Before she could breathe, his arms clamped like steel around her, his hands bunching in the thin lace of her nightgown. His hips and mouth crashed against her at precisely the same moment in an ardent, almost violent claiming.
His tongue burrowed past her lips in an erotic intrusion as he fused their mouths and their bodies. The ridge of his sex ground against her belly. The heat and girth and taste of it a scorching memory she yearned to reacquaint herself with.
His restless hands splayed on her back, creating a gentle counterpoint to the ardent kiss as they slid down her spine, dipping into the dramatic curve of her waist and shaping over her hip. He stopped there, toying at the curve as though searching for something.
“Yer drawers,” he whispered against her mouth.
“I don’t wear them to bed,” she admitted shyly.
He said a few things in a language she’d never before encountered and fisted her shift in his hand. “If ye keep surprising me like this, woman, tonight willna last long.”
“I’m sorry,” Cecelia said contritely, deciding she loved when he called her woman.
His woman.
“Doona ye dare apologize,” he commanded before swooping to claim her lips once more. He distracted her with drugging kisses as he attacked the ribbon keeping the wispy sleeves of her garment around her shoulders. Once he’d untied it, the cotton and lace slid away from her curves to join her robe.
The chill of the night air caressed her everywhere, and she burrowed against him, suddenly shy and anxious. Though this man had already turned her most private places into a banquet, Cecelia had underestimated what being naked in front of him would feel like.
She thought of her breasts, a pendulous burden two times the size of Alexandra’s. She thought of all the places she was round and soft and large, now unshaped by a corset.
What if Ramsay saw her true shape and was repulsed?
He made to step back and look at her, but Cecelia clung to him like a burr, pressing their mouths so firmly together their teeth met.
His fingers ventured where his eyes could not, gliding down her shoulders and stroking across her chest until he angled away enough to fit his palms to the weight of her breasts.
They shared a gasp that broke the kiss, and Cecelia stared in unblinking awe as he palmed her bosoms with the appreciative sound of a man finally given reprieve. “I’ve dreamed of these in the night,” he confessed as his thumbs moved to caress the hard and sensitive points of her nipples.
“You did?” she squeaked. “You have?” A start of pleasure trilled from her breasts down her belly and landed in her sex.
“Och, aye,” he groaned. “Mythical breasts, these.”
He gave her a look so hot, so full of erotic promise, Cecelia swayed, clutching at him as her legs trembled and melted.
Then Ramsay did something no man had ever done before.
He bent to hook his hands beneath her knees, then swept her up in his arms.
Cecelia wasn’t given warning, or time to protest, so she kept her hands locked about his neck and buried her face into his shoulder.
He knelt with her in his arms, only breaking the kiss to settle her onto the makeshift pallet of blankets.
A self-conscious wave threatened to douse her ardor, and she instinctively lifted her arms to cover her body, curling in upon herself. Strange explanations bombarded her tongue, apologies for the roundness of her stomach, the length and girth of her thighs, and the unsightly dimples at her knees. She couldn’t seem to lend any of them voice, as they threatened to choke her.
To make matters worse, Ramsay didn’t join her on the blankets. Instead, he sat back on his haunches and gazed down at her with those features carved from stone.
She reached for him, feeling suddenly needy and unsettled. “You don’t have to look,” she said. “Just come here.”
“How can I not look?” he asked her as though she’d gone mad. His growl had deepened another impossible degree, to that of a Gregorian monk at prayer. “I didna know such perfection existed.”
In that moment Cecelia didn’t care if anything subsequent proved to be folly, she merely realized she was falling for this strong giant brute, with all the subtle grace of a landslide. Plunging artlessly into love with him even though every logical thought told her she should not.
Logic didn’t belong in this mysterious Scottish forest.
Only this. Only them.
“Christ,” he panted. “Ye are a goddess, Cecelia. Ye should be wooed in a gilded bed, not on this pile of blankets.”
She rose and locked her arms around the back of his neck, stopping his mouth with a desperate kiss. She opened her lips, this time not in submission or invitation, but for the purpose of her own exploration.
His blankets and furs on the ground were more than comfortable, but now that she was without her wrapper the evening summer air chilled her to her core.
She shivered and pulled him closer.
And then he was upon her, covering her with his body like a blanket of sensual need. He pressed her into the earth, kissing her with fervent urgency. His restless hands upon her. Touching her everywhere. Discovering her with rough and masculine delight.
Cecelia’s legs parted of their own accord to make room for his bulk. His loins pressed against her sex, separated only by his trousers. The intimate pressure turned her hot all over and he ground against her with a wicked roll of his hips, all the while trading deep velvet licks into each other’s mouths.
Her hands found the buttons of his shirt and released them one by one.
Ramsay ripped his mouth from hers and stared down at her with intent eyes, darker than she’d ever seen them. Dark as midnight and magic and the depths of the sea.
“God,” he said with a halting breath, trembling as though the weight of his own body might prove too much. “If this be a dream … I swear to Christ…”
“This is no dream,” she promised, tentatively reaching into his shirt to brush the mounds of his shoulders with hesitant hands. “Though I’m not excited for morning to come.” Her fingers drifted lower, sweeping through fine gold hair to find the hard disks of his chest. Lord but he was solid. Heavy and hewn from some other clay than most men.
He crouched over her like a giant cat intending to spring at his next meal.
But she was already caught. Already imprisoned beneath him and ready to be devoured.
A fingertip traced at the waist of his trousers and he pulled away, capturing her hands in his own. “Let me taste ye first,” he crooned. “Once ye release me, I willna be able to stop myself.”
“You?” she teased, pushing sparkle into her eyes. “The paragon of willpower?”
“Not anymore,” he grieved. “Not when it comes to ye.”
His full mouth began a maddeningly slow journey down her body, stopping in the strangest places to brush hot kisses and sample her skin with his curious tongue. He nuzzled into the hollow between her jaw and her ear. Nipped at her clavicles. Lingered over the downy trail between her breasts.
He did stop there to cup the orbs once again, tracing his tongue over the white skin to circle the pink ridge of an areola before opening his lips over the peak of her nipple. He stroked and laved in a hot spiral, until Cecelia arched her back off the ground with a hungry moan.
Her hips rose of their own accord, begging for his attentions.