“My father and older brothers are gone much of the time, and my mother is a MacLeod.”
Caragh assumed that explanation would suffice, since the implications seemed obvious to her.
“And your father doesn’t ask what goes on while he’s away? Your mother assumes that growing up around her pirating family makes it safe for you to conduct business with strangers?”
Anger coursed through him at the thought of how much danger Caragh seemed to blithely accept, or worse yet, was unaware of.
“Of course, my father asks. He knows. But it’s a small village, and the fishing near our harbors has been sparse in the last few years. It’s either find alternatives to fishing or starve. My mother understands that since she’s the one responsible for feeding six of us. I have a head for numbers and, as you’ve said, I’m rather practical. The smugglers were already using the fishermen in our village, but the townspeople weren’t getting anything but risk out of the deal. I arranged for us to receive payment for storing goods or transporting them inland. We are all now able to go to bed with full bellies.”
“Or be put to sleep with swords through your guts.” Rowan’s hushed tone made Caragh pause. It was far more menacing than if he yelled.
“Is that what you plan to do with me when you tire of me?”
“What?” Rowan looked at her as if she sprouted a second head. “Why would I do that when I’m furious at the notion of anyone harming you?”
Rowan’s declaration surprised them both. He scrubbed a hand over his face and considered her inexperience with men and bed sport.
“Caragh, before this goes any further, you should understand what you’re agreeing to.”
She cast her eyes to the bed and smiled shyly. “I believe I understand already.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Rowan lifted her chin and stared into the depths of her green eyes. Caragh had noticed his eyes were an unusual shade of deep blue, but up close she saw flecks of silver shot through almost like a starry night. “I expect obedience aboard my ship. At all times. From everyone. I told you that already. I told you I punish those who don’t heed that rule. That includes you now, too. If you thought I was harsh with the spanking earlier, then you underestimate me. But Caragh, hear me now and hear me well, you’ll also earn yourself a trip over my knee if you continue to do things that risk your life. You’re under my protection now. Aboard this ship and off it. That means no one can touch a hair on your head without risking my wrath, but don’t put me into positions where that’s tested. And don’t do things that cause me to worry about you rather than captaining this ship.”
Caragh opened her mouth but shut it as she bit into her top lip. She wasn’t sure of what to say. She didn’t like his high-handedness assuming she needed, or even wanted, his protection. She wasn’t interested in being treated like one of his deckhands. She hadn’t asked to come aboard, so blind obedience was a hard pill to swallow. And the thought of another spanking intrigued her as much as it frightened her. The feel of his large hand upon her backside hadn’t been entirely unpleasant. In fact, it had awoken a burning ache in her belly, but now his promise of retribution scared her as she took in his size and the power that she knew had been barely restrained. She wanted to retreat, but he held her in his embrace. She wasn’t sure what he would do if she tried to pull away. She felt trapped like a fox, and a fox would chew off its own leg rather than die in the snare. Her brain began to spin trying to find a way to put space between them.
Rowan felt as if he could read every thought that passed through her head. Her expression barely changed, and she had the face of an experienced negotiator. It gave away very little to those who didn’t understand how her mind worked, but her eyes were windows to her mind. Rowan had already discovered it worked very much like his own. He could tell she was scrambling to find a way to free herself. He’d frightened her more than he intended.
“Caragh, I’ll never strike you out of anger. I don’t hit women. But I will punish you if I think you deserve it.”
“Wouldn’t the point of the punishment be because I angered you?” Her hushed voice trembled for the first time that night.
Rowan brushed hair away from her temple and slowly dropped a kiss. Although she stood there with nothing covering her breasts, it was the first true act of intimacy between them, and the kiss charged the air between them.
“I’ll never act in anger. By the time I’m ready to deliver your punishment, it’ll be with a calmness. My intention isn’t to harm you, Caragh, but to be sure you understand there are certain things I won’t tolerate.”
“What if I don’t agree with your level of tolerance?”
Rowan knew it was a fair question. Not one he would have ever permitted one of his men to ask, but Caragh wasn’t one of his men. He kissed her temple once again before pulling back.
“I’m not an unreasonable man. We can discuss whatever transpires, but you should not expect to change my mind. I’m willing to listen to your thoughts, but it doesn’t mean it will change mine.”
“Then what would be the point other than to hear my own voice?”
“You would feel listened to and heard.”
“And then disregarded.”
“Or you could simply behave in a way that doesn’t endanger you, then there would be no qualms between us.”
“Hardly likely I’ll manage that for long,” Caragh huffed. “I suspect you’ll find fault in much of what I do just so you can turn me over your knee. I think you’re controlling to an extreme, and I think you take a perverse pleasure in causing pain.”
“If that’s truly what you thought, you would be trying harder to get away from me rather than standing before me half-naked,” Rowan pointed out. “I think part of you liked being spanked. I think you also crave someone who is present and attentive enough to punish you when you do things that common sense says you shouldn’t.”
“You think you understand me far better than you do.”
“I do understand you.”
“How could you? We’ve known each other for a couple hours.”
“You remind me of someone I know very well.”
“Who?” she sneered.
“Me.”
Rowan pulled her against him as his mouth descended and hovered just above her own. He waited for her to struggle or pull away, and Caragh knew he was giving her a choice. It was a choice she’d already made and in fact declared. She tilted her chin and brought her lips to his. The initial contact was soft, merely a brushing. The hand still ensnared in her hair cradled her skull. They came together with mutual eagerness, and as the kiss deepened, they both moaned. Rowan swept his tongue along the seam of her lips, but when he could tell she didn’t understand, he retreated just enough to whisper.
“Open for me, mo Caragh.”
“Mo cara? This is when you consider me your friend?” Caragh giggled.
Rowan paused.
“A bheil Gàidhlig agad?” Do you speak Gaelic?
“Gu leòr.” Enough.
Rowan brushed his nose against hers.
“I didn’t mean my friend. That wasn’t what I was saying.”
Caragh’s eyes widened with realization. Her body swayed toward his as she pulled the queue loose from his hair.
“Mo bhris,” she whispered.
“Hardly,” Rowan chuckled.
She froze. Had she overstepped? “Which do you dislike? Me saying ‘my’ or calling you a Viking?”
Rowan pressed his lips against hers as he lifted her and guided her legs around his waist. He walked them to the table where he sat her. “I’m all yours. But I’m no Viking.”
Caragh refused to read more into his statement than she’d intended by hers. “You certainly look like the Norsemen my mother described.”
“My clan is descended from them, but I’m not one myself.”
Caragh quirked an eyebrow. “You pillage and plunder. Sounds like a Viking.”
“And I’ve already told you what I want to
plunder.” Their time for talking came to an end. Caragh pulled him toward her and opened to him when his tongue swept across her lips again. Rowan’s hands roamed across her back until they came up to cup her jaw. She could feel restrained power in his soft touch, but she wasn’t interested in gentleness in that moment. She struggled to pull his shirt over his head, and he had to help her. She pounced when she caught sight of his bare skin. It was tanned to a golden brown, and a large tattoo covered his shoulder. She skimmed her finger over it as Rowan devoured her neck. The Celtic scrolls looped and intertwined to make an intricate pattern that was a piece of art unlike anything she’d ever seen. The quality of the craftsmanship was far too superior to be what an average sailor or even pirate could find. This was work done for someone of significance, someone important to and within his clan. Caragh didn’t have time to ponder it further when Rowan found her mouth again. She was swept away in a current of need and desire as his hands palmed her breasts. They were heavy and achy as his thumbs passed back and forth over her nipples, which were still sensitive after the extreme cold of the seawater. She arched her back, and her head fell back. Rowan watched her face as her cheeks grew flushed and her throat tightened with each swallow. He ran his hand down between her breasts until he could cup her sheath. He felt the heat radiating through her leggings, and he almost spilled imagining what it would be like to sink into her.
“Mo Caragh,” the words felt right as he said them once again. The first time he was testing them, now they seemed natural. “I’m going to finish undressing you, then undress myself. If you don’t want your first time to be on this table, you should get on the bed as soon as I take the last bit of clothing off you.”
“What if I do want you to take me right here? Like this,” she asked.
Rowan growled as he pulled her from the table and stripped off her leggings. He took in her trim legs and the thatch of strawberry curls at the apex of her thighs. He cupped his aching cods as he adjusted himself long enough to undo the ties of his own leggings, pushing them from his lean hips and stepped out of them. He never took his eyes off Caragh as she watched him. He fisted his cock and stroked it, in part to relieve some of the ache and partly to test her reaction. She didn’t flinch or shy away. Instead she licked her lips. Rowan felt himself drip when her eyes riveted to his cock.
“Does it frighten you?”
“Hmm? No. Fascinates, not frightens.” Caragh raised her hand tentatively but pulled it back.
Rowan lifted her back onto the table and whispered against her ear, “Touch me. I long to feel your hands on me.”
“Will you touch me in return?”
“Wild horses couldn’t keep me from it.”
Rowan bent as he lifted one of her breasts. As he suckled, he felt her hand reach between them and wrap around his engorged cock. He forced himself to slow his breathing as he took in the scent of lavender and saltwater that clung to her. As she began to stroke him, he pressed her down to the table’s surface. His body followed hers, and his tip glided along her entrance. He felt the tremble that coursed through her at this introduction to something that must have felt very foreign to her. He could barely remember the first time he was with a woman, but he did remember it had been nearly too much for all his senses at once. His hand covered hers as he guided her to stroke him faster and then slower, alternating the pace.
“Do you understand what happens next? Do you know how our bodies will join?”
“Yes. My mother explained it many years ago.”
“There’s a difference between being told and understanding.”
“Then perhaps you should show me to see whether I did understand.” Caragh pulled her feet back to the edge of the table to lift her hips toward him. She was resolved to her earlier decision, and she intended to maintain the little control she had in this situation. She would find pleasure, perhaps even joy, in the arms of this man. What was done was done; she was here now, with a man she wouldn’t deny she wanted.
Rowan was tempted to plunge into her, but the point of his question had been because he knew she was a virgin. He would hurt her despite wanting to do anything but. He could do his best to ease her initiation. He slid a finger into her sheath and felt the dew coat it. Her hips rocked toward him, so he slid one, then two more, into her. He pistoned his fingers into her just as his cock would do soon enough. His thumb made slow circles around her bud. Her hips lifted in rhythm to his fingers and the hand still wrapped around his rod stroked him. Rowan knew she was ready when her legs began to quiver, and her breath hitched. As her back arched off the table and she moaned her release, he lined up his sword with her sheath. He clenched his teeth as he surged forward. He seated himself to the hilt and froze. He felt her muscles seize around him, and he wanted to thrust over and over. It was the first time in years that he felt a cunny suck his cock in all the way to his cods. He preferred other methods of pleasure. Ones that prevented disease and children.
*** (no need for symbol just space)
Caragh gasped at the invasion, but waves of ecstasy crashed over her and masked the pain she expected. Now her body needed to adjust to the feeling of intrusion. It wasn’t unpleasant, just unprecedented. She looked at Rowan and saw his jaw twitch as he clenched his teeth. She realized he wasn’t moving. He was waiting for her, and it was taking every bit of self-restraint he had. Her heart thudded for a different reason as she realized he wasn’t going to take advantage of her for his satisfaction alone. She reached out and cupped his jaw.
“Come here,” she knew her words were a double entendre, and she meant them.
Rowan’s breath hissed from his lips as he leaned over Caragh.
“You don’t know what you do to me.”
“If it’s anything like what you’re doing to me, then it would be bliss.”
Rowan was sure the sound that came from him was a whimper as his mouth sought hers. This kiss had none of the frenzy of before. It was tender and languid. It was unlike any other kiss he’d ever shared, but then he’d never deflowered a virgin before and rarely kissed any of his bed partners. His hips rocked slowly until Caragh began to squirm beneath him.
“Rowan,” she begged. He looked into her eyes and saw need he was sure she didn’t understand.
“Wheest, mo leannan. I’ll make it better. I just didn’t want to hurt you any more than I had to.”
“You didn’t hurt me. But Rowan--” her words trailed away as her body welcomed his. She lifted her hips in tandem with his thrusts. As the need gained a hold of her, she scraped her nails along his back, and Rowan was sure she would leave marks. In the past, such an act annoyed him. He didn’t like women who thought to mark him as theirs. With Caragh, he wanted to encourage her. He rather liked the notion of being hers, and it was the most disconcerting idea that ever passed through his mind. This coupling was unlike any other he’d ever experienced, and there had been enough for this lifetime and the next. But his intuition already knew Caragh was unlike any other woman he’d ever met.
He looked at her as she chanted his name in a whisper-like mantra. Her head was tilted back once again, and her throat begged for his attention. He licked a path from her collarbone to her earlobe, which he flicked before sucking. That was all it took for her to shatter within his arms. Her entire body went rigid, and the strength of her channel held his cock captive as his body took control, leaving his mind racing to catch up. Before he could pull himself fully loose, he spilled within her. He froze as guilt, shame, remorse, anger, and the need to thrust again waged a war within him. The damage was done, so he slid back into her as her knees cradled his hips. He stroked her hair away from her damp forehead, and he watched her rest beneath him with her eyes closed. She was like a mythical sea creature, a selkie from the fairytales his mother told him as a child. She’d lured him in, and now he was guilty of the one sin he had yet to commit. He’d never spilled his seed into a woman’s cunny. He’d spilled it on and in other parts of a woman, but he’d never risked creating a child,
not even when he was a green lad. His position within his clan had dictated he take care, and his traveling had shown him the hardships unwed mothers faced. He had no intention of leaving bastards strewn left and right and wouldn’t abandon his children, so he always took care to prevent them. This time, his conscience had fallen silent as his body felt like it had come home at last.
Now that the need was satiated, he had time to regret his actions. He held the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen within his arms. A woman who was full of fire and ice, a woman who challenged and amused him in equal measure, a woman he may have trapped in a far tighter noose than he originally intended. If she did carry his child, he would never be able to let her go. He wouldn’t take a child from its mother, but he’d pledged years ago never to desert his child.
Chapter Four
Caragh’s eyes fluttered open, and she blinked several times to focus. Rowan was quick to hide his thoughts. He wouldn’t let her believe he regretted bedding her, not when this was her first time with a man. He didn’t truly regret the bedding part, only the finish. And even that wasn’t entirely accurate. He relished the pleasure his body experienced, but he was now tormenting himself for being irresponsible and selfish.
Caragh sensed a change in Rowan as she ran her hand over his arm to his tattooed shoulder. She moved to her elbows.
“You regret this.” She said this despite their bodies still being joined.
“No,” he was quick and adamant to respond before she misunderstood him.
She tilted her head as she stared at him. “You don’t regret the pleasure, but you regret the finish. You didn’t intend to spill within me.” She watched Rowan flinch as guilt swept across his face. “Rowan, I know how babes are made. I understand the risks I took, but I’m the one who took them. It’ll be me who’ll manage any consequences. Rest easy, I’m not going to make any demands.”
Rowan was unsure if his shock was born of surprise at how blithely she made a life-altering proclamation or anger from her assumption that he would give up his child so easily. “And if I’m the one to make demands?” he growled.
The Blond Devil of the Sea: The Highland Ladies Book Three Page 3