Juliana reached down. “Elliot, what are you…?”

Elliot lifted the skirt and petticoat all the way to her hips. The bustle she wore today was smaller than her evening one, the stiff shaper plumping her skirt out at the back with a soft linen panel in the front.

He unfastened the hooks and pulled the bustle from her. He’d have to start dictating that she didn’t wear a bustle at all when they knew they’d be alone.

Elliot next undid the drawstring of her lawn drawers and tugged them down.

He barely heard her faint noise of protest. He studied his warm-scented Juliana, hair fiery red between her thighs, the curls already moist. He leaned forward and kissed her, breathing her in. “You’re wet for me.”

One slender finger traced his temple. “I cannot seem to help it.”

“I like you wet for me.” Elliot drew his tongue down the seam of her cleft. “I like tasting you.”

Her fingers moved in his hair, less controlled. “Someone might come.”

“Warn me.”

Elliot didn’t care if they did. Let these Highland people see him on his knees loving his wife. They’d know she belonged to him, know he’d go after them if they harmed her in any way.

Elliot held her skirts bunched in his hands. Smooth cotton brushed his face as he leaned into her, tongue dancing along her opening.

Juliana moved her feet apart without him asking. She smelled of honey and salt, and her own nectar. Elliot drew some onto his tongue, pausing to savor it.

Her little berry firmed as he breathed on it. Elliot, hands full of fabric, slid his tongue over her, opened his mouth to reach more of her. Her legs moved apart still farther, and there was her moisture, sweet and made for him.

“Dripping wet,” he murmured. Her swift intake of breath made him ache.

He thrust his mouth over her and drank. His tongue moved, his throat worked as he drew her into him. This woman was beauty in all things—heat, sex, innocence.

When he and she had been young, and Elliot had first become aware of the amazing eroticism of women, he’d fantasized about her. The day he’d helped her with the kite in the tree, when they’d both been sixteen, and she’d raised on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, he’d not only fallen in love with her, he’d wanted her in the most basic, primal way.

Her demure look, the blush as she pulled away from the kiss…She’d been so innocent. He’d wanted her bodice sliding down to her waist, baring the pink of her ni**les, wanted her flush to deepen as he pushed up her skirts and did what he was doing now. He’d wanted to lay her down in that meadow and show her what it meant that they were man and woman.

Elliot had watched her run off, back to the children she’d been entertaining. But in his mind, they’d remained hidden behind the shrubbery, Elliot thrusting hard into her, claiming her, marking her, making her his.

“Mine,” he whispered now. He couldn’t help himself.

He licked and nipped her, and Juliana made sharp little noises, feminine and sweet. Elliot’s c**k was pounding, but he ignored it to bask in the taste that was Juliana.

She rose on her tiptoes, her hands still in his hair, small fingers clenching. Elliot barely felt the tugs; he was surrounded by her and drowning in her. Her thighs were hot against his face, and he could scarcely breathe, but he didn’t care.

With his eyes closed, there was only darkness and the scent and taste of Juliana, the sound of her finding her highest pleasure.

She arched against him, betraying that she wanted his mouth. Elliot rewarded her, flickering his tongue inside her until more of her liquid flowed into him.

“I can’t…I can’t…”

Elliot held the fabric of her skirts against her body, tightly out of his way, as he drank her down.

Juliana drooped against the boulder, her legs bending. She swayed, her hands landing on Elliot’s shoulders to keep herself from falling.

Elliot finally granted her mercy. He wiped his mouth on a fold of his kilt and got to his feet, letting her skirts fall, and he plunged his mouth over hers. She kissed him back with strength that made his heart ache.

“We need to get indoors,” Elliot said. He kissed her hair, her face, her lips again. He needed to be inside her, needed it now.

“We’ll have to walk,” Juliana said. “I do not believe I can crawl back through the tunnels.”

“Then we walk.”

Elliot snatched up her bustle, grabbed her firmly by the elbow, and strode away with her, in search of the shortest route back to the house.

The summer sun didn’t set until after ten. Juliana lay naked in the big bed with Elliot, the last light of the day caressing the long planes of his body.

Elliot wasn’t asleep. He skimmed his fingertips down her damp side and around her breast, thumb finding and teasing her nipple.

He’d brought her in here, stripped off her clothes and his, laid her on the bed, and made love to her for two hours.

Now he stretched out on his side, his half erection heavy against her thigh. Elliot’s gray eyes were soft in the light, but he looked nowhere near tired.

Juliana said softly, “When I was told what happened in the marriage bed, my stepmother mentioned none of this.”

Elliot lifted the weight of her breast, caressing the tightness of her nipple. “None of what?” His head was on her pillow, the covers long ago kicked off.

“None of what we’ve done today. I was told to lie quietly on my back and let you adjust me as necessary, and then you would come in on top of me.” She smiled at her questions—What will I do in the time between that and when he spills his seed? The whole discussion seemed long ago and innocent now. “You would derive pleasure in the act, but I probably wouldn’t. I was to hold and comfort you when you released, because at that moment, a man was, for the only time in his life, weaker than a woman.”