Read Online Never Kiss a Laird by Tess Byrnes - Free Book Online Page B

pushed against her
jacket.    Sally’s hands moved down Hugh’s
back, feeling the muscles beneath the linen shirt, as they reached the top of
his breeches, she felt him tense.   He
deepened their kiss, and Sally moved impatiently within his hard embrace,
urgently trying to satisfy her need, but not exactly sure how to.  
    A crack of thunder stopped their
movement momentarily, and Hugh raised his head.
    As if the spell had been broken
Sally abruptly released the warm body, and stepped backwards quickly, eyes wide
in wonder, one hand pressed to her reddened lips.   Her body still hummed with the reverberations
of the feelings Hugh’s touch had aroused in her.
    Sally met Hugh’s amazed gaze
unflinchingly.   She couldn’t in
conscience rail against his ungentlemanly behavior, when her own actions had
been so far from ladylike.   Instead of
kissing him back, she should have fainted, or had strong hysterics, she told
herself, wondering why she had responded in the way she had.  
    “Miss Denlington,” he murmured,
holding out his hand.   “Sally.”
    She flinched as the false
appellation brought her back to the reality of her situation.   An overwhelming desire to leave engulfed her;
a need to be away before she was forced to make some false explanation, or to
lie further to the man before her.     She walked quickly to pull Beauty’s reigns
free, and tugged the horse out into the sleeting rain.
    “Wait,” the Earl called
urgently.  
    “I have to go,” Sally called in an
unsteady voice.   “Thank you for your
help!”    She put one foot into her
stirrup and vaulted upwards, turning agilely to land on the saddle.   Slipping one leg over the pommel, and feeling
with her other boot for the stirrup, she urged Beauty into a canter, and as
soon as she was down onto the moor, thence into a gallop.

 
    Chapter Five

 
    Sally recklessly
allowed Beauty to race away from the caves, putting as much distance as quickly
as possible between herself and Hugh McLeod.   As the moors disappeared behind her and she
gained the road, she slowed her mare to a walk.   She needed time to try to understand what had just happened and to calm herself before going back to the cottage and the searching
eyes of her maid, Millie.
    The storm had
blustered itself out, and there was only a drizzling rain continuing to
fall.   Sally raised her face to allow the
mist to cool her heated cheeks.   Such a
short time ago she had been chilled to the marrow, and now she felt as if her
bones had been melted in a furnace.    She
raised one hand to her lips, which felt tender and swollen.   Nothing in her existence had prepared her for
what she had just experienced.    Growing
up in the country, Sallie knew about animal husbandry.   She knew that something physical happened
between a husband and wife.   But the few
kisses she had experienced had not even raised her pulse.   She remembered with distaste the times that Simon
Atherly had pressed his hard lips to hers, and shook her head in wonder.   Nothing had ever opened the floodgate of
sensations in her like Hugh McLeod’s touch.
    She pressed one
hand to her breast, and it felt as if the responsive tip was still tingling.   “So that is what these are for,” she said
aloud with a scandalized smile.   Her
breasts still felt full and heavy, and incredibly sensitive.   She shifted uneasily on the saddle,
remembering the feelings that had spread through her body.     She
had wanted more, and if the storm had not stopped Hugh McLeod’s actions, she
knew that she would not have been the one to stop him.  
    Then she
remembered the moment when she had come up with her alias.   “Den-ling-ton?”   she repeated in
disbelief, smacking herself lightly on the forehead.   “That’s not even a real name!”  
    She was still
chuckling at this absurdity when Beauty came to a sudden halt in the road.
    “I’m sorry,
dearest,” she crooned to the brown mare.   “My thoughts