LITMIR.BIZ

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It would be a slower tune, he knew, and he pulled her onto the floor before anyone else had a chance to get his eager hands on her.

      Now he could get his hands on her instead.

      Corran held her, the way he had wanted to hold her all evening. He spread his fingers over her back, feeling the tiny bumps in her spine through the silk dress. Her hair was growing out of its pixie cut but if he ran his hand up to the nape of her neck, the skin there was still soft and enticing beneath the feathery wisps of hair. She was slender and warm in his arms, and he could smell the faint expensive fragrance she always wore in the evenings. He was going to miss that when she left.

      He was going to miss a lot of things, Corran realised. Already he was used to her being in the kitchen, frowning down at the cafetière, wrinkling her nose at the smell of tea. He was used to the way she tied her hair up in a scarf like a Fifties housewife when she was doing dirty work. Only Lotty could carry that look off without looking ridiculous!

      She had an innate style whatever she was wearing, he thought. In the evening she would change into a skirt or loose trousers after a bath, and Corran had to admit that her elegant, feminine presence had made a difference to the feel of the house. The rooms felt comfortable since Lotty had taken on the role of housekeeper. Corran wasn’t quite sure how she had done it. They were still bare, but they felt lighter, happier, somehow. She found wild flowers in the overgrown garden and made charmingly haphazard arrangements with them. Even the kitchen looked mellow and inviting now, in a way it had never done before. Corran liked going in at the end of the day and finding her there.

      He liked how eager and responsive she was in bed. How passionate. How she could make his senses reel with the brush of her lips.

      Yes, he would miss her, Corran acknowledged to himself. But Lotty had made it very clear that she had no intention of staying for ever. She would be moving on soon.

      And that was just as well, Corran reminded himself. Lotty wasn’t the sort of wife he needed. She couldn’t cook. She didn’t understand the country. She was ethereal and lovely, and he needed someone sturdy and strong. She was all wrong for him.

      Still, he rested his cheek against her hair and felt her relax wordlessly into him. He turned his lips to her temple and touched the skin there. Her hand tightened in his and she eased closer, her body soft and pliant. The feel of her made him light-headed. It made him forget that she was leaving, forget the village and the hostility he still sensed beneath the smiles, forget everything but the woman in his arms. Lotty, who was all wrong, but who felt so right.

      ‘Please tell me it’s not more scones!’

      Lotty was at the range, peering dubiously into the oven, but the moment Corran came into the kitchen her pulse kicked up a notch. It always did that, even now. It didn’t matter where they were or what they were doing, something inside leapt at the sight of him every time.

      ‘I thought I’d try a chocolate cake for a change,’ she told him as he dumped a couple of carrier bags on the kitchen table. He’d had a meeting at the bank in Fort William and grudgingly agreed to stop off at the village shop on his way back to pick up a few essentials.

      A man with shopping bags. Nothing glamorous or heroic about that, but he was so lean and so powerful, and his presence filled the room so that the breath dried in Lotty’s mouth. It did that every time, too.

      Lotty kept waiting to get used to making love with Corran. She had expected that it would slake that terrible craving to wind herself round him and press herself against him and crawl all over him, but if anything it was worse. She was still dazzled by lust and longing and the thrill of being able to touch him. After years of being a good girl, Corran’s touch had let loose a different Lotty, one whose recklessness and passion both thrilled and alarmed her.

      Only the day before she had finished painting the woodwork in the cottage’s kitchen. It was too late to start a new room—or that was the excuse Lotty gave herself, anyway—so she went to find Corran. Perhaps she had it in mind to help him tidy up. Or perhaps she had something quite different in mind all along.

      He was in the next cottage, boxing in the bath. When Lotty paused in the doorway, he was bending over a sheet of plywood, sawing it into shape. The floor was covered in sawdust and wood shavings and the smell of new wood filled the air.

      As Lotty watched, the sun came out from behind the clouds and a shaft through the open window lit directly onto Corran, hot and sweaty in a faded T shirt and jeans. She could see the dust hanging in the light. Her gaze followed the sunbeam to where it gilded the prickle of stubble on his jaw, to the curve of his back as he bent over the wood, to the muscles that flexed in his arms as he wielded the saw, and she was gripped by a need so acute that she couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe. She could just stand and stare at him.

      Sensing her gaze, Corran glanced up and froze at her expression. He didn’t say anything but something shifted in the air, something hot and dark that lit the fever in Lotty’s blood.

      Corran laid down his saw and straightened.

      She took a step inside the room.

      ‘You’re a bad girl,’ he said, and his voice was dark and dusty with desire.

      ‘I didn’t say anything.’

      ‘You didn’t need to.’

      He put his hands on the wall on either side of her, trapping her, and Lotty’s heart pounded with excitement. She slid her hands beneath his T-shirt so that she could run them over his flanks, loving the feel of his warm, solid skin, revelling in the flex of his muscles beneath her touch, smiling at his indrawn hiss of breath.

      ‘Do I need to say anything now?’

      ‘No,’ he said, and the expression in his eyes snarled every one of Lotty’s senses into an urgent knot of desire.

      And then…oh, then! Lotty still burned at the memory. It had been wild, exciting, reckless.

      Very reckless.

      ‘I’m going to have to be prepared if you’re going to do that to me again,’ Corran said unevenly at last, resting his forehead against hers.

      ‘Do what?’ Lotty was breathless. She clung to him, limp with satisfaction. ‘What did I do?’

      ‘You looked at me. You know what I mean,’ he said as she started to laugh. ‘You turned those great eyes on me and they told me you’d die if you couldn’t have me.’

      ‘That’s how I felt,’ she confessed.

      ‘We mustn’t do that again, Lotty,’ said Corran. ‘It’s too much of a risk.’

      ‘No,’ she had agreed. It was stupid to make love without taking precautions, of course it was. But, deep down, Lotty loved the fact that she could be bad. That she could make him forget about everything but her, his hands on her, her mouth on his, make him forget about anything but the rocketing need between them.

      That she could forget that she was a princess. Lotty loved that most of all.

      Flushing with remembered heat, Lotty made herself turn back to the range and pull out the cake. How was it possible that it looked flatter and harder and thinner than it had when she’d put it in?

      ‘I don’t think it’s supposed to look like this,’ she said, her mouth turning down at the corners. It certainly didn’t look like the exquisite patisserie that the palace kitchens produced. The head chef made a chocolate cake that was so light and delicious that it was hard to believe that it contained any calories at all. It melted in the mouth, so that one slice was never enough.

      This cake had about as much chance of melting in the mouth as a brick.

      ‘It’ll be fine,’ said Corran, without glancing at it. He was putting milk away in the fridge. ‘Let’s have some tea and we can always dunk the cake in it.’

      ‘Good idea.’

      Lotty put the kettle on. She had never cared for tea before, but now she drank it all

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