Page 38 of The Scot Beds His Wife
Nothing about Alison Ross was perfect. Her thick, heavy hair belonged to a woman with a much less elegant neck. Her eyes, too wide and shrewd for such a delicate chin and sharp nose, should not have been paired with a brow so prone to censure. She was too tall, too thin, too crass, and much too insolent.
All of that gave her a sort of uncultivated allure, a beauty much like the forest in which they stood, dappled with several genuses of trees and moss, grass and blossoms. Its own beauty cultivated by its rather random, untamed imperfection.
He could look at the unsophisticated topography for hours, and not think to move a single tree or replace a meadow.
These were the eyes with which he appreciated Alison Ross.
Though she often spoke, swore, and rode like a man, she felt like a woman against him, feminine and fragile.
She undeniably tasted like a woman.
And yet… so unlike any other women he’d sampled. To say she was sweeter missed the mark entirely. She was rather like strong Turkish coffee when one had only ever tasted multitudes of tea.
A shock.
A revelation.
As Gavin feasted on lips softened with a rare lack of ire, he realized what dangerous ground they both stood upon. Treacherous because it was terrain he’d promised never again to tread. Paved with sweet stones of consideration and vulnerability that—once outlived their usefulness—were always picked up and hurled at him.
Instead of taking from her, he was seized with the urge to give. He pressed against her because the desire to infuse her delicate bones with warmth overcame his need forself-preservation. He’d tupped a lass or two against a tree come Beltane or Samhain… and he’d allowed her back the abrasions of the bark to remember their pleasure by.
But this… this was no casual, alcohol-infused encounter. And it should have been. He’d meant to dominate her, hadn’t he? To show her that he could leave her panting and boneless while he, the great seducer, could stow her convictions with a kiss.
Then, unaffected, he’d walk away and take her land.
Well… that simply could not happen now.
This kiss was a dynamic shift in the very stars that wrote their fates. It peeled back years from his soul somehow, took him back to before he’d become a hunter, and a traveler. Before Colleen had torn what was left of his heart from his chest and left him alone in the world, before his mother was blinded and his father killed.
Before Liam, his brother, left for the army, thus condemning Gavin’s own childhood to death.
To when these woods were a haven to a kind, sensitive boy, and the open land of Erradale the only bit of freedom he’d ever tasted.
The only place his cruel father would never look for him.
Having Alison in his arms now, coaxing a response other than defiance from her, was a chance, a challenge. One he wanted to embrace.
One he wanted to reject.
And knew he could not.
He had to take care with her. To recognize her strength, but honor her softness. To shield her delicate skin from any abrasions but those caused by his own whiskers.
Or his teeth.
Fierce hunger reared in him at the thought of any part of her in his mouth. Now that he’d tasted her lips, he wanted a taste of it all. He wanted her writhing in capitulation as he supped on every part of her. The soft lobe of her ear, the taut arch of her neck, the turgid peak of her breast, and ultimately, her sweet, soft sex.
She broke the kiss only an intake of breath’s time before the deafening report of her pistol shattered the peace of the forest, and drove their heated, straining bodies apart.
CHAPTEREIGHT
Samantha used the time it took the startled Lord Thorne to figure out that he hadn’t been shot—once again—to sag against the tree and catch her breath.
Everything trembled. Her limbs, her bones, her lips, the leaves beneath the percussive rain. The earth beneath her feet.
Noting that her aim had not been true the first time, she lifted her pistol, aimed carefully, and shot again.
This galvanized the astonished lord, and he had her back against the tree and relieved her of her pistol before she had the chance to react.
