She was magnificent.

Poets could compose sonnets about the color of her hair and her large dark eyes.

Hamish was no poet. There was one thing he wanted to do: ravish her.

He had no time for musings. It was simply obvious that no loch, no meadow, no hilltop—no matter the clearness of any water, the composition and variety of any flowers, and the intriguing slope of any incline—could compete with the simple image of her on the bed beneath him.

Because the simple fact was that he adored her. In fact, Hamish was quite certain there was a stronger word that better expressed how he felt about her.

I love her.

It was a word he hadn’t used with anyone before, but he mused over its significance as their lips danced and swayed together as they kissed.

I will marry her.

It didn’t matter if they found Georgiana’s sister or not. It didn’t matter if Georgiana’s sister was already a duchess and could craft the loftiest, most believable excuse for Georgiana.

He still wanted to marry her. Georgiana had brought everything wonderful into his life, and there was no way he would deposit her at Gretna Green into her sister’s care, as if nothing in the world had changed.

“You’re smiling,” Georgiana breathed.

“I have you.”

The sentence made her moan, and Hamish concentrated on making more lovely moans come from her throat. She tasted like vanilla, and his nostrils flared. Her skin was soft, some delicious combination of silk and velvet, and he tore his lips from hers and pressed kisses against her long elegant neck, her collar bone, all the places of such beauty that he sought to memorize them for all time, as if the action of kissing them might imprint them on his mind.

Then he smiled.

He wouldn’t need to memorize anything. He intended to have her here, by his side, for the rest of their lives.

Right now he faced a more immediate problem: her dress.

The gown was beautiful of course, no matter how he teased her. It was feminine. Something about the gauzy overlay and the flowers sewn on it was charming, even if she wouldn’t have looked entirely out of place on one of the Regent’s elaborate desserts at the pavilion in Brighton. But the dress was entirely too constrained, and it was absolutely necessary to remove her from it. Immediately. He wanted Georgiana, and he wanted her naked, without even the finest textures to separate them.

He traced the curve of one breast with his hand, indulging in the soft sensation of her luscious form. He wanted to bury himself in her bosom, to never let her go, but for now he turned her over, even though the action seemed absurd. Not seeing her face seemed a vast disadvantage to seeing her face, but he stared at the column of buttons on her back and resisted the urge to curse.

He’d always prided himself in the large size of his hands, but now they seemed an impediment. He moved his fingers slowly over her back. The mesh overlay felt suddenly impossibly fragile, and the frills and ribbons on the top of her gown seemed like an unwanted deterrent. Each flounce and ribbon seemed as forbidding as one of Bonaparte’s finest forts.

He moved valiantly, undoing each ribbon. It wasn’t the first time he’d removed a woman’s dress, but it was the first time that the action seemed imbued with such urgency. There seemed something sacred in the action, and as he slid the dress over her hips, a sense of almost trepidation moved through him.

Because no matter the carnal pleasure he took in the act itself, no matter the baseness of the sensation of flesh against flesh, sweat merging with sweat, the fact was that Georgiana mattered.

He turned her over, staring into her beautiful brown eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

She tensed beneath him, and for a horrifying moment Hamish thought that she would confess that she had no such desire.

“Y-yes,” she stammered. “I mean... If you still desire—”

“Naturally,” he said, enveloping her mouth once again in an embrace, and despising that he’d for a moment made her feel uncomfortable. “A thousand times yes.”

It was not the sort of question he was accustomed to asking before such acts. The women he’d seen in Edinburgh, bored wives eager to invite young men into their beds, seeing the action as diverting as hat shopping or selecting various haberdasheries, would have laughed at it. Georgiana was different. If she desired to bed him, it was not out of a sense of anger that gossipmongers were reporting that her husband was frolicking once again with one of her friends or that the maids always seemed unduly nervous in her husband’s presence and she was never able to get a governess to stay long with her children. It was certainly that she was not one of the wives who saw Hamish as capable of fulfilling pleasures that her husband had long ago abandoned or had never been able to adequately meet, perhaps because of age or the oddities of appearance or demeanor had never drawn their wives to them, at least not as much as their titles, wealth and the encouragement of the women’s parents had done.

He removed her dress, folding the delicate gown with reverence and placing it on a nearby chair. The bed sank as he moved back, tumbling him closer to her, and he once again succumbed to kisses. Kissing had always seemed perfectly pleasant, but the act now seemed imbued with greater significance and far greater pleasure.

Her shift, though, would also need to come off. The long linen fabric looked as complex to remove as any dress, especially given the woman’s tightly drawn stays that further enclosed her chest, even as it managed to arrange her bosom in a particularly alluring manner. The coarse tightly woven fabric of her stays was rough against his hands, and he yearned to touch her skin. It didn’t matter in the least how daintily tied the ribbons were, or how fetching and becoming the light pink color of her stays looked against her skin.

Tomorrow they would reach Gretna Green and Georgiana would join her sister.

And yet, if he was honest, he’d always been aware of the extent of Georgiana’s charms. She’d made his heart lurch from the moment he first saw her, and it hadn’t simply been from seeing her in her night rail.

He undid the tightly pulled stays, wondering how the woman could have worn something so obviously uncomfortable for so long without complaint. He removed the garment slowly. His hands shook, even though his hands never shook.

Georgiana assessed him. “Do you intend to keep your tailcoat on?”

“No,” he said, his voice suddenly hoarse.

She smiled. “Then I believe you will need to remove it.”

He nodded, and in the next moment her hands were on his. She brushed her fingers against the fabric, and he remembered that she’d worn it herself. He slid the tailcoat off.

This time he did not bother folding it.

It could remain utterly wrinkled for the rest of the trip, and he did not care. If it meant he had a moment more of kissing her, then it was worth it.

His sleeves billowed, unconstrained now by his coat. Georgiana, though, was more interested in his vest, or at least, the process of removing it. Her fingers were gentle but not without efficiency. He decided to get to work on his cravat and unwound the linen fabric. Before long his chest was bare, and Georgiana traced his muscles with her fingers. Her silky touch managed to send fire jolting through his body, and he ached to be inside her. His muscles flexed at her touch, and her cheeks pinkened. “Continue,” he said.

“It’s so hard,” she said.

He smirked, and her blush deepened.

“And your body is delightfully soft,” he said.

She bit her bottom lip, and he feathered kisses over her face. He pulled the pins from her hair, so her luscious locks fell to her pillow. He ran his fingers through her hair, moving the satiny strands to her waist.

“You’re glorious,” he said. “Utterly glorious.”

She wrapped her arms around him, as if to clasp him more tightly to her, as if she agreed that any space between them was to be avoided. She combed his hair with her fingers and wrapped her ankles around his.

For some strange reason Hamish felt that he belonged to her every bit as much as she belonged to him.

It was sentimental nonsense of course. Utter balderdash, the sort of thought that would make him roll his eyes if another man expressed it, and yet, here he was, in Georgiana’s arms, thinking the thought himself.

He was hers.

He wanted to pleasure her.

She was his queen.

Evidence of his desire arched against her. He craved her, and the urge to raise her shift and slide into bliss thrummed through him.

He resisted the temptation. This was about Georgiana.

The shift didn’t come off. Kissing was becoming far too interesting, and separating from her again to tear off further garments seemed like an inefficient use of time. Her skin was warm against his, and he smiled, knowing that the fire that blazed through him was not imaginary.

He craved her, and she, despite her propriety, gave every evidence of craving him.

He cupped her breast, and even through her shift, he felt her quiver beneath him. Her cheeks darkened, and her eyes widened as she gave a sudden moan. She hooked her ankles more tightly around him, as if realizing that it was his body that could bring her relief. Beads of sweat lined her brow, and he wiped them away with his hand.

It didn’t matter that he was the brother without a title, the brother who had been just a bit too late. It didn’t matter that he didn’t spend his time in gaming halls and that, unlike his cousin Lord Rockport, he didn’t top lists of rogues. He spent too little time in high society for women to decide whether to adore or avoid him.

“If you were to seduce me,” Georgiana asked, “Would you be wearing pantaloons?”

He grinned. “Absolutely not.”

“Ah.” She lay back onto the bed, and her eyes glimmered. “Perhaps you should demonstrate.”

He tore his pantaloons off. His valet would have been impressed by his speed, and Hamish flung the pantaloons in the general direction of the door. The one good thing about staying in a posting inn would be that there would be no maid to come to light a fire in the hearth who might be shocked by his behavior.

Georgiana had removed her gaze from Hamish’s face, and it was now pointed directly at the evidence of his desire.

Her eyes were wider than before. “That is—”

“Massive. Magnificent. Mighty.” Hamish grinned. “I want to spare you the bother of making conversation.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Is that how you seduce women?”

It wasn’t, he realized. Those situations had been formal in their own way, comprised of each party giving a series of appropriate compliments as they entered each stage of the act. He’d already spent more time with Georgiana than he had with any other woman, and somewhere along the way he’d found an easy comfort with her.

The ropes sank between them, tumbling her closer to him, and she laughed.

“That shift is going to have to come off,” he growled.

“That shift is the only item keeping me proper.”

“Then I despise it,” he said, directing a glower at the coarse linen.

She laughed. “Then I think you’ll have to remove it.”

“I will.” Hamish clutched both sides of the bottom of her shift and pulled it over her head. He’d already removed her stays, and he removed the shift without a great deal of effort.

And then he was silent.

Transfixed.

Georgiana was still in his arms, but this time she was utterly naked. His pulse quickened. His desire throbbed, jutting into her soft flesh.

He drank her in. Imbibed her. She surpassed the finest wine, the finest whisky. Her skin was luminescent, save for the auburn curls on her intimate part. Her waist was slimmer than he’d imagined, fragile in his arms, though her hips splayed in a delightful, rounded manner. Her bosom was perched high, and he circled her rosebuds with his fingers, tracing the manner it pebbled against his hand.

“You’ve gone silent,” Georgiana said, and her long lashes fluttered up.

Hamish blinked and pulled her onto his lap.

Perhaps silence was not the sort of thing a woman wanted in bed.

His throat was dry, and he willed his mouth to speak, even though speech seemed like an overly complex act in the circumstances.  

“You are utterly beautiful,” he said finally, conscious that his voice was hoarse. “You’re a queen. A goddess. A—”

“You can call me goddess,” Georgiana said, rolling off his lap and displaying a wonderfully pert bottom and then splaying before him on her back.

Every part of Hamish tightened, and the room was suddenly much, much hotter than it had been moments before. 

The woman didn’t understand what that position was doing for her body as she stretched, and with a groan he lowered himself over her.

Their lips met, and bliss ensued.

Her skin tasted like the ocean, and their legs tangled together. They kissed, and life was magnificent. Any initial timidity from her had vanished, as if her tongue knew just what to do to his, as if her lips were meant for him and him alone, and as if her arms knew just how to squeeze, just how to rub, just how to—

He tore himself from her, his heart beating wildly.

“Hamish?” she asked.

“Stop.”

“But—”

“Otherwise this is going to end.” He swallowed hard, conscious he wasn’t quite explaining things.

She settled back down on the bed, and Hamish placed his knees between hers and lowered himself over her, positioning himself right at her entrance.

She moved her arms around him, hugging him against her.

“I don’t want to crush you.”

“I’m strong.”

In the next moment she was pulling him even more tightly to her, as if their heartbeats might send each other some code.

And then he pushed forward into her. He moved gently, meeting with resistance and he rested against her. She was wet. Warm. Everything that he craved.

She tangled her fingers in his hair and kissed him.

He obliged.

They kissed for hours, or perhaps just minutes. He’d always prided himself on his sense of time, but his understanding of even the most basic principles seemed to disappear. She rocked against him, unconsciously, and he pushed further.

He was inside her.

Nothing rivaled this pleasure. Her eyes were wide, as if surprised.

He stroked her cheek. “Are you in pain?”

She shook her head, but he moved slowed inside her all the same and continued to feather kisses over her.

And then at some point she tightened about him. His speed quickened, and his rhythm grew more erratic, his mind consumed with one word: Georgiana.

She clung to his back, and then she let out a delightful sigh and he eased heronto the pillow. She smiled softly, and her eyes appeared dreamy.

Life could not entail any greater joy, and happiness shot through him. He pulled himself from her quickly, spilling seed over her taut stomach.

“That was—” Georgiana closed her eyes, as if she’d abandoned the use of words after all. Her bosom still heaved, and he stared, transfixed.

He squeezed her hand and wiped her stomach clean gently with a cloth before pulling her tightly toward him.

He’d never spent the night with a woman with whom he’d been intimate before, but now he didn’t want to leave a single inch between Georgiana and him. He held her tightly, stroking her lovely, luscious locks until her head seemed to grow heavy, and her breathing grew regular.

Still he forced himself to stay awake longer, wanting to remember the exact curves of her body and angles of her face and the manner in which the candlelight flickered over it.

Only when the glow of the candlelight ran out did he allow himself to sleep, soothed by the sweet scent that still clung to her.