Page 46 of The Scot

He moved his thumb to her lower lip.

“I could have asked for that.”

Tugging on it lightly, he opened her mouth.

“I could have begged for you to join me this eve in my bedchamber, promising pleasures our bodies were designed to create.”

He was relentless. And she wanted more.

“I could have asked for you to touch my thumb with your tongue.” She did it the moment the words left his mouth, tasting the salt remaining there from their meal. “For you to wrap your luscious lips around it . . .”

Again, she complied.

“And suck.”

Was she really doing such a thing? And did it really give him as much pleasure as it did her? Apparently so. Terric closed his eyes for a brief moment, and when he opened them, Roysa stopped.

Her heart hammered at his expression. Such longing . . . and for her. So different from the lust in the eyes of the men who had come to Stanton to court her. A warmth in Terric’s made her glad for his question, and assured of her answer.

“But you did not,” she managed as his hand moved from her cheek to behind her neck.

“Nay,” he admitted. “I did not.”

Terric looked into her eyes.

“I asked for permission to court you. And now that you have given it, I believe I will start now.”

He pulled her close, kissing her just as he’d done the night before. But this time she knew how to meet his slanted lips, his insistent tongue. She kissed him back, her fingers weaving through his shoulder-length hair.

It did not last long enough. When he pulled away, she was fairly panting, her chest heaving up and down.

Roysa wanted more.

“We will do it the right way, out of respect for your sister and Lance.”

The right way. Which meant . . .

“But you kissed me,” she said, her voice much more petulant than she would have liked. To court her properly, there would be no more of that for now. But forging a marriage was the reason for courting, was it not?

And she had said yes. She had just agreed to potentially marry, sometime in the future, a man she hardly knew. Hadn’t she made this mistake with Walter? She’d rushed into marriage with him, only to learn he was a very different man than she’d thought. And yet, she didn’t regret her decision at all.

“A minor indiscretion. But I agree, kissing, as you just saw, is much too dangerous.” He smiled. “If we are to do this as we ought to.”

Roysa changed her mind. Her first instinct had been correct.

This man was quite unkind.