My good friend and talented historical author, Em Taylor is treating us grown ups to our very own advent calendar with a twist! Each day, you can open a door on her calendar to read a little more of a new story, An Accidental Christmas featuring Rebecca and Daniel from her bestselling Regency romance, Saved by a Rake.
Rebecca shivered and pulled her cloak tighter as she peered out of the carriage window at the leaden sky and the snowflakes fluttering down to lie of the muddy road—some to join the gathering snow on the verges and others to melt into the mud. She hated travelling in winter and to have decided to make the journey to his grandmother’s home in Cairnvar in Perthshire was sheer madness, even though the old woman was ill.
They had spent the night in Stirling and were hoping to arrive at Cairnvar by sun down. Not that they had seen the sun today at all. The skies had been threatening snow since they had set off just as daylight had dawned.
“Are you cold?” asked Daniel, her husband of seven months. She turned her head towards him and smiled wanly. She was freezing. Her feet were like blocks of ice. But she did not want to admit as much to Daniel. She hated him to think she was weak. He had been so kind and gentle when they married—and still was. And she had been so fragile after the Earl of Newthorpe had raped her. She did not want him to stop the carriage so she could be warmed at an inn. She just wanted to get to their destination.
“I am fine,” she lied, wriggling her frozen toes inside her boots and tugging the rug over her knees.
“Come now, Lady Ramsey, you can admit it to me,” he whispered in her ear. She shuddered as his warm breath tickled her ear. He was using that voice that he used in their bedchamber.
She watched as he tweaked the buttons of his great coat and pushed it aside, then squeaked a protest when he scooped her up and sat her on his lap. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she settled against him, resting her cheek on his shoulder as he pulled her blanket over both of them.
“Sharing body warmth is an ancient method of staying warm,” he murmured quietly. “And your body is my favourite body.”
Smiling against his warm neck, she didn’t try to speak. She became aware of his hardening flesh near her hip and wondered how he could be aroused in such cold. But then, his arousal made her wriggle on his knee.
“Yours is my favourite body too,” she said quietly before pressing a kiss to his neck, just above his collar and cravat.
“Do not start what you are unwilling to finish, my love,” growled Daniel.
“Have you ever made love in a moving carriage?” she asked. She knew he hated answering questions about his sex life before he had chosen her as his bride but freedom he had, by virtue of being male intrigued her.
“No I have not,” he answered gruffly.
“Would you like to?”
She looked up into his brown eyes and knew his answer from the darkened gaze. She had grown accustomed to that look in the course of their short marriage. He held her gaze as, behind her back, he tugged off his soft leather gloves.
“We have been married for seven months and have four times made the journey between London and the Scottish Borders in extremely clement weather. You have never suggested we make love in the carriage. Yet when it is freezing and tumbling you should be the last thing on my mind, that is when you decide you wish to try it. And you know I cannot refuse you.”
She knew that well enough. The merest suggestion of making love when they were alone in the library of Drumbane House had him lifting her onto the desk, kissing her thoroughly before opening the placket of his breeches and plunging deep inside her.
She ran a gloved hand over the hard rod at the front of his breeches, causing him to crush her to him and press his lips to hers—plunging his warm tongue into her mouth. The warmth of his lips of her cold ones was like a balm to her and she kissed him back, hungry now for his touch as the need rose within.
He leaned her first one way, then the other as, without freeing his lips from hers, he managed to close the curtains on the carriage. Her senses were whirling as he continued to sweep his tongue around her mouth, groaning into each caress. Oh how he loved that she could make him lose control so easily.
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