He reared back even further, frowning down at her. “But … ye are—were a virgin. I took that from ye.”
“I survived,” she shrugged, the movement of her breasts snagging both their notice.
His because … well, breasts.
And hers because she realized she was dressing down a man while completely naked and spread beneath his torso.
“I hurt ye,” he rasped, though it was his gaze that contained a wound. “Ye should have heard the sound ye made.”
Cecelia shrugged again, this time distracting him in purpose. “Oh tosh, I’ve made more distressed sounds getting dressed in the morning.”
He tilted his head to the side in that way he was wont to do when befuddled.
Cecelia took pity upon him. “My corset hurts me, my boots hurt me. Riding sidesaddle hurts me. Every time someone offers me a more judicious portion of food, it hurts me. I am a woman, Ramsay, I am used to pain. The loss of one’s virginity only happens once and I’m certain it’s worth the cost. I’m even more certain I’ll bear it better than most. Now.” She wriggled beneath him. “If you please.”
His golden brow rose over eyes alight with myriad things, most chiefly a mystified sort of surprise warring with a boyish mischief. “If I please … what?”
“Oh, don’t make me say it,” she pleaded.
A dark chuckle overtook him as he lowered his great body to nuzzle into her hair. “Ye confound me, woman,” he purred into her ear. “Tell me what ye want, and I’ll give it to ye.”
“I want you.” Cecelia turned her head, sifting her fingers through his hair as she returned her breath against his ear. “And you can have me, Ramsay,” she offered gently, reaching in between their bodies to stroke his hard length over his trousers. “In whatever way you want me. I can take it. I can take you. All of you.”
Her words were like a spell, summoning forth something dark and demonic he’d kept chained in the deep place he hid from the world. He grew impossibly larger beneath her fingers, stretching to an intimidating size.
A sound reverberated from low in his chest, and all sense of control drained away in an almost tangible rush.
He captured her lips with his in a violent kiss as he grappled with the fastenings of his trousers.
Cecelia’s hands landed on each side of his massive jaw, but it truly was too late for all that. She’d reap her just deserts, and something inside her told her it would be the most delicious experience yet.
Once the final barrier between them had been stripped away, he wrenched her beneath him, a creature of frenzy and lust, pushed her thighs wide, and angled his hips between them.
There was a moment of fright. A single, breathless knowledge that once he’d claimed her this night, neither of them be the same. His weight was both a comfort and a burden, and she did the only thing she could think of to release a sudden rush of anxiety.
She bit the muscle between his neck and his shoulder.
He snarled and drove forward, pressing inside.
She cried out and, heedless of her claim, her body bore down against his intrusion, but to no avail. He sank deep into the tight heat of her, nearly spearing her in two.
The stinging of tears in her eyes was more pervasive than the stinging pain in her core.
He stilled. Froze. Staring down at her with eyes both inhuman and alarmed.
“Christ,” he hissed between a jaw locked completely shut. “Christ. Fuck. Christ.” He was quaking. Sweating. And his eyes threatened to burn a hole into hers.
But he didn’t move.
Cecelia closed her eyes and pulled him against her, breathing deeply, needing his strength flush against hers.
He scooped her close to his body, enfolding her in his warmth and strength. Crooning a lyrical language in harsh, throaty groans.
She splayed her fingers down the brackets of his spine, tracing the flexing muscles as her own finally accommodated his intrusion.
The moment her body accepted him fully, his hips moved. They rocked slowly for a few tender moments, before everything accelerated. His breath, his heart, the wet glide of his shaft inside of her.
Lord, it was lovely. An aching sort of delight coiled within her. Lighter and less intense than what she experienced beneath his tongue. There was something unparalleled about this act. The rhythm of it. The wild impatience. The fierce gleam of possession in his gaze as he took her again and again, pushing deeper each time.
She was undone. Unraveled. Completely thrown open and bared to the world.
Who’d have suspected that all this time, she’d been a lock and he was her key?
She shaped to him as though they were made for each other. Not just sex to sex, but their bodies as well. Her curves and swells gave way for his cords and planes as they fused to each other in a singular motion.
Cecelia kneaded his flexing back, glorying in his strength and bulk, in the sheer magnificence that was this man.
“Christ,” he blasphemed in time to his intensifying thrusts. “Sweet. Sweet. Too sweet.”
He swiped his thumb against his tongue before reaching down between them and thrumming at her little bead once. Twice.
On the third time, Cecelia lost herself to the night.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cecelia’s mewls of pleasure ripped him apart.
Ramsay had always paid homage to religion, because he was supposed to and all that, but he’d never truly believed heaven existed. Not until he found it.
Between Cecelia Teague’s thighs.
It was there he lost his soul, his heart, nay, every part of himself. He poured the very essence of life into her in long, paralyzing pulses. Throwing his head back, he realized if there were gods, they were the pagan, bacchanalian kind who would only be appeased by blood and sex.
Deep down, he longed to pay homage to both.
Locked in the most intense bliss he never could have conceived of, Ramsay began to fear the loss before it had even begun to fade.
And thereby couldn’t wait to do it again.
Seven. Fucking. Years. He’d wait another seven for this. For her.
He’d wait a lifetime.
Once his bones unlocked and his limbs began to work again, Ramsay still couldn’t bring himself to let her go. He attended to her, cleaning them both with his discarded shirt before gathering her close and rolling to his back.
He draped her over him, thighs parted and her delicious weight settled across his chest and hips. She seemed apprehensive at first, but her legs trembled too greatly to protest for long, and so she splayed in a lazy heap of luscious woman as her hair spilled across his shoulder.
He stroked the spun-copper silk, brushing her locks gently with his fingers, massaging little points of tension on her scalp and her neck idly as they each listened to the other breathe.
Her breath disturbed some of the hair on his chest, tickling it pleasantly, and he scratched at it.
Cecelia took the opportunity to grasp his fingers and press a kiss to each one.
The little gesture nearly melted him into a puddle of tenderness.
“I felt guilty that you’d been exiled out here,” she said between her ministrations to his knuckles. “But now I see the benefits of sleeping beneath the Scottish stars.”
A languorous yawn overtook her, and she stretched over him like a sated cat who’d had her fill of cream.
“If ye insist upon moving like that, woman, ye’ll not have time to recover before I’m inside ye again.”