The Highlander’s Lost Lady: The Lairds Most Likely Book 3

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The Highlander’s Lost Lady: The Lairds Most Likely Book 3 Page 20

by Anna Campbell


  “Now come nearer.” His voice sounded gruff, and his fingers tightened around hers.

  Again, speech was beyond her. Feeling like her legs were sure to collapse, she took one faltering step, then another until she stood right above him. She fought the urge to cover her breasts.

  This close, awareness of his vigorous male beauty shuddered through her like an earthquake. The lamplight turned his skin to gold, lapped across the broad shoulders and powerful chest with its light covering of black curls. When he turned his head, light cascaded over his shining hair, black as a crow’s wing.

  She shifted on her bare feet, as the throbbing inside her approached the pitch of discomfort. Heaven help her, she could look at him forever.

  There was more to come than just looking. Feeling bold, she perched on the edge of the bed, her feet still on the floor. It took all her courage to twist her body until she met that fathomless dark gaze.

  He kept hold of her hand. Odd how the simple connection felt strong enough to defy the world.

  Without shifting his gaze from hers, he raised her hand and kissed the back of it. The courtly gesture made her breath catch in an audible gasp. She felt tremulous and uncertain, eaten up with fascination.

  “You’re taking your time.” Her voice was husky with nerves and what she couldn’t help recognizing as sensual interest.

  His smile was sweet, with no hint of the usual irony. “Why would I no’?”

  “Ian was always in a hurry. He’d have me under him by now.” By heaven, he’d have finished and rolled away to snore the night away.

  “Och, lassie, ye shock me.” One sleek black brow rose in teasing inquiry. “Are ye telling me to get a move on?”

  Color burned her cheeks. “I won’t back out.”

  He placed her hand flat on his chest, where she felt the solid thud of his heart. His skin was warm, and when she instinctively rubbed the firm muscle, his hair created a pleasant friction under her palm. That restless feeling tightened her stomach and made her feel like she’d swallowed a hundred grasshoppers.

  “You can if ye want to. You’ve been bullied enough.”

  She stared at him, trying to make sense of what he offered. “But you want…me.”

  His hand flexed over hers. “Aye, I do. From the first.” His lips quirked. “Well, perhaps no’ when I picked ye up from the beach. You were as waterlogged and sandy as a lump of seaweed then, but definitely after we’d dried you off and put you in Mags’s nightie.”

  To her surprise, the memory made her smile. At the time, his desire had terrified her. “It was a tent.”

  “It was.” His eyes flickered down to encompass the silk that barely covered her. “I like this one much better.”

  She bit her lip again. “What should I do now?”

  “Kiss me, Fiona,” he said softly.

  “Very well.” She sucked in a nervous breath. “But it’s at your own risk.”

  He laughed softly. “I’ll survive. Stop putting off the evil moment, lass.”

  It took her a few seconds to gather the nerve to lean in and touch her lips to his. Immediately a barrage of familiar impressions engulfed her. Warmth. The firmness of his mouth. His tangy scent, edged with something she recognized with a terrified thrill as arousal.

  He made a purring sound of pleasure, and she pressed harder. Her fingers clenched against where his heart accelerated.

  Oh, Lord, she started to feel like she was drowning. She wrenched her head up. It took her a few seconds to clear her vision.

  “Was that right?” she asked shakily. She could taste him on her lips.

  The tenderness was back. “It’s a start.” He reached for her shoulder. “Lie back against the pillows, and we’ll try again.”

  “Under the sheets?” More of that wanton curiosity had her wondering just what he hid beneath the bedclothes.

  His lips twitched. “No’ yet.”

  He brought her down beside him and shifted to lean on his elbow. She hated the way she stiffened in wariness, but lying next to a man like this reminded her too vividly of her first husband. “Diarmid…”

  “Whisht, lassie,” he murmured, trailing his fingers along her hairline and across her ears and down her cheeks. “You’re awfully bonny. Later, I’d like to take down your hair. I’ve had a thousand fantasies involving your hair.”

  “My hair?” she asked, unable to hide her astonishment.

  He laughed softly and kept up those teasing, unthreatening touches. “Aye, your hair. It’s beautiful.”

  “I assumed you’d only think about…”

  A smile hovered around his mouth, as those drifting fingers trailed heat wherever they touched.

  “Och, I’ve thought about that, too, never ye fear, sweetheart.” He caught her chin and angled it up. “But that’s all for later—or perhaps never. Now I’m going to teach ye how to kiss a man.”

  She should be frightened, but fear had moved further out of reach than she’d ever imagined it could. “A man?”

  “Well, me. I’m hoping you’ll find the lesson so satisfactory that ye won’t want to broaden your range of kissees.”

  “Kissees?” she queried on a gurgle of laughter. “Is that a technical term?”

  “Och, aye. Ye need to learn the correct words for what we do together.”

  “How…educational.”

  “I aim to please.”

  He bent in so close that his breath made the sensitive skin of her lips tingle with what she was shocked to recognize was longing. Another shock shivered through her as she realized she’d laughed. In bed. With a man. Who was going to push inside her before the night was done.

  Lying with Ian had always been an act of grim endurance. When she’d come to Diarmid tonight, she’d been keyed up for an onerous experience. She hadn’t expected this enchanting lightness.

  He brushed his lips across hers. Automatically, she closed her mouth and her eyes.

  When nothing else happened, Fiona opened her eyes to find him watching her with a fond amusement that had her silly heart performing wild acrobatics.

  “Why do ye shut your mouth so tightly?”

  “Aren’t I meant to?”

  “If you’re kissing your grandfather, perhaps.” When his fingers caressed her jaw, her lips loosened of their own volition. “Relax a wee bit, and follow my lead.”

  He bent his head again, and this time her nervousness receded to a point where she moved her lips against his. The tingling sensation increased and spread until she felt the contact across every inch of her body. When the pressure on her lips shifted and changed, she tried to imitate it.

  After a few seconds, he raised his head. “Better.” His breathing was unsteady. “Shall we try again?”

  “Yes,” she said on a whisper.

  This time the pressure was more purposeful, and she felt the flicker of his tongue. When she whimpered in protest, he stopped.

  “Ye dinna like it?”

  She gasped for air, and her heart banged in her ears like a madman’s drum. “I’m…I’m not sure.”

  “Perhaps I’m going too fast.”

  He returned to playful kisses that teased her into yearning up toward him. Little glancing touches that surprised and tantalized. His hand cupped her jaw and held her still, as he kissed her lips then shifted to quick kisses across her cheeks and eyelids and chin and nose.

  A choked giggle escaped her. “It tickles.”

  “In a nice way?” He punctuated each word with a brief kiss somewhere on her face.

  “Yes, very nice.”

  Diarmid returned to her lips, and this time the glide of his tongue had her following instinct and parting to take in more of his taste. He made a low sound of approval and slipped his tongue into her mouth with fleeting importunity. Her heart slammed hard against her ribs, as a wave of sensation crashed over her.

  He tasted like the peppermint powder he’d used to clean his teeth. He tasted of heat and hungry male.

  She’d learned to fear ma
sculine arousal, but now she opened her mouth wider. Another rumbling growl of encouragement, and the kiss changed. Flared into desperation and craving.

  Through quaking astonishment, Fiona summoned the courage to greet him with a flutter of her tongue. Then everything melded into a tumultuous symphony of question and response, as he sucked her tongue into his mouth and she returned the favor.

  By the time he lifted his head, she was shaking, her toes curled, and her hands were clawing at the bedsheet beneath her. Her lips felt full and damp and eager for more.

  Fiona forced heavy eyelids upward. Diarmid looked ruffled and intent, and his black eyes were glowing. “Would ye like to touch me?”

  “T…touch?” After those dazzling kisses, speech was difficult.

  “Aye. Put your hands around my neck.”

  “Would you like that?”

  “Aye.”

  Tentatively she curled a hand around his nape, feeling the way his soft dark hair tickled her fingers. Her other hand curved around the ball of one brawny shoulder.

  He’d been warm when they started kissing. Now he radiated heat like a great furnace. His scent had changed, too, become richer and muskier. She gulped in a mouthful of that delicious fragrance.

  “More?” he asked.

  Fiona stared up into a face drawn tight with reined-in hunger. She’d never felt like this before, hot and eager and daring. The restlessness inside her might even be passion stirring to uncertain life. “Yes, please.”

  So far, he’d touched her face, holding her still for those breathtaking kisses. Now he slid his hand around her back and angled her toward him.

  This time, she had an idea what to expect from his kisses. So when his mouth opened over hers, she parted her lips and kissed him with no trace of her earlier hesitation. His hold firmed, and he rolled over so she felt the hard outline of his body through the sheet. Even that didn’t make her want to stop.

  As long as he kept kissing her, he could do whatever he liked with her. With a sigh, she yielded to the wild seduction of her husband’s lips.

  Chapter 25

  Pleasure pounded through Diarmid. Pleasure and rising hunger. But when he recalled that he’d had to teach his wife how to kiss, he leashed his impatience.

  The more he discovered about Fiona’s previous marriage, the more he understood her skittishness. He refused to let her put him in the same category as that clumsy swine who had frightened this treasure of a woman away from sensual fulfillment. The fact that she was here in this bed at all told him that she trusted him as she trusted no other man.

  That was a heavy responsibility. Even if it killed him, he wouldn’t betray her by pursuing his own delight ahead of hers.

  How strange to hold this bonny woman in his arms, a woman who had married and given birth to a child, and recognize that he must treat her like a virgin. Because in every sense but the most prosaic, she was a virgin.

  Hell, she hadn’t even kissed anyone properly until tonight.

  The memory of coaxing her lips to open for him and the rapture that followed drew him back from the brink of passion. Every time he touched her, he was torn between overwhelming desire and a tenderness so poignant, he felt like someone stuck a harpoon into his aching heart.

  Her burgeoning response made his blood rush and his head swim. She tasted so sweet, like honey and flowers and warm female. Her scent, more flowers, more warm female, was intoxicating.

  God bless her, her hands started their own exploration. They raked through his hair, traced the shape of his shoulders and arms, stroked his naked back. With a soft sigh, she arched toward him.

  Still he kissed her, teaching her the sensual dance of tongues and teeth and lips. A teasing foray, a strategic retreat, a nip here, a more thorough invasion there. Until on a growl of frustration, she set out to pursue him with all the skills he’d lavished on her.

  With a breathless laugh, Diarmid pulled away to lean on one elbow. “You’re getting too good at this.”

  Hazy blue eyes stared up at him, as she gasped for air. Her breasts rose and fell under the frail silk covering.

  When she caught his hand and brought it to her lips, more tenderness threatened to choke him. Even if they stopped now, she’d turned a wedding night that he’d dreaded into an occasion of extraordinary joy.

  She brought his hand down to her breast. “Touch me,” she whispered, pressing his palm against that luscious roundness.

  “Fiona…” he forced out through a throat jammed with pleas and questions and, damn it, piercing emotion. He bit back a groan, as he shaped his hand to her. When his thumb brushed a hard nipple, she gave a huff of surprise.

  “If I do, I’ll…” He couldn’t finish. She knew what he wanted.

  “I want to give you pleasure.” She seemed to have no trouble putting a sentence together, whereas words scattered in front of him like seagulls running across the beach at Canmara. “Let me give you this.”

  “I…” He wanted to tell her he could wait, but his hand tightened on her breast.

  She released his hand and fumbled with the hem of her nightdress. During their voracious kisses, it had ridden high over her slender thighs. Now she bunched it in her hands and tugged it up to reveal a tangle of ash blond curls at the base of her flat stomach. Lamplight glistened on damp, feathery hair, proof of her arousal.

  Diarmid swallowed the jagged boulder that blocked his throat and made himself say what he must. “Ye dinna have to do this.”

  “Aye, I do.” To his surprise, she smiled with an openness he’d never seen before. “Not just because you’re my husband and I owe you my duty. Diarmid, I want to give myself to you.”

  In his wildest dreams, he’d never imagined Fiona saying those words. Her admission filled him with gratitude and astonished joy and scrambled every coherent thought in his head.

  He kissed her to try to tell her what he couldn’t say. When he raised his head, she trembled, but he was—almost—certain that this was desire, not fear of a man’s possession.

  Releasing her breast, he slid his hand down to the soft plain of her belly. He paused to explore the pale, satiny skin, then ventured a few inches lower to cup her mound. She gave a start and bit the lips he’d kissed over and over tonight.

  “Should I stop?” he asked.

  She flattened her hand over his chest, where his heart labored as if he pushed a loaded wagon up a hill. “No.”

  “You dinna sound too sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Diarmid didn’t quite believe her, but while she might be nervous, she was aroused, too. Need darkened her eyes, turned them heavy. Her nipples pressed tight and hard against her silk nightdress.

  He kissed her again. At first, she was awkward in his arms, but soon she kissed him back with gratifying enthusiasm. Only then, while his lips still teased at hers, did he launch a gentle invasion of her body’s secret hollows.

  “I love to touch ye,” he whispered, nibbling a line down her neck and feeling her shiver as he scraped his teeth across the nerve where her neck curved into her shoulder.

  Fiona tangled her fingers in his and after a pause that seemed to last an eon, she relaxed under him. Her legs parted to allow his caresses where, God willing, he’d soon join his body to hers.

  She was sleek and hot. As his seeking fingers met the proof of her response, relief washed through him. She hadn’t lied about wanting him. Slowly he explored the satiny folds.

  Her hand clenched in his hair. “What are you doing?” she asked unsteadily.

  “Ye dinna like it?”

  “I’m not…”

  As he caressed the sensitive pearl of flesh, another huff of surprise escaped her. “Oh.”

  Once again, he thought how virginal she was. She knew nothing of her body’s potential for pleasure. How could she, married off as little more than a child to a brute who made no attempt to teach her about enjoyment?

  Diarmid leaned in and took one beaded nipple between his lips. The silk was a tantaliz
ing barrier. He burned to rip away this rag of a nightdress. But some corner of his brain retained enough grip on strategy to recognize that once she was naked, her fears might resurface. Right now, she was drunk on new sensations, not thinking beyond the next delightful shock.

  As he drew on her nipple, his touch between her legs became more purposeful. One finger circled the entrance to her body, then slid inside. He tensed his jaw as she closed around his finger. Even aroused, she was tight.

  Carefully he withdrew, relishing how she clung to his finger. The promise of being inside her thundered through him like an earthquake. He reached a point where the sheet could no longer ensure restraint.

  Diarmid shoved the hampering linen out of the way and settled between her slender thighs. The trust and barely hidden uncertainty in her eyes hit him harder than his discovery of her desire.

  “Shall we proceed, lassie?” The question emerged as a growl.

  She studied his face as if seeking the answer to some eternal question. He gritted his teeth and told himself that despite bollocks as heavy as cannon balls, he could stop.

  He’d limp for a month, but he could stop.

  Her courage once again stole his breath—if he had any to steal. Whatever she saw in his face must have reassured her, because she gave a small nod and stretched out her legs. A slight smile fluttered around her lips.

  “Yes.”

  A long groan of relief escaped him. “Hold onto my shoulders. And bend your knees. It will be easier for you.”

  He wished he sounded more like a lover and less like the sergeant major she’d once called him, but stringing any words together was almost beyond him. Urgent hands caught her hips and angled her upward.

  He could hardly believe this moment had arrived. Fiona in his bed, willing and ready for his possession.

  With a smoothness that set his heart crashing against his ribs, he pushed forward. At first, he met tension, then her body adjusted to take him and with a broken sigh, she accepted his entire length.

 

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