Page 82 of The Laird's Masked Passion
“Aye?”
“Warm.”
His thumb brushed the edge of her jaw. “Where?”
Her eyes widened with such scandal that he couldn’t help but smile.
“I willnae answer that.”
“Ye already have.”
“I have done nay such thing.”
“Yer body did.”
Her lips parted. No retort came. She hated that. He could see it. His sharp-tongued wife, robbed of words by the truth of her own blood.
Colin leaned nearer, not touching her elsewhere, though it cost him. “Were ye wet?”
She inhaled sharply. “Dinnae ask me such things.”
“I asked because ye need tae ken it isnae wicked.”
“Itfeelswicked.”
“Aye,” he murmured. “The best things often dae, at first.”
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. His control thinned to a single dark thread. He could have kissed her then. He wanted to. He wanted her mouth angry beneath his, then yielding, then not yielding at all but answering with that fierce, ungoverned honesty she gave to everything except desire. But this was not about taking whathewanted.
His hand slid from her chin to the side of her neck, his thumb resting over the frantic beat of her pulse.
“The lass in that room,” he murmured, “wasnae being harmed.”
Elspeth closed her eyes briefly. “I ken.”
“And that unsettled ye more than if she had been.”
A breath left her. “Aye.”
“Because yer maither told ye different.”
The flinch was small, but he felt it. Anger moved through him, old and black, not at Morven Fraser, who had given the only knowledge she possessed, but at every man who had made fear sound like wisdom in a woman’s mouth.
Colin bent until his lips brushed the place beneath Elspeth’s ear.
“Pleasure isnae a thing men keep fer themselves.”
Her fingers caught his sleeve. “Colin.”
His name in her mouth was a wound and a blessing.
He drew back enough to see her face. “Say stop, and I will.”
She stared at him, breathing too fast, pride and longing warring so fiercely in her expression that he thought it a wonder she remained standing.
“I should go,” she whispered.
“Aye.”
