Page 18 of A Match Made in Heather

Her mind raced as fast as her heart. He remembered that, after all these years?Impossible.But when he reached up to her face, to cup her cheek for a brief moment before trailing his hand down her body, her mind went blank. All she knew was the heat of his dark gaze pinning her in place, the solidity of his hard body hovering just above hers.

“Because it wasn’t enough to only look at you,” he continued in a deep purr that seeped through her, leaving hot tingles in its wake. He splayed his fingers across her throat, and a devilish smile tugged at his lips as he traced his fingertips over her racing pulse. “Not enough to hear your laughter, or even to be graced with one of your smiles.”

His hand caressed downward over her chest as it rose and fell rapidly with each panting breath. All of her pulsed, electric. When his fingers reached the first button of her riding dress and slipped it free, that small tug slammed through her like a lightning bolt.

“I had to be with you, Arabel. Had to have your attention focused solely on me.” Another button slipped free as his hand worked its way with agonizing slowness down her front. “But even that wasn’t enough.”

“Garrick,” she pleaded in a whisper, although she couldn’t have said if she were pleading for him to let her go or pull her closer.

Knowing what her body wanted, he granted what she craved and lowered his head to kiss her. A soft whimper escaped her.

When he moved away, she followed, arching up as if pulled by a magnet. His eyes gleamed at that, but he remained just out of reach, except for his hand, which continued its path down her front, loosening each button and leaving her breathless.

“As untamed as the highlands, as sweet as the heather . . .” When the last button slipped free, he pushed open the bodice of her dress to sweep his hand over the short corset beneath. “To be that close to you yet not be able to touch—” His fingers pulled the zigzagged laces free until her stays loosened and gaped open over her breasts. “Madness.”

He took the fingers of his glove between his teeth and pulled it off, then slowly slipped his hand beneath the corset and chemise to cup her breast. She bit back a soft cry of need and frustration at the heat of his bare hand against her, but she couldn’t keep from arching her back to bring his hand harder against her, or stop the small shudder of pleasure that shot through her when he teased at her nipple with his thumb.

“The scent of you lingering on my clothes, the taste of you on my lips . . . I craved you, Arabel.” He pushed down her stays to reveal a single breast, peaked and aching. “I yearned for you.”

He lowered his head to take her breast into his mouth.

With each suckle of his lips and flick of his teasing tongue across her nipple, the throbbing heat between her thighs grew stronger. She’d not forgotten how exquisite the sensation of having his mouth on her body, or how he’d made her want him. But it had never been like this, never this relentless and overwhelming. Never this much agonizing heat, lapping flames at her toes and burning her up from the inside out.

“It wasn’t enough to be near you, Arabel. I had to be close to you, as close as possible.” He whispered into her ear, “I had to be inside you.”

When his mouth returned to hers, capturing hers in a plundering kiss that left her breathless, all of her shook helplessly from the intensity of the man he’d become. Her arms lifted to encircle his neck of their own accord, to dig her fingers into his silky hair and pull his head down as her lips parted beneath his in permission to ravish her kiss.

He tore his mouth away and laid a blistering trail of hot kisses down her neck. “Even that wasn’t enough,” he murmured as he tongued the racing pulse in the hollow of her throat. “I wanted your love, Arabel. Because I loved you.” His mouth returned to hers, and he murmured against her lips between kisses, “I loved you more than life itself. And make no mistake.” He sucked at her bottom lip and drew a soft moan from her. “I would have waited forever for you if I could have.”

“Garrick.” She closed her eyes and surrendered to the mounting need he flamed through her.

His hand moved down the side of her body in hard, firm strokes over her curves as he kissed her. Nothing about him was gentle. Not the way he roughly massaged her breast against his palm, not the way he raked his other hand down over the tops of her thighs. Not the way he thrust his tongue between her lips in a fast, barely controlled rhythm that ripped her breath away with its erotic promise for more and left her panting beneath his hungry assault.

But she was just as hungry, aroused both by the wicked confession of his words and by the way he knew how to excite her with the exact right amount of roughness tempered by tenderness. Her fingers dug into the hard muscles of his shoulders, and when his hand grabbed the hem of her skirt and yanked it up her legs, she shuddered with a need born of ten years of pain and frustration, of doubt and loss.

The yards of tartan in her full skirt made it impossible for him to bare her from the waist down, but he shoved enough aside to be able to slip his hand beneath and caress along her inner thigh. A cry of longing poured from her. He kissed her greedily, drinking in the sound.

“I have never been happier in my life than when you said you loved me,” he murmured against her lips. “You loved me for the man I was. You wantedme.”

The emotion in his voice pierced through the fog of arousal that intoxicated her. Sucking a deep breath to fight for control of her heart, she reached down to grab him by the wrist and still his hand.

“Yes.” She opened her eyes, and the raw arousal on his face ripped her breath away. “But now you want revenge.”

“Not against you, Arabel,” he assured her. “Not anymore.”

“Then against my family,” she whispered, and the hardness that flashed across his handsome face told her she was right. “Let me have Highburn. It means nothing to you, but it’s everything to me.”

He stared down at her, and his expression became inscrutable, like a veil coming down over his face. “I can’t do that.”

Slowly, he pulled his hand free and smoothed down her skirt. When he began to move away, she cupped his face in her hands to hold him still.

“Then letmego,” she pleaded. Hot tears of humiliation formed at her lashes that she’d been weak enough to end up in his arms.

“I can’t seem to do that either,” he said quietly.

With a cry of frustration, she shoved at his shoulders and scrambled out from beneath him. She stumbled backwards across the cottage to put as much distance between them as possible.

She stared at him, her lips parting as confusion danced with anger and humiliation inside her. Howdarehe return and spin her world on end like this! After all they’d been through, after all the years that had passed—Oh, she was a fool to think that the past was behind them!