His brows shot upward, the pert nipple forgotten. “From yourself?”
“Devorgilla gave me the anti-attraction potion to render me immune to your charms,” she said, bold as day, the steel he knew she possessed rising to the fore again. “Charms such as your bonnie chest and that slow, wicked smile you’re e’er turning on me.”
She stared at him, daring him to laugh. “Much is bandied about concerning your prowess and airs with the ladies,” she declared. “I only wanted an alliance. Ne’er did I desire to fall prey to your legendary appeal. I was assured the potion would spare me such a fate.”
His last trace of chivalry gone, Donall lowered his head and gave in to the urge to flick his tongue over one of her painted nipples. Unable to curb his lust once he’d touched her so intimately, he drew the nipple into his mouth, and swirled his tongue over its swollen, tender peak.
She arched her back, pressing herself against him, instinctively seeking more. It was the reaction he’d sought, all he needed to know.
“And have you been . . . spared?” he asked, lifting his mouth from her sweetness. “Do you still desire ‘only a bairn’? Or would you have the whole man as well?”
Body, heart, and soul?
He touched a finger to her damp nipple. “Have you fallen for me, my lady?”
Silence answered him.
Silence and a most telltale stubborn set to her fine jaw.
Donall’s heart soared. His fierce MacLean pride wanted to shout with triumph. She’d said she wanted an alliance, naught else. But what she didn’t say, and the look on her beautiful face, said more.
Whate’er fool notions had made her desire a child to seal her ludicrous pact, she wanted him now.
Donall was sure of it.
A maelstrom of fierce, joyous emotions surging through him, he gave her one of his guaranteed-to-melt-a-wench’sheart smiles. “And you vow the potion to be worthless?”
She surprised him by placing her hand on his chest and smoothing her fingers over the planes of his muscles. Donall melted, his jaunty smile tilting away. Banished by the darker urgings stirring inside him.
Easing her hand over his heart, she stilled her fingers, tensing them as if listening with their nerve endings for the manifest thudding.
The slow pounding of a heart conquered and besieged.
A tiny smile of recognition flittered across her face when her questing fingers heard what they’d sought.
“This is what I sought protection from,” she breathed, her words balm to his soul. “Exactly this.” “The beating of my heart?” he could scarce speak, so thick was his throat.
“Nay, sirrah, what its slow, hard beat means.” Showing the steel he loved, she captured his hand and placed it over her own pounding heart. “What this means,” she said, and Donall was lost.
Totally, irrevocably lost.
A tremor, light and delicate, rippled through her. A sign as sure and true as the damnable thumping in his chest.
She cared.
Cared mightily.
As did he.
A floodtide of pure joy rose within him. Bold, fierce, and shining. “And will you tell me what it means?” He slipped his hand from her grasp so he could caress her cheek. “I would hear the words.”
She shook her head, and the refusal struck hard. Stinging and painful as a fired arrow striking its mark. But then she circled her arms around his back, and the pain diminished. “I cannot say the words, Donall of Baldoon, but I will show you.”
Lifting her chin, she offered her lips for a kiss. Donall crushed her to him, slanting his mouth over hers in a rough, possessive claiming. A deep taking of her lips, her tongue, her very breath.
Her soul.
When he eased the kiss to an end, she gazed at him with luminous eyes. The pulse at the base of her neck pounded wildly. His pulse raced, too. Swift, hot, and urgent, an unrelenting stream of need pouring straight into his groin, filling him and demanding release.
But even as he held her, steel bands held him.
Invisible constraints forged of a steel harder than the most adept armorer could hope to achieve.
A forever bond crafted of his feelings, and hers, for there could be no doubt she harbored them. They shouted their existence, shone clear in her shining amber-flecked eyes.
Regardless of how many flagons of her fool anti-attraction potion she’d imbibed to dull them.
A wholly unexpected, giddy sensation swept over him. Wild and unrestrained. Exultant. He could call it naught else, and its fierceness threatened to bring him to his knees.
He pushed away from the table. Sweeping her up hard against his chest, he strode to her bed. With great gentleness, he lowered her to her feet beside the bedpost, his bedpost.
His dark eyes heavy-lidded with desire, he regarded her with a smoldering look so intense, sheer nerves made her slip out of her soft leather slippers and dig her toes into the floor rushes.
The stiff coolness of the rushes prickling her feet made a welcome contrast to the liquid heat of his gaze and the languid warmth weighing her belly.
“Your eagerness to disrobe pleases me greatly,” he teased, his amused gaze lighting briefly on her bare feet before he swept back the bed curtains. He whipped down the coverlets, his swift movements revealing a sharp eagerness of his own.
Mayhap a greater eagerness, for of a sudden, hers was fraught with a slight twinge of trepidation.
He watched her, a slow smile curving his lips. “I am going to fondle your breasts now,” he told her, placing his hands on them as he spoke. “And then we shall rid you fully of your clothes, and I shall love you until you cry out with your release.”
“Will you kiss me?”
“I shall kiss you forever and a day,” he vowed, lowering his head to her breast. He licked one nipple, caressing it with his lips while he palmed and rubbed the other.
Isolde dug her hands into the thick silk of his hair,
gasped at her wonder. She clung to him, fearing she’d fall if she didn’t, so overwhelming were the waves of pleasure swirling through her at his touch.
So exquisite.
Very gently, he grazed his teeth over her hardened nipples, then lapped at them, one at a time, until not a trace of the blush of rose remained.
“Would that I had a potion to save me from your charms,” he murmured, so low she scarce heard him. But she felt his breath, warm and soft, against her flesh.
Reveled in it.
Straightening, he sent a pointed look at the garments still tangled about her hips. “I would kiss all of you,” he said. “Push down your gown and the camise so I can.”
“You needn’t have me naked to k-kiss me.” The maid in her returned, not quite comprehending his intent. But the bawd in her knew, whispered to her exactly what kind of kiss he meant. “Oh!” she gasped, heat shooting onto her cheeks.
Delicious little flames of sharp pleasure stabbed her elsewhere.
There where her wanton side claimed he meant to put his mouth.
To kiss her, and the saints knew what else.
She took a backward step. “You cannot do that.”
“Cannot . . . or will not?” His smile turned wicked. “Fair Isolde, I promise you I can and will, and shall do so most masterfully.”
She gulped. Her heart knocked about wildly in her breast, the pulsing there cried out for what he meant to do to her.
“Push down the clothes, Isolde, or I shall do it for you.”
Driven by the need he’d enflamed in her, she began struggling with the bunched folds of her garments until the last of her gown’s laces finally gave. But just before she shoved it and the camise to her feet, she remembered Evelina’s emerald bauble.
Mortification assailed her.
She’d forgotten the slim gold chain and large tear-shaped gemstone. A whore’s trinket, bold, sassy, and resting brazenly against the abundant pelt of red-gold curls betwixt her thighs.
Her last bastion of hope had the MacLean shunned her e
fforts at seduction. Evelina had sworn, if all else failed, the sight of the bauble resting against her intimate curls would be rousing enough to stir any man.
Even one so braw and bold as Donall MacLean.
But she hadn’t planned on him seducing her.
Her fingers dug into the fabric still bunched at her hips. “I-I cannot do this after all,” she declared. “Can we not just . . . kiss?”
Donall placed his hands on hers, curled his fingers over hers. Over her fingers and the fabric she clutched so desperately. A wicked gleam danced in his dark eyes. “Kissing you is my intent,” he said.
His gaze holding hers, he began easing down her gown, the camise with it. The tips of his fingers, dry and warm, brushed against her hips, the tops of her thighs, as he worked to release her grip on the fabric.
Each time the contact came, she grew more breathless, became more eager. Did the large emerald not adorn that part of her, she’d release her hold on the constricting garments, kick them aside, and part her thighs in wild abandon.
For him.
For his touch.
For the promised kisses.
Those kisses.
Sheer wanton need seized her, a liquid heat spilling the length of her, leaving her breathless, leaving her . . . his.
She began to sway, might have lost her footing did he not grasp her hips. “Do not fight what you’re feeling, Isolde,” he soothed, his fingers kneading the curve of her buttocks, this new touch sending waves of bliss swirling through her.
“Let the clothes fall,” he murmured, his caresses working wondrous magic, making her fingers loosen their hold almost of their own volition.
He dropped to one knee. “Let me give you this pleasure.”
Her fingers jerked reflexively against the linen and silk clutched tight in her hands. “I do not want to be kissed t-there,” she lied.
“You will,” he said and yanked on the material.
Her fingers gave and the raiment dropped to the floor, pooling at her feet in a billowy heap of black linen and transparent gauze.
She wore naught beneath.
Naught but her desire and Evelina’s bauble.
“Sweet Jesu!” The words tore from Donall’s throat. A dark, feral cry rent from the very depths of his need.
By the holy sepulcher, her beauty lamed him.
The large gemstone winked at him from the wild tangle of her feminine curls. Heated blood rushed into his tarse, lengthening and swelling him to a degree that ripped away the last strands of his restraint.
His heart slammed rough against his ribs and his breath came fast and hard. He looked up at her, capturing her gaze as he pressed his lips against the warm, taut skin of her lower stomach in a fierce, openmouthed kiss.
“By the gods,” he choked out against the soft curls of her woman’s mound. “What siren’s trick is this?”
He edged aside the bauble, nuzzled his face against her softness, drank in the light musk of her sweetness in great, greedy gulps. Its aroused tang fired his lust. He caressed his hands up the backs of her thighs, spread his fingers over the firm rounds of her bottom, drew her nearer.
Near enough to lose himself in her scent as he brushed his lips over the pleasingly lush vee of intimate curls.
He fingered the large gemstone, purposely holding back, not yet ready to touch the sweet flesh hidden beneath the wealth of red-gold curls . . . not yet wanting to lick at her lest he explode within his hose.
“So my lady does value baubles?” He rubbed his fingers over the stone’s smoothness, its warmth.
Warmth gleaned from her heat.
She looked down at him, transfixed by the way his lips hovered so close to her femininity, incredibly aroused just watching him. Even the way his fingers moved over the emerald excited her.
A slow, languorous rubbing.
Touch me thus.
The throbbing at her core screamed the words, but he must have heard them, for he let loose the bauble and slipped one finger between her thighs, trailed its tip slowly along her very middle.
“The stone, Isolde?” He withdrew the finger and glanced up at her, the lust in his eyes stealing her breath. “Why did you wear it?”
She opened her mouth to explain, but a soft moan blocked the words. His eyes narrowing, he touched her again, using more fingers this time. He toyed with her, plucking at her damp nether hair, gently stroking and probing the sensitive flesh until she writhed with the sheer bliss of his touch.
“Why, Isolde?” he asked again.
“It was a friend’s loan,” she gasped, leaning against the bedpost, needing its support. “T-to push you past your limits should you shun my . . . advances.”
His eyes widened. “What purveyor of nonsense suggested you have need of such ploys?” His hand closed over her, hard and rough. He palmed her, and the pressure increased the urgency pulsing so exquisitely at her center.
“I vow on my life, woman, a score of Infidel harlots wearing similar jewels would not sway my lust as much as one gold-cast glance from your beautiful eyes,” he said, dragging his hand from her.
Catching her up in his arms, he eased her onto the bed’s cool linen sheets. “We shall love now, Isolde,” he said, his hands going to the waist of his hose, his fingers swiftly undoing the cord binding, then shoving down his braies, kicking them aside to stand proud and tall before her.
Standing there, next to the bedpost where he’d been chained for so many nights, her prisoner, yet now she lay sprawled before him, spread wantonly across her bedsheets.
His for the taking.
“You are beautiful,” he said, his eyes heavy-lidded with passion, his manhood aroused and full, its swollen length riding hard against the darkness of his groin.
He touched one hand to his rigid shaft, let his fingers curl ’round its thickness. He stroked down, then up, his dark gaze trained on hers. “See well what you do to me,” he said, his voice husky with need. “What you alone do to me.”
To my MacLean heart.
Letting go of himself, he stepped to the edge of the bed and smoothed his hand down her side. “Look well and look your fill, for my honor would keep me from laying a further hand on you unless I honestly say you I shall leave here, leave you, at first opportunity.”
Leave until I have gathered my wits, my sword, and my men. Then I shall harangue you the length and breadth of this fair isle until I’ve claimed your heart as well as your passion.
Until I’ve made you mine.
Isolde heard his words, recognized the threat behind the spoken ones, the promise in the unspoken ones.
The ones she heard with her heart.
“Is this still your wish, my lady?” His fingers skimmed over the thick curls of her woman’s mound. “Speak now if it is not, for I can withhold myself but few moments more.”
She watched him, too awed to speak. She gazed in wonder at the dark masculinity of his male parts, at the length and thickness of his manly flesh. Marveled at how well formed and beautiful that part of him was, how incredibly arousing.
How incredibly aroused.
Ne’er would she have guessed a man could wax so . . . large. Her heart leaped, her own passion soaring. Just looking upon him, long, thick, and visibly throbbing, sent purely wondrous thrills of pleasure streaking through her.
Something tore loose inside her. A careening something, and whatever it was, it made her hips rock. She arched upward off the bed, her body instinctively seeking relief from the wild urges twisting and spinning inside her.
An exquisitely painful knot, whirling ever tighter until she feared it would shatter into a million pieces if he did not soon spend her the surcease she craved.
“I see your desire, Isolde of Dunmuir,” he said, the words proud, male, and triumphant. He touched his hand briefly to his swollen shaft. “As you can see mine. Tell me you still want this, and I shall come to you.”
Lose myself fully inside you.
Give you my heart . . . my seed.
&nb
sp; Know and love you in all your moods, find my own haven in the fair shelter of your embrace.
He waited, his MacLean heart thudding with a greater intensity than the hot throbbing of his charged shaft. And whilst he waited, he tried hard to block his ears to the foolery his heart and its annoying soft spot kept flustering at him.
Henpeckers both, the curse of every MacLean male e’er to be born: a full heart and a sore weakness for but one braw lass.
“Well?” he snapped, his temper and aching tarse winning the battle against his smitten heart.
Treat her gently, laddie, for she loves you.
Donall wheeled around, his sharply indrawn breath snagged fast in his throat, but no one stood behind him.
No old woman darted into the shadows, seeking a hiding place after chiding him to go easy with his lady.
His lady?
Aye, his, and with the acknowledgment came a queer sound, almost a cackle.
Gooseflesh rose on the back of his neck. He peered into each dark corner of the room but naught stirred save the embers glowing in the hearth and the tail end of the sea breeze that had just swept through the chamber.
Only the wind.
Not the hag he’d glimpsed spooking ’round Dunmuir once or twice.
Merely the wind.
As if to prove it, one of the shutters slammed back against the wall. Caught and tossed by the same sea wind whose high-pitched keening he’d mistaken for an old woman’s un-asked-for advice.
He turned back to face her, a shade less irritated. “I would know if you still want this?”
“Aye, I do,” she whispered and parted her thighs.
But ’tis you I want, not simply . . . this.
Donall started. He looked sharply at her, but her sweet lips were upturned in a soft smile, her luminous eyes unafraid. The wind had sought to bedevil again.
The wind or the sound of his own heated blood surging through his ears.
His patience flown, both with his overtaxed restraint and the damning voices e’er whispering at him, he joined her on the bed, settling himself on his knees between her parted thighs.
He raked his gaze over her, studied every curve. The sleek lines of her limbs, the round globes of her breasts, her sweet nipples peeking at him through the wild tumble of her bronze tresses. The nip of her slender waist, her smooth, flat belly, and the lush fleece of red-gold curls at the juncture of her spread thighs.
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