The Scot's Secret - Cecelia Mecca Page 0,71
legs intertwined with hers, her core pressed against him, his hands splayed across her buttocks. Alex squeezed, ever so gently.
“Yes,” she said, knowing what he was asking.
This time, there was no pain. He moved just slightly, and she immediately understood that she needed to move with him. She met his movements and matched them with her own.
His wicked grin made her realize that she was in control this time—he’d known it all along and had been waiting for her to figure it out.
And she did, quickly.
“Clara. . .”
Her name on his lips was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard. She moved with him until the pressure became too much to bear.
“I need. . .”
He circled his hips beneath her, somehow understanding, and once again Clara lost herself to the pleasures that he awoke in her. He called her name again, thrusting into her as she shook and squeezed and shuddered.
She wanted to tease, ‘Not too loud,’ as he’d done before, but she couldn’t talk. She couldn’t breathe. She allowed her whole body to go limp atop him. It was as if she were frozen in place.
This time when he broke contact, he rolled them both onto their sides.
“You spin me around like I’m a kitten,” she said.
“A kitten?” He laughed. “Nay, a full-grown cat, ready to pounce. No wee kitten here,” he said, kissing her nose.
The intimate gesture made her smile.
“Nice?” he asked.
“Perhaps I could have used another word,” she admitted. “How many times can—”
“As many as you’d like.”
“Really?”
“Aye.” His voice had suddenly grown serious. “But every time we make love, the chance you’re carrying my babe grows.”
She would have been excited by the prospect, even unmarried, if she could offer a babe any kind of normal life.
But she could not.
“You’ve done that before?’
He didn’t flinch, but instead pulled her closer to him. Wrapped in his arms, Clara could imagine all would be well. That she wouldn’t ever have to say goodbye to him. She’d never felt so safe, or sated, in her life.
“Aye.”
“And you have no babes?”
He sighed. “I do not. There’s a way to avoid it.”
She waited.
“I could have, should have, pulled myself from you at the end to prevent it.”
“Pulled yourself?” Though she knew how a woman became pregnant, she’d never thought about how to avoid it.
“Aye.”
He watched her as she thought about what he was saying. “Why did you not do so?”
“That’s not so easily answered, lass.”
Actually, she thought it might be, but didn’t dare say so aloud.
“Have you ever been with a vir. . .” She stopped. She really didn’t want to know.
“No, I have not. You are the first.”
But he didn’t seem happy to admit it.
“Which is why, of course, we will marry.”
It took her a moment to understand his words.
“Marry?”
That was how he would propose marriage? Nay, they would not marry, but the look on his face told her that he was earnest.
“Alex, we will not be getting married.”
“Clara—” he mocked her tone, “—we will.”
And the stubborn Scotsman actually believed his own words. As if she would ever put him in such danger.
Another, more alarming thought occurred to her.
“The bed? Alex. . .” She pushed away from him and looked down but could see nothing. She pushed at him until he moved, and sure enough, drops of blood stared back at her.
He looked amused.
“’Tis not funny. I didn’t think. . .”
“The sheet can be replaced.” Alex pointed to the silken coverlet that he’d torn off the bed earlier. “That, not so easily.”
“You thought of that before. ”
He reached for her and ran his finger gently down her cheek. “I thought of everything.”
“Including—”
“Aye, including the fact that you could become pregnant.”
She stared into the face of the man she loved.
“I don’t regret it,” she said.
He smiled and pulled her toward him. Nestling her head in the comfortable and familiar crook of his arm, Clara closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure she could sleep pressed against him this way, her hand draped on the ridges of his stomach. Those ridges were the last thing she remembered. When she woke, it was morning, and he was gone.
The first thing she noticed, of course, was his absence. The second was a folded sheet at the foot of the bed. How the devil had he managed that? Besides which, the fire still raged when it should have died out during the night. He’d stoked it without her noticing, and he’d clearly also seen to the candles at some point in the night, for they were not much shorter