Page 30 of The Scot

Please do not say aye.

“He did not abuse me. But neither did he kiss me that way. As if . . . as if he cared for my pleasure.”

Terric understood, although he would have gladly pummeled Stokesay, were he not dead. The man had been a blind fool.

“I do not mean for you to be embarrassed.”

“I am not,” she lied.

“Aye,” he disagreed. “You are, but should not be. There is nothing more natural than this.” He pulled her back toward him. “You say he did not care for your pleasure when he kissed you . . .”

“Or at any time. He came to me rarely and always after drinking heavily.”

To beget an heir.

Not unusual in an arranged marriage, but very much so when the woman looked like Roysa. Even now the thought of his hands on her bare skin was enough to make Terric forget they were preparing for a possible battle. A fight for his home, for his life . . . for vengeance.

“Enough talk of him,” he whispered, lowering his head again. “I will do what he did not. I will show you pleasure, Roysa.”

He kissed just under her ear, holding her hair back and taking advantage of the long swathe of neck he’d revealed.

“Starting here.”

This time, he used his tongue. Little by little, he teased his way from her neck toward her cheek. When he’d just reached her lips, he stopped. Heart racing, cock pulsing, he did nothing. When she opened her mouth, presumably to ask why he had stopped, Terric held nothing back.

He kissed her, hard.

Tilting her head with his hands, Terric showed Roysa everything a kiss could and should be. This was no gentle lesson. He wondered if she could feel the evidence of his need pressed against her. It would be such a simple thing to part the heavy material of her robe, let it fall to the ground between them and continue his exploration of her luscious body.

Especially when she made that sound. It was his undoing.

But through the haze of lust, Terric felt the certainty it would lead to more than a few simple touches. Still, he could not help but reach inside her robe to find a perfectly shaped breast. He lifted it, rubbed his thumb across her nipple, and nearly came in his trewes when he found it already hard, as if awaiting his touch.

Congratulating himself for being an even better man than he’d thought his parents had raised, Terric stopped. He stepped away.

His hands felt empty, as they did every time he handed his sword off to a squire. As if a part of him were missing.

“I did not intend to do that—” He stopped, recognizing the lie, and told her an unshakable truth. “That was going to lead down a path neither of us is ready for.”

He dared her to disagree. And was disappointed when she didn’t.

“Aye. ’Tis unseemly for me, so recently widowed.”

Terric had not meant that at all. “Nay, Roysa. Being widowed by a man like that is a blessing, not a cause for mourning.”

But she felt guilty even so. He saw it on her face.

“I only meant”—he frowned—“I would very much enjoy showing you all of the pleasures of the flesh. Not just the ones that come from kissing.”

Endearingly, she blushed at the word.

He would incite that blush for a more tantalizing reason next time.

There should not be a next time, you fool.

“And it might be hard to explain to Idalia and Lance why we should find ourselves alone, unchaperoned, in my bedchamber.”

She did not flinch. “Is such an explanation necessary?”