woman had remained in his embrace like this? The convenient liaisons he’d allowed himself in the past few years had not been intended to foster tenderness or cuddling. A welling of bodily loneliness obliterated the last of Asher’s arousal and made him long for the moors outside Steeth.
“You can let me go, Balfour.”
“Of course.” He shifted his hold to pick up the discarded skates and lace his arm with Hannah’s, pausing only to tuck his sporran around front, where it could prevent gross immodesties from befalling him.
“Am I presentable?”
