It should have worried her, but it didn’t. He wouldn’t do anything that they both wouldn’t find supremely pleasurable. Of this she was somehow certain. But danger to herself wasn’t the only issue that trust revolved around. She was handing over a great deal more than her wellbeing into his care. She understood that. But even that momentous realization wasn’t going to stop her. Stop this.
He leaned just forward enough that she could flick out her tongue and brush across the dp of him. So she did. He gasped, jerked hard against her lips. And she grinned. Oh no, there would be no stopping this. She’d never once felt this way, and she might well never again. Whatever regrets might await her after this was over, wouldn’t compare with the regrets she’d certainly have if she backed away from this now.
He was close enough for her to flick her tongue over that velvety tip again. He sucked in his breath, and his thighs tightened against her ribs as he fought for control. She wanted him to struggle with that battle just as she was. The ache between her legs was a sharp, insistent need, but she didn’t move anything other than her tongue and mouth. The control cost her, but also made the need climb higher, the ache sink deeper.
He finally shifted forward again, enough for her to swirl her tongue fully around him. His growl was low, guttural, as he eased himself forward, letting her finally take him into her mouth. His thighs tightened further against the need to pump, to thrust himself against the length of her tongue, the wetness of her mouth.
She moaned herself as she held him, so rigidly taut between her lips, her tongue wrapped around the warm head of him. Her fingers curled into her palms against the need to touch him, hold him, stroke him. His hips shifted forward once, so that her lips slid down the shaft, then again. And again. Until he finally, with a groan of regret, pulled free. He shifted his weight back and off of her, though still straddling her hips.
Veins stood out rigidly along the length of his cock, the soft tip darker now, and twitching with the need for continued attention. He noted the direction of her gaze, then took himself in hand, stroking slowly. It was far more intensely erotic, watching those strong, tanned fingers slide up and down that taut, velvety length. She tore her gaze away, lifted her eyes to his, thinking he’d have his squeezed shut, only to find his gaze hot and steady on hers.
“Please.” The word was torn from her before she realized she’d been brought to the point of begging.
“What would please you?” he asked roughly, his hand stilling, then dropping away.
“You,” she said, her gaze flicking down and back up. “All of you.”
He reached for the second pillow then. Moving down her legs, he bent over her and swiftly slid an arm beneath her, lifting her hips so he could slide the pillow beneath. She moaned as her body arched more fully. With her arms extended, her hips elevated, she was now, more than ever, an altar to him. It was intensely arousing, the ache so strong now she was certain the merest brush of air between her legs would make her climax, wrenching her hard over the edge. She wanted to tip her head back, squeeze her eyes shut and just sink into the sensation of it, without having to think about why this was such a powerful turn-on for her. But her head was propped in such a way as to make that impossible.
No, instead she’d been arranged in a way that gave her the perfect angle to watch him as he slowly smoothed a condom on, then with torturous patience, bend to kiss a spot on the inside of one knee, then the other. She gasped, bucked despite wanting to control herself, her nails now digging into palms to keep from reaching for him. She wanted nothing more than to sink her hands into those streaked blond curls and drag him up and inside her body. One long moan after another was wrenched from her as he kissed his way up the inside of one thigh, then the other, always stopping just short of what had been so perfectly presented for him. She wanted to scream with frustration, muscles so tight now she was almost to the point of pain.
A moment later she did scream, but it was in indelible pleasure when he shifted suddenly and speared her fully with his tongue. Even then she couldn’t tear her gaze away from watching him, watching what he was doing to her. It was the most erotic, intimate thing she’d ever witnessed. She whimpered repeatedly as he continued to alternately tease her, then fill her. She twitched, she panted, she begged him, until finally, blessedly, he moved that spare inch up… and slid his fingers inside her at the same time. She shouted in stunned shock as her climax ripped through her with such intensity, stars winked in front of her eyes. It was a miracle she didn’t buck them both off the bed, she came so violently.
And then he was on her.
“Maura,” he rasped.
She opened her eyes, only then aware she’d finally closed them. The room was spinning, or maybe it was just her mind, and she had to force herself to focus on him as her body was still wracked with the shuddering aftermath of her orgasm. He took her hips, pulled her up and rather than watch himself enter her, he watched her as he pushed inside of her. Fully, inch by inch, claiming her as fully as he’d declared he would.
Her throat closed over, even as she began climbing the peak again, more swiftly this time, every nerve ending still engorged and ready to be set off. Her heart was pounding, but only partly because she could barely draw a breath. Deeper he pushed, pulling her legs up over his hips, moving up until her back was the only thing on the bed, until his hips met the insides of her thighs and he was fully buried inside of her.
He didn’t move. He just… watched her. A vein in his temple throbbed. His cock throbbed. His entire body was taut, shaking with the strain of maintaining even this thin veneer of control.
“Maura,” he said again, only there was this thread running through it this time. Not a command. More a plea. His fingers dug into her hips.
Instinctively, she unlocked her wrists. Reached for him.
His expression opened then, his eyes so fierce and dark and filled with… She couldn’t put a name to it. He met her reaching grasp, and all but yanked her up into his arms, spearing her more fully down onto him, making them both gasp deeply as he wrapped her tightly against him.
Her mouth found his as she gave in to her most visceral needs and began to ride him. They grunted, groaned and all but sobbed with relief as they thrust and pumped and bucked against each other with wild, almost animalistic abandon. He had one arm tight around her back, his other hand tangled in her hair. Her nails raked his back, dug into his shoulders.
And then he reached behind her, yanked the pillows away, flinging them unseen across the room before pushing her onto her hack, settling his weight between her hips. Settling himself inside her. So perfectly inside her. And, shockingly, something calmed between them, if you could call it that. Instead of driving himself and her over the edge, he slowed, pushed up onto his elbows and brushed the tangled hair from her face as he framed her cheeks with his palms. He continued to move inside her, slower, steadier now, as if the bloodlust of their need for one another had been sated somewhat. Allowing them both to savor each stroke, instead of wasting what they’d built up in a mindless frenzy of thrusting body parts.
He kept his warm palms against her face, looking deeply into her eyes as he moved deeply inside of her. She didn’t know what he was feeling, or perhaps was too afraid to assign anything so powerful as what she swore she saw in his eyes, to what he could be feeling. Not yet Surely not yet. They were strangers.
And yet, when he slowly lowered his mouth to hers, joined his tongue with hers as he took her harder, faster, and finally, blessedly over… she couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d been like this before. Right here in this tower. Again. And again. When he came, the words that echoed through her, resonated within her, as incredulous and unexplainable as it was, were, “Finally. Finally, you’re back where you belong.”
And when they’d both finally spent themselves in a rocking, shuddering release, when they couldn’t wring one more wracking thrust of pleasure from it, he rolled to his side, pulling her with him, tucking her against his che
st, tangling his legs with hers, his chin nestled in her hair, as they both allowed their hearts to slow, their breathing to even out. Her mind was racing even faster than her heart, and yet she willed the tumble of thoughts and emotions away. She simply wanted to feel. To let the waves of pleasure continue to ripple through her, spreading farther and farther out, calming her, settling her, as she came back down to earth.
She didn’t want to think about that instant when he’d come inside her, here in her bed, in this centuries-old tower chamber. She didn’t want to think about the talks they were going to have about his involvement in the property, and the inevitable effect it was going to have on them. And most of all, she didn’t want to think about him leaving.
Because whatever it was they had just shared was a finite, once-in-a-lifetime thing. No matter how amicably they settled the rest, he would go when they were through. There was no altering that. No altering that his place was half a world away. And that her place was irrevocably here.
Their destinies were different. And she couldn’t stop that fleeting thought from returning, that irrevocable sense that once again, they were going to allow themselves to be torn apart by circumstance. That once again they were going to ruin their chance to unite for all eternity.
He pressed a kiss against her temple just then, blessedly taking her mind off her obviously orgasm-induced delusional thoughts. But nonetheless making her eyes burn at the sweetness of the gesture. How did a man who’d just taken her like some jungle god, turn around and touch her in a way that made her feel so special and revered?
Oh Maura, you puir foolish lass. Ye’ve gone and let him into yer heart.
Aye, she thought, nestling against his warmth, his strength, that she most shockingly had. Sure, she was fascinated with tales of the past, of her family history, that of the land of her birth. There was a romance to those tales, certainly, but she did not consider herself personally to be a romantic woman. She was a pragmatist, a realist. God knows she’d had to be. The intelligent, modern woman who knew what she wanted and did her best to get it. Whether it be funding for renovating her family’s ancestral home, or a slaking of her more base needs. She went about achieving both the same way. With careful planning and conscious decisionmaking.
Neither of those things came close to describing how she’d handled this affair with Tag. Affair. Even the word was somehow an affront to her. To that unnamed part of her that wanted to suddenly believe in fanciful fairy tales. The heretofore unknown romantic that had apparently resided within her all along, just waiting for the right moment… or the right man, to set it free.
Her eyelids grew heavy as he toyed with her hair. A languid sort of bliss stole into her body and she let herself fall under its sway. Surely after a restful, restorative spot of sleep, she’d awaken clear-minded and focused once again. Not to mention sane.
When she did wake, hours later, the room was dark except for the glow from the embers in the fireplace. She wasn’t sure how clear-minded she was, but she knew one thing: she was alone. Yet, she didn’t feel any sense of alarm or abandonment. Mostly because Tag’s pants were still draped haphazardly over the chair by her wardrobe.
She smiled then, and indulged in a very long, self-satisfied stretch. Another woman would probably have awakened feeling at least a shred of shame. After all, she’d taken two men to her bed in the past three days. But she was feeling too much like a tabby with a belly full of fresh cream, one who’d just found a big, fat ray of sunshine in which to doze away the afternoon, to allow herself to wallow in self-loathing. Besides, she had no doubt that would come back into play at some point.
She rolled over to her side and stared at the flickering embers of the fire Tag must have started at some point while she slept. She wasn’t one to forge long-term relationships, but she also wasn’t one to dally about with more than one man at a time. Nor was she one to hop from one man to the next, discarding lovers like day-old bread. But it wasn’t like she’d gone looking for this, for him, now was it?
And she could hardly be blamed, considering the reason she’d discarded her last lover, if she’d taken advantage of a rather serendipitous situation to indulge herself. It was hardly her fault that that occasion had come so soon after Jory had been booted out of both her bed, and her life. It wasn’t like she lived in the land of opportunity, after all, that she could so cavalierly dismiss one when it presented itself, now could she?
She snorted and rolled to her back to stare at the domed ceiling. “Such dedicated rationalization,” she murmured, but she still refused to let guilt creep in. She was an adult. An unattached adult. Who could take as many men to her bed as she pleased. Whenever she pleased. So there.
She tossed the covers aside and drew her legs over the side of the bed with a sigh. Who was she kidding? Och, yer a slut, Maura, that ye are. Which did nothing to explain the impish grin that lit up her face a moment later. “But a very happy, satisfied one.”
Well, so much for self-flagellation.
But the truth of it is, she thought as she quickly tippytoed her way across the chill flooring that was bared between the thrown rugs, my only regret about Jory was trying to make him into someone he was most definitely not. And that was a man she could have a future with. She snagged her bathrobe off the bathroom door, then as an afterthought, shut it behind her. She wasn’t used to having guests up here.
Which had been her other critical mistake. Not bringing Tag into this place she’d kept so sacred, her tower chamber. But bringing Jory there. It was surprising how right she felt about Tag’s presence in her private rooms, in her bed. Of course, the sacrosanct feeling she’d always extended to her most personal space here, her one haven in the vastness that was Ballantrae, had been shattered when she’d found Priss and Jory desecrating it.
In fact, she’d wondered how she’d recover from that violation, much less how she’d ever sleep in her own bed again. A smile curved her lips. “Well, it no longer appears that’s going to be an issue.” In fact, she couldn’t have imagined a more perfect way of reclaiming it.
She’d often been asked how she could stand living in such a huge, empty place. But Ballantrae, the castle and the grounds, from the loch to the tenant farms, were so steeped in family history, she hardly felt alone here. In fact, at times, she felt downright crowded.
As a child, she’d had this fanciful idea that the inhabitants of the portraits that lined every nook and cranny of the place were watching over her, making sure she lived up to Sinclair standards, didn’t disappoint all they had done to keep Ballantrae steady and strong for so many centuries. She’d been made aware at a very young age, as soon as she was able to understand in fact, the mantle under which she’d been born. The responsibility she’d be groomed to take over.
Of course, she’d assumed her Uncle Niall would live a far longer life, and that her inherited burden wouldn’t become a direct responsibility until she was much older. As it turned out, she’d been only a little over a year out of university, living in a tiny flat in Inverness, when Niall had taken so ill. A pneumonia that he couldn’t seem to shake had eventually claimed him the winter before her twenty-fifth birthday.
She stared into the narrow mirror above the sink. That had been such a bleak time, so overwhelming. To go from the excitement of getting her own place, starting her own career, separate from the demands of her heritage, to just live a normal life for a bit.
She brushed her teeth, splashed water on her face and made a meager attempt to unsnarl her hair. It was full of tangles and knots. A glimmer of her smile returned. Sex with Tag was like a full-contact sport. Next time she’d do well to wear a helmet and pads for protection.
Her smile flickered, then dimmed. Next time. Would there be a next time? Would she be even more a fool to allow him more access to her head, to her heart, than she already had?
She sighed and leaned in to turn on the shower. To think she’d ever thought she’d truly let Jory into her heart. He was fun, he made few if any demand
s on her, and he was just smitten enough with her that she could sway him to see things her way on just about every occasion. The perfect boyfriend, so she’d thought at the time. Perhaps the right mate. He wasn’t a serious person, no, and seemingly had no real ambition in life, but he didn't add stress to hers, easygoing as he was. She slid out of her bathrobe and stepped under the stinging spray of the shower.
And then there was Tag, who was nothing if not a giant complication in every way. There was nothing remotely easy about him. And yet he’d claimed more of her in the short time they’d been together, broken past more barriers, touched her more deeply, than she’d ever realized was possible. And despite the fear and trepidation that struck into the very soul of her, she couldn’t help but think back and wonder, had I really been ready to settle for anything less?
She let the hot needles of water pound at the muscles of her shoulders and back. She’d met a man now who made her think even when he made her laugh, who was thoughtful and witty, sharp-minded and intelligent. Who also happened to make her knees go all shoogly with little more than a glance from those hooded eyes of his. He wasn’t the least bit malleable, nor did she have any illusions about controlling him in any way.
Nor, truthfully, would she want to. Most of what intrigued her about him was wondering what he’d say, how he’d react, what he’d do next. It was exhilarating, actually, even as it was disconcerting. She didn’t like feeling so unbalanced, so removed from being completely in control. And yet she could hardly wait to get done here and go find him.
She massaged shampoo into her hair. Which, she thought as she winced through snagging a few more snarls in her fingers, begged the question of what was she going to do with him when she did find him?
She closed her eyes and stepped under the spray. She knew what she wanted to do with him. In fact, if he were to join her right now, she could all but ensure the two of them could spend a very delightful time conserving hot water together. Sighing, forcing the accompanying visuals of slick tanned skin and clever soapy fingers out of her mind, she shifted out of the spray and reached for the conditioner. She’d have to use half the damn bottle, most likely.
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