Mad or not, she wanted him to be her first lover, here and now, on top of a mountain in the Highlands, beneath a million stars, encircled by ancient stones. Perhaps making love had some healing power. God knew, she probably needed some healing too.
His eyes flared and he went perfectly still. “I did hear that, did I not?” he said carefully. “You did say what I think you said? Or have I truly gone as mad as you accuse me of being?”
“Make love to me,” she repeated quietly. There was no tremor in her voice the second time.
His silver eyes glittered. “Lass, you honor me.” When he opened his arms, she leaped at him, and he swung her effortlessly into his embrace, pulling her legs around his waist. They both gasped at the intensity of the contact. A current of desire sizzled between them, zapping them both to the core. With powerful strides, he backed her to the perimeter of the stones until her spine rested against one of the megaliths. He lowered his head and kissed her, grinding his hips against her, and when she cried out, he caught it on his tongue.
“I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you,” he said roughly.
“Me too,” she confessed, with a breathless laugh.
“Och, lass, why dinna you tell me?” he asked, kissing her jaw, her cheeks, her nose and lashes, cradling her face with his hands. “Why did you resist? Three days we could hae passed doin’ this,” he said, his burr thickened by desire.
“Not if we wanted to get to your stones,” she panted, wondering why he couldn’t just shut up and kiss her hard on the mouth. “Shut up and kiss me,” she said.
He laughed and kissed her so hard that it unleashed ferocity in her tiny frame. She’d seen movies where people made love slowly, sinuously wrapping around each other, but theirs was a mating of wildness. Given their propensity to argue heatedly, she hadn’t expected their sex to be anything less intense. She couldn’t get enough of him, she wanted more tongue and more hands and more of his muscular ass. She wanted him naked against her body. Wanted to feel him pounding into her. She’d waited all her life for this, and she was ready. Just looking at him made her wet.
He tugged her shirt from her shorts and fumbled with her fly, kissing her urgently all the while. “Your trews, lass, get them off,” he said roughly.
“I can’t. My legs are wrapped around you,” she mumbled. “And ow. Your knife is poking my breast.”
“Mmm, sorry.” He nipped her lower lip and sucked it hard. “I must put you down, lass, to get you naked. And ’tis needin’ you naked I am.”
But he didn’t make any move to lower her, hostage to her luscious mouth nibbling at him, her wee hands clawing at his back.
“So put me down, MacKeltar,” she panted a few minutes later against his mouth, desperate to feel his skin against hers. “I have too many clothes on!”
“I’m trying,” he said, trailing kisses down her neck and scraping his velvety tongue back up, only to arrive at her lips again, a position he could hardly fail to take full advantage of.
“Don’t put me down,” she whimpered when he stopped kissing her. Her lips felt naked and cold without him, her body bereft.
The minute her toes touched the ground, she reached impatiently for his clothing, but he dived for her shorts at the same moment, cursing when he bumped his jaw on her head and she got tangled up in his hair.
She fumbled with his hair, then found her way to the leather bands across his chest but was unable to fathom how he’d fastened them. Brushing her hands aside, he tugged her shirt over her head, than stared at her bra. He touched the lacy fabric with fascination. “Lass, show me your breasts. Be quit of this thing, lest I tear it to shreds in my haste.”
She popped the front clasp swiftly and slipped it off. The cool air teased her nipples into puckered crests, and he drew a sharp inhalation of breath. For a moment, he didn’t seem to be able to move, just stood and stared.
“You have splendid breasts, lass,” he purred, cupping the plump mounds. “Splendid,” he repeated stupidly, and she almost laughed. Men loved breasts—any shape or form, they just loved them.
And he was certainly loving hers. He palmed them, lifting and squeezing, and with a husky groan he buried his face in her breasts, rubbing back and forth before drawing a nipple deep into his mouth.
Gwen panted softly when he scattered scorching kisses over her breasts. She twisted and turned in his arms, wanting his mouth there…and there…and there, telling him with her body just how and where she needed him. His fingers worked at her shorts, with little success, and grunting his frustration he tugged at her zipper but succeeded only in jamming it off the track. Encountering similar resistance with his costume, she moaned frantically. She wanted skin against skin; she needed it—every last inch, pressed slick and intimate.
“Oh, just do your own and I’ll do mine,” she snapped, impeded desire making her downright testy. She needed him naked now.
He looked as relieved as she felt by the efficient solution, and as she tugged and twisted at her zipper, then kicked off her shorts, he removed his plaid, tossing knives left and right, doffing his ax and sword and finally shucking his leather armor. He stood up straight, tossing his long dark hair over his shoulders, and looked at her.
“Christ, MacKeltar,” Gwen breathed, stunned. Six and a half feet of sculpted naked warrior stood before her, unselfconscious in his nudity. Proud, in fact, and well he should be. He was raw and male and powerful beyond compare, and it had certainly not been a sock or twenty in his jeans. He was breathtaking, and he had a remarkable amount of mass that she had not been factoring into her equation of why she was orbiting him, but she certainly would be in the future. It explained a great deal.
His eyes drifted over her breasts, down her belly, then lit on her kitten thong, and he made a strangled sound. “I thought that was some strange ribbon to restrain your hair. ’Twas why I put it on your pallet that night, thinking you might plait it before you slept. But, ah, lass, I far prefer it there,” he said roughly. “ ‘Tis wise you did not tell me that was beneath your trews, for I would have walked around hard all day thinking of removing it with my tongue.”
He likes my thong, she thought, beaming. She’d always known that if she’d picked the right man to pluck her cherry, he would appreciate her good taste.
Slipping to his knees before her, he proceeded to do as he’d threatened, lifting the strap of her thong away from the smooth curve of her hip with his teeth and licking the sensitive skin beneath it. He tugged the silk down with little nips, curving his tongue beneath it. She dug her fingers into his shoulders as he licked again and again, building resonance beneath her skin. He sucked her sensitive nub through the silk, making her arch against him, begging for more. Each inch he bared he swept with a hot stroke of his tongue, alternating tiny love bites. His callused hands glided up her thighs, and the delicious friction created by his rough palms against her smooth skin awakened erogenous zones she’d never known she had. Her knees trembled and she clutched his muscled shoulders for support.
“Lovely you are,” he purred, slipping his hands between her thighs, kneading and tasting her. “I doona know which part of you to taste first.”
“Drustan,” she moaned, pressing against him.
“What, Gwen? Do you want me?”
“God, yes!”
“Did you want me when you saw me in those blue trews?” he pushed. “Did you want me then too?”
“Yes.”
“Do you feel the heat when I touch you? Does it hit you like a thunderbolt too?”
“Yes.”
He stripped off her thong and rose to his feet. He drank in the sight of her nude body for a long moment before dragging her into his arms.
They both cried out as skin met skin, stunned by the intensity of the contact, sizzling where they touched. He kissed her deeply, his tongue hot and hungry, plundering her mouth. She arched her back, rubbing her breasts against him. When he cupped his hands beneath her bottom, she clasped her hands behind his neck and
wrapped her legs tightly around him, so his erection was firmly trapped in the vee of her thighs. She squirmed, wanting him inside her right now, but either he wasn’t cooperating or she was too clumsy to angle them into the right position, which, she rued, given her inexperience, was possible. But it doesn’t seem that he’s being particularly helpful, she thought mulishly, breaking their kiss long enough to look at him. His silvery gaze was wicked…and cockily amused.
“Are you torturing me?”
“My pace, lass. You’re the one who said no and wasted days. We might have done this yesterday when you stuffed me into those torturous trews. And later that afternoon. And later that night, and this morning, and—”
When she tried to reply, he kissed her so hard she forgot what she was going to say. He rocked himself against her, mimicking sex, gliding back and forth in the slick vee of her thighs. Millions of tiny nerve endings screamed for more. Well, if he won’t, I will. She knew better than most people that forces of nature should not be resisted or subdued. She twisted against him, rubbing herself wantonly, pushing herself to the peak.
As her soft panting became more frantic, Drustan broke the kiss and looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes brilliant and wild, her lips kiss-bruised and parted.
“That’s it, lass, take your pleasure.” He was riveted by her unabashed hunger for him; she was making him hotter and harder with every insistent thrust of her hips. If he wasn’t careful, he’d spill without ever entering her. He doubted a woman had ever desired him so intensely.
She whimpered as she came, she purred, she rubbed against him like a love-starved kitten.
“Yes,” he breathed, flooded with purely male, possessive triumph. When her shudders subsided and she relaxed against him, he lowered her to the ground on his plaid, then sat back on his knees and gazed at her for a long moment. Long enough that she began to squirm, and it wrought havoc upon his fleeting control. She arched her back, raising her breasts toward him, her nipples dark berries, begging to be suckled.
“Touch me,” she whispered.
“Och, lass, I’ll touch you,” he promised. He nudged her legs wider, then drank in the sight of her, lying in wait for him, her full breasts swollen from his kisses, her thighs open and slick with her desire.
He ran his hand up the inside of her thighs, across her woman’s wetness, then down the other leg. Once, twice, and a half dozen times lingering between her thighs, flicking her sensitive nub, until she was arching her hips up from the plaid.
“I’m going to toop you as you’ve naught been tooped before, lass.”
Gwen was quite certain of that, having never been tooped before. “Promises, promises, MacKeltar,” she provoked. “A woman could die of old age before you got around to it.”
His eyes flew wide in surprise, then he laughed, a husky laugh full of dark eroticism.
Finally, she purred, when, shoulder muscles bunching sleekly, he covered her body with his.
“Have you no sense at all, that you would provoke me? I’m twice your size, you know,” he murmured against her ear.
“So show me something I don’t already know.” She gasped, when he nipped her earlobe.
“Like this?” he asked, shifting himself between her thighs. “Or like this?” He rubbed the head of his cock back and forth and back again in her slick folds.
Gwen melted as he spoke to her then in a language she’d never heard but knew was tribute from the husky admiration in his voice. The strange accents made her wild as he purred compliments against her heated skin. She half-wondered if he was ensorcelling her, because the more he spoke in his foreign accents, the hotter she got. Or perhaps it was the smoky deep voice and the way his hands moved over every inch of her body as if memorizing the subtleties of each plane and hollow. He devoted lavish attention to her breasts, squeezing them, plumping and fondling them until she was nearly delirious with need, hovering at the brink of another orgasm.
He braced himself on his forearms and suckled each nipple, moving his head back and forth, chafing her with his shadow beard, and just when she thought one couldn’t take the erotic teasing anymore, he would turn his attention to the other. He kissed her breasts, the sides of her breasts, the soft warm place beneath them, pushed them together and kissed the plump cleavage, dragging his tongue roughly between them, then returned to her hard nipples and took them alternately with his teeth. Nipping and suckling and drawing her into his mouth. She nearly screamed from the exquisite pleasure of it.
He trailed kisses over her ribs, down her abdomen, then glided his tongue across her belly, playfully flickering into her belly button. Then, suddenly, he dragged his tongue across her swollen bud and she cried out.
“There’s my lass,” he purred, burying his face between her thighs.
The man has a magic tongue, she thought, writhing beneath him. He cupped his hands beneath her bottom, raised her to his mouth, and Gwen filled the night with tiny whimpers as he kissed and licked her, then plunged his tongue deep inside her. As his hot tongue stroked her in places that had never been touched before, she came in spasms, and he lapped her as she shuddered over and over again. Then, just when she thought it was over, he gently nipped her, wringing a tinier series of spasms from her trembling body.
Resonance—I am crystal and I am shattering, she thought feverishly.
As she arched her hips against him, crying out, Drustan growled and pressed himself against the ground. He wanted this to last as long as it could. Wanted to pleasure her like no other man ever had. Gritting his teeth, he pressed himself against the plaid, remaining perfectly still, trying to convince his cock that it needed to wait just a bit longer, because at least he could give her this.
At least he could have this. This perfect moment with her, if naught else. She whimpered softly as the spasms stopped, and he gently lapped her again, playfully warning her that she would have many more peaks of pleasure before he was through with her.
She was so beautiful and open to him. She was the most sensuous woman he’d ever met in his life, every inch of her body sensitive to his caresses, and although he’d bedded scores of bawdy women in his life, none had nudged him past the edge of reason, until now. His stomach was shaky from the intensity of his desire, and his cock was so hard it was painful. His breathing sounded harsh to his own ears, the beat of his heart was the thunder of a hundred horses, the blood boiled in his veins and reality narrowed down to: Just. One. Thing.
Her.
He could wait no longer.
He rained kisses up the gentle swell of her stomach, over her breasts, and dragged the edge of his teeth back and forth across her nipples. Positioning himself between her legs, he did not take her immediately but kissed her thoroughly, a kiss of demand and dominion, of raw possession.
“Tell me,” he demanded. She didn’t play shy or coy, a thing he liked. She let him read her hunger in her face, in her expressive stormy eyes, hiding nothing. But would she speak of her desire? Would she be audacious and whisper words to him that would tell him how to fulfill her wildest needs?
“Tell me,” he insisted.
His wee Gwendolyn said a thing to him then that he’d never heard a woman say before, neither high-born nor whore, and the baseness of her words slammed into him as if he’d swallowed a double dose of a Rom lust potion.
He’d never had a woman say that to him. They used gentler words, but what Gwen had asked of him was exactly what he wanted to do. Their attraction to each other was primitive and went far beyond reason.
If she could voice such raw desires, what more might she confront bravely? Who and what he was? Might she possess such courage?
She lay beneath him, shivering with desire, her lips glistening in the moonlight, wet from his kisses, and he realized he was falling for her harder than a mighty oak cleaved in two by a lightning bolt would crash to the forest floor.
He plunged inside her.
And stopped.
Not by choice—oh, nay, not by his choice�
�but because there was something in his way.
“Oh, just push,” she cried. “I know it’s going to hurt at first. Just do it! Get it over with.”
He was stunned. Fragments of thoughts collided in his head: She is untouched by any man; how could this woman have survived a maiden so long? Are the men in her century utter fools? Then, Ah, she chose no other, but she chose me!
What a gift!
A more noble man might have backed off, a more noble man who knew that even a minute possibility existed that he might disappear that night would surely have refused, but there was something about Gwen Cassidy that drove him far past nobility. He wanted her, by fair means or foul. And if the worst happened tonight, the loving between them might make her more able to face what she may have to confront. Mayhap help her complete all the things he might need her do, and mayhap—he could entertain the outlandish dream—she could be persuaded to find a happy future in his past. For like it or not, the only future she was going to have after tonight was in his past.
He would make it up to her, he vowed. Her happiness would be his first priority. He would give her anything she wanted, heap her with mountains of gifts, attention, and devotion, as befitted a queen. He would wait on her hand and foot. And mayhap loving could work out the uncertainties in his plan that no amount of careful and cautious orchestration could accomplish.
“I may be little,” she coaxed softly when he hesitated, “but I’m tougher than you think.” And she repeated her previous request that had sent all the blood in his body rushing to his groin.
Inflamed, he plunged through the barrier, claiming her.
“Yes,” she screamed, and he drank her cry into his mouth, kissing her savagely, pushing deep within her. She matched his urgent rhythm, and although he knew it had caused her pain, her desire quickly surpassed the tearing of her maidenhead.
He gave himself to her with intensity he’d not given a woman before, burying himself so deep inside her he thought he must be touching the lip of her womb, then gliding out, slowly, only to thrust again. His entire world, his every breath and heartbeat, was focused on the woman in his arms.
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