Charmed by His Love

by Janet Chapman

  Peg smiled up at the moonlight showering the unusually tall trees surrounding the unusually warm pool with soft white light, and decided she liked Duncan’s idea of the forest and mountains being God’s cathedral. As for his dad and those other men traveling through time, and Mac being from Atlantis, and Trees of Life growing right here in Maine, if Duncan had told her all that stuff hoping to persuade her to have sex with him … well, he’d certainly caught her attention. Of all the arguments he could have made, having the power to break her family curse was the most potent. Because not only would he be saving her daughters’ futures, Duncan would also be saving hers. And honestly, she didn’t know how much longer she’d survive sleeping in a small empty bed every night before the part of her heart not filled up by her children finally atrophied.

  Peg glanced over at Duncan again, looking big and strong and unkillable as he reclined on the mat and sleeping bag he’d unrolled on the moss next to the fire. After, that is, he’d beat the jeans she’d tossed to shore against a rock before spreading them on a branch—after she’d watched him secretly peek at the label to see their size. Now he was lying with his head propped in his hand, pretending to be gazing at the fire like the patient man he was even though she knew he was secretly peeking past the flames in hopes of seeing something interesting.

  When in the name of God had she fallen in love with him?

  She’d caught herself being attracted to Duncan the day he’d helped her butcher the deer, which to her dismay had turned into desiring him when he’d stolen a kiss the night his equipment was being sabotaged—which had then turned into her desperately needing him sometime when she hadn’t been paying attention, apparently. And if she had to wait much longer to feel him inside her, Peg was afraid she was going to be the first female to die of the Robinson curse.

  She’d thought, much to her delight, he was taking the decision away from her down by the beach when she’d lied and said she wasn’t wearing a bra. But the contrary man had suddenly backed off, and then made her spend two friggin’ hours watching the moonlight play over his broad shoulders as he’d carried a sword that had to weigh at least twenty pounds, and the heavy backpack, and eventually her up the mountain.

  Damn, big strong men turned her on.

  And really, it’s not like he hadn’t been forewarned that making love to her might kill him. So what was she doing here in this magical place with this magical man—with no danger of being interrupted and all the time in the world, apparently—acting like some seventeen-year-old virgin planning to give herself to her boyfriend on Valentine’s Day? God, she’d been a romantic idiot when she was seventeen.

  Yeah, well, she was twenty-eight now, a full-grown woman with four children, an empty bed, and a hole in her heart the size of a house. And if she had to go through the worry of letting a man see her naked for the first time again, she really couldn’t have devised a better setting. She might not have a seventeen-year-old’s body thanks to three pregnancies, and her boobs may be heading south and she might have a few stretch marks, but moonlight and water were great disguisers of imperfections.

  Peg rolled onto her stomach, quietly swam toward a rock embedded in the sandy gravel shore, and folded her arms on it to rest her chin on her hands. “I still have that card, you know. The one you gave me eleven years ago.”

  He sat up. “Ye do?”

  She nodded on her hands. “I’d forgotten about it, actually. But your telling me that it was you on TarStone that day, I remembered slipping it inside the torn lining of my jewelry box when I got home from the ski trip.” She smiled, knowing the fire was casting enough light for him to see it. “And your kiss did leave quite an impression on me. I had some pretty erotic dreams for a virgin that winter.”

  God, she’d swear his chest actually puffed up.

  “Are you going to make me try to catch these trout all by myself,” she asked, “or come in here and help?”

  The fire certainly cast enough light for her to see him go still but for the sudden flare in his eyes. “I didn’t bring a swimsuit with me, lass,” he said thickly.

  She shrugged. “Last I knew, red-blooded females consider swimsuits just one more obstacle to get past.” She reared up slightly and pushed off the rock to glide on her back to the center of the pool. “Come swim in this magical pool in God’s cathedral with me, Duncan.”

  Why weren’t men the least bit modest? This one had his boots and socks off in three seconds flat, unbuttoning his shirt as he stood up, dropping his pants—boxers included—and stepping out of them all without taking his eyes off her. Peg’s breath caught when he skirted the fire with an unhurried but deliberate stride and walked into the pool, not stopping until the water was up to his waist and there was only about ten feet separating them. Knowing that if she gave him too much time to think through his plan of attack that he might not attack at all, Peg dove under the surface and swam directly toward him, knowing he’d assume she was swimming away.

  His muted bark of surprise confirmed her guess when she popped up in front of him. “Shh, you’ll wake the squirrels,” she whispered as she wrapped her arms around him and pressed the full length of her body to his, making him suck in his breath. She touched her lips to his chest and pulled in his wonderfully male scent. “And I’m not into having an audience.”

  He cupped her face and tilted her head to look at him. “You’re sure, Peg?”

  “About what I’m doing? No. But about doing it with you? Oh, yes.” She searched his eyes searching hers. “I loved my husband with the heart of a young girl wanting nothing more than to be a wife and mother. And now with a woman’s heart, I’ve fallen in love with you. I really didn’t want to, since you’re a little more than scary sometimes, but I think that’s precisely why it’s safe for me to love you.” She gave him a tentative smile. “Because I definitely believe a woman needs a big, strong, scary man to keep life … interesting. For instance, I can’t wait to find out what that is poking my belly.”

  Peg dropped her hands from his waist when he still didn’t move and wrapped her fingers intimately around him as she cupped his scrotum with her other hand. Only he caught her shoulders when she started to slip underwater and hauled her back up against his chest with a warning growl. And since she was finally the right height, and before he could say whatever he intended to say, she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and stuck her tongue in his mouth.

  Because really, the man never should have admitted he loved her.

  She leaned away. “Well, are you going to kiss me back or not?”

  “What, ye find yourself needing a little encouragement?”

  “No, I need cooperation.” She leaned her forehead on his and sighed. “Okay, if you really were serious about wanting me to start asking for help, there is something I’ve been having a hard time doing … all by myself.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Well, I’ve tried … um, pleasuring myself, but it’s just not the sa—”

  Peg couldn’t tell if his roar meant she’d better shut up and prepare herself for his cooperation or if she’d just unleashed the really scary man who’d been driving her SUV earlier. But her first clue arrived when his mouth came down on hers in anything but cooperation; harsh, demanding, and so full of promise that Peg felt her insides clench in anticipation. The next clue that she’d unleashed more red-blooded male than she might be able to handle was when she felt herself falling backward into the water, the weight of his body pushing her all the way down to the sandy bottom of the pool.

  She was pretty sure warm-water bass could hold their breaths as long as trout could—that is, until Duncan broke the kiss and slid down and cupped both her breasts, sucking first one nipple and then the other right there at the bottom of the pool in four feet of water. Peg’s shout of surprise released a good amount of air from her lungs, and her moan ended with a frantic struggle to find a way to replace it.

  His hands spanned her waist and pushed her to th
e surface, where she gave another shout of surprise when his mouth pressed intimately between her thighs and his tongue pushed into the folds of her sex. She went boneless on a moan of pleasure, and would have slipped beneath the surface again if he hadn’t been holding her. One of his hands lowered to her hip so he could control her movements and one arm slid between her thighs to lift one leg, allowing him better access as he splayed a hand across her lower back to keep her from falling over.

  Peg clung to his shoulders to brace herself when he found her sensitive bud and suckled, gently at first then quite eagerly, making her insides clench again and her mouth go dry in response. He was going to drown. She was drowning in desire. His tongue drove into her and then he suckled again.

  She heard whimpering, raw and needy and ragged, and Peg tugged at his head so he’d come up and breathe with her. But just like the man in her SUV, he was relentless, pushing wave after building wave of searing heat through every cell in her body, until the world receded but for his demanding mouth as it drove her closer and closer toward release. His hand slid between her thighs again and Peg cried out when he slipped two fingers deep inside her. Her muscles clamped around them and she bucked forward, climaxing with a cry of unbelievable pleasure.

  She was nothing but a trembling, jerking, convulsing, boneless mess when he finally surfaced, his hands spanning her waist as he pushed her backward towards shore. God, he wasn’t even winded, and she was still trying to catch her breath. Her back had barely touched the sandy bank when he was pressing into her; no hesitation, no request for permission, no testing her readiness.

  His penetration wasn’t careful, but neither was it rushed; his mouth capturing her startled cry as he pushed deeper. Peg clutched his shoulders bunched with undeniable strength and turned her mouth away to suck in ragged breaths as she tried to adjust to his invasion.

  He moved his arms next to her head to hold her looking at him, his eyes dark and intense and locked on hers as he eased back and she relaxed, and he pushed into her again. Her nipples hardened as his chest hair brushed over them with each stroke of his body, pushing, then retreating, then pushing deeper into her with each thrust.

  “Again,” he commanded. “So I can watch ye this time.”

  Peg forgot all about breathing, admittedly a little scared by his intensity.

  “Again,” he repeated, obviously fighting to soften his … request.

  He leaned away—somehow without breaking his slow, maddening rhythm—and slid one hand under one of her legs to settle it over his arm, effectively changing his angle of penetration. “Oh God, don’t stop,” she groaned, throwing her head back, which in turn lifted her aching breasts into his chest, each of his thrusts pulling her closer to that spiraling vortex of shattering pleasure.

  She cried out when his other hand lowered, his palm scorching her stomach as his thumb pressed into her folds and found her bud. He worked her intimately against the slick length of his shaft moving in and out, and within the next heartbeat Peg crested again, her fingers digging into his arms in a futile attempt to keep from flying in a thousand different directions.

  His thrusts stopped with him buried deep inside her even as his thumb continued stroking her through the storm of her climax, his gaze locked on hers as she convulsed around him two, five, eight pounding heartbeats. Ten. Twelve.

  And then he exploded in motion, placing his elbows on either side of her head as he drove into her again, his lips brushing her forehead and his chest hair roughening her super-sensitive nipples. And all Peg could do was cling to him through his own climax, knowing with blinding clarity that she was in really big trouble.

  With the both of them lying mostly in the warm water of the pool, Duncan kept as much of his weight off Peg as he could while remaining embedded deeply inside her, considering every muscle in his body felt like lead as he lay his forehead on the ground beside hers and sucked in ragged breaths.

  Her ancestor’s curse wasn’t going to kill him, but she might.

  Christ, he’d lost it completely when she’d asked for his help with a little problem she was having; the picture of Peg lying in her feminine room in a small bed in the dark touching herself igniting a firestorm in him that Duncan was afraid wouldn’t be brought under control, much less extinguished, in his lifetime. He’d taken her boldly when she’d unwittingly brought forth his need to claim her in a way that would leave no question in her mind that she belonged to him.

  He smiled at the sand, wondering if she recognized yet that they’d only just begun. He slowly lifted his head to find her big, unblinking eyes staring up at him, her soft, lush chest heaving into his as her trembling hands pressed against his shoulders on the misguided notion she could hold him at bay. He pressed his hips forward, her eyes widening with a gasped moan of surprise.

  “I would have ye come again,” he said quietly.

  “Are … are you serious?”

  He slid an arm under her shoulders, which canted her head back. “Again,” he growled, setting his mouth on her throat and pressing his tongue to her pulse.

  She shifted restlessly beneath him, her soft shriek of alarm making him smile as he moved his mouth lower, leaving a trail of quivering flesh in its wake as he pressed his hips forward. Her second shriek ended on a moan as he felt her dig her heels into the sand to lever herself into his slow thrusts, and he heard her whisper, “Ohmigod, you’re serious,” just as he felt her clenching around him with her building climax.

  Aye, if the lass had only suspected it before, before this night was through she would definitely know she had fallen in love with a demanding, never-say-die, very possessive man.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Peg opened her eyes to see the sun just peeking over the top of the mountain, although its rays weren’t reaching this far down yet, and she decided it was a good thing she didn’t want to move because she couldn’t. Partly because every muscle in her body had given up the ghost two love-makings ago—she’d lost count of her orgasms—but mostly because Duncan had her so tightly wrapped in his arms that it was a wonder she could even breathe.

  The man wasn’t scary; he was flat-out terrifying.

  Relentless was too benign for what he’d been last night, Peg decided now that her brain wasn’t suffering from passion overload and she could think. Well, think at least semiclearly, because she was emotionally as well as physically exhausted. No, Duncan had been driven by something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Intense. Determined. Frighteningly focused. Really, really driven to prove … something.

  For the love of God, she hadn’t known a man could keep making love after he came, much less that he could come that many times in one night. She was chafed in more places than just her legs now, and a little worried her skin was so super-sensitized from being in a constant state of arousal that she was going to have another orgasm just getting dressed.

  Assuming she could ever move again.

  He nuzzled her shoulder and Peg stiffened, and he chuckled softly as she nevertheless moaned when his thumb lazily brushed over her nipple.

  “I swear to God,” she softly growled, “you say ‘again’ and I’m going to hit you over the head with your own sword, and not with the flat of it, either.”

  “I doubt ye can even lift it, lass,” he said with another chuckle, turning her around in his arms so that now her naked backside was sticking out of the sleeping bag. He kissed her forehead. “Did ye sleep well?”

  She snorted, pressing her cold nose into the crux of his neck, making him chuckle again as he palmed her exposed backside and pulled her up against his wide-awake front side. “Insatiable,” she muttered under her breath, adding another word to her growing list of his finer qualities.

  “Excuse me?”

  She patted his chest, a bit surprised that she could even lift her hand. “I was just mentioning it was sunrise, so I guess that means you have an hour to get me home like you promised.” So I can send the boys to my mother-in-law’s and collapse into bed and
sleep all day, she silently added.

  “This sunrise doesn’t count, Peg,” he said, the humor having left his voice as he tilted her head back. “We could see a hundred sunrises from this mountain, but when we cross the fiord it will only be the morning after we left. Monday morning.”

  “But that’s really not possible, Duncan. Really. I need to be home when my children wake up or they’ll be worried sick.”

  He folded her into his embrace with a heavy sigh. “I told ye it’s only going to seem like you’re gone days.” He tucked a finger between them to nudge her chin up. “My word of honor, Peg; you’ll be away from them for less than twelve hours.”

  He sat up, sitting her up with him, and chuckled again when Peg scrambled to grab his shirt beside the dead fire and immediately slipped it on.

  He lifted her chin to look at him again, his expression gone back to serious but his eyes still showing a hint of amusement. “I’d have thought we put any shyness ye might have with me to rest last night, but I can see it’s still something we’re going to have to work on.”

  He stood up, as naked and immodest as the day he’d been born, walked to the pool, and dove in. Peg flopped back on the bedroll and pulled the sleeping bag up to her nose with a sigh of relief—followed by a smile at the treetops finally catching the first rays of a magical sunrise.

  Oh yeah, based on last night’s experience, nothing could kill Duncan MacKeage.

  “The way I see it, ye have two choices,” Duncan said as he dripped water from his fingers onto Peg’s forehead, causing her to pull the sleeping bag up over her face with a groan. “You can get up and get dressed so we can get on with the day, or I can crawl back into bed with you and work on that little shyness problem.”