“Thank ye, but…” Her fingertip was pressed against her lower lip, but this time she didn’t look thoughtful, she seemed flustered. “I need something besides the leather.”
He’d do anything he could to help her. “Tell me, lass, and it is yers.”
“I need ye.”
His chin jerked once. “Aye, I’ll do aught.”
“I need ye to teach me pleasure.”
“Aught but that.”
It wasn’t until she reeled back that he realized how fast his denial was.
Her hand dropped to her hip, and she frowned up at him. “Ye just said ye’d given up on doing the right thing when it comes to me.”
It surprised a harsh bark of laughter out of him and he shook his head. “So even ye can admit what ye ask isnae the right thing!”
But she scowled, and to his surprise, stepped forward once more, until her breasts—snug inside her silk gown—brushed against his bare chest.
“I ken this is the right thing,” she whispered boldly, defiantly. “I ken it.”
He had to swallow to make his voice work, but he shook his head nonetheless. “Ye ken naught, lass. No’ about this.”
“Ye’re wrong.”
“Wynda, ye…” Huffing in frustration, he took her hands. This was the closest, most intimately he’d touched her, and it still didn’t feel like enough. “Ye are brilliant, aye. No’ for a woman—for anyone. Ye are brilliant and witty and—and—“ He shook his head. “I am flattered—beyond flattered—ye’d think of me to teach ye anything. But…ye ken naught of pleasure. Of what passes between a man and a woman.”
Her laughter, sudden and clear, shocked him. As did the way she twisted her hand in his hold so her fingers twined through his.
“Ye’d be surprised how much I ken about what passes between a man and a woman, Pherson Ross.”
After all these years, the name was his, but it still sounded strange on her lips. “Ye’re no’ a virgin, then?” The thought should’ve angered him, that someone had taken advantage of her innocence…but instead, he was intrigued.
She hesitated, then lifted her chin, boldly holding his gaze. “I am a virgin, but I have a…a tutor. An older woman. She’s taught me much about what pleasure can be found between a man and a woman, and she’s…insistent I try it myself.”
One of his brows rose skeptically and he found himself swaying toward her. “One of yer sisters, mayhap? Yer mother? A nurse?”
“She’s a ghost,” Wynda blurted.
And Pherson found himself chuckling. “A ghost has taught ye of sexual congress, and insists ye try it out yerself?”
She was staring up at him. “Ye have a beautiful laugh,” she whispered. “It makes me want to kiss ye.”
Still chuckling, he shook his head. “Everything ye do—even blather about ghosts—makes me want to kiss ye,” he admitted.
He likely shouldn’t have.
Because she didn’t hesitate. She yanked—hard—on his hands, and when he bent forward, she kissed him.
It wasn’t a skilled kiss. It wasn’t even a good kiss.
But it was definitely a kiss, and the sexy little noise she made proved she wanted this.
Still, he reared back, his lips aflame. “What the fook was that?” he rasped.
She blinked, and he told himself that wasn’t hurt he saw in her expression. “That was a kiss. I was kissing ye.”
It was the way her lower lip looked. The way she was chewing on one corner, as if she wasn’t certain if she’d done a good job. That was what pierced the last of his defenses.