Page 49 of The MacGregor's Lady
She was off her feet, nearly at eye level with him. Her fingers went to the buttons of his shirt, her hands hungry for the feel of his skin. “Asher MacGregor. You left me to worry,fordays. I lost sleep, fretting that my kisses were lacking, that you had been humoring the clumsy efforts of a Colonial bumpkin. You sit at the head of the table as if you’re an ocean away and barely say a word…”
She was pulling his shirttails from his waistband when he caught her hands in his. “Does this feel like a man who’s humoring ye? Like a man who’s an ocean away?”
Through the soft wool of his kilt, he used her fingers to shape the length of his arousal.
That he could behave so indifferently toward her before others was troubling. That she might not have any more such private interludes with him wasunbearable.
“I want you, Asher MacGregor. Now. I want to touch you.”
She heard him swallow. While her hand traced his flesh through his clothes, he stepped closer. “I don’t mind that ye beggar my reason, Boston—not nearly as much as I should—but I canna allow ye to beggar my honor.”
This was some befuddling male allusion to his duty as her host, or his lordly obligations, or some blighted obstacle Hannah would not tolerate. “I am not a virgin. I am ruined, do you understand me? I have no virginity to protect, andIwantyou.”
While he went still in that considering, unfathomable way of his, Hannah found the pins holding the kilt closed and withdrew them. The wool slithered to the floor, leaving the earl covered by the long tails of his shirt and the open plackets of his vest.
“I suppose ye want me naked as a newborn?” He didn’t growl the question so much as purr it. Hannah’s insides turned over, then over again.
She nodded. He shrugged out of his clothing with a twitch of broad shoulders, leaving him wearing only firelight, shadows… and a smile.
“Look your fill, Hannah Cooper, because your expression tells me whoever the blessed fool was you bestowed your favors on, he didna pleasure you properly.”
Hannah could not take her eyes off the abundant masculine pulchritude before her. In the course of her travels around London, she had seen the famous statues at the British Museum. They were puny specimens compared to the Earl of Balfour. Puny, cold, and unimpressive, and they were not standing in this kitchen, naked, aroused, and smiling—at her.
Ten
Hannah Cooper had missed him.
The woman had no idea what a weapon she wielded with those words.Nobodymissed Asher MacGregor. He’d been declared dead, and after years of silence, even Ian had probably believed it so.
His siblings had picked up their lives and moved on without him, the brother they’d known only lately. The family in Canada who might have missed him was gone, and yet Hannah Cooper, starchy, stubborn, and Boston-bound, announced she’d missed him while sharing his very roof.
Though for a woman who’d missed him, her expression was as wary as it was fascinated.
“Am I to be the only one revealing my treasures, Hannah Cooper?”
She blinked but—may she be blessed for all time—kept her gaze on his erect cock. “Can I—May I touch you?”
A question for a question. He did not believe for a moment she’d parted with her virginity in anything but name, and there would be a limit—anexcruciatinglimit—on the extent to which he indulged her curiosity now.
“You may touch me, and I will touch you.” He used his hands to gently part her knees and stepped between them. “If kisses don’t convince you that you’d enjoy the life of a married woman, perhaps pleasure might.”
Her brows drew down. “It’s not exactly a pleasure to look on you, Asher MacGregor.”
“It’s no’?” Before she could stare a hole in his parts, he took her hand and wrapped her fingers around his shaft. “It’s terrible hard work, is it?”
She shaped him, slipped her palm along his length, and traced the sensitive rim, slowly, as if she were circling the lip of a delicate wineglass. Asher had to strain over the roaring in his ears to hear what the daft woman was saying. “Seeing you like this makes me upset, inside. Anxious and… witless. You make me stupid and… this part of you is very soft.”
Her thumb dallied with the tip. Asher’s hips flexed forward, and God bless her and the entire city of Boston, she did not take her hand away. “Are ye tryin’ to make me spend, woman?”
“I’m trying to learn how you’re put together. Men and women are very different.”
Some ruined woman she was, babbling her ignorance of anatomy in awestruck tones for all the pots and pans to hear. The surge of sheer affection he felt for her blended with raging desire and restored his resolve.
“You need to learn how you’re put together, Hannah. Let me show you.”
He covered her mouth with his, wedging himself as close to her as the bloody counter would allow. She wrapped his cock in a wonderfully tight grip and held him snugly while he teased at her lips with his tongue. “Kiss me, witch.”
For once, Hannah Cooper wasn’t arguing. While her tongue came out to play skittles with his sanity, her hand started a slow, sleeving caress of his cock.
