The Royal Collection. Rebecca WintersЧитать онлайн книгу.
Corran didn’t even know why he had suggested this walk. It was just reminding him how out of place Lotty was. And yet somehow she looked completely right here with the hills and the water. Somehow she felt right walking by his side.
Still thoroughly overexcited by their return, Pookie jumped around Meg, who did her best to ignore him as she trotted at Corran’s heels. They walked past the beach where they had lunch, and on around the loch side until the track petered into a narrow deer path which led at last to a perfect curve of beach at the end of the loch. Behind, the hills soared up into the sky, while the loch stretched gleaming down the glen.
Lotty just stood and looked for a while. Then she drew a long breath. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
‘I always think of this as my beach,’ said Corran. ‘I used to come here all the time. No one ever found me—not that they would ever have looked.’
He sat down on the ledge of tufty grass, stretching his legs out onto the shingle. After a moment, Lotty sat down beside him, close but not touching.
The spectacular light was fading slowly from orange to a purplish colour, but it wouldn’t get properly dark until well after midnight. It was lovely to be out without the midges pestering and Lotty leant back on her hands and lifted her face to the breeze. She could hear it rustling over the grass, and the faint slap of the little waves ruffling the water.
And the boom of her pulse.
Corran was very close. He was looking out over the loch. Lotty could see the heart-wrenching line of his jaw and the very edge of his mouth. She wanted to tear her eyes away, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t stop thinking about how it would feel to touch him.
Then he turned his head and all the air left her lungs in a whoosh.
‘You’re very quiet,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking about?’
Lotty felt as if she were teetering on the edge of a cliff. If she stepped off, she could never step back.
She stepped anyway. Almost before she had thought of what she was going to say, she had opened her mouth and the words came out as if they had a will of their own.
‘I’m wondering if I dare ask you to k-kiss me.’
There was a long, long silence, while her words echoed out over the water and rang up in the hills. K-kiss me. K-kiss me. K-kiss me.
‘Do you?’ said Corran at last.
‘Do I what?’ She could feel embarrassment prickling beneath her skin as the colour crept up her throat.
‘Do you dare?’
Lotty drew a breath. ‘What would you say if I did?’
A suspicion of a smile hovered at the edge of his mouth. ‘I think I’d be able to oblige.’
‘Oh.’ The wretched colour deepened. This was when some darkness would help. She pulled at the grass beside her. ‘The thing is…I should warn you…I’ve never had a boyfriend.’
It wasn’t often she caught Corran by surprise, but he definitely blinked. ‘What, never?’
‘No.’ She moistened her lips. She had started, so she might as well tell him it all. She couldn’t be any more embarrassed anyway.
She went back to plucking at the grass, not looking at him. ‘I’m a v-virgin. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to have this time by myself. I know it can’t last for ever, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to…to…lose my virginity,’ she finished in a rush.
‘It would just be a temporary thing,’ she hurried on before Corran could speak. She was desperate to get it all out before she lost her nerve completely. ‘I know I’m not your type. It’s just…I wondered…’ Moistening her lips, she took a determined breath. ‘The thing is, I wanted a lover, only I wasn’t sure how to go about finding one and I just wondered, well, I thought…’
‘…that I would do?’ Corran suggested when she ran out of steam.
But he didn’t sound offended and, when Lotty risked a glance at him, she saw that the dent at the corner of his mouth had definitely deepened. Warmth bloomed deep inside her.
‘Well, there isn’t anyone else out here,’ she pointed out, just so that he knew that she wasn’t planning to get too involved.
‘No, there isn’t, is there?’
Reaching out, Corran ran an unhurried knuckle down Lotty’s cheek, and her throat tightened at the tenderness of the gesture from the hard hand.
‘Why don’t we start with a kiss and take it from there?’ he suggested.
‘OK.’ Lotty tucked her hair behind her ears and cleared her throat. Now that it had come to it, she was terrified and excited and very nervous that she wouldn’t do it right.
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been kissed before either?’
‘Not really.’ How could she explain to Corran about the lonely pedestal she lived on, or how closely protected she had been by her grandmother all her life?
‘Incredible,’ he said, his eyes searching her face. ‘Like a princess in a fairy tale, locked away, waiting for a kiss…’
Lotty’s gaze slid from his. ‘Something like that.’
Corran shook his head in disbelief as he laid his palm against her cheek. ‘Are you going to ask me, then?’
The air was soft and sweet but Lotty shivered at his touch as he slid his hand down to her throat.
‘Please would you kiss me?’ she asked politely, and then he did smile. He really smiled, and something blossomed inside her. She had dreamt about seeing Corran smile like that, about seeing the hard mouth soften and the cold eyes warm, and the cheeks crease with amusement, and her heart contracted at the sight.
‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ he said, but he still didn’t kiss her. Instead he twisted his fingers around the scarf and drew it slowly from her throat. Lotty felt the coolness of the silk sliding over her skin and she closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the fizzy rush of anticipation and nervousness.
At last…at last!
Corran’s lips touched the corner of her mouth, and her eyes flew open in dismay. ‘Is that it?’ she said, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice.
‘No.’ His smile deepened. ‘That’s not it. That’s just the start. Come here,’ he said, pulling her close so that he could trail tantalising kisses along her jaw to her earlobe and then down to the pulse that was beating frantically in her throat.
Lotty arched her head back instinctively and her fingers curled in the grass. His lips were so warm, so sure as they made their way back towards her mouth, and then he was torturing her with slow kisses on the other side. It was agonizing. It was wonderful. Lotty’s senses were spinning with the wicked, delicious pleasure of it even as she burned with frustration.
And then his mouth reached hers at last, and the pleasure rocketed into a new urgency, a hunger that had her hands lifting instinctively to his shoulders so that she could hold on to him. His lips were warm and sure on hers, while his tongue teased until she parted her own and he took her with him as they sank down into the grass so he could kiss her in a way she’d only ever dreamed of before, long, long kisses, hungry but unhurried.
Lotty gave herself up to the sheer sensuous pleasure of it. Beneath her, the grass prickled her neck but she didn’t care. She felt only the warm weight of Corran pressing her down into the ground, his hard hands sliding insistently over her thigh, slipping beneath her top to trace patterns of fire on her bare skin. It felt so good to be able to touch him too, to run her own hands over his back and feel the flex of his muscles beneath his shirt.
‘I like this,’ she gasped at one point, and Corran smiled against her skin.
‘I