How to Seduce a Scot by Christy English Page B

tiny bit wild, but she also knew that no matter what the provocation, he would always look after her, would always see to her needs and interests without her even having to ask. For all his good looks and non-marrying ways, Alex was a good man.
    â€œCome close, and I will tell you.”
    He obligingly leaned down, and she raised her hands to settle on his broad shoulders. She knew that his horses would stay in place and not run away, as she had seen him tie them to the post by the road. So she closed the door behind him with a tilt of her hips, and stepped even closer in the dark.
    â€œI like you too, Alex Waters. A very great deal. More than any man I have ever met, save my father. And he was a great man.”
    â€œI am sure he was. Miss Middlebrook—”
    â€œCatherine,” she corrected him.
    â€œCatherine,” he amended. “We are standing a bit too close. Someone might see.”
    She smiled at him then, and felt as if a little sun had risen in her heart. Even in that dark corridor, when any other man would have taken advantage, he was still trying to care for her. She leaned close, as if to whisper once more in his ear, but at the last moment, she turned her head, and brushed her lips against his.

Twelve
    Her lips on his were like a bolt of lightning.
    Alex had never been struck by lightning, for he still lived to walk the earth, but he had seen a tree that had been split in two by a blast from above. Now, he knew what that tree felt like. A fanciful piece of his mind thought of that tree as his angel kissed him. His life was now like that tree, divided into two parts: before she kissed him, and after.
    Her lips were soft and warm, and more than willing. He tried in the first few moments to remember that he was a gentleman, that he was sworn to protect this girl, even from her own folly. But as she pressed her sweet, round breasts against his chest, winding her fingers into the long dark of his hair, drawing the ribbon out of it, he found that he forgot his oath. He had forgotten every oath he had ever taken, every breath he had taken before that moment. There was only that girl, and her soft sweetness in his arms.
    She did not know how to kiss. He wondered if this might even be her first. That thought too splintered off from the main, and drifted away with the current of what he did not care about. He cared only for her, for her breasts against his chest, and the way she felt beneath his hands as he pressed them to her waist.
    Her waist was reed thin, with no need for stays save to hold up the delectable weight of her bosom. She seemed interested only in pressing that bosom to him, so that all of his thoughts spun away on the current of his lust.
    He gentled his lips and ran his tongue over her sealed mouth until she opened it beneath him. She gasped a little, and he pressed his advantage, sweeping his tongue into her mouth as gently as he might, so that he did not offend or frighten her. If this was her first kiss, let it be the best he could offer her, as it would also be their last.
    For he knew well, even in the throes of lust, that he could not have this girl. She needed a husband, and he was not a marrying man. He repeated this mantra to himself, but somewhere he lost the thread of it. She began to learn what his tongue was teaching her, and her own tongue joined his in a mating dance.
    It seemed she had a natural affinity for it.
    She slipped past the last of his defenses then, as her tongue tangled with his, and she pressed her hips against his manhood. He would never think to bring himself against an untutored girl like this one, but she seemed to think nothing of it. She was not frightened or repulsed, but seemed to savor the contact as he did. She moved her hips against him, and his body became a white-hot brand, his mind and morals almost burned away altogether.
    It was a sound from inside the house that saved him.
    Somewhere within, above stairs, some ham-fisted servant dropped a