Merely the Groom (Free Fellows League 2)

Colin laughed, showing all of his perfect white teeth. “You have obviously mistaken me for someone else, my lady.”

Gillian firmed her lips into a thin, disapproving line. “A situation with which you seem to be increasingly familiar. I mistake you for Galahad. My father and his Bow Street detective mistake you for Colin Fox. Yet your name is Colin McElreath, Viscount Grantham. Or is it?”

Her words stung. But her disapproval stung even more, and Colin responded in kind. “You know my name, Lady Grantham,” Colin told her. “You share it. Along with my pillow.”

She’d also shared a pillow with Galahad. It had been a chaste pillow, but he had shared it with her. Gillian thought of that night Galahad had slept beside her. Remembered that she’d been thinking of Galahad when she’d told Colin about the time she’d spent at the Blue Bottle Inn. “I liked touching,” she’d whispered. “I liked being held at night and knowing I wasn’t alone anymore. I know it sounds silly, but I liked sleeping beside someone.”

And he had been the one to hold her.

Now, Gillian understood why she’d felt so comfortable in Colin’s company from the very beginning. Why he’d seemed so familiar. It was his scent. It had clung to the pillowslip and the bedclothes of her bed at the Blue Bottle the morning after he’d spent the night there. And she had remembered and recognized the warm, welcoming scent of the sandalwood soap he wore. She had trusted Colin from the moment she’d met him and all because she had fallen in love with Galahad and Galahad had proven himself to be trustworthy.

“I shared a pillow with Galahad, too,” she said, softly reminding him of that night. “In Scotland.”

Gillian realized she had given him ammunition with which to hurt her the moment she’d opened the door to old wounds her first honeymoon had left. She prayed he cared enough about her to live up to his reputation as Sir Galahad and protect her, rather than hurt her.

“Did you?” he asked.

Tears burned her eyes as she breathed a prayer of thanks. “You know I did,” she replied, holding the seal close to her heart. “You were there.”

“I’ve never been to Gretna Green.” He tried to bluff once again, but she wasn’t having any of it.

“Nice try, my lord,” she informed him, her heart in her eyes as she looked up at him. “But you know as well as I do that Gretna Green can’t compare to the Blue Bottle Inn in Edinburgh.”

Colin raked his fingers through his hair. “What do you know about the Blue Bottle Inn in Edinburgh?”

“I know that it’s no place for a lady.” She took a step closer to him. “A man who called himself Galahad told me that.”

“What were doing there?” he asked.

“Trying to find my way home to you.” She put her arms around his neck. “When were you going to tell me that I’ve been there all along?”

Her words sent a rush of desire coursing through him. He had been waiting all of his life to find someone who understood how he felt. And Gillian had just put his feelings into words.

Colin held her close. There was no rhyme or reason to it. He’d simply looked up, seen her standing at the window, and had wanted her. He hadn’t even seen her clearly, but he’d recognized a kindred spirit when he saw one. She stood waiting at the window. Colin had wanted her to be waiting for him. “Oh, hell, Gillian, you were never supposed to know.” He placed his hands on either side of her hips and lifted her, without warning, onto the top of the desk.

It was an effective way of distracting her.

When were you going to tell me that I’ve been there all along?

Those words registered in recesses of his brain as Colin skimmed her nightgown up over her legs and bunched it around her waist. Reaching down, Colin freed himself from his breeches, then lifted her hips and guided himself into her welcoming warmth.

Gillian cried out his name as he entered her. She lifted her legs and locked her thighs high around his waist.

Colin closed his eyes, threw back his head, and bit his bottom lip as he sheathed himself fully inside her warmth. His entire body shook with the effort of holding back the tide of pleasure he knew would come. Colin lost his battle to maintain control as her movement forced him deeper inside her. He began to move his hips in a rhythm as old as time.

Gillian matched him thrust for thrust as she followed the primitive cadence of their pounding hearts. She clung to him, reveling in the weight and feel of him as he filled her again and again, giving everything he had to give.

She closed her eyes and allowed tears of joy to seep from behind her lashes and run down her face.

Colin was her Galahad. He was the man of her dreams. He always had been. He was the man who’d set her free and won her heart.

Gillian gave herself up to the emotions swirling inside her, gave voice to the passion with the small moans that escaped her at each wonderful thrust. She tightened her muscles around him, holding on as the exquisite pleasure peaked, then muffled her scream against his shoulder.

“Gillian.” Colin felt her tremors surrounding him and called out her name. As he collapsed atop her, completely spent, completely satisfied, Colin brushed his lips against her cheek and buried his face in her curly brown hair.

Tasting the saltiness of her tears, Colin lifted his head and looked down at her beautiful face. Her blue eyes were wide open and dark with passion. Her lips were plump, swollen from his kisses, and the stubble on his jaw had abraded the soft skin of her face.

A lump caught in his throat. He wanted to say something profound, something beautiful, something to explain the way he felt.