Page 51 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
“Will ye tell me yer true name, lass?” he whispered.
Persephone twisted on the bed to face him, bringing up her hands to cup his lean face. “I don’t want to talk anymore.” Leaning up, she kissed him, feeling the immediate response of his mouth against hers, the heat of him against her chest, the strength of the arms that swept around her.
“If ye’re trying to distract me, ye’re doing a damned fine job of it,” Coll murmured against her mouth, nibbling her bottom lip with his teeth.
“Shh,” she breathed, kissing him again.
If this was merely a distraction, it was meant for her, rather than him. Thinking about the mess her life had been—all the things that had nearly been forced on her because her family sought more power and influence—made her sad and angry all over again. And the idea that one of them had found her and decided the most expedient way to be certain she didn’t inherit anything was to murder her. In a sense, it didn’t even surprise her.
Hades appeared from beneath the bed to begin grazing on the tray of sandwiches Coll had set aside as Coll untied his cravat and tossed it to the floor. “I dunnae care what name ye go by, lass,” he said, untying the ribbonbeneath her breasts, and then shedding his coat and waistcoat. “Juliet, Persephone, Mabel, or Sally. It’s the woman beneath the pretending that I like, and that’s the woman I want.”
That was perhaps the nicest thing any man had ever said to her. And she believed it, because he’d said it before, when he hadn’t known her to be anything more than a common-born actress. Persephone pulled the shirt from his trousers to run her palms up his hard, muscular chest. If she did have to flee to Spain or Prussia, she at least wanted one night spent in his arms, one night of feeling wanted and desirable for who she truly was, one night of feeling safe and protected from whatever lay beyond her front door and was trying to kill her.
Coll gathered her gown up in his big hands and pulled it over her head. Her shift followed, and then his mouth was on her breasts and she couldn’t breathe. She groaned, tangling her fingers in his hair as he nipped and licked. No, he wasn’t her first, but back then she’d felt like losing her virginity was simply inevitable, and so she’d chosen the least offensive man in her circle to relieve her of it.
Lord Albert Pruitz, her first “protector,” had had the imagination and wit of a potato, but he’d been handsome and gentle, thank goodness. Afterward, she’d decided that sex was definitely not at all what Shakespeare and most other people made it out to be, and the two gentlemen since then had done nothing to alter her opinion—until she’d flung caution to the wind in the park with Lord Glendarril the other day, and realized that not only was Lord Albert not the expert he’d claimed to be, but that she was supposed to climax, as well.
“Damned trousers,” Coll growled, standing up to kick off his boots and unbutton the offending article of clothing.
“They’re not so bad,” she countered, knocking hishands away to finish opening the trio of buttons. That done, she dipped her hand in to curl it around his engorged member. “I like to think of them like opening a gift at Christmastime.”
“Well, this gift is definitely happy to see ye,” he said, taking her upturned face in his hands and kissing her with a thoroughness that left her panting.
Persephone put her hands around the waist of his trousers and drew them down past his hips and knees until he stepped out of them and joined her again on the bed. Mouths fused, tongues tangling, they stretched out with her beneath him.
“Ye’ve such soft skin,” he murmured, trailing his fingers down her breastbone, along her stomach, and around her hip to cup her bottom. His mouth followed the trail but continued straight south. When he parted her legs and dipped lower to taste her, she clenched her fingers into the sheets and moaned.
As she threw back her head, her back arching, she realized she still wore her stupid, prim black wig. Trying to keep her fingers steady as he licked and teased at her, she unpinned it and threw it aside. Now they were both truly naked, and she was as close to being herself as she could ever be. And it—he—felt glorious.
When one of his long fingers slipped inside her, curling as his free hand lightly pinched one breast, she came in a delighted spasm of breathless, shivery wonder. Even if there had been nothing else between them, nothing else that drew her to him, Coll MacTaggert would have the very fondest of places in her heart.
As her muscles relaxed, Coll made his leisurely way back up her body, a man enjoying a sensual, erotic holiday, investigating her most sensitive places. Persephone grinned; she couldn’t help herself.
“That’s the smile of a satisfied woman, I reckon,” henoted with a breath-stealing grin of his own. Another thing at which Lord Albert Pruitz had failed: showing her that sex could be… fun. A delight.
“So I am,” she sighed, stretching her arms out on either side of her. “And yet I am not.”
“Good. Because I’m nae finished yet.”
“Yes, I have noticed that. Do come closer, Coll.”
Pulling her legs around his hips, his hands on either side of her shoulders, he pushed forward, entering her. The warm, filling sensation, paired with the weight of him on her hips, sent heated shivers from her spine down to where they were joined. “How’s that, lass?”
“Oh, much… Yes, much better.”
He rocked into her again, holding himself deep inside her. “I like yer hair,” he murmured, shifting his weight onto one arm and pulling out a hair pin with his other. Slowly he withdrew, then entered her again, freeing more of her hair until he could draw his fingers through the honey-colored mass. “Aye, that is much better.”
“Coll,” she gasped, shivering in delighted goosebumps.
Her hair a wild mane around her head, she slid her hands over his shoulders and pulled him closer. With a deep kiss he pushed inside her again, taking up a hard, fast rhythm, burying himself in her over and over, pausing only to kiss her open-mouthed or to suck on her breasts. The muscles of her abdomen and thighs tightened again, drawing her closer around him. The low, panting moans coming from her chest in time with his thrusts hardly sounded like her, but she didn’t think she could have stopped making them even if she’d tried. This felt… glorious.
Abruptly, she came again.
With a low growl, Coll joined her, burying his seed deep inside her, his gaze holding hers, both of them breathing hard, sweat slicking their skin. She watched him come, the carnal satisfaction on his face. This man. She still didn’tquite know what to make of him, what motivated him. Duty, yes, and honor—even before he’d figured out that she wasn’t precisely who she claimed, he’d promised to protect her. He’d saved her life at least once, had left a grand ball and his best chance to find a wife to be certain she wasn’t injured. No, she didn’t quite know how to classify him, but she did know one thing. She trusted him.
Persephone drew her fingers through his damp, disheveled mahogany hair, pulling his face down for another slow, sensual kiss. “Temperance Hartwood,” she murmured, the words sounding familiar yet foreign on her lips. “That’s my name. Lady Temperance Hartwood.”
Chapter Eleven
