The Devil of Clan Sinclair by Karen Ranney

fate, any damn thing you wanted to call it, owed them these moments, this time, this night. All hell could visit them tomorrow. For tonight, they’d have everything they’d once wanted.
    He looked down at her and it all fell away. All the anger, all the longing, everything but Virginia.
    Her face was pale, as if he’d shocked her by carrying her through his house. He held her in the safety of his arms, bent down and pressed a kiss to her hair. He smelled roses, which made him smile.
    “Forgive me,” he said. “I’ve rushed you. I’ve been a fool.”
    “You haven’t,” she said. “I was always foolish around you and about you.”
    “Do you want this, Virginia?”
    She pulled back and gazed up at him. “Yes. For the last year, I haven’t been able to forget you. Yours is the face I saw before I slept. I prayed for you when I should have been praying for my own husband. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t be here now.”
    “Then we’ll go to perdition together,” he said, “because I can’t be sorry for your husband’s death.”
    He pulled her inside his suite, closing the door firmly behind him, striding through the sitting room and into the bedroom to stand beside his bed.
    He’d left the lamp on in the sitting room and considered lighting the one on the table beside the bed, dismissing the thought instantly. That would take too long, and he was impatient enough as it was.
    He removed her garments one by one, gently set them aside, revealing her like she was a present lovingly wrapped for his delectation. The bow was, perhaps, her bodice with its jet buttons and full sleeves. The paper was her corset cover and the corset he unlaced with deft fingers.
    The package was her skirt, shift, and pantaloons, until she stood in front of him naked with only her shoes and black garters holding up her silk stockings.
    The contrast of her black stockings against her white skin was yet another present.
    He held out his hand and she placed hers on it for balance. Bending, he removed her shoes then her stockings with such speed he was amazed at his own dexterity.
    He stood studying her like she was one of his ice machines. He expected her to cover her breasts with her arms. Or shield the curls at the juncture of her thighs. She did neither, merely stood with her hands at her sides, letting him look his fill.
    Now he wished he’d lit another lamp.
    “You’re as beautiful as I always thought you’d be,” he said.
    “You imagined me naked?” Her voice sounded surprised.
    He smiled. “Endlessly.”
    He had never touched her breasts, never stroked her skin with fingertips that were rough and tender at once. Yet it felt like he had, as if he knew her like he knew himself.
    Still, some innate caution whispered at him to pay attention; there was more here than he could see. She trembled, but was it from fear or eagerness?
    The girl he’d known had acquiesced only too easily to her father’s plans. Or did he judge her too harshly? Perhaps she had been a girl, and a woman stood before him now.
    “Why are you here?” he asked, trailing a finger down her nose, then tracing the shape of her mouth.
    Her full lips curved at the touch of his finger.
    “For this,” she said, another gift, this one of words. “To have you kiss me endlessly, until I grow tired of kisses. To have you love me until I’m exhausted from it.”
    “Virginia,” he said, that one word uttered harshly.
    The need for her slammed up against his self-control. He warned himself not to be too eager, but the message didn’t reach his cock, straining against his trousers.
    He was as hard as he’d ever been and as improvident: a man’s body with a boy’s excitement. He wasn’t wise or cautious at this moment. Only desperate to feel her, touch every inch of her, and have her sob in his arms.
    T he room was quiet, while outside the storm pounded Drumvagen, the wind batting against the windows, throwing the drops of rain against the panes in a child’s