by Hope Tarr
Intense amber-brown eyes bore down on her. “Will ye have me, lass? In your bed, I mean?”
“Jack, are you…are you certain?”
He answered with a swift nod. “Aye, certain I’ve been a horse’s arse, a bloody fool. And if ye’ll but give me leave, I’ll show ye just how verra sorry I am.”
“Oh, Jack.” She launched herself at his chest.
His arms closed about her, holding her tight for a lovely long moment. Then he slipped an arm about her waist, another beneath her knees, and lifted her. Cradled close against his chest, she could feel the heavy drumming of his heart as he carried her over to the bed.
Gently he laid her on the center of the mattress, then joined her. A palm braced on either side of her, legs straddling her skirts, he said, “Ye’ll have to show me what to do, but only the once.” His earnest expression dissolved into the lopsided grin she’d come to love. “I’m a fast learner, ye ken.”
Overcome by emotion, she stroked her hand down his lean cheek. “Oh, Jack. If either one of us knows about loving, it is you.”
Damn, but he should have thought to undress her first, not to mention take off some of his own clothes, at the very least his boots. For himself he might have managed but Claudia’s clothing was far too complicated to remove with her lying down. He had the swift, vivid image of tossing her cloak and skirts up about her waist but dismissed it just as swiftly. It was their first time together. He wanted it to be perfect, or at least as perfect as he could manage to make it.
With a sigh, he stood them both up again, removed her cloak and then started on her gown. “Too many eyes and hooks,” he muttered, struggling with the queue of silk sewn fastenings fronting her bodice.
His hands, the same hands that could without a tremor arrange a noose about a man’s neck, shook like those of a palsied old man. With anticipation, yes, but also with nerves. What he was about to do would betray a lifelong vow, but since meeting Claudia, his conscience had withered to a fragile thing, no match for the fierceness of his wanting. His cares, past and future, forged into a single-minded focus: he simply had to be with her.
She seized hold of his hand, her grip surprisingly strong for one so small, and brought it to rest low on her belly. Gaze holding his, she said, “Would you believe, Jack Campbell, that beneath these layers and layers of skirts, I am not wearing so much as a scrap of lace?”
He might be a virgin, but he wasn’t such a daft idiot that he couldn’t read the sultry invitation in her voice. “Is that so?” he whispered back and pulled her to him for another kiss while he caressed her through her clothes.
With his help she stepped free of her gown, shed her corset, her quilted petticoat and finally her fine lawn shift. Her breasts were unbelievably beautiful, high and firm and flawless save for a small, cylindrical white scar just above her left nipple. Perhaps someday he’d ask her how she’d come by it but for now his attention, indeed all his focus, was riveted on her legs. Sheathed in silk stockings of sheerest white, they were even prettier than he’d imagined them to be, her ankles and calves trim, the thighs above the lace-trimmed garters pale as moonstone.
She was so lovely, so verra fine. So far he’d done little more than kiss her and yet his cock was so stiff it strained the panel of buttons fronting his breeches, his balls heavy and swollen with the force of his need. And the only thing more powerful than his desire was his fear.
He shook his head. “Mon duinne, I dinna ken what it is I’m supposed to do, how to please ye.”
“I think you do.” Taking hold of his wrist, she brought his touch to bear on the plump mound between her thighs.
He hesitated, then began stroking her. Crisp curls teased his palm. Before it had seemed rude to stare at her there but now he did so—openly. “You’re the same blue-black as a crow’s wing here too,” he remarked with a kind of wonder, thinking that the erotic etchings he’d once seen in a book, detailed though they’d been, couldn’t begin to do justice to female beauty—at least not to Claudia’s.
Bracing a hand about her waist, he slicked the pad of his thumb down the dewy cleft dividing her mons. She moaned and backed up against the edge of the bed, spreading her legs wider. He entered her with first one finger and then two, sliding back and forth, stretching her wide.
Several times he stopped to whisper in her ear, “I’m no hurting you, am I?” and each time she only shook her head and reached out to reclaim his hand.
Wet and warm, the musk on his fingers made his mouth water and his groin pulse. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he felt himself growing even harder, thicker.
“My turn,” she said, and reached for him, slender fingers starting on his shirt buttons. “I have wanted to do this for a long time,” she told him, freeing the second to last button. “Ever since that night when I cried out in my sleep and you came to me. Do you remember?”
He pulled a hard swallow. “Aye, I remember. You were in your shift and all I could think of was how much I wanted to take it off you.”
“I wish you had.” She slipped the shirt over his shoulders, pulled the tail from the waist of his breeches, ran her palms and fingers over the dusky flat discs until his nipples stood straight. “I would not have stopped you, you know.”
He did and though part of him regretted that they hadn’t made love sooner, in his heart he knew he’d been right to wait for back then he’d only just begun to love her. Now she was in his heart, she was his heart, and even though he was breaking faith with himself by making love with her, nothing in his life had ever felt so right.
“I will not stop you now.” She started on the panel of buttons fronting his trews.
Desperate as he was to be free of them, he caught at her hand. “I’m a great beast and ye’re delicate as a fairie. I dinna ken how we can come together wi’out my hurtin’ ye.”
She smiled up at him, warm and welcoming, even as she took him in her hand. “It has been a long time for me but I do not think you will hurt me.” With her thumb she teased the great bulging vein that seemed to thrum in keeping with his very heart.
“I’d rather die than hurt you.” And wishing he might take away all the hurts of the past, he bent his head to her breast and laved the little white scar with his tongue.
She gasped, then arched against him, a hand threading through his hair, drawing him closer. He took her nipple into his mouth and gently tugged even as he reached down to fondle her other breast.
“Lovely, so verra lovely,” he murmured and reached around her waist to lift her up and lay her on the emerald counterpane, a striking backdrop for black hair, violet eyes and white, white skin.
She opened her arms. “Come to me, Jack. Come to me now. I do not care if it hurts—I only want to hold you inside me.”
Jack didn’t wait to be asked a second time. He kicked off his boots and then peeled off his pants. Coming down on top of her, he braced a knee on either side of her and slid a hand between her parted thighs.
“Och, lass, but ye’re slick as marsh grass.”
“It is you who have made me so.” Violet eyes, clear of tears now, unshadowed by second thoughts, looked up into his. “I am wet, Jack, only because I want to take you inside me so very much. Because I want you so very much.”
Her small, sure hand closed about his shaft. She guided him to her, saving him from fumbling. He felt a brief, hesitant pressure as he entered her, her narrow channel balking against his breadth. And then she lifted her hips and ground against him, taking him all the way inside.
For a long moment the miracle of it held him still as he sought to hold on to the myriad sensations rolling through him. His penis, the tip exquisitely, almost painfully sensitive, the shaft pulsing with life and chafing for movement. The musk-scented heat that rose between them like steam. Claudia’s rapid-fire breaths punctuated with tiny, impatient moans as she wiggled beneath him.
And then without conscious thought, he began to move back and forth, inside and out, slowly at first, but the
n with increasing confidence. Sweat slicked his brow, his back and the insides of his thighs. He slid one hand beneath her buttocks and lifted her against him. Before long they were retreating and advancing together in perfectly matched movements, his every thrust seeming to carry them both higher and higher toward the crest of some unseen crag.
“Christ, Claudia, you’re hot as a furnace.”
“That is good, I think?” She tossed back her head and smiled even as her inner muscles fisted about him.
Oh, it was good all right, almost too good. Biting the inside of his lip to keep from crying out, he answered, “Whatever it is ye’re doing, you wee witch, dinna stop.”
“I am holding you as tightly as my body will allow and I promise I will not stop, not even if you beg me to.” She slid her hands about his hips, pressed her palms to his buttocks, urging him closer, deeper. “Look at me, chéri. I want to see your eyes when you come.”
At some point he’d squeezed his eyes shut though he hadn’t realized it until now. Opening them now, he gazed down. Christ, but she looked just as he’d imagined her so many times only perhaps even more intensely, more blindingly beautiful. Raven hair splayed across the white pillow, eyes wide as saucers and almost black with desire, mouth pink and swollen from his kisses, she was the embodiment of his every fantasy, his every dream. And, for the present if not the future, she belonged only to him.
Emotion welled inside him. Desire, to be sure, but something else, something less fragile and far finer than the physical pleasure he took. He’d never been much with words, but this almost unbearable closeness demanded to be voiced.
“Claudia,” he said, pulling himself up on his arms to look down at her. “Is it supposed to be like this? I never thought it could be like this.”
She regarded him with wide, feral eyes, kissed his jaw, his throat. “Mon Dieu, neither did I.”
Bowing to primal instinct, he reached down between them, rubbing his thumb over the hard little nubbin just above where they were joined. Claudia’s breath caught. She arched, pitching her slender hips in silent demand. And because he could deny her nothing, because he ached to be inside her for not only now but always, he pulled all the way out and then drove into her, sheathing himself in one shuddering thrust.
“Oh, Jésus, oh, Jack!”
Her keening cry, her inner muscles convulsing about his shaft very nearly proved to be his undoing. But as much as he hated to leave her, he knew that he must, for there was one part of his vow he still refused to break: he would not beget a bastard.
He withdrew and rolled onto his side, spending his seed on the mattress. “Sweet Jesus,” he moaned when at last he found his voice. Looking down, he saw that he was gripping the edge of the bed so hard that his knuckles had gone white.
Claudia’s small hand touched his shoulder. “Jack, ça va? Are you all right?”
“I’m still alive, if that’s what ye’re askin’. Beyond that…” He rolled onto his back and gathered her against him. “Christ, Claudia, that was—”
“Perfection,” she finished for him and settled her head on his damp shoulder. “Now I see why in France we call it le petit mort, the little death.”
Breathing didn’t come easily but somehow he found the energy to smile. “If this is dyin’ then sure it is I’m the merriest corpse that ever was.”
Now that his heart had ceased beating like a drum, a delicious languor had begun to roll over him. “Thank you.” He pressed a kiss onto the top of her head and closed his eyes, content to listen to the sound of their commingled breaths and the spit and hiss of the fire devouring the peat bricks within the grate.
But even in the presence of all that peace, his mind refused to shut down completely. “Claudia?”
“Hmm?”
Wondering how to ask, he stroked her slender back. “What you said just now…Did ye ne’er take any pleasure in the act before with…him?”
Even now he couldn’t bring himself to speak her former lover’s name. The bastard might be dead, a headless corpse moldering in an unmarked grave, yet Jack had never been so jealous of anyone in all his life.
She pushed up on one elbow, dark hair streaming over one milk-white shoulder. Looking into his eyes, she gave a resolute shake of her head. “Jamais. Never.”
He released the breath he’d been holding and admitted, “If I were a better man, I’d say I was sorry and mean it. But I’m not and so I must tell you that I’m no sorry.”
She sighed. “Perhaps I should be but I am not, either. In all the years I was with him, not once did I find my release in his touch. He was impatient—he did not take his time with me. He hurt me sometimes, many times. In my heart I hated him for his cruelty but mostly I hated him for not giving me the pleasure that other women I knew found with their lovers. But now I think that perhaps it was not all his fault, that my body must have been holding back, saving itself for…for you.”
He exhaled heavily, his heart suddenly feeling too big, too swollen, for the tight casing of his chest. “Ye dinna feel I’ve soiled ye, then?”
“Oh, Jack, oh, chéri.”
Tears spilled down her face; at a loss, he reached up and caught a fat droplet on the edge of his thumb. “Claudia, sweeting, what is it? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head at him, dashed a hand over her wet cheek. “Mon chéri, do you not see? You have not soiled me. You have washed me clean.”
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning Jack sent Luicas home with the cart and mare. He wanted time alone with Claudia, of course, but beyond that he was loath to involve the lad in what amounted to abetting a prisoner to escape. Not that he and Claudia struck out for Linlithgow that day, or the day after, or the even the day after that. The excuses to linger came fast and furious, much like the snow that fell obligingly outside their chamber window. And then, lo and behold, the following day was Christmas. Since Claudia had come to Scotland, one day had slipped into the next until she’d lost count altogether and had forgotten all about the winter holidays. Not so Jack.
“There’s one more yet,” he told her and, reaching beneath the covers on his side of the bed, withdrew a small, elaborately wrapped box. “Open it,” he urged, pressing it into her hand, as impatient as any child on Christmas morn.
Though it was nigh on ten o’ clock in the morning, they were in bed still, where they’d spent the better part of the three previous days and nights, propped up against the banked pillows and, thanks to the warmth of a roaring fire, naked beneath the covers.
Claudia accepted the box, one of several he’d already bestowed on her, and holding it up to her ear gently shook it. “When did you do all this?”
“The other afternoon when you were napping, I went out for a wee ramble.”
Jack’s “wee ramble” had led him to the shops on Princes Street. The fruits of that expedition now lay spread about the mussed bedcovers—a set of fan-shaped hair-combs sparkling with amethyst brilliants, a linen handkerchief trimmed with silver-gilt bobbin lace, a delightfully wicked set of scarlet silk garters threaded with black.
Letting the anticipation build, she slowly untied the silver bow and lifted the lid. Inside was a small swan of cobalt-colored glass, a lovely trifle. Upon closer inspection, though, she saw that the swan was hollow and was in fact a vial for holding scent, a light rose fragrance to replace the bottle she’d brought with her from France, now all but gone dry.
“Oh, Jack, chéri, you think of everything.”
Delighted, she lifted the stopper and passed the bottle beneath her nose.
“Not that you need it,” he told her, reaching across to take it from her when she would have dabbed some of its contents at the base of her throat. He set it on the bedside table on his left then shifted to her. “You a’ready taste like flowers.”
If Claudia thought to ask him what flowers tasted like, the pert question flew from her head the second he threaded his arms beneath hers and pulled her back against him. Leaning forward, he kissed the sid
e of her neck, his tongue laving the little pulse point below her ear.
“And your skin’s like silk. Warm silk,” he whispered, his own warm breath grazing the wetness as he reached around her to take her breasts in hand.
“But, chéri, I feel so guilty,” she said even as she leaned back to savor the sensations of him nuzzling her neck, of his callused palms weighing her breasts. “I have not so much as one cadeau, gift, for you.”
“Not one, aye?” Chuckling, he grazed his thumbs over her nipples, still pebble hard and puckered from his recent kisses that morning. “But I count two at the verra least.”
Closing her eyes, Claudia smiled to herself. Her Jack hadn’t lied about being a fast learner. Though he’d lost his virginity but four days before, already he was engaging in love play with the finesse of an accomplished seducer.
He eased her from his shoulder and laid her down on the mattress, the sheet riding low on her waist. A decent woman would have pulled it back up, but Claudia had learned the futility of trying to be someone and something she was not. And so when he slid his big body down the front of her, not stopping until the crown of his red-gold head was level with the vee between her thighs, her first thought, her only thought, was to kick the remaining covers aside and spread her legs even wider.
“Tell me, mo chride,” he said, parting her woman’s flesh fold by fold with exquisite care. “What does this feel like?”
Claudia had considered herself to be the inquisitive one but over the past days Jack seemed to have developed an insatiable desire to know everything about her, right down to the nature of the sensations he could create by running his thumb down the slick, blood-warmed cleft between her thighs.
Only too happy to satisfy his curiosity as well as the rest of him, she didn’t hesitate to answer, “Like champagne bubbles tickling one’s nose only on the inside and…and much nicer.”