Kitabı oku: «Royal Families Vs. Historicals», sayfa 25

CHAPTER SIX

THREE months, Lotty had given herself. She had been here for three weeks already…was she going to make the rest of the remaining time?

It was all very well deciding to do something about the lust that had her in its grip, but how exactly was she going to go about it? Lotty squirmed in her seat, mentally rehearsing scenes.

Should she just grab Corran once they got back to the house and hope he got the idea? She couldn’t see herself having the nerve to do that, descendant of Raoul the Wolf or not.

Or she could lead up to the question in a diplomatic fashion. I was wondering what your views were on brief flings? she could ask him, and then if he said that he was all for them, that would give her an opening at least.

Or perhaps she should be grown up and discuss the matter openly as two consenting adults.

Yes, grown-up was good, but the more Lotty tried to think about how such a conversation might go, the deeper she lost herself in a morass of euphemisms. Perhaps the grabbing option wasn’t such a bad one, after all.

One thing became clear to Lotty during that interminable drive. It had been a mistake to bottle up the physical attraction she felt. Something about being shut up in the Land Rover with Corran for so long seemed to have acted as a pressure cooker, and choosing furniture together had merely lifted the lid on her feelings, which were now threatening to explode out of control.

Lotty was alarmed by the way her hands were twitching and she had to clutch them together in her lap in case they wandered over to Corran of their own accord. She felt physically ill: giddy and slightly nauseous, her heart pounding, her throat dry. Was it normal to believe that the only way she could ever feel better again was if she could touch him?

If only she had more experience, she would know what to do. Was the chance of being able to coil herself around him and press her mouth to that pulse beating in his throat worth the risk of making a monumental fool of herself? Lotty couldn’t decide. She couldn’t think. She could just sit there and give up on the idea of pretending that she didn’t want him, while the air in the Land Rover grew tauter and tauter with every mile.

When they drew up in the stable yard behind Loch Mhoraigh House, Lotty practically threw herself out of the Land Rover to gulp at the fresh air, only to find that her legs were so weak that she had to hang on to the door.

Perhaps she really was ill?

Lotty told herself to get a grip. She was distracted for a little while by unpacking the shopping, and she made herself breathe deeply: in, out, in, out. Not too difficult once you had got the hang of it. She was very glad Corran had left her to it while he took the dogs out. Pookie was thoroughly overexcited after being left all day.

‘I’ve put your case upstairs,’ Corran said briefly before he left.

She would be able to change into something decent for a change. Lotty clung to the hope that wearing clothes from her old life would remind her that she was a princess, not a skittish, fever-eyed girl in a frenzy of lust. She would put on the clothes she wore in the palace, and she would miraculously become sensible and dignified again.

Only it didn’t work out like that.

Lotty remembered packing her most casual clothes, but everything she pulled out of the case looked far too smart for Loch Mhoraigh House. She was half inclined to put it all back, but having made such a fuss about getting the suitcase back, it would look odd if she didn’t wear anything from it.

She chose the most relaxed outfit she could find—a pair of loose trousers and a silk knit top, a scarf knotted casually at her throat—but, far from restoring her to her normal regal self, the slip of the luxurious materials against her skin only made her feel more edgy. Every cell in her body seemed to be jangling with awareness. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, or her feet, and she couldn’t settle to anything.

Corran was checking the oven but he glanced up briefly when Lotty went into the kitchen, and then did a double take. Closing the oven door, he straightened slowly.

‘You look very elegant,’ he said.

Elegant. It was a horrible word, Lotty decided. It was cold and restrained. She didn’t want to be elegant. She wanted to be foxy. She wanted to be sexy. She wanted to be hot.

And elegant didn’t belong at Loch Mhoraigh either. Elegant was out of place, just like she was, Lotty thought miserably.

They had bought a ready meal to heat up for supper, but Lotty was too tense to enjoy the break from cooking. The soft trousers whispered against her legs whenever she shifted in her seat, and with every stretch of her arm, every lift of her hand, the silky top caressed her bare skin. She wished she had her old jeans and pink cardigan on again, or—even better—her filthy working clothes. Anything would be better than sitting there, simmering, unable to think about anything except her own body and Corran sitting across the table.

She was preternaturally aware of him, of his fingers holding the foil packet steady as he helped himself, of the broad, strong wrists. She couldn’t risk looking into those iceberg eyes, but her gaze skittered around the rest of his face, from the dark brows to the forceful nose, across his cheek to his temple, along the uncompromising line of his jaw, and always back to his mouth.

That mouth.

Lotty’s pulse was roaring in her ears. She couldn’t believe that she had spent every other evening sitting at this same table, happily chatting to Corran. At least, she had chatted happily and Corran had offered caustic comments, but it had been comfortable.

It wasn’t comfortable now.

How could one day have changed so much? It wasn’t as if anything had happened. All they had done was sit in the Land Rover, and walk around two stores. And yet it felt as if a fault line had appeared between them, shifting the world out of kilter, and squeezing all the air out of the atmosphere. Lotty had years of experience of stilted situations. She knew just what to do to move the conversation on, to make people relax and smile.

But not now. She felt like a hot air balloon, precariously tethered, and it would take only one little tug and she would just float away out of control. It was all she could do to keep herself in her chair. So their lame attempts at conversation kept getting stuck while Lotty pushed her food around her plate.

‘Not hungry?’

‘Not really.’

‘Me neither,’ said Corran, pushing the plate aside. ‘Let’s go out.’

Lotty looked at him blankly. ‘Out?’

‘I’m stir crazy after a whole day indoors or in the car. I need some exercise. We could go for a walk.’

Lotty’s heart was beating high and hard in her throat. ‘OK.’

Outside, it was one of those long, soft Highland evenings she had come to love so much. Corran had told her it was a different story in winter, when the days were short and it was dark and bitterly cold, but in June the sun was only just setting at half past nine, and the cloudless sky was washed with an uncanny orange light.

The breeze ruffling the surface of the loch still carried the warmth of the day, but Lotty was hugging her arms together and her shoulders were hunched with tension.

‘Cold?’ Corran asked her. ‘Do you want to go back and get a jacket?’

‘No, I’m just… No, it’s fine.’ He could see her making an effort to relax her shoulders. ‘I’m fine,’ she said again, but she tucked her hair behind her ears in a gesture he had seen her make before when she was uncertain.

She had been tense all afternoon. Corran couldn’t put his finger on when things had changed. She had been her usual self on the way down to Glasgow, but gradually the ease had leaked out of the air, and then she had started talking about going home.

Her home, which wasn’t Loch Mhoraigh at all. Corran had been conscious of a nasty jolt at the reminder. Of course, he knew that Lotty wasn’t going to be there permanently—that had been the deal, after all—but he hadn’t thought she’d be thinking about going home yet.

He hadn’t thought at all. He’d just got used to Lotty being there. She’d turned into a more useful worker than Corran would ever have imagined and between them they were making good progress on the cottages. Which would explain the rush of relief when she had said that she wasn’t leaving immediately, of course.

Corran didn’t want to think about an alternative explanation.

On the whole he was glad Lotty had reminded him that she was only there temporarily. For some reason she was making a point of it today. Corran almost hadn’t recognised her when she came into the kitchen earlier. She was wearing trousers and a top, just as she had done every evening, but that outfit screamed sophistication and style. And money. Corran didn’t know much about clothes, but even he could see that it must have cost a lot of money. He wondered how many rams he could have bought for the cost of that pair of trousers.

She looked different. Elegant, expensive, a creature from a different world. She made Ella’s fashionable wardrobe look cheap. She didn’t look like she belonged at Mhoraigh any more.

And that was a good thing, Corran tried to convince himself. It made it easier for him to ignore the way her mouth tilted when she smiled. Made it easier to pretend that the blood didn’t rush to his head every time he looked into those luminous grey eyes.

She was walking beside him in silence, fiddling with the inevitable scarf at her neck, slender, straight-backed, those trousers swishing around her legs. Her face was averted slightly, and that meant he could let his eyes rest on the pure line of her throat as it swept down from her ear and curved into her shoulder. Sometimes Corran let himself imagine kissing his way down it…

He pushed the thought aside with a scowl. What was the point? Lotty was the last kind of woman he needed, Corran reminded himself. She didn’t belong here any more than Ella would have done, any more than his mother had done. There was no point in imagining what it would be like to draw her close and taste that soft, sweet mouth, to gentle his hands down her spine and discover if her skin was as warm and smooth as it looked.

No point at all.

Corran didn’t even know why he had suggested this walk. It was just reminding him how out of place Lotty was. And yet somehow she looked completely right here with the hills and the water. Somehow she felt right walking by his side.

Still thoroughly overexcited by their return, Pookie jumped around Meg, who did her best to ignore him as she trotted at Corran’s heels. They walked past the beach where they had lunch, and on around the loch side until the track petered into a narrow deer path which led at last to a perfect curve of beach at the end of the loch. Behind, the hills soared up into the sky, while the loch stretched gleaming down the glen.

Lotty just stood and looked for a while. Then she drew a long breath. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

‘I always think of this as my beach,’ said Corran. ‘I used to come here all the time. No one ever found me—not that they would ever have looked.’

He sat down on the ledge of tufty grass, stretching his legs out onto the shingle. After a moment, Lotty sat down beside him, close but not touching.

The spectacular light was fading slowly from orange to a purplish colour, but it wouldn’t get properly dark until well after midnight. It was lovely to be out without the midges pestering and Lotty leant back on her hands and lifted her face to the breeze. She could hear it rustling over the grass, and the faint slap of the little waves ruffling the water.

And the boom of her pulse.

Corran was very close. He was looking out over the loch. Lotty could see the heart-wrenching line of his jaw and the very edge of his mouth. She wanted to tear her eyes away, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t stop thinking about how it would feel to touch him.

Then he turned his head and all the air left her lungs in a whoosh.

‘You’re very quiet,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking about?’

Lotty felt as if she were teetering on the edge of a cliff. If she stepped off, she could never step back.

She stepped anyway. Almost before she had thought of what she was going to say, she had opened her mouth and the words came out as if they had a will of their own.

‘I’m wondering if I dare ask you to k-kiss me.’

There was a long, long silence, while her words echoed out over the water and rang up in the hills. K-kiss me. K-kiss me. K-kiss me.

‘Do you?’ said Corran at last.

‘Do I what?’ She could feel embarrassment prickling beneath her skin as the colour crept up her throat.

‘Do you dare?’

Lotty drew a breath. ‘What would you say if I did?’

A suspicion of a smile hovered at the edge of his mouth. ‘I think I’d be able to oblige.’

‘Oh.’ The wretched colour deepened. This was when some darkness would help. She pulled at the grass beside her. ‘The thing is…I should warn you…I’ve never had a boyfriend.’

It wasn’t often she caught Corran by surprise, but he definitely blinked. ‘What, never?’

‘No.’ She moistened her lips. She had started, so she might as well tell him it all. She couldn’t be any more embarrassed anyway.

She went back to plucking at the grass, not looking at him. ‘I’m a v-virgin. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to have this time by myself. I know it can’t last for ever, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to…to…lose my virginity,’ she finished in a rush.

‘It would just be a temporary thing,’ she hurried on before Corran could speak. She was desperate to get it all out before she lost her nerve completely. ‘I know I’m not your type. It’s just…I wondered…’ Moistening her lips, she took a determined breath. ‘The thing is, I wanted a lover, only I wasn’t sure how to go about finding one and I just wondered, well, I thought…’

‘…that I would do?’ Corran suggested when she ran out of steam.

But he didn’t sound offended and, when Lotty risked a glance at him, she saw that the dent at the corner of his mouth had definitely deepened. Warmth bloomed deep inside her.

‘Well, there isn’t anyone else out here,’ she pointed out, just so that he knew that she wasn’t planning to get too involved.

‘No, there isn’t, is there?’

Reaching out, Corran ran an unhurried knuckle down Lotty’s cheek, and her throat tightened at the tenderness of the gesture from the hard hand.

‘Why don’t we start with a kiss and take it from there?’ he suggested.

‘OK.’ Lotty tucked her hair behind her ears and cleared her throat. Now that it had come to it, she was terrified and excited and very nervous that she wouldn’t do it right.

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been kissed before either?’

‘Not really.’ How could she explain to Corran about the lonely pedestal she lived on, or how closely protected she had been by her grandmother all her life?

‘Incredible,’ he said, his eyes searching her face. ‘Like a princess in a fairy tale, locked away, waiting for a kiss…’

Lotty’s gaze slid from his. ‘Something like that.’

Corran shook his head in disbelief as he laid his palm against her cheek. ‘Are you going to ask me, then?’

The air was soft and sweet but Lotty shivered at his touch as he slid his hand down to her throat.

‘Please would you kiss me?’ she asked politely, and then he did smile. He really smiled, and something blossomed inside her. She had dreamt about seeing Corran smile like that, about seeing the hard mouth soften and the cold eyes warm, and the cheeks crease with amusement, and her heart contracted at the sight.

‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ he said, but he still didn’t kiss her. Instead he twisted his fingers around the scarf and drew it slowly from her throat. Lotty felt the coolness of the silk sliding over her skin and she closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the fizzy rush of anticipation and nervousness.

At last…at last!

Corran’s lips touched the corner of her mouth, and her eyes flew open in dismay. ‘Is that it?’ she said, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice.

‘No.’ His smile deepened. ‘That’s not it. That’s just the start. Come here,’ he said, pulling her close so that he could trail tantalising kisses along her jaw to her earlobe and then down to the pulse that was beating frantically in her throat.

Lotty arched her head back instinctively and her fingers curled in the grass. His lips were so warm, so sure as they made their way back towards her mouth, and then he was torturing her with slow kisses on the other side. It was agonizing. It was wonderful. Lotty’s senses were spinning with the wicked, delicious pleasure of it even as she burned with frustration.

And then his mouth reached hers at last, and the pleasure rocketed into a new urgency, a hunger that had her hands lifting instinctively to his shoulders so that she could hold on to him. His lips were warm and sure on hers, while his tongue teased until she parted her own and he took her with him as they sank down into the grass so he could kiss her in a way she’d only ever dreamed of before, long, long kisses, hungry but unhurried.

Lotty gave herself up to the sheer sensuous pleasure of it. Beneath her, the grass prickled her neck but she didn’t care. She felt only the warm weight of Corran pressing her down into the ground, his hard hands sliding insistently over her thigh, slipping beneath her top to trace patterns of fire on her bare skin. It felt so good to be able to touch him too, to run her own hands over his back and feel the flex of his muscles beneath his shirt.

‘I like this,’ she gasped at one point, and Corran smiled against her skin.

‘I can’t believe you’ve never done this before,’ he said.

‘Am I doing it right?’ she asked, suddenly uncertain, and he lifted his head to look down into her face, touched and amazed by her innocence. Lotty might be no expert, but she was so sweet and so eager and she felt so sinfully good.

‘You’re a natural,’ he told her, and a smile lit the beautiful grey eyes.

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Would you kiss me again?’

‘Why don’t you kiss me?’ Corran rolled onto his back and spread his arms. ‘I’m all yours.’

Lotty smoothed her hair behind her ears, the way she always did when she was nervous, but she leant over him and looked down into his face for a moment before lowering her mouth to his. She was tentative at first, a little unsure, but he lay still and let her discover just what she could do.

And she could do quite a lot. Corran had to clench his hands to stop his arms clamping around her and rolling her beneath him once more. He didn’t want to frighten her, but she was sorely testing his control. She was lying right on top of him, tracing the angle of his cheekbones with light, butterfly kisses, kissing her way to his ear and then back to his mouth. Who would have thought that those sweet little kisses could be quite so tantalising, quite so sexy, quite so exciting?

When he couldn’t take any more—and Corran thought he had done pretty well to last as long as he did—he brought his arms up and held her protectively while he eased her beneath him once more and kissed her hard, once, twice and a third time, more lingeringly, because he couldn’t resist it.

‘More,’ said Lotty, winding her arms around his neck when he tried to lift his head, so he kissed her again.

The kiss went on a long, long time, and Lotty abandoned herself to it until Corran levered himself away from her.

‘I think it’s time we went back,’ he said unevenly.

‘Oh,’ said Lotty, disappointed. ‘That’s it? We’re stopping?’

Corran pulled her to her feet and brushed the grass off her. ‘We’ve only just got started,’ he said.

‘I don’t understand,’ Lotty said, but she let him take her hand and tug her back towards the house. ‘Why do we have to go back?’

‘There’s the little matter of protection to think about,’ Corran pointed out. ‘I thought we were just having a walk. I didn’t come prepared.’

‘Protection?’ Lotty’s mind was reeling. She felt as if she were drugged with delight, and her whole body was humming with the feel of Corran’s mouth on hers, his warm hands on her body.

When she thought of protection, she thought of her close protection officer, the one she had given the slip in Paris. She and Corran had been alone together for weeks. There was no one else around. Why would they need someone to protect them now?

Corran sighed. ‘You do know where babies come from, don’t you, Lotty? Even you can’t be that innocent!’

‘Oh,’ said Lotty, finally making the connection. ‘I didn’t think of that,’ she confessed.

‘Besides,’ he added, ‘we’ll be more comfortable in a bed.’

‘Oh.’ A shivery tide of anticipation and apprehension washed through Lotty. ‘Oh,’ she said again.

Afterwards, Lotty couldn’t really remember walking back to the house. Wrapped in a strange dreamlike state, she had no idea if they had talked or not. All she remembered was the feel of Corran’s strong fingers laced through her own, how warm and firm they had been.

They must have done something with the dogs when they got back, but she didn’t remember that either. There was just Corran letting go of her hand at the door to his room.

‘Are you sure, Lotty?’ he asked. ‘We can take it slow if you want.’

Lotty shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, stepping up to him so that she could slip her arms around his waist and sucking in a breath at the taut solid strength of his body. ‘I don’t want to go slow,’ she said. ‘I’m sure.’

Lotty lay on her side so that she could watch Corran, who was splayed on his front over the bed. She didn’t know how he could sleep. She was exhausted, but too overwhelmed to relax herself. She had known what happened in theory, of course, but she hadn’t known it would be like that.

‘Let go’, Corran had said, and she had. It had been like flying, terrifying and exhilarating. Now every cell in her body was fizzing with satisfaction, but at the same time she felt shaky and uncertain. All her boundaries had shifted, and she couldn’t go back to being the person she had been before.

But that was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? She had wanted to know what everyone else seemed to have, and now she did. Lotty’s lips curved at the memory. It had been a revelation—Corran’s mouth, Corran’s hands, his lean hard body, and how they could make her feel. Lotty burned at the memory.

She could look at him properly now that he was sleeping, and her eyes drifted wonderingly over the curve of his shoulder, the line of his back. His body was solid and male, with warm sleek skin. Who could have imagined that he would be a lover like that, that all that passion could be pent up behind the cool competence?

As if sensing her gaze, Corran stirred and rolled over, opening one eye as he encountered Lotty’s warmth, and then the other. Lotty could see him remembering just what she was doing there.

‘Good morning,’ she said nervously. She hadn’t been sure if she should slip back to her own room once he had fallen asleep. She had spent her whole life absorbing the correct protocol for different situations, but no one had ever told her the etiquette for sleeping with a man for the first time.

‘Good morning,’ said Corran. He shifted into a more comfortable position so that he could study her face. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ said Lotty. Given what they had done the night before, it was absurd to feel shy now, but her eyes slid away from his all the same. She looked at his shoulder instead. ‘Corran, is it always like that?’

He reached out and tilted her chin up so that she had to look at him again. ‘It’s never going to be your first time again, Lotty, but it’s only going to get better, I promise you that.’

What did that mean? Lotty regarded him doubtfully. ‘Was I b-bad?’ she asked, wincing inwardly at that betraying stutter.

Corran stretched, and Lotty caught her breath at the flex of his muscles and the sheer, unfamiliar maleness of him. ‘Very,’ he said.

Well, she shouldn’t have asked the question if she didn’t want to know the answer, Lotty reminded herself. She bit her lip. ‘I did tell you that I wasn’t experienced.’

‘Lotty,’ he said, exasperated, ‘you were very bad in a very good way!’ Sighing, he reached out and pulled her into the hard curve of his body. ‘How is it someone so beautiful has so little belief in herself?’

What was there to believe in? Lotty wondered. She was a princess, and that was all anybody ever saw. She had never had a chance to be anything else, never had to prove herself. People treated her as special because of who she was, not because of what she was, Lotty had always known that.

Until now. Corran didn’t know she was a princess. If he had known, would he have made love to her last night? Lotty didn’t think so. They had been as intimate as two people could get, but he still didn’t know the most important thing about her. Lotty didn’t like the feeling that she was keeping a secret from him, especially now, but if she told him, he might change, and she couldn’t bear that.

No, she wouldn’t tell him yet.

Putting the flat of her hands on Corran’s chest to hold him away slightly, she said, ‘This won’t change things between us, will it?’

‘I would imagine it would, yes,’ he said dryly.

‘I don’t want it to.’

‘It’s a bit late for that, Lotty.’ Corran had been smoothing his hand possessively over the curves of her body but paused at that and a frown touched his eyes. ‘I thought this was what you wanted.’

‘It was,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I want everything else to stay the same.’

He took his hand off her. ‘Are you trying to say that you don’t want to do this again?’

‘No!’ said Lotty, horrified. ‘No, I do want that. Definitely.’ Corran’s expression was as hard to read as ever, and abruptly Lotty lost her nerve. ‘If you didn’t mind, of course.’

A smile quivered at the corner of his mouth as he pretended to consider the matter. ‘I think I could bear it,’ he said and put his hand back.

‘You’re laughing at me.’ Lotty would have liked to have had the strength to pull away, but it felt too good with his big hand gentling down her spine and over the flare of her hip, and his fingers tightened on her.

‘I am,’ he agreed, the smile deepening. ‘Why on earth would I mind?’

‘I’m not your type,’ said Lotty, but she eased closer anyway until her bare skin was pressed against his.

‘Aren’t you?’ His palm was so warm, so sure against her that Lotty caught her breath.

‘You said yourself that I’m not the kind of woman you’re looking for,’ she managed.

That was true. Corran was oddly jolted by the reminder. He shouldn’t have needed reminding. His mother had been lesson enough and, after his ill-fated marriage to Ella, he had no intention of falling for another woman who wouldn’t fit in with life here in Mhoraigh.

Corran was clear in his own mind. He wanted a practical, sensible woman who wanted to share his plans and work with him to restore the estate to its former glory. A woman who would belong at Mhoraigh and be part of his life for ever.

Lotty wasn’t that woman. No matter how hard she worked, there was an elegance to her that made her look like an exotic orchid planted out in a kitchen garden.

And she wasn’t going to stay. She had been clear about that.

But none of that had mattered last night when she had asked him to kiss her. All the reasons why it would be sensible to keep a distance had evaporated at one look from those beautiful grey eyes. He could have said that it wasn’t a good idea, Corran realised in retrospect, but he could see how much it had cost Lotty to ask him and the truth was that he hadn’t wanted to say no.