Highland Awakening by Jennifer Haymore Page A

stop.”
    He looked at her through lust-clouded eyes. No woman in his entire life had ever asked him to stop. He didn’t exactly know what to do, so he just gazed at her.
    “Someone might come out onto the terrace,” she breathed. “The scandal…it would be…it would be unbearable.”
    Who gave a damn about scandals? He sure as hell didn’t.
    But then he remembered her position. Her brother was a paragon of society, well loved, and very much in the public eye. Society would have no compunction about throwing her to the wolves.
    And surprisingly, he didn’t want there to be any kind of carnage. Not with Esme, and not because of him. He didn’t want to analyze the protectiveness that surged through him at the thought of those bastards tearing this woman apart.
    He pressed on her lower back. That exquisite feeling—the pressure of her body against his—would sustain him. He hoped. “Esme,” he said, and his voice was gruff as hell, “I canna wait to unwrap you.” And he meant that in every way possible.
    Her eyes widened, but then she shook her head slightly. “That’s impossible.”
    “Nothing’s impossible. Not if we both want it. I definitely want it, and I ken you do, too.” She did want him. He could sense these things—he had a nose for it. The woman wanted him, maybe even to the same extent he wanted her.
    This knowledge only made him hotter for her.
    She glanced toward the door that led from the drawing room onto the terrace. “Who
are
you, Mr. McLeod?”
    “It doesna matter.” It didn’t. None of it mattered. He could be a gravedigger or the king. He was a man when he was with Esme. He didn’t care about anything else.
    “You came with Lord Pinfield,” she observed.
    Cam pressed his lips together, annoyed at the intrusion of Pinfield on this moment. “I did.”
    “You are good friends?”
    He raised a brow. “You’re full of questions, aren’t you now, milady?”
    “I am merely curious.”
    He loved her voice. It was hesitant, but it was clear and smooth, a bit lower-pitched than most female voices.
    His lip curled. “Nay, we are not good friends.”
    “Then…why did you come tonight? My sister-in-law said you and he were friends and he asked for an invitation for you.”
    “Ah, is that what he told her?” Cam tried not to roll his eyes.
    “It wasn’t the truth?” she pressed.
    He narrowed his eyes at her. “There is a price for my secrets, Lady Esme.”
    She pulled farther back from him. “What…what would that be?”
    “Och, I can imagine many things that you could give me in recompense.” He let his eyes make a hot trail over her body. “But…let’s begin with a secret for a secret. I’ll tell you one of mine; you tell me one of yours.”
    Her lips pursed, and she turned to face Green Park, clutching the railing. “Then, no. I don’t need to know your secrets that badly.”
    “Don’t you now?”
    She shook her head, and he studied her. Her secrets—What was in her notebook? Why had she been at the whorehouse?—they were deep ones. So deep, he’d wager the clothes on his back that even her family didn’t know them.
    And they were driving him mad. He
would
learn them. He didn’t know how—not yet. But if this beautiful, exotic, stimulating woman thought she could hide from him forever, she was in for a great disappointment.
    She slid her eyes to him. “You’re staring at me.”
    “There’s nothing else I’m interested in looking at,” he answered honestly.
    She took a shaky breath, gripping the railing so hard he could see the whiteness in her knuckles. “I can’t…I shouldn’t even be talking to you. I am engaged to Mr. Whitworth. He is to be my husband.”
    A wave of disgust washed through him at that. “Nay.”
    It was her turn to cock a brow. “Nay?”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “You have no say over what I do.” Her words were harsh but her tone was soft, and she watched him carefully, as if curious as to how he might react to her