Page 91 of Hit Me With Your Best Scot
“Och,” her husband grunted. “They’re gone, are they nae?”
“Yes, they are.”
“Aye, they are,” Coll agreed, tugging on the hand that Temperance still squeezed.
Rather than releasing him, she turned to look up at his face. “They’re gone.”
“Aye.”
“I’m free.”
“Aye.”
“Did I hear the gong? I believe breakfast is set out,” Lady Aldriss said, gesturing none-too-subtly at the earl.
A moment later, Coll and Temperance had the library to themselves. “What are ye thinking?” he asked her. The idea that she was free sounded pleasant, but it also seemed to mean she had no entanglements, and he didn’t much like that.Hewas an entanglement, after all.
“I’m thinking you should lock the door,” she whispered, cupping his cheek in her hand.
“Ye dunnae need to tell me that more than once.”
He locked all three doors that led into the library from various parts of the house, then returned to take her in his arms. Lifting her, he carried Temperance over to the deep couch and settled there with her on his lap.
“Will they expect us for breakfast?” she asked, pullinghis shirt from his kilt and sliding her warm hand up along his chest.
“Aye. Everybody’ll be there.”
“Then we shouldn’t be late. Too late.”
“I can see to that, as long as ye dunnae hold it against me later.”
Temperance laughed. “Out, out, brief candle.”
Coll narrowed his eyes, unable to stop his grin. “Oh, stop that right there.”
Shifting, he set her on her knees to lift her pretty borrowed yellow and red muslin up over her hips, then shoved his kilt aside. The sight of her dismissing her parents like a queen had already aroused him, and with her kissing him like that and squirming about on his lap now, he was damned ready for her.
“Come here, lass.”
She sank down over him, moaning as she took him in. When she put her hands on his shoulders and began bouncing, Coll grabbed hold of her hips, thrusting up to meet her. This was what mattered: the two of them, together. Not where they lived or whether she spent her nights on a stage for a few months of the year. Hell, he’d go see her every night.
“Coll,” she rasped, arching her back, clinging to him as she came.
He let himself go over with her, filling her as he pushed hard inside her. “Temperance Hartwood,” he breathed, when he could speak again. “Temperance MacTaggert.”
She smiled a bit breathlessly. “I love you, Coll. Just you being with me, it makes me… more than I was. I don’t know how to say it, but I… I never thought I would be this happy.”
“That sounded fine to me.Tha mi airson a bhith còmhla riut an-dràsta,” he said for the second time.
“Now tell me what it means,” she breathed, kissing him again.
“It means ‘I want to be with ye right now,’” he translated. “An-còmhnaidh. That means ‘always.’”
“An-còmhnaidh,” she repeated, her accent startlingly good. “It’s what I want, as well.”
“M’laird? Breakfast is served,” Smythe’s voice came, muffled through the door. “Lady Aldriss has requested your presence.”
“Of course she has.”
