He stepped closer, changing his hold as he angled her up for another kiss. This was gentle, persuasion rather than insistence. Yet the same magic transported her to paradise. His kisses claimed her very essence. It was many years since those adolescent experiments with Paolo, but she didn’t remember such a profound reaction.
She did however remember the way a passionate kiss made her stomach twist and ache with desire. She remembered how frustrated her sixteen-year-old self had been when Paolo got her all stirred up, and they’d both been too frightened to take the next step.
That hadn’t changed. In fact, it was worse.
She leaned into Fergus, seeking more heat, more pressure. But he, il cattivo, kept the contact essentially innocent. She was mad to resent his restraint, given she was the one who placed limits on what they did.
“Aye, it is dangerous.” Like her, he whispered, although she doubted if there was another person between here and Iceland. “But it’s delightful, too.”
This time when she tried to break away, Fergus let her go. Perhaps because he knew that, despite her misgivings, she wasn’t ready to forsake this perilous enchantment.
She raised trembling hands to burning cheeks. “Madonna, my head is spinning.”
Then came the fatal moment. He smiled at her as he’d smiled just once before. As though she was a treasure he’d unexpectedly found in a field and that he meant to cherish forever.
For more smiles like that, any risk might be worth it. Perhaps denying herself the chance to know him as only a lover could was the sin, not yielding a chastity that in Fergus’s presence seemed more burden than blessing.
“I’ll no’ trouble ye with more now.” He paused and tilted an inquiring eyebrow in her direction. “Unless you’ve reached a decision, that is.”
Marina should give him a categorical refusal. She should stick to the path that gave her success and independence and a future. Especially as a love affair between two such disparate individuals as she and the Mackinnon was sure to be a catastrophe.
But, cavolo, he was handsome standing before her with that quizzical expression on his face. And he kissed like a dream. This was the first time she’d tasted adult passion, and its power left her astonished.
She should say no to Fergus’s proposition, but by heaven, she was tempted to say yes.
With a quaking breath, she buried her trembling hands in her skirts. “No, no decision,” she said in a faint voice, loathing her cowardice.
Chapter Ten
When Marina and Fergus joined her father for dinner in his room, she was sure Papa must guess something significant had happened to her today. It was lucky that he was used to her distraction when she was wrapped up in her work.
Whereas for once in her life, painting was the last thing on her mind.
Could she become a man’s mistress? For all the reasons she’d given Fergus, she’d long recognized that a woman who wished to pursue a career as an artist must remain chaste.
Rosa’s death retained its power to inspire nightmares. What Marina hadn’t told him was that she was there when they pulled her friend’s body from the Arno. Ever since, that pale, waterlogged corpse had served as a warning of the price a woman paid for passion.
But that was before Marina discovered how powerful passion could be. This afternoon’s kisses had swept her into a new and fiery world, radiant with heat and excitement and pleasure.
And all Fergus had done so far was kiss her. Imagine what else she had to discover.
If he’d made demands, she’d have no difficulty refusing him. But devil take the Mackinnon, for once he didn’t order her around. He left it to her to decide—and she was far from convinced she had the strength to walk away without sampling more.
Her mind recognized the wise choice. Her traitorous senses insisted that desire must rule.
The internal argument continued all evening, as she battled to pretend she was the same independent woman who had set out to paint this morning. The fine dinner stuck in her throat, and she heard hardly a word of the conversation between her father and the man who wanted to be her lover.
But she watched him. Dio, how she watched him. All her life, her soul had fed on beauty, and the Mackinnon was an extraordinarily beautiful man. On a physical level, she couldn’t choose a more perfect specimen.
One strong, elegant hand made a slashing gesture, as he described a banquet he’d attended in Edinburgh Castle. Her gaze fastened on that spare, almost austere face with its subtle hints of humor and intelligence. That long, lean, efficient body…
A shudder ran through her as she imagined lying beneath that body as he pushed inside her. A heavy pulse set up in the secret hollow between her legs, and she gave a surreptitious wiggle in search of relief.
Most of the night, Fergus had treated her as a casual acquaintance. He seemed happy to talk to her father about places they’d traveled, and the great families in Italy who had opened their homes to Marina in recognition of her talent. Warning enough of how much she risked, if she trusted herself to this man’s honor.
But while she’d made no sound and the chairs at Achnasheen were far too sturdy to creak, Fergus must have sensed some change in her. When he raised his gray gaze, she had to bite back a gasp.
At times tonight, his ease had made her wonder if she’d imagined that sizzling encounter on the hillside. But one flickering, incendiary glance told her that he burned, too.