Cally’s heart was already beating a dancing allegro within her chest. “McTavish?”

“I mean to impress you, lass. So hold fast. We’re in for a bit of a storm.” And to prove it, he flipped up her skirts, and ran his hands up and down her legs, over her stockings to the edge of her garters.

Her dancing heart stopped. “Do you promise?”

His smile was all in his eyes. “Aye. The better to impress you with.” He let the brogue he had been carefully covering light the edges of his words.

“Oh, Lord help me, I do like a rogue. And I like a Scots rogue best of all.”

McTavish slid to his knees in front of her. “Then you’re in for a treat, lass.”

Caledonia felt heat flash under her skin, and her head felt light, faint with anticipation and need. “Pray God, you don’t disappoint me.”

“Have I yet, lass?” His grin was sly and confident all at the same time.

“No.” And he wasn’t disappointing her now. Not in the least.

It had been so, so long since she had felt this kind of focused, physical attention. It had been so long since she could give herself over to the sensations sliding across her skin without needing the memories that went with it. It had been so, so, so long since she had let herself feel this kind of unbridled, unapologetic bliss.

McTavish put his hands upon her knees and pushed them gently wider. He lowered his head to feather kisses on the insides of her thighs, and she felt herself coming undone, inch by tantalizing inch.

Oh, God, yes, he could—Cally nearly shrieked with relief and gratitude at the first warm, wet lick of his tongue across her. But the sound that came out of her mouth was all animal pleasure.

“Yes,” he agreed, and she could feel his voice vibrate through her as he tongued and probed her. She was carried away, floating along on a current of soft, infinitely pleasant sensation.

And then with a precise touch she hadn’t prepared herself for—and never could quite manage on her own—he kissed her there, in exactly the right spot to make all the quiet desperation of her lonely nights in the Cheviot Hills dissipate into warmth and want. Into delicious desire.

A craving, a hungry yearning rose within her, and her hands tangled in his hair, pulling him to her, pressing his lips—his marvelously clever lips—against that most sensitive place. She felt intoxicated with the relentlessly gentle onslaught of his tongue against the center of her very being.

Her fingers curled and dug into the fabric of his shirt, as if they could bind her to this man, but she was untethered, carried off on a journey of passion by his strength and his gentleness. And, heaven help her, his clever, clever hands. Because, with one sweet touch she flew away, blinded by the explosion of light and heat behind her eyelids.

Cally had no time to rest in the afterglow—while she was still wet and all but shaking from the outrageous force of her release, McTavish unbuttoned the flap on his breeches, lifted her up like a rag doll, and just as easily lowered and impaled her upon his ready member.

And they burst into flame.

“McTavish.” She didn’t know what else to call him. Good Lord, she had never even used the man’s Christian name, and here she was, making acrobatic love to him in an empty town coach at the back of a carriage house at a party she could not now return to.

The only sensible thing seemed to be to wrap her arms around his neck and weather the marvelously pleasurable storm.

She did so with a whisper at his ear. “Make it a slow ride, if you please, McTavish. Let it last a good long while.” Long enough to see her through the bleak, lonely days that were sure to come.

With her hands about his neck, her skirts pooled down about her waist, covering his lap.

“No, lass,” he urged against her lips. “Pull your dress back up so I can touch you.”

Cally felt a tremor of something reckless and intoxicating shiver its way deep into her belly as she complied, hugging the folds of supple silk fabric to herself as she pulled them up.

McTavish kept still except for his hands firmly caressing her hips as she adjusted to having him so deeply inside her, letting her find her own desire.

“Well done, lass,” he whispered with that marvelously appreciative, and decidedly wicked grin. “You’re a beautiful sight for damn sore eyes. Devil take me if you’re not.”

Cally made a sound that was very near to a groan as he reached around to her bottom, pulling her even more tightly against him, before he let his hands stray upwards. As his palms swept across the bunched silk of her dress she began to arch her back slightly, knowingly thrusting her aching breasts forward for his touch.

He did not disappoint her, stroking the sensitive undersides with his fingers before moving on to draw the backs of his knuckles across her rosy pink nipples, running his fingers back and forth, grazing against the sensitive peaks until they pebbled, and she gasped with the exquisite pleasure.

“Beautiful,” he whispered again.

She was drenched in thankful pleasure that poured through her until she had to move, had to chase the bliss that she knew was just out of reach.

“That’s right, lass.” He kissed her neck, and then her ear, and then kissed her deeply on the mouth.

Cally responded instantly, channeling all her need to touch him into her mouth, into the play of her tongue with his. McTavish moved his nimble, articulate hands to the apex of her thighs, and let his fingers play against the sensitive nub at the center of her being.

She rocked her hips into him, creating the sweet, unbearable friction between their bodies, and clever man that he was, he let her set the pace, let her find the rhythm she needed, until need and knowledge made her move more urgently.

McTavish matched her motion, rocking his hips in rhythm to meet hers, driving upwards into her with his own increased need as she spiraled higher.

Cally could feel her legs start to clamp together, could feel the glorious slippery tension that signaled her need for release. “Please.”

He heard her and understood her inchoate plea. He kept one hand on her, urging her towards her fulfillment, while he wrapped the other around her waist and began to urge her up and down, sliding deeper into her slick heat.

She couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but try to bring the bliss nearer and nearer, faster and faster toward the rush of oblivion.

The one thought she could form, as her climax blossomed through her body, was to kiss him on the mouth to mute her unbridled scream.