‘Lift your hips,’ he said.
He’d claimed that she spoke bluntly, but he bludgeoned her with his rough rasped words. Her body instantly responded, knees drawing in, elbows pressing into the mattress more, giving her leverage enough to tilt her hips up and back.
Into the calloused grasp of his hand against her right hip. The shock of the sudden contact making her gasp. Pant. The ribbon was warm, but his hand was hot, searing her.
Another clenched sound from him. From her. And then... And then a brushing of something just at her centre. Too firm to be the silk. Too slender to be his thigh. She guessed that he had somehow released his breeches and he was there, there to finally press forward into the ache that her body had become.
She arched her hips to give him more access and felt the scrape of his breeches against her inner thigh. He was still clothed. Once she registered how he touched her with one lone calloused finger, she understood the intimacy of his touch. Sliding around her outer lips and circling in. Sliding around and circling in. Like the pooling of the ribbon.
It was too much. ‘Rory.’
He hummed a reply that wasn’t a reply. This wasn’t how it was done with her body tightening to some unimaginable degree. With her knees almost digging into the mattress and her hands gripping the quilt. He needed to be undressed, she needed to face him. They were meant to join their bodies and bind their marriage.
But his finger that had drummed along thesurface of her skin now curved along her wetness, winding her body like the silk of a ribbon. Coiling everything inside her tighter and tighter.
‘We have to stop now. Please.’
‘Ailsa, let it go. You must let go before I... I’m here. This...thisis what was meant to be.’
‘Rory—’
His hand gripped more firmly against her hip, grounding her. Centring her. Another finger added and he pressed more firmly.
She couldn’t catch her breath. Her hips wouldn’t stop their own movement that mimicked his fingers. But her hips weren’t as gliding and insistent, they trembled and juddered until she felt something else.
The ribbon. He’d wound the ribbon around his hand. It was there, too at her centre. Just as insistent and demanding. Soft. Silk surrounding the bluntness of his hand that pressed and rubbed against her until it was all too much.
‘Rory!’
Chapter Eight
‘Ihope you don’t intend to use that ribbon to secure my gown when we leave this room,’ Ailsa said.
Raw with denied need, Rory felt like chuckling despite the fact his wife had somehow shifted their positions and turned partly on her side to make that comment.
She was still underneath him, but her legs were stretched so he straddled her long limbs. The move had bared her shoulders and breasts to him, showed the soft curve of her belly and hips and gave a hint of what was between her legs.
He felt the wet hint still on his fingers though he’d practically flung the ribbon away once her pleasure was done. It didn’t help his need to free himself of that ribbon. It only made him aware of how his fingers were now unbound so he couldtouch and reach every bit of her. His wife, this night, wasn’t supposed to be like this at all.
They had started as enemies. They still were. Paiden was proof that this marriage wasn’t to be trusted.
He couldn’t even take comfort that he had somehow remained in control, that he remained clothed because that made this point in time all the worst. Damn politics and clans. To see her like this, how she responded, to know what they could be together...
Shoving away his need, forcing away the want for more, Rory knew he must extricate himself from this bed, from this room. He must pry himself from the woman. His loyalties couldn’t be divided, not when his friend’s life was at stake.
‘I’ve no intention at all.’ He hoped they found the ribbon and burned it before he forgot all his loyalties. ‘Does that please you?’
‘Please me?’
‘Because you don’t like laces.’
She smiled and it punched him in the gut. Her green eyes almost slumberous with the desire that wasn’t quite sated. He knew it wasn’t because they’d begun that flitting thing again, making him aware how bare he was to her still and how undone he must seem.
He was so undone.
‘I might have changed my mind,’ she said. ‘I might add more laces to my gowns now.’
He probably would be overcome with lust every time he saw one binding her body. The thought of her like that shuddered through him and his knees gave. Which was a mistake because it brushed that part of him that needed her against her stretched legs and her eyes widened and locked on him.
