Legend Of The Highland Dragon by Isabel Cooper

One hand grabbed at Stephen’s arm, while the other came up to his shoulder. Before she could push him away or make whatever snide comment had occurred to her, before she could say anything at all, Stephen bent and kissed her.
    She froze against him for a second. Stephen almost let her go then, as the human part of him asserted itself. The feeling of Miss Seymour in his arms had his blood pounding almost at once, but he wasn’t in the habit of tormenting women. He began to relax his grip on her—
    —and then her lips parted beneath his and the stiffness in her body became tension of another sort entirely. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his coat. Pressed against his chest, her breasts rose and fell rapidly; and she kissed him back with inexpert—and perhaps unconscious—hunger.
    That was the end of thinking for Stephen just then.
    With one arm, he drew Mina—he couldn’t keep thinking of her as Miss Seymour, not now—even closer, pinning her to his body, feeling the outline of her through far too many layers of cloth. She could feel him, Stephen was sure. He was hard and aching, hungry as he’d almost never been for a woman, even in his youth. She didn’t draw back from his arousal, though she did catch her breath. Stephen wound his free hand in her hair and kissed her more deeply, stroking his tongue against hers and sliding his other hand down from her waist.
    His palm was gliding over Mina’s hip when she pulled away. She shoved at him when she did it, the hands that had been clenched on his coat now flat and forceful. The gesture wasn’t quite as good as a bucket of cold water, but it sufficed. Stephen dropped his hands and took a step backwards.
    Panting, Mina stared up at him. Her hair was disheveled now, light-brown strands tumbling down around her face. Her eyes were dark and her lips slightly swollen, but the face she turned on Stephen was full of cold anger.
    “That didn’t prove a bloody thing,” she said, the East End as thick in her voice as Stephen had ever heard it. “Not one thing, my lord . An’ if you try winning an argument that way again, I’ll leave straight away, an’ you and your money can both go to Hell.”
    She spun on her heel, her loosened hair almost hitting Stephen in the face, and stormed out.

Nine
    Mina almost didn’t come down to breakfast the next morning.
    It hadn’t been a good night. She’d left MacAlasdair’s company without any clear idea of where she was going and had finally sought refuge in her room. There she’d tried unsuccessfully to start reading her book again, tried even less successfully to lie down and calm her mind, and ended up alternately pacing the room and hitting the pillow.
    She should have slapped MacAlasdair, she thought, lord or not. Dragon or not. After all, he obviously wasn’t willing to kill her, and if the kiss had actually proved anything, it was that in some respects, he was just a man like any other.
    She wished she had something to throw at the wall, but she didn’t own anything breakable in her room. Not that MacAlasdair would notice if she broke the lamp or the mirror; he probably didn’t even know they existed.
    But no. It didn’t do to get into that habit. It didn’t do to lose control. She’d done quite enough of that for one evening already.
    That, of course, was the other problem: she’d liked kissing MacAlasdair.
    Actually, she’d liked it quite a lot.
    He hadn’t been the first man to kiss Mina—though the others had been boys, really, and she’d been much younger as well. She’d gone further than that with one of them, though never as far as he’d wanted. Even at seventeen, Mina had known what risks she didn’t want to take. She’d liked the experience then too, and had, in truth, wanted more herself. Sometimes her breasts would ache, after their…encounters…or the place between her legs, and she’d had some idea of what satisfaction her body craved.
    The feelings had seemed almost overwhelming.