When a Scot Ties the Knot (Castles Ever After #3)(50)

“Why did you never send me a drawing of yourself?”

She paused, surprised. “I don’t know. I suppose the idea never occurred to me. But are you saying the idea occurred to you?”

“Of course it did. I’m a man, amn’t I?”

Yes. He most definitely was a man. And his manliness was on full display as he undid the cuffs of his shirt, exposing his bronzed, muscled forearms.

“Every time they delivered one of your letters,” he said, “I’d have this swell of anticipation. Maybe . . . just maybe . . . this time there’d be a sketch of a woman in there.” He pulled his shirt over his head and hung it over the back of the chair. “No such luck. All I got was moths and snails.”

Maddie barely heard the last part of his speech. Aside from the usual stupor that accompanied the sight of him shirtless, her mind had seized on a word toward the beginning of his statement. The one that had sounded like . . . anticipation.

“You . . .” The word died on her tongue. She cleared her throat and tried again. “You looked forward to my letters?”

He answered her from the washing stand. “War is a brutal occupation, mo chridhe. It is also deadly boring and verra uncomfortable. Socks are cause for celebration. A toothbrush?” He held up the one currently in his hand. “Worth its weight in gold. Letters are manna from heaven.”

After he rinsed his face, he crossed to the edge of the bed and slid one finger along her collarbone. “The slightest glimpse of this softness would have seemed a miracle.”

He undid the top button of her shift, pushing the fabric to the side to reveal a small swatch of her skin. “Only one shift tonight?”

She nodded. “I trust you now.”

With a heavy sigh, he leaned against the bedpost, his eyes never leaving her body. “Then sketch a picture for me. No pencil. No paper. Just you, right here, right now.”

Maddie’s pulse stuttered. His suggestion should have been unthinkable. But her body had ideas of its own.

She said, “Tell me how.”

“Start by taking down your hair.”

She reached for the scrap of fabric tying the end of her plaited hair. She pulled the knot loose and began to tease the strands of the braid apart, shaking her head gently to distribute them.

In this moment, she would do almost anything he asked. But she wasn’t doing any of it for him. Oh, no. This was all for herself. She loved the way he was looking at her right now. She never wanted it to end.

“Now this.”

He pushed the sleeve of her shift down her shoulder. She tensed.

“I just want to look, mo chridhe.” His voice was hoarse. “Let me have this much.”

He pushed the panel down to reveal her breast. With just the pad of his fingertip, he circled her pink areola. Her nipple tightened to an aching peak.

Maddie glanced up at him. The expression on his face was pure, unfiltered yearning. She never would have believed she could inspire that look in anyone, much less a man who’d been privy to her worst sins. He swallowed, and the hard bob of his Adam’s apple was the most sensual, arousing thing she’d ever seen.

Her whole life had been an exercise in avoiding attention. Observing, rather than being observed. She’d mastered the art of hiding in plain view. And for the first time, she never wanted this attention to end.

She slipped her arm from the loosened sleeve entirely. Then she undid a few more buttons of the shift, pulled her other arm free, and let the cloud of white linen settle about her waist.

Her heart pounded in her throat.

“Lie back on the bed.”

She followed his instruction, reclining against the bed. In an impulse of sheer wantonness, she pushed the wadded shift over her hips and peeled it down her legs. Leaving herself completely bare, from head to toe.

Her choice of position was instantly more fraught than she had anticipated. Should she lie on her back, or on her side? Bent legs or straight? And for heaven’s sake, what should she do with her arms? Stretch them overhead? At her sides? One of each?

Her sincerest impulse was to flail them about in indecision, but that wasn’t the erotic picture she hoped to present.

In the end, she lay on her side, crosswise on the bed. Legs together, bent gently at the knees. With one arm, she propped up her head. The other hand lay draped—- casually, she hoped—-on her thigh.

He stared at her.

He stared at her so long without speaking that she began to grow concerned.

“Maybe this was a bad id—-”

He shushed her. “Sketches don’t talk.”

She touched the backs of her fingers to her elongated neck, drawing them slowly downward. She waited for him to complain that sketches didn’t move, either.

He didn’t complain.

Unless a strangled groan counted as a complaint, and she didn’t think it did.

She let her fingertips drift lower, down into the hollow between her breasts. He muttered something Gaelic that she assumed to be the best kind of blasphemy.

With his eyes never leaving her body, he undid a fastening of some kind on the inside of his kilt. The heavy plaid fell to the floor, leaving him every bit as naked as she was.

Every bit as naked, perhaps, but considerably more tanned, muscled, and covered with hair.

More solid, too.

One particular bit of him was very, very hard.