Page 40 of The Duke's All That
“Do you think I’m through with you?” she murmured, the huskiness of her voice like a physical caress.
“God, I hope nae,” he groaned as she lowered her head again. The kiss was harder now, her teeth coming into play as she nipped at his bottom lip, dragging a low, pleading moan from his chest. When her hands worked under hisshirt, skimming over his stomach, playing him like the finest instrument, he lost the ability to think at all.
“Mmm,” she murmured, the sound a purr, her lips trailing from his mouth to his jaw and down his throat, “you were always finely formed, but these muscles are a lovely addition.”
A strangled laugh burst from his lips. “I could say the same about you,” he managed as one of his hands brushed the sides of her breasts. When she took hold of that hand and formed his fingers around the soft plumpness of her, he groaned. “Lass, ye shall kill me.”
“Surely you’re made of sterner stuff than that,” she teased, even as her teeth nipped his collarbone.
“Nae when it comes to ye,” he choked out. “I’ve always been weak when it comes to ye.”
She made a soft, needy sound in her throat at that, her touch becoming a bit more desperate, a bit more demanding. He willingly gave himself up to her, each trip of her fingers over his skin making him wilder for her. And when she pushed his shirt up to his neck and began kissing his chest, he thought he might combust from the fire it ignited in him.
“Do you want more, Iain?” she murmured, her lips dragging back and forth across his skin, her breath hot.
“God yes,” he groaned. He wanted more, not only of this physicality between them, but a life with her as well. The life they’d planned all those years ago, the life that had been robbed from them.
“We’ll return to Synne,” he gasped as her tongue did wicked things to his nipple. “We’ll gather your sisters and return to Scotland. They can live with us if they wish. I shall protect them as fiercely as I protect you.”
She stilled and raised her head. “Live with us?”
He should have perhaps paid better heed to the strange tension in her voice. But he was awash in sensation, and for the first time in a very long time hopeful for the future, and so did not heed the faint alarm pealing in the back of his mind.
“Aye,” he replied, running his hands over the smooth length of her thighs where they straddled his leg. “You dinnae think I would forget them, did you? Of course they shall live with us.”
She pushed away from him, scooting back across the bed until she was well out of reach. “But there is nous, Iain.”
He frowned. Something was wrong, very wrong.
“Of course there is,” he declared, sitting up. “There is no reason to divorce now. Not after learning the truth of why we were separated.”
But she shook her head, even as she pulled her nightgown over her legs. “The truth changes nothing.”
“It changes everything,” he insisted. He reached for her, certain it must just be nerves that had her talking that way. But she slipped from the bed, standing at the foot of it, as if in preparation to bolt.
“No, it does not,” she replied firmly. “I have no intention of remaining married to you, Iain.”
Confusion gave way to frustration. “What was all this then?” he demanded, indicating the bed and his disheveled clothing and her kiss-swollen lips. “Did you lie then, and it was all due to gratitude for last night?”
She flinched, but glared at him, planting her hands on her hips. “I can desire you and still wish to divorce you,” she snapped. “Physical passion is not necessarilyincumbent upon deeper feelings. And my body has urges, as I’m sure yours does.”
“So this was merely physical to you?”
“Yes.”
The blunt answer stunned him mute, more for the fact that it actually pained him.Damned fool.He had been in the throes of deep emotion, and she had been quite the opposite.
But she was not done with him yet. No, she still had some flaying to do.
“What did you think would happen between us, Iain?” she asked. “Did you think we could pretend the last thirteen years never happened, that we could go back to when we were young and in love and live out the simple dreams of those two naïve fools?”
“We were nae fools,” he growled, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and rising to face her. “We were naïve, yes. You have that right. But we were nae fools. We were forcibly separated by your father.”
“Which is something we cannot change,” she replied firmly. She moved to the covered cage in the corner, where Phineas, the damn pigeon, was beginning to make his presence known. “But you have your life now, and I have mine,” she continued, lifting the cover and opening the door so the bird could scramble out. “I worked hard to build my business, and I refuse to give up control of it. And you went through an incredible amount of trouble to find me in order to secure a divorce so you might remarry. That cannot have changed in the past days.”
But it had changed. And he was furious at himself for allowing it to have.
She must have seen the frustration in his face when sheglanced up from her pet, for her tone gentled. “We cannot go back in time, Iain. I am sorry for making you think otherwise. But you will thank me for putting an end to those thoughts, you’ll see.”
