She smiled. “If…if you mean it when you say you’d like to make this a real marriage between us, we’ve got time to get it right.”
“Lots of practice ahead?”
It was her turn to blush. “I…I hope so. If what is to come is anything like kissing you, I won’t complain.”
He smothered the thought of having Kit in his bed for hours on end. Right now he needed control, and that idea was a sure way to snap his restraint.
“I’ll do my best,” he said, smiling at her. “And I do want to make this a real marriage. I want to live with you and fight your battles and grow old at your side. What do you say?”
Kit’s grip on his hand tightened. “So you’re not angry at all that we had to marry?”
He shook his head. “I want you, Kit. I hadn’t worked out how I’d manage it, but I had intentions of courting you.”
“The laird’s nephew and the stableboy?”
“Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?” He went on to mention something that niggled at him. “Although a union between a mere laird and a countess sounds absurd, too. You could look much higher than me for a husband.”
She studied him as if she saw right to his heart. “You know, there is more to a laddie than his title. You’re a good man, Quentin MacNab. In every way that counts, I could look no higher than you.”
“You don’t know me.”
Her huff of amusement expressed utter contempt for that statement. “Of course I do. I’ve seen how you treat children and horses and dogs. I’ve seen how you treat Hamish and Emily. When we spent that night in the hut, I know that you were a perfect knight in shining armor. If you had any designs on my fortune, you had me at your mercy then. Yet I slept in your arms in complete safety.”
He lifted her hand to kiss her knuckles. “I have no designs on your fortune. I do however have designs on your person.”
“Why didn’t you try and kiss me at the hut?”
He shrugged. “Because you weren’t ready. Because you were afraid. Because you didn’t yet trust me.”
“I trust you now,” she said softly.
The words sounded like a declaration of love. Give
n what Kit had been through, trust was perhaps a greater gift than love, which didn’t mean that Quentin harbored no hopes of making her love him one day.
“Enough to become my wife in every sense?”
For the first time, she gave him a smile without shadows. She reached up to stroke his cheek. He was sharply conscious that she’d never before touched him of her own initiative. A physical expression of the trust she pledged in words.
“I can’t wait.”
Chapter 11
When Kit saw hunger flare in Quentin’s hazel eyes, turning them vivid gold, giddy anticipation flooded her. She’d been afraid for so long, but staring into her husband’s intense features, she wasn’t afraid now.
“Kit…”
He swept her into his arms for a kiss so sizzling that it cast his earlier kisses, thrilling as they’d been, into the shade. When he sucked her tongue into his mouth, heat overwhelmed her. As her knees threatened to crumple, she clutched at his broad shoulders.
He began to kiss her face and neck. Sensation rippled through her and made her cry out when he concentrated on a particularly sensitive spot where her neck joined her shoulder. These unfamiliar reactions turned her body into a stranger’s. Her breasts swelled, and her nipples tightened to aching neediness. Her stomach clenched with restless yearning.
“Quentin, I feel so odd,” she choked out.
He raised his head and stared down at her. He too looked like a stranger. An alluring, dangerous stranger. But his voice was full of familiar kindness. “Good or bad odd?”
“Good.” Although her essential honesty made her add, “I think.”
The soft laugh that always made her heart melt soothed her disquiet. “You’re meant to feel that way.”