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He lifted her to slide against him in the most intimate way, damning the silk and cotton between them. Although, he knew she was bare beneath the petticoats. The thought of her heat there rendered him harder still. He groaned against her mouth when she tentatively touched her tongue to his. She might be an innocent, but she knew how to kiss.
Daingead. He was practically tupping an innocent in a chapel. They’d be struck with lightning right through Whitehall’s vaulted roof. He shouldn’t even be kissing her there.
Without a word, he lifted under Lucy’s legs. She clung tighter to him as he carried her back up the aisle like a lusty bridegroom taking his new wife away. His echoing footsteps stopped, and he broke the kiss to push through the door. Thank the devil or the lord or whomever had kept the corridor empty and dark, the sound of music and laughter coming from the Great Hall.
Striding quickly, Greer led her out of the chapel and through the door of the massive wine cellar down the corridor. The smell of wooden casks and dust enveloped them with the deep darkness. No sconces were left burning in the room where servants came to turn the bottles once each day.
He set Lucy down, clasping her face gently in his hands. They couldn’t see one another, only feel. He slid his thumb over her smooth cheek. “Ye cannot mean it,” he murmured.
“I do want you, Greer,” she said, her words breathless.
“Ye are a maid still.”
“Yes, but I have no need to continue that way. I will never marry, but I want… I need to know about this heat, this ache inside me.”
His breathing was loud in his ears. Lucy’s hands found his chest, and he could tell she’d removed her gloves. He caught her hands between them, lifting them to his mouth to kiss. “Ye honor me, lass.” His rational mind warred with his want. There was no doubt he wanted Lucy. He would bring her to such pleasure along with him. But why did she think she’d never marry? Because of her scars, her marks? He wanted to argue, but then she pulled his face back down to hers.
Her lips slid against his, banishing all lingering thoughts of talk and treason. He held her to him as if she could disappear into the darkness if he didn’t. The soft mews she made tightened his muscles, and he lifted her against him again, molding her intimately to his form. His hands held her arse under her bum roll. “So many layers,” he murmured.
“Too many,” she said and pulled his tunic up from his wrapped plaid. Breaking free of the edge, her cool fingers slid up underneath to feather across the hot skin of his stomach and chest. It had the same effect as if she’d stroked his hard jack, rolling fire of lust through him.
Greer left her mouth, kissing a trail down the side of her jaw to her neck where her blood rushed under her skin. They backed up until Lucy was pressed against what was probably the door because bottles and casks lined every spare inch of wall and filled shelves up to the low ceiling. Her breathing came fast and shallow, like his. She ran her fingers through the light hair of his chest. She found his hand against her face and led it down to her shoulder and then lower. “Touch me,” she whispered on an exhale, her hand pressing his to her breast.
She tugged on her bodice and stays, and he felt them shift downward until her flesh swelled over the laced edge. He could easily imagine her breasts perched on the top of the neckline, two plump mounds of softness.
Hand against her back, Greer lowered his mouth to her skin, breathing in the scent of her in the warm valley between them. Strawberries and cloves. He kissed along the swell over to one taut nipple, sucking it into his mouth.
“Oh God, yes,” Lucy said, her words stuttering as with a gasp.
Greer focused his lips, teeth, and tongue on the pleasure point while his hand strummed her other nipple, palming the flesh before moving his mouth over. Her fingers ran through his hair, holding his head to her, and he was her willing captive. She shifted below, pressing against him, and he raised his lips back to hers.
“You are mighty,” she murmured against his mouth. “I want to…” She moaned softly against his mouth as Greer pressed against her mound through her petticoats. She pushed her pelvis back, and he could imagine the wet heat there. “Yes,” she said. “Please, Greer.”
Everything about Lucy pulled him in. Her obvious desire, her words, the strain in her voice, her openness to his touch.Take me. Before he could think, his fingers were rucking up the layers of her gown, determined to feel her desire for him. The petticoats came up easily, and he realized she’d reached down to help lift.
Silk, sewn with little pits that he remembered were pearls, puffed up around them. They both shoved the fabric behind Lucy, like a cushion for her against the door. Her kisses clung to him, and she opened her mouth. When her tongue slid out, touching his, Greer groaned. He slid his hand up her silky thigh, squeezing the roundness of her bare arse.
Lucy breathed heavily against him. She lifted her one leg, giving him access, and Greer found her easily. Wet and warm, she was as soft inside as she was out. She moaned softly.
“Ye are a nymph, lass,” he said and kissed a path along her jaw to her ear where his ragged words whispered. “Like sweet honey, heated in the hot sun.”
“’Tis so good,” she said, thrusting in his hand as he played her tight body.
The rush of blood through his ears blocked the noise at first, but his warrior instincts woke him to the push against the door.
“Is it locked?” a voice came from outside the door at Lucy’s back.
Greer’s palm flattened against the thick wood as he dropped Lucy’s petticoats, the rustle of them breaking the thick silence in the wine room.
“I have the key.” It was a woman, the first voice belonging to a man. Were they looking for a secluded place? Or were they servants finding wine to replenish the goblets in the Great Hall?
Either way, he needed to save Lucy from ridicule.
“What do we do?” she said in a whisper barely heard over the iron clink of the key in the lock. Being discovered in a dark room alone together would cause a scandal, something he was certain Lucy didn’t want. She’d already lived through so much as a Cranfield.
Greer grabbed Lucy’s hand, tugging her behind him as he moved deeper into the room, his hand out to stop him from knocking over shelves of glass bottles. He’d only briefly seen the layout when he’d opened the door to carry Lucy inside. Were there three or four rows of bottles?
Hand before him, he pulled Lucy quickly forward down a back aisle as the door opened. Candlelight seemed bright after the ink-black darkness, and Greer tugged Lucy to stand against the back wall, blocking her body.
