Geoff tried reason, “Heather, do you realize how soon the ton will have the two of you betrothed if this continues?”
Nial answered for her. “Heather has given me the most precious gift I have ever received, and I will fight to the death to keep her with me always.”
The words shocked the would-be suitor and Heather’s failure to contradict the claim caused him to step back. Maclee whirled her away, the other man already forgotten, as he steeled himself to be strong enough to face the public show she planned in her vain attempt to gain the Maclee swipe. Before the night was through, every person in the room would see his desire, be able to measure his need and know that he danced to this ladies’ tune. Well, every person except the lady herself who seemed to believe he would turn his world upside down on a whim.
No man danced to a ladies' tune because he willed it. Rather, he did it when it was the only song he heard, the only melody he could follow.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nial’s steps guided them to the opposite side of the floor, far away from where the lost expression on the other man’s face called to his greatest fear. He tried, and failed, not to think that there but for the grace of God go I. He wouldn’t go that way because he wasn't bound by their rules about who could do what with whom and how often they could do it. He chose his rules and if one kept him from his fate, it was a rule that would be discarded.
She felt his sex already stretching between their bodies, and tried to ignore it but sighed with pure female longing. The friction reminded her that her female power emerged only in the arms of the man she worked to drive away. She had no choice if she wished to preserve her sanity and his future - she had to provoke the Maclee swipe that would show his grand performance for the acting it was. Only one lady had immunity from the swipe - the faerie fated love destined to spend forever with the consummate lover who held her with such pretend passion.
Her hands slipped between their bodies, this time going to the buttons on his shirt, only nominally covered by his now open jacket. His hands continued to caress her back without pause. Heather’s touch, anytime, anywhere, was completely different from the intrusion that he felt with every other female who made free with his person. No bloody rules of propriety would keep him from the woman he held so lovingly. She stared into his eyes as she opened the top button, and paused for a noticeable interval.
“It’s okay, my love,” Nial said in a tone already too threaded with desire. “I’m all yours. You can touch anyway, anytime you want.”
Her confusion showed in her eyes but she opened the second button and a froth of his black curly hair emerged. She paused to toy with it, tickling and teasing interspersed with light jerks. His eyes darkened more. He felt each tug as a separate pulse in his rigid tarse. When her hands went to the third button, they shook a bit. He made the mistake of looking down at her chest to see that only her stiff nipples kept the fabric of her dress from sliding off her breasts entirely. Red silk closely outlined those thrusting nipples that begged for his touch, and his mouth.
“Ohh love, you do make it hard for a man to keep his resolutions. Your need calls me but I won’t answer. This is your show.” He'd be the one on display, but the performance was hers to direct.
Two more buttons revealed his golden chest entirely, all the way down to where the thick tufts of black hair dwindled into a fine line and vanished into the pants working to contain the expanding load. Nial whirled them and the candlelight glistened across fine beads of sweat highlighting well-developed muscles honed in battle. A blonde English princess dancing with another man reached out to touch. In the blink of an eye the Maclee swipe swatted the delicate hand away so quickly that had Heather not been looking she would have missed it.
She stumbled in the steps of the dance and he inquired in a tone so guttural that she barely understood the words. “Are you okay, love? Heather?” He asked, carefully hiding his amusement at her stunned expression.
“I’m fine,” she gritted out between lips that wanted to tremble in amazement as they strained to cover teeth that wanted to take a big bite out of any one of the gaping women who kept reaching out hands that were each swatted away.
Her hands trembled badly as she reached up to fasten the buttons. The tremble overcame his stern resistance and he did reach out at that point, tilting her chin up and glancing deeply into her eyes. She had no practice at hiding her feelings. Her misery shone clearly in the gold about to turn molten and now her hands shook so badly that she was on her fourth attempt to get a button into its hole. He whirled her outside to the terrace and then further, to an area where high hedges provided minimal privacy.
He found a bench beside a small fountain and pulled her into his lap, shifting her sideways so he could see her as they spoke. Her tears fell freely as she breathed deeply, trying to calm herself. He had no clue what upset her, but this was his first attempt to understand a woman. Although he would rather take on a legion of warriors single-handedly, he was determined to stop her tears.
“Heather?” He murmured the question as he reached down to kiss away the tears. His motion seemed to cause more tears and he clenched his fists, wishing for a threat he could subdue in a manner he understood. He hated the plaintive note in his own voice, but could not help it. “Heather, love, talk to me. What is it? What has upset you?”
“You don’t know?” She asked in disbelief. “You know, and I want you to stop it.”
He suddenly recalled his own hearty amusement and ignorant laughter when one of his warriors complained that his wife seemed upset and he didn't know why or how to help. When he asked why the warrior didn’t just demand that she tell him the problem so he could fix it, the man laughed and said, "Just wait till you wed, laird." The clansman said that all of the emotions seething inside a woman could draw a man in until he felt like he danced in quicksand. He’d laughed then, but now he felt the slimy grasping mess trying to pull him under, if he made just one misstep.
“Heather?” He inquired again and somehow the lost little boy expression she could see him trying so hard to achieve pissed her off. She leapt up, the light of battle fired anew in her eyes, and drug him back inside and immediately to the dance floor. He had no idea what he’d done to make her cry or to piss her off. The quicksand held the upper hand.
She stood a half step away and an evil light sparked in her eyes as she recalled that she had only begun to play with his chest and hadn’t gotten to her favorite part of it yet. She took her right hand and licked it, slowly, giving it long laps of her tongue, before she took the wet fingers and flicked them over his nipple. The concentration on her upset had eased his arousal, but her caress twitched his staff to awareness again. She repeated the motion with her left hand, and then, covered only by the sketchy protection of his jacket, reached up and began circling his nipples while she made a humming sound that he felt as vibrations in his staff. Without rhyme, reason or pattern, periodically she would halt the circling and flick her fingers back and forth over the nipples that would have poked holes in his shirt had he possessed the sanity to re-button the garment while they were outside. By the time they were roused nearly beyond bearing, she began pinching the pebbles rhythmically. He tossed his head back, closed his eyes and surrendered to the irresistible urge to thrust in time with the rhythmic pinches. She toyed with him until he feared he would prove definitively, right on the dance floor, that a man could come from attention to his nipples alone.
When she stopped her play he breathed a premature sigh of relief. She caught his eyes and held them as she sucked her index finger into her mouth, slowly, a fraction at a time, until the whole thing was submerged. She inched it out the same way, a bit at a time. He shook his head no but she ignored the gesture and began sucking the finger in and out, in and out. The hot wet suction traveled to his tortured manhood via that connection to her that had only grown stronger with time. He opened his mouth to speak or beg but what emerged was a panting groan, huffed in time to her suckling. When she
withdrew the finger with an audible plop, the release emerged as a tiny trickle of milky white that escaped his control before he tightened every muscle in his body to damn the flood knocking at the base of his spine.
No gun or sword ever looked as threatening as that single finger she placed against his lips, rubbing it back and forth over the tight line with a smile that said he would surrender soon. Against common sense, against his damned survival instincts and way contrary to his pride and self-worth, he did, opening his mouth and leaving it parted for her pleasure. She put the finger on his tongue and it lay there like a bullet still hurtling through the air.
“Heather,” he said, the start of a sentence he couldn’t finish as the motion of his mouth when he said his name closed his lips. She moved her finger out of his mouth before she plunged it back in. He parted his lips slightly, unable to quell some vestige of pride entirely.
She reached up to his ear and pressed her lips against it as she made the wanton suggestion. “Pretend it's the part of me you attended so well yesterday.”
His eyes met hers for a shocked millisecond before her finger became her plump hidden nub, moist and needy as it had been at the picnic. He plunged it into his mouth, rimming the base with his tongue and groaning as he seized her wrist and pulled it out to bite the tip of her finger. Another burst surged and he tightened too late to prevent it all. The single drop hurt more than it helped. He pulled her hand away because he was at the end of his rope, ready to toss her skirts up and take her here, now.
She smiled sadly at the confirmation. Finally, she'd pushed nearly far enough. The Maclee swipe would come for her very soon. She must gather her courage and force herself to follow through. Then the truth would arrive, openly and irrefutably. Armed with that resolve, she cocked her head to the side and licked her index finger, up and down like a candy cane. She took that wet digit and slowly placed it on a wild tuft of black hair that sprouted in the center of his chest. She traced that hairline down, inch by inch, slowly, between his nipples and into his navel. She followed it until it trickled to the thin line that disappeared into the top of his pants.
He watched her take him and seize control of his body with a single damned finger. His breath came in irregular huffs that amplified his small, nearly soundless moan until it sounded like a throaty purr. His surging tumescence needed her touch so badly it rose to meet her damnable digit which rimmed around the aching head without grasping it, without reaching into his pants and damned pulling it out and guiding it to the release he’d have sold his soul for. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides she traced the outer boundaries of his desire, enflaming it without delving into it, without satisfying it.
An expression that managed to be simultaneously triumphant and defeated swept across her face as she watched the motions of his hands. She continued the teasing that convinced him the staircase to hell was infinite in duration. “Don’t fight it, Nial. I know you want to. Go ahead and then we’ll both know.”
“Go ahead? Sweet, it’s a mark of weakness for a man to do that when he is alone, much less in the middle of a dance floor.”
At his words she withdrew her finger, and he suppressed the demented urge to put it back.
She mumbled, “I’ll just leave you alone then, and…. What?”
“It is a profound sign of weakness for a man to become so desperate for release that he gets it from his own hand.”
“Gets it from his own….. It’s obvious that you are fighting the impetus to swipe my hand away and I am telling you to go ahead. Then we’ll both know.”
He brought both hands up to frame her face. “My only love, I know already. I’m trying to convince you, but you’re still uncertain and confused. I hurt you and betrayed you and I will do anything I must, everything I must, to prove that I am your destiny as you are mine. Why the motions of my hands? Because I’m ferociously aroused, painfully hard, and my hands fight the urge to relieve my distress. There will be no swipe, sweetheart. How quickly did the other hands get the swipe? You must see that it would have arrived long ago.”
She refused to give up and narrowed her eyes to determined slits. “The English lasses are not quite so bold as Scottish lasses, I’m thinking. At home, I believe every lass you danced with ended up trying to fondle your privates sooner rather than later. They always got the swipe.”
He didn't tell her how many of the so-called English ladies behaved as boldly as the lasses at home. It wasn’t her point. She still expected that she could do something to his body that would push him past endurance and earn that swipe. This night was all about proof, but glancing at her wicked expression, Nial vowed that she would satisfy every craving she roused.
With eyes turned into gold diamonds, she lowered her hands to cup his crotch. Her boldness intoxicated him as much as it astounded him. He hadn’t expected that his little Heather would follow through on her threat. Her adventurous hands circled his length loosely, sliding up and down, up and down. Moving his head from side to side, he mumbled portions of words and incoherent phrases. He arched his groin away from the touch he craved more than his next heartbeat.
His hands fastened on her hips with bruising force when she joined the measuring motions with words. “Hmm, what have we here? Your member?" Her lips plumped and rounded to caress the words, framing them like they surrounded the part of him she stroked. "It seems rather engorged, would you say it is engorged, Nial?”
“Hell yes,” he said, though his words were husky, inarticulate and barely human.
Her measuring grew harder, as she pressed and released up and down his entire length, and damn them both, she joined the motion with more words. “Ahh, what have we here?” Her fingernails dug through the thin material of his pants to prod the two wet spots centered near the head of his staff. She leaned up to his ear and rimmed it with her damnably talented tongue as she said, “Did you lose control baby, just a little? It wasn’t enough though was it? What’s wrong, am I not as arousing as all your other women?”
She fitted her silk-coated feminine mound to the damp spot over his erection and started to thrust, lightly, teasingly. He growled as he summoned resistance that was nearly beyond him. He wanted to thrust against her, needed to, damned near had to but he couldn’t thrust and clench and he clenched with all his might against the release crawling past his restraint, creeping up his spine. His desperate struggle showed in his face, and suddenly she dropped her hands. He quickly led her away to a quiet corner where he managed to fasten a couple of the lower buttons on the shirt he couldn't summon the ability to tuck in. He gave up and rested his chin on her head and tried to regain some measure of control by holding himself nearly rigid against the pain.
He couldn’t open his eyes yet, but when he could finally speak, he said, “Just for the record, love, the graphic term for those spots on my pants is come. I’ve never come in my pants for any woman but if you hadn’t shown mercy just then, I’d have flooded the dance floor.”
She put a hand to his cheek at his words, caressing him, compelled to wipe away the pain she caused. He leaned into her soothing stroke blindly for long moments. When he finally opened his eyes she searched them, seeking the soul beneath the polished glass. The navy blue orbs seethed with need, desire, and pain underscored by flickers of resentment. Yet another emotion shaded the others, moderating their tone to allow control when none should remain. It looked a lot like love.
After a couple of minutes more he could stand erect, even though another part of him still stood erect as well. The time passed in silence as she discounted the emotion she couldn't confirm in favor of her last sight of him on Skye, which she couldn't forget.
“You’re good,” she said quietly. “I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not what it looks like.” His question was in his eyes, as he remembered she had used the same phrase earlier. Apparently, it was the key to a deeper thought.
He was about to question her when Viv wandered over with Peter. In the way of family, they decid
ed to interfere simply for the joy of it and give the pair a hard time by breaking up their private party. Peter’s impertinent appraisal started at Nial's unkempt hair and ranged to his untucked and partially open shirt and then down to the wet spots dotting the hard that still tented his pants.
Heather flushed but Nial remained stoic. Peter quirked a brow in inquiry and the Scot simply said, “I was proving a point to your cousin.”
Viv laughed. “It must have been an interesting point, at least. Unlike this gathering.”
“A member of the nobility who is not enamored of the almighty social whirl?”
Viv’s gaze was far away as she answered. “No, I’m not and I have never been. This is not my place, I’m afraid. Well, it is, but not now, not like this.”
Geoff wandered over, intent upon trying his luck at gaining a dance with Heather. Perhaps the presence of her family would moderate the laird’s boorish behavior. Boz, seeing Geoff’s arrival, made haste to join the group. Nial stepped behind Heather to wrap his arms around her waist. The signal should have been enough, but Badgerton ignored it to press forward, extending his hand as he inquired, “May we finally have our dance?”
He pulled her closer, pressing his spiked phallus into her buttocks in silent reminder that he passed her test. He opened his mouth to answer but she placed her hands over his and squeezed. He stilled, awaiting her response. Just before she gave it, her parents joined the group, so she said, “It is nice of you to ask Geoff, but actually, I am tired and I believe that our party was about to leave. Unless you would prefer to stay at the ball, Nial?”
“You are my party love, and you know I prefer our gatherings to be smaller and more intimate.” He stepped to her side, more than ready to get out of this torture chamber.
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