Nial wiped away the tears falling from Heather’s eyes with a finger he kissed as he smiled down at her tenderly. It didn’t seem enough, so he lifted her left hand to his mouth and kissed her ring finger. Claiming wasn’t as firm a commitment as he wanted, but it was a start.
“Lad, you two can leave whenever you choose.”
He walked over to Carrick and the other man returned his hug. "I couldn’t ask for a better Father-in-law.”
Laird MacIver patted his shoulders and replied, “You’ll do, son.”
Nial gathered Heather close and guided her towards the closed carriage that would take them to the grounds of one of the estates his cousin owned. This one was near London and had a lovely lake completely surrounded by dense woods. On the banks of the lake grew a weeping willow. At Nial’s instructions, via one of the Sedgewick messengers, the grounds were being prepared with an ermine spread lying beneath that weeping willow, a great deal of champagne, and a basket of finger foods, suitable for hand feeding.
He hadn’t gotten settled on the seat before he questioned the wisdom of the closed carriage Boz insisted on. He suspected his cousin hoped to avoid a public scandal, but giving his lady such a private venue allowed her to concentrate fully on testing him. The silly lass still expected the Maclee swipe, and he had begun to wonder if they would be christening their first bairn before she realized it wasn’t ever going to come.
The passionate determination in her eyes called his master member to attention before the coachman spurred the team.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
If she only had a little time before he tired of toting his load of guilt, she might as well enjoy it. In fact, she might need some hot memories to warm up the cold nights once she and Viv left to find their futures. So she decided to play. She grinned up at him as she began opening his shirt buttons. When the white cloth lay open, she ran her fingers through his chest hair, styling it until it spiked wildly, and then she reached up to tousle the black locks on his head.
She jumped back to her seat herself across from him, sighed and got an eyeful. "You're almost a perfect doll."
"Only almost?" He asked, the hard edge in his voice a cue to his annoyance.
"Take the shirt off and clasp your hands behind your head," she said, pushing her luck deliberately, intentionally.
He tilted his head and his navy eyes narrowed. "Giving orders already, sweetheart?"
"Saying no now to save yourself the trouble of having to swipe away my hands, baby doll?" The sharp edge in her voice didn't match the traces of pain darkening the gold of her eyes.
"Listen here, I don't.." He halted, gave a deep sigh and said, "Damn. How much of my amorous history are you familiar with?"
"It's quite extensive and yet I pride myself on being thorough when I study."
"You've heard that it annoys me when females try to treat me like a bloody human doll to be arranged and admired."
"I've heard and I thought it might save you a lot of work if we skipped the seduction you're not much interested in anyway." Heather's sharp edge became a razor and the traces a flood.
He slid forward on the seat to jerk off his shirt. "It's another bloody test. Actually, whether you know it or not," he said, tossing the shirt on the floor, "I get extra credit for this one. It's a double."
"Why.." she paused and licked her lips, the sight of him exceeding the allure of any fantasy the girl who'd always loved him ever had. "Why is it a double test?"
"Because I never take orders from women," he replied, before he leaned back on the seat. "Clasp my hands behind my head like this?" He asked, positioning himself as instructed.
Gad but the man was lethally attractive. She chewed her lower lip as she gazed at the contrast between the black fur matted on his chest and the wild black hair clustered in spurts under his arms. She reached in her bodice for the handkerchief she'd tucked there earlier. "It is warm in here, isn't it?" She asked as she wiped the perspiration from her brown with a trembling hand.
"The heat is growing within you, love. You're becoming aroused from looking at me. It's flattering as all get out but it's so much more than that. It's also hot as hell watching your nipples poking out against the thin cotton of your gown."
Under his burning eyes, she started panting, causing her gown to slip further down her shoulders, baring an additional enticing inch of her creamy breasts. Her gaze shifted to his lap, and as though she commanded it, he spread his legs wider. The fit of his kilt changed dramatically under her scrutiny.
"You're aroused, aren't you, Nial?" She asked, surprised. Perhaps it was genuine, he was genuine and her fairy tale love was coming true. Maybe he really was her Prince Charming and...Stop it, you twit, she ordered herself. "Or are you? Is it some sort of trick or illusion?"
"There's one way to find out, you know."
She called his dare by rising from her seat to kneel by him. As he sat with legs splayed to accommodate the growing pressure of his arousal, she flipped up the skirt of his kilt, pulling it to his waist. Dear Lord, if this were an illusion she'd take tricks to reality any time. She stumbled back to her seat. Her eyes blazed while her face hardened with the mercilessness of intense desire. Under her stare, his blood flow changed, engorging his proof until his skin stretched tight and his balls turned to stone. As she panted, he shifted in his seat. Her tongue came out to rim her lips while she made noises that sounded like a panther's purr. Soon, he couldn’t sit still at all and he thrust against the air, clenching his teeth to prevent a plea for her touch.
"Thank God, we're here," he said, jumping up as the coach jerked to a halt. His kilt flipped down when he rose but he made no move to button his shirt as he helped her out of the carriage. Why fix clothes that would be abandoned soon enough? If gossip about their appearance today circulated to London’s ton, then so much the better.
He led her through the forest until they arrived at their bower of love. He seated her on the ermine throw and perched on his heels beside her. “I hope you’re not hungry for food right now lass. After the desire you inspired on the way here, I would feast on more heady stuff.” He lay down beside her and turned her to face him before he took her lips with passion that put Geoff's garden groping to shame. He nibbled her lower lip until it opened, and thrust his tongue inside to lick hers with light, easy strokes. The urgency from Nial didn't scare her at all. On the contrary, she clutched his shoulders and pressed her breasts to him, rubbing them to seek the friction of his spiky chest hair.
He broke off the kiss. “I’m afraid that perhaps I wasn’t honest enough in explaining all the rules. I get the same privileges you do, love.”
Dazed, flushed and panting, she murmured, “You do?”
“Oh yes, sweetheart. I get to touch too. Starting right now,” he said as both hands came up to cup the fullness of her breasts through the gown. He tested their weight and closed his eyes like he wanted to memorize their shape. She kept hers open wide, refusing to miss an instant of the memory that would have to sustain her forever. His palms slipped up the full globes until her hard nipples stabbed them.
"At least you still need me for something," he muttered.
She swayed back and forth, rubbing her erect nipples against his palm, which he kept cupped and available, but only available. He made no move to touch her or to deepen the play.
“Nial,” she moaned, placing her hands around his, “touch me.” He sat panting and not moving his hands, although she gripped them to her bosom fiercely. Horrified, she realized that her big udders had disgusted him. She sat up and started to spring to her feet, but she never made it.
He tackled her, coming down over her on the throw. "I know how to arouse you. I know how to satisfy you. I even know how to bloody satiate you. But I don't have any idea how to make love to you. I've never made love to anyone. I don’t want to screw this up.”
Suddenly his hands were all over her breasts, especially on her full, aching nipples and she could only moan. His fingers abraded the pebbles
through the fabric, lightly and then harder before he started pinching the nipples and she heard herself purring. He took her right breast between his hands and shaped it before he sucked it inside his lips, rimming it with his tongue. She writhed beneath him and he applied full suction that soaked the front of her gown before he applied his teeth in delicate bites. She felt like she held fire and panted, feeling an itch spread to her private parts that grew to a burning and a steady pressure. She thrust her crotch in the air and he moved his mouth to her other breast. He pulled back to gaze in her eyes as he took each palm and pressed down on the erect nipples while he swiveled that hard manhood she'd seen in the carriage right between her legs, right where that burning itch tormented her.
He levered himself up on his arms, panting and clenching his face like he was in pain. She'd have asked him but she noticed his nipples. They were hard like hers. She reached up to tweak them between her fingers and when the hard nub peeked out at her she licked them, darting back and forth from one to the other. All the while, his navy eyes focused on her chest. She licked harder, using her teeth to try to distract him, but it did no good. He gazed at her, right where she didn't want his eyes, like he was mesmerized.
Without warning, he groaned and grabbed the strapless gold fabric, rolling it down.
"NO!” She screamed, folding her arms over her udders. She tried to turn to her side but he surrounded her and she couldn't move.
“Sweet love, I would see the charms hidden from my gaze. Can I not take the gown down?”
Take the gown down? He wanted her to wobble her damn udders at him? Yeah, he'd have something to tell the lads on Skye then. How they would laugh when he described his narrow escape from the haggish cow. The tears trickling from her eyes turned to heavy sobs and she clenched her ugly anomalies. Then she recalled her hair and she thrust up her other hand, wishing heartily for a bonnet. When she closed her eyes to hide their hue the tears poured from under her lashes. Still, she felt him looking at her, felt something that seemed so close to real concern, real caring and she badly needed both.
He sat over her, stroking her forearm. “Sweet, when I spoke as I did to your Father I did not mean I would force myself on you. Do you fear I will rut you like a beast if you allow me to gaze upon your bare charms?”
She shook her head no, at first lightly and then furiously. Then she started laughing although she continued to cry. “Hardly, Nial. You know very well that if you look at my udders rutting will be the last thing on your mind. No matter how kind you are being to me now and overlooking my ridiculous hair and my strange eyes, the udders would be more than you could take. You would run away from me, not walk, run. But that's your goal, isn't it? You'll have a mighty entertaining story to tell over the next dram of whiskey with the lads.”
She continued to cry and try to hide her hair and chest and eyes as he perched above her, totally silent for long moments that confirmed her belief in her diagnosis. When he spoke though, he nearly sounded puzzled, baffled almost. "Is this something you actually believe? Bleeding buggers, was this absurd delusion the reason for the whole bloody disguise? That damn garb you hid inside of is responsible for this whole mess. Without it, I'd have thrown you over my shoulder and toted you to the priest the day of the fair."
She barely heard his words because she was beating his chest, trying to push him away and discovering that all those rippling muscles didn't push real easy. She persisted anyway until he finally caught her hands. “Let me go. I appreciate how kind you have been. You’re a very good actor but there is no need to try to continue the charade longer. Just go back to Liz Montwell and leave me alone.”
“Actor? These last months my tarse gets stiff every time I think of you but I can’t find release with another woman because I only want you. Actor? My need for you has made me bloody useless for anything and anyone else.”
“Months?” She asked, jarred out of her certainty by his words.
The fact that he went on as though she had not spoken was her first clue that she was seeing the famous Maclee temper erupt. No one could act or pretend when they were this irate and as he began screaming and muttering obscenities, her heart began to thump with joy and a smile grew on her face.
“Lady, I started having wildly erotic dreams about the woman who was my fate just about the time you showed up and the elders started pressing for marriage. You covered every inch of flesh from your head to your toes and refused to look me in the damn eyes. I decided that what was between us had to be friendship because you weren’t the panther that gave me wet dreams every single night and caused me to spend every other bloody waking moment half erect. Then when I saw you unclothed at the lake you ran from me and I was terrified that you would leave my life without my ever finding you. The only time I saw your amazing gold eyes was when you were running away from me in the garden.”
“Nial?” She tried to draw his attention, but he was too wound up to stop, and his rage was real, whether or not she could believe his startling claim that he had fantasized about her for months.
“Just who the bloody hell is Liz Maxwell anyway?”
“Montwell. You danced with her at Almack’s.”
“Well damn, that was all arranged by Boz who had some stupid idea that I should pretend to be your friend and…..”
“Nial!” She yelled his name this time and got through.
“What?” He snarled as he finally looked to see that that she had pulled her gown down. She displayed her anomalies with something akin to pride. Everything but his eyes seemed to freeze for a long moment that felt like forever as she discovered pride didn't last long. But then again, she didn't really have all that long to wait because his rage changed to passion in such a tiny span of time that it was fascinating to watch the transformation. His lips trembled and he wasn't graceful at all as he lurched for her bare breasts. He dove for them, and filled his mouth with one as he filled his hands with the other, all the while muttering something against her breasts that was difficult to interpret. The amazing things his mouth did to ease and fertilize the ache in her nipples distracted her from trying to make out the words that rumbled against her chest.
She finally made it out though. He was saying, “Mine, mine all mine.”
It was her last coherent thought for quite some time as he worshiped her breasts with tender touches that led to harsher grasps and with light caresses of his tongue that grew to cheek hollowing suckling. Finally, he sat back, looking at her with his navy eyes sparkling with some deep masculine pride she'd never imagined she'd see from him. Even her fantasies hadn't stretched to this. Then something darker entered his eyes and he snapped at her. “Heather. Has any other man seen these? Did Badgerton see them? Answer me.”
Talk? Now the man wanted to talk? She could barely breathe let alone think well enough to form words and he wanted to hold a conversation. Then his words penetrated and she understood that he was jealous of Geoff. This handsome sensual man desired and pursued relentlessly by women wanted reassurance from her. She grinned as she teased a bit, “How about you? Can you say no other woman has seen you?”
His expression showed he was not in the mood for teasing just yet. “Damn it, answer me.”
She still panted and her breasts hurt and she'd been close to something only to have him stop. She arched her breasts up at him, but he refused to take the hint, wouldn't touch her until she spoke. She felt more like clawing his too-bloody-charming eyes out by the time she did. “No, Nial. No man but you has seen my breasts yet. Happy? And again I ask, can you say the same?”
“Yet?” He reached down and began to vigorously massage her, continuing until she thrust her womanhood forward, shouting her need for more without words. “Yet? Never, my love. No man but me shall ever gaze upon your bounty. I will kill any man who dares to behold your magnificence. Should any dare touch, he will pray most heartily for death before it finds him.”
He slithered downward to reach under skirts, and as his fingers found her he smiled a
smile full of sensual promise. "You're drenched for me," he whispered and his fingers found the sensitive hidden nub as he said, “Sweet, I can’t say no woman has seen me before, but I can promise that no woman will ever see me again.”
He watched her face as his hands played her with the skill of the virtuoso he was. She knew it and resented it while just now, she could only feel terribly grateful that he knew exactly how to touch, how to rub and when to rub harder. When she got close she seized control, rubbing up against him, swaying to get the fingers where she needed them and holding them there, right there. Then she reached it and vibrated at the edge of some perfect harmony and felt the beat of the melody deep inside. She heard herself screaming his name. It was the only word she could recall and it vibrated in her head until it emerged through her lips. She bit them then to hold back the words of gratitude that wanted to follow.
When her sensibilities returned enough to allow her to look around, she saw him lying on his back, with his elbow sprawled across his face. It was a gesture she of all people couldn't mistake. He hid from her but she'd hidden enough to know you couldn't hide everything. Her eyes didn't have to travel too far down to locate the exact cause of his distress. His kilt was tented obscenely. While she watched, his groin made an aborted thrusting motion that he checked before he cursed and tensed from head to heal. Before long, he'd half thrust again, mutter a worse oath and tense again.
Reaching a decision, she stood abruptly and called to him.
"I can't eat anything right now. You go ahead," he growled, apparently assuming she'd gone for food.
"Nial," she called, "You're too brave to hide and I have something more interesting for you to see than food. Are you going to look or do I need to come over there and ..... examine you again?"
He finally opened his eyes. She stood a few feet away, stark naked with the sunset glowing behind her shoulders. The wild profusion of sandy, chocolate, auburn, Jesus, every brown shade in the rainbow of her hair was matched in the fur that guarded her mons. It was a sight straight from his most erotic wet dream but it wasn’t for some other man. It was his and she was his. He made it to his knees and crawled the short distance, not stopping until his mouth met the mons hair still drenched from her release. His tongue lapped out, heading towards her cleft when she reached down and grabbed his hands and started tugging him to his feet.
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