“I should very much like to fuck you.”
Cat almost choked on the piece of tender venison she had just chewed and been about to swallow.
It took all her determination to make that swallow rather than engage in a fit of choking in front of the man who had just made that shockingly blunt statement.
Could she have misheard him?
As there was absolutely nothing wrong with her hearing, Cat doubted that was the case.
She simply hadn’t been expecting Essex to say something so…so blatantly carnal, when he had been so coldly polite in his conversation since Cat had joined him for dinner in the small family dining room.
They had already eaten their first course of thick broth and were now enjoying some of the local venison, caught and dressed by Dougal McGregor and expertly cooked by Mrs. Murray. As they ate, they had discussed the weather and how far Inverness was from here and how long it would take to reach it. They had discussed nothing at all of a personal nature.
And now this.
Was it any wonder, then, that Cat was struck dumb at the duke having so suddenly made such an openly sexual comment to her?
“I have always preferred to deal with all things honestly, including physical desire,” Essex continued in the same cool tone he had seconds ago announced he wished to fuck her. “Rather than indulging in a ridiculous and time-wasting flirtation that would ultimately arrive at the same conclusion.” His gaze was icy. “Such honesty leaves no room for false expectations.”
Who said things like this?
Andrew Belgrade, apparently.
Although none of the desire he stated he felt to fuck her showed in that unemotional face or as his steely gaze steadily met hers. His firm lips were unsmiling.
Cat cleared her throat before speaking. “Next you will be flattering me even further by telling me this desire you feel for me goes completely against your nature and wishes.”
He nodded. “It does. But as it is also growing stronger rather than dissipating, as I had hoped that it would, I believe it best to deal with the situation openly rather than continue trying to ignore it,” he added self-disgustedly.
“Deal with it by fucking me, you mean?”
He winced at hearing a lady speak so crudely. “With your agreement, yes.”
Cat continued to stare at him. Indeed, there was no way she could do anything else at the moment. “And does this…this honest approach to the subject succeed in seducing many ladies into your bed?”
His eyes darkened. “I have not, for many years, wished to seduce any other ladies into my bed. The desire I feel for you dictates I have no choice in the matter. Which is why I have stated my desires openly.”
Cat ignored his comment about not wishing to seduce any other ladies into his bed, although she believed she would like to come back to the subject again later.
Possibly once she was alone in her bedchamber.
Or perhaps the duke did not mean the comment as literally as she had heard it? Perhaps his title and handsome looks meant he had no need to seduce ladies into his bed.
For now, Cat gazed at him incredulously. “What on earth gives you the impression that honesty will succeed in seducing me?”
His gaze remained on her unblinkingly. “The manner in which your nipples have hardened and your delicious female scent has deepened since I mentioned the subject tells me that you feel that same physical attraction toward me,” he remorselessly said. “That being the case, I see no reason why, for the duration of my stay in Scotland, the two of us cannot satisfy each other’s physical desires once Malcolm has gone to bed in the evenings.”
He saw no reason why the two of them could not satisfy each other’s physical desires!
Cat had never been spoken to with such—such—
Stark and brutal sexual honesty, she acknowledged weakly. Both in regard to Andrew’s words and her own physical response to them.
She had changed out of the damp gown from earlier and now wore another high-waisted gown of deep rose. The quick rise and fall of the tops of her breasts above the low neckline clearly revealed her agitation.
Or something else…
Because her nipples were hard beneath the silk material, and the slickness between her thighs had increased, and no doubt her female scent along with it.
Still, people didn’t talk like this to each other on a few hours’ acquaintance. In her experience, they didn’t talk to each other like this at all! Not in Cat’s polite and protected world, in any case.
Andrew Belgrade does.
And he had done so with that same lack of emotion with which he spoke of everything else.
Cat willed her ragged breathing to even out before attempting to answer him. “Flattered as I am—”
“You are no more flattered by the bluntness of my comments, than I am pleased at having to acknowledge this unexpected desire I have felt for you since the moment I first looked at you,” he said harshly.
Revealing how much that desire angered him?
No doubt it did, Cat acknowledged. She was sure that before he came to Scotland, Andrew had never even considered the possibility that he might feel desire for his sister’s own sister-in-law.
“Now I’m really not flattered,” she said dryly.
He raised dark brows. “Would you have me lie to you with flowery declarations of eternal love and romance?”
Cat glared. “I would rather you had not spoken at all!”
“I only state the truth as I see it.” One of his large hands reached across the table to grasp one of her much smaller ones. “I accept I am probably fifteen or so years older than you, but I do not see why that should detract from the desire we obviously feel for each other. You are a widow, I have never been married, nor am I committed to another. Therefore, there should be no impediment to us becoming lovers.”
Cat’s whole evening, her very reality as she knew it, felt as if it were being shaken to its foundations.
Because Andrew was correct in his summation?
Because she did feel an inexplicable desire for him, one her responses told her she felt more deeply than for any other man. Including Ewan, who had been her best friend before he became her husband. This awareness of Andrew was visceral, primal, and nothing like the easy joy she and Ewan had found in each other’s company.
But that didn’t mean she and Essex had to take that mutual desire to its natural conclusion. Something inside Cat knew instinctively that if she once gave in to these uncomfortable feelings she had for Andrew Belgrade, she would never be the same.
There was a darkness to him, a well of emotions buried deep inside him, a sensuality that, if he ever unleashed it, would either conquer or destroy everything in its path.
She knew Elena had believed her brother to be a good man at heart, despite his wanting nothing more to do with her after she had eloped with Hugh. Elena had described that behavior as being due to “the curse of Andrew’s propriety.”
Cat had seen some of that propriety, in that until now he had been excessively polite to her. She couldn’t fault his manner toward Malcolm either. Despite the prank of the two of them having tried to waylay him on the road earlier today. His behavior toward the household servants had also been impeccable.
But whether she returned Andrew’s desire or not, she must never forget that he now had as much of a say in Malcolm’s future as she did. Essex’s conversation with her great-uncle, whether it took place tomorrow or the day after, would confirm that Hugh’s will named the two of them as joint guardians.
But no judge, her Uncle Simon had explained to Cat, Scottish or English, would refuse to allow a man as prestigious and wealthy as Andrew Belgrade, the Duke of Essex, to take his nephew back to London with him, if only for a visit.
That possibility was enough of a deterrent to the heated desire Cat now felt coursing through her veins.
She turned away from the fierceness of his gaze. “Except the impediment of decency and good sense,” she answered him abruptly. “Two things which currently seem to have deserted you.”
Andrew wished he could claim otherwise. He truly did. But this desire he felt toward Catriona had been growing steadily stronger throughout the evening.
Minute by minute.
Second by second.
Until she had become all he could think about.
Her beauty.
That flawless milky-white skin.
Her deep auburn hair.
The tempting swell of her breasts.
The slender elegance of her body.
Andrew had become obsessed with those thoughts. So much so that, after bathing and changing for dinner, rather than remaining in his bedchamber looking out over the loch, he’d instead felt compelled to seek out Catriona where he knew she would be putting Malcolm to bed.
He had remained in the doorway, watching her unobserved for several minutes. She’d looked beautifully flushed and disheveled. Much like Andrew imagined she would look after her body had been plundered by his lips, hands, and cock.
The way in which she had so pointedly looked at him as she announced to Malcolm she was going to read Beauty and the Beast as his bedtime story had caused Andrew’s palms to itch with a need to spank her deliciously rounded bottom before any of that plundering took place.
Since Catriona had joined him for dinner, looking utterly beautiful in a gown of dark rose and with her deep auburn hair secured in loose curls at her crown, his cock had remained permanently hard and throbbing inside his pantaloons.
Having so much of his blood pumping and churning hotly in one place caused him to feel slightly light-headed.
Which perhaps explained why he had spoken so bluntly to her of his desire minutes ago.
Perhaps.
Truth be told, Andrew was naturally a blunt and decisive man. Traits he’d had to curb during this past ten years of trying to restore the decency of his Belgrade family name and the Essex title.
Catriona made him forget all caution.
Made him ache.
Want.
A want that, after so many years of restraint apart from the release he gave himself, Andrew no longer had the physical strength or desire to deny. It was Catriona’s hands he wanted on him. Caressing him. Stroking him. Giving him the pleasure his cock currently throbbed and ached for.
His gaze continued to hold hers captive now as he pushed his chair back noisily before standing. He maintained his hold on Catriona’s hand as he moved swiftly round the table. She was light as a feather as he pulled her to her feet, allowing his arms to at last move about the slenderness of her waist as he drew her close to him.
Andrew gazed intently into those dark blue eyes for several seconds, giving Catriona a chance to object if she wished to, before he lowered his head and claimed her lips with his own.
Those soft and perfect bow-shaped lips parted invitingly beneath the onslaught of his as he first took and then claimed.
Those same lips Andrew had more than once today imagined wrapped about his cock as this little Cat knelt at his feet and he thrust his hardness rhythmically into and out of the welcoming heat of her mouth until he could bear the pleasure no longer and pumped his release down her slender throat.
After years of refusing to even think of physical pleasure, just the thought now of burying his cock in Catriona’s heat was enough to harden his cock to a painful level. He could also feel his drawers becoming damp as pre-cum leaked from the slit at the bulbous tip.
“Miss Catriona— Oh.”
Andrew was barely aware of the interruption of a third party, but the woman in his arms reacted immediately by wrenching herself away so quickly, he was sure his fingers would leave bruises on the creamy skin of her arms.
Cat was mortified.
Not only at what Mrs. Munro must think at finding Cat being kissed by a man she had obviously met only hours ago, but also because she was shocked by her own response to a man who had hitherto been only cold and distant. Toward everyone and everything.
There had been none of that coldness and distance when he kissed and touched her. Kisses and a touch Cat knew she had responded to. To a degree that if they hadn’t been interrupted when they were, Cat dreaded to think where they might have found themselves.
No doubt in my own bedchamber or Andrew’s, a voice inside her head taunted.
Bad enough she had responded to a relative stranger at all, but it was made worse by the fact Andrew was also the man who threatened the life of peace and harmony she and Malcolm were building here together in the Highlands.
That it should be Esme Munro who had chanced upon the two of them kissing, a distant relative of Cat’s own dead husband, made it doubly devastating.
Cat had known the Munro family all her life, Ewan most of all, because the two of them were of an age. His brother, Alec, now the Munro heir, was a year younger than them. Much to Alec’s disgust, the two of them had always left him behind when they ran wild together amongst the loch and glens.
It had seemed only natural Cat and Ewan would gravitate toward each other at the dances and assemblies they attended when they were both old enough to do so. Their romance had blossomed, and Cat had begun to fantasize about their future life together. Of possibly years of being happily married to each other, with children and, later, grandchildren.
She had been furious with Ewan when he announced he felt duty-bound to join a Scottish regiment of the king’s army to rid the world of Napoleon’s tyranny. Cat had sympathized with his feelings about the latter. Even in the Scottish Highlands, they had been affected by hardship brought about by those years of war. But still, she had hated the very idea of Ewan going to France. Of his possibly dying there.
But as there had been no formal arrangement between the two of them when he joined his regiment, she could only kiss Ewan and wave him goodbye when he set off to join in the fighting.
Cat had missed him dreadfully while he was away, and breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief when word reached them that the fighting against Napoleon had ended with the Corsican’s surrender and subsequent incarceration on the island of Elba. To her relief, Ewan’s regiment had returned to the Highlands shortly after.
He was a slightly different Ewan than Cat remembered.
He had seemed taller, definitely broader, and his nature seemed to have hardened too. No doubt from the terrible things he had seen and been a part of.
Cat’s heart had lightened somewhat when, within days of his return, Ewan had asked Hugh’s permission to marry Cat.
She had accepted, of course, having loved Ewan all her life.
But there had seemed no need to rush the wedding when his regiment was to remain in Scotland. Instead, they spent the winter and spring months becoming reacquainted with each other before their wedding, arranged for the end of April.
A wedding that had quickly been brought forward after Napoleon escaped from Elba and seemed set on sweeping across France to return to its capital as its emperor.
Cat and Ewan had only one week together as man and wife before his regiment was recalled to the fighting, and mere weeks later, he was killed at the Battle of Waterloo.
So, yes, Andrew was perfectly correct earlier in referring to her as being a widow, but the truth of it was Cat had barely had chance to be a wife before Ewan was taken from her.
She was certainly nothing like the widows Elena had told her about in London Society. Beautiful and sophisticated women who took advantage of their return to single status by engaging in numerous and discrete affairs. Some women, Elena had told her, behaved in that fashion before their husbands were even dead!
The sort of women Andrew was no doubt accustomed to being with.
None of which Cat could say when poor Esme Munro was still standing white-faced and unmoving in the doorway.
Cat forced a smile to her lips. “I believe we are both finished with dinner, thank you, Mrs. Munro.”
The older woman blinked as if waking from a dream, a frown still marring her brow as she continued to stare at them. “I came to tell ye that Alec Munro is waiting in the parlor to speak with ye.”
Cat’s eyes widened. It was almost ten o’clock at night, far too late for anyone to be calling. Especially so when Alec and the rest of his family would be attending the celebrations tomorrow in order to show their respect for the close ties that had existed for so many years between their two families.
That closeness dictated Cat must now meet with Alec despite the lateness of the hour. “No doubt His Grace would appreciate you bringing him a decanter of brandy, either here or in his bedchamber.” Cat glanced out the window. “Could you also see that a bedchamber is prepared for Alec Munro?” It was full dark outside, making traveling hazardous, and there seemed little point in Alec taking that risk when he would only be returning in the morning.
The housekeeper gave a bob of her head. “Very well, Miss Catriona.” She hurried from the room.
“Cat—”
“Do not speak to me,” she warned Andrew in a shaky voice. “Certainly, do not touch me.” She held her hands up in front of her to ward off any attempt on his part to do so, her gaze avoiding meeting his. “I suggest we forget the events of this evening and, for Malcolm’s sake, begin anew in the morning.” She left the room with the same haste as the housekeeper had seconds previously.