A Beautiful Lie (The Camaraes)

by Stephanie Sterling

  ..ooOOoo..

  It was surprisingly cold when Muira woke the next morning. At some point in the night she had rolled away from the warmth of Lachlan’s body, and with one less blanket on the bed, and winter fast approaching, she was suffering for it now.

  Muira shivered, and turned onto her other side so that she could face her husband as she curled up against his chest. It was light enough to make out the features of his face. His poor black eyes were beginning to lessen, they were no longer a terrifying purplish-blue, but had faded to a yellowy-green. His cuts were similarly starting to heal. She hoped that her own bruises were healing just as quickly. She wasn’t looking forward to meeting Lachlan’s family looking like the loser in a tavern brawl… she couldn’t honestly say that she was looking forward to meeting them in the first place.

  Sighing heavily, she nestled still closer to her husband, daring to touch him in a way she hadn’t the night before. She laid a hand flat against his broad chest, raking her fingers over the hard muscle and through the spattering of soft, dark hair. Her husband… she marvelled, hers. She left one hand were it was, but let the other drift higher until she was lightly tracing his lips with her fingertips. She wanted to touch all of him. She wanted to be allowed to explore.

  She didn’t dare take her explorations further just yet though. However, Muira did wriggle up the mattress so that her mouth was level with his own. She could explain her desire to kiss him, she just knew that once the notion had taken root she was unable to ignore it. Holding her breath, she left forward, dapping her lips to his, pleased, but unsurprised, that the little frisson of heat was still there.

  Muira pulled back, smiling softly, and then gasped and blushed when Lachlan’s eyes flickered open, a smile in their sleepy depths.

  “Good morning,” he purred, his voice thick and husky.

  “Good morning,” Muira echoed, a little breathlessly it had to be said. “I thought you were asleep,” she murmured stupidly. Her husband’s grinned widened.

  “And that was a very pleasant way to be woken up I’m sure,” he chuckled, and then he rolled on to his back, taking Muira with him so that she was lying atop his chest. She looked a little uncertain in her new position. “I did say that I’d let you ride me,” he explained wickedly, lifting his hips, and making Muira quite aware off the jutting hardness that was pressing into her thigh.

  “I-I’m not sure I know how to,” she whispered shakily. A mix of hesitance and enthusiasm rushed through her body, and with it a low burning fire that smoulder in her womb.

  “I can teach you,” Lachlan purred, but first her pulled her into his arms for a deep, dizzying kiss that started Muira’s body pulsing faster through her veins.

  He cupped the sides of her face, letting his tongue surge between her lips, until she was fully entranced, and then he let his hands wander down her body. Muira was only half conscious of Lachlan positioning her body, bending her knees and shifting her legs until she was straddling him at the waist, she was too desperately trying to keep up with the demands of his mouth.

  However, she did squeal when his fingers burrowed under her nightdress to start tickling her there again. Her neck arched and she started to pant-oh but it felt so wickedly good! He made her feel so wickedly good.

  “That’s my girl,” Lachlan growled his approval. “Hell, you’re so wet,” he rasped, plunging his fingers into her cunt, and grinding his thumb against her clit to reward her body’s enthusiastic response to his suggestions.

  “Lachlan,” Muira puffed.

  She was still faintly sore between her legs, but she couldn’t find the will to care. In fact, she started to rock her hips into his hand. She didn’t think about her wanton display, Muira simply knew that she had to have another taste of the euphoria that her husband had dealt out the evening before.

  “I want to see you,” Lachlan panted. His eyes were dark and hot as he watched his wife’s face as he pleasured her.

  Muira blinked at him, uncertain as to what he meant exactly, but there was no mistaking the heat in his gaze. She gulped nervously, and reached for the hem of her nightgown, slowly hitching it up over her thighs. Her heart was pounding, first from the ministrations of Lachlan’s fingers, and then from the embarrassment of undressing for him, but finally from the surge of power that she suddenly realised she possessed.

  Lachlan might be able to make her knees weak, and her body burn, and her soul shatter, but she had a power of her own. She had never read desire in a man’s eyes so blatantly before. He wanted her-needed her-he hardly seemed able to breathe for his desire.

  Smiling, a soft sultry smile that she hadn’t even know that she was capable of a day beforehand, Muira began tugging the white cotton further up her thighs. She was still working painstakingly slowly, only now it had nothing do with embarrassment. She watched Lachlan’s eyes watching her, glued to the hem of her gown. He groaned, low and deep, in the back of his throat when Muira revealed the thatch of dark curls just above where his fingers were playing. Illogically, Muira felt herself glow and twitch around his hand.

  “Not yet, lass,” he grunted.

  He didn’t stop his stretching strokes, but he did lessen the attention that he was lavishing upon the swollen, sensitive bundle of nerves at the head of her slit. Muira whimpered her displeasure, and trying to twist her hips into his head to grant her body better satisfaction. Lachlan chuckled roughly, and threatened to stop completely unless she stilled.

  “I want it all the way off before I let you come,” he panted, looking lustfully at her nightgown.

  Muira had barely realised that she’d stopped, but her nightdress was now lifted to just above her flat stomach, hinting at the heavy swell of her bosom that Lachlan seemed most keen to see. She blushed a little as she revealed her breasts. She’d always thought them a little too big, earning her a little too many lecherous male stares, but Lachlan could make them tingle and ache with just a glance, and his approval spiked right through Muira’s body to very her core.

  She whipped her gown all the way off over her head, tossing it onto the floor by the bed, and then Muira licked her lips and lowered herself over Lachlan’s body, hissing as she finally touched him skin to skin.

  “You like what you see?” she purred, in a voice she hardly recognised.

  “Like would be a shameful understatement,” Lachlan growled, before capturing her lips and kissing her again. His tongue plunged, deep and insistent, stoking the fire he’d already kindled in his wife’s body. “Muira,” he groaned against her mouth, withdrawing his fingers from her heat so that he could gently squeeze and tug at her impressive bosom. “Oh God, I need you now,” he panted, bucking his hips beneath her.

  “I-I don’t know what to do,” she confessed quietly, suddenly unsure of herself again.

  Only too eager to assist her in finding her confidence, Lachlan let off the sweet torture of her breasts. One of his large, rough hands closed around one of Muira’s much smaller, softer hands, and dragged it down across his hot skin until he left it resting on his hip.

  “Touch it,” he begged, looking utterly agonised. Muira couldn’t help but remember the pain she’d suffered the night before, and found that she was wondering if Lachlan was similarly afflicted now. She would do anything to try and ease his discomfort, so she twisted around, trying to see what he could mean.

  “Oh my!” she choked under her breath. No wonder it had hurt before! She hadn’t seen it-him the night before, covered as Lachlan had been by his kilt, but now that she could see him… in all his glory, an awed uncertainty swept over her. If they hadn’t made love already she would have doubted that it were even possible.

  “Muira-” Lachlan panted raggedly, shifting beneath her again.

  Taking a deep breath, suddenly aware of the lust now writhing in her womb, Muira wriggled down her husband’s body so that she was sat, looking at the jutting, throbbing length of his sex. Her hand tentatively grazed his thigh, causing Lachlan to shudder, as she slowly reached t
o touch him.

  When her fingers finally fluttered against the twitching rod of his cock the low moan that fled from her husband’s lips send a spasm clenching through her body. He felt like steel wrapped in silk, so thick that Muira could barely close her fingers around him. She stroked him lightly, experimenting with her touches, tracing the pulsing veins and circling the damp head of his cock, smearing the moisture she found there between her fingers. Lachlan’s eyes were hardly open, no more than two gleaming slitting that were watching her as he struggled to cling to some shred of composure.

  “I need-” Muira began, shifting uncomfortably as her body screamed for her to take him.

  “What lass?” Lachlan grunted, his mouth managing to curve into a wicked grin as he tempted her to say it.

  “I need-I need you inside me,” she gasped, blushing furiously as she voiced this new understanding.

  “Thank God,” Lachlan moaned, lifting his hips in desperate encouragement. He moved his hands to grip her legs, coaxing her to crawl back up his body. Muira shot him a hesitant glance when she finally realised what he wanted her to do.

  “Lachlan,” she gasped, her eyes widening, but her body submitted to his instructions, letting him position her above his sex. She couldn’t… could she? And then she suddenly realised that yes, she could, and yes, she definitely wanted to…

  Muira gasped against when she felt him nudge against her opening, surprising herself, she tried to force herself down on him, but Lachlan was still guiding her movements.

  “Slow,” he puffed, “let me-” he groaned, and then Muira stopped listening, because she was gradually being allowed to sink down his shaft.

  She bit her lip, expecting the raw, searing burst of pain from the night before… only it never came. She started to pant, eyes wide, marvelling at how deliciously good it felt. She was still a little sore, and felt rather overfull as she took him deep inside her body, but it was pleasure more than anything else that sizzled through Muira’s veins.

  “Oh-Lachlan,” she whimpered, letting her eyes fall shut, and then crying out in a little exclamation of bliss when Lachlan thrust up, filling her completely. She starting to rock he hips, to grind her body into her husband’s, instinct taking over where experience was lacking.

  “Muira.” Her name was barely recognisable as it was hissed from Lachlan’s lips, but she at last understood what he wanted.

  Muira rode him, loved him, with a raw desperation that wound the spring in her womb tighter and tighter each time there bodies clashed together. She gripped Lachlan’s shoulders to keep her balance as he began to thrust up, unable to lie still any longer, knocked the breath from Muira’s body as he moved fiercely.

  She was so close, so close, tighter and tighter she felt her body coiling, until she couldn’t breathe for the pressure in her womb, until it was just too much to endure, and she shattered in violent ecstasy, clenching around her husband with a keening cry of his name.

  Muira fell into a sea of bliss, waves rolled through her body in crashes of pleasure. Lachlan flipped their positions with a strangled groan, plunging hard and deep, just once, twice, three times more and then he too was lost in the intensity of his release, spilling himself inside his wife in hot, sticky spurts.

  Lachlan managed to roll back into their original position before collapsing, which meant that Muira ending up curling atop his heaving chest instead of pinned underneath him, as she tried to catch her breath and recover her completely disorientated senses. She could hear his heart thundering next to her ear. A smile lit her face when she released that the tempo exactly matched the racing of her own blood.

  She felt like she should speak, but what they had just shared was so perfect that it seemed to transcend words. Her eyelids were heavy, her body exhausted, but gloriously sated, and so, when Lachlan shifted a fraction to cover them again in the blankets, Muira said nothing, simply drifted asleep again, a soft smile still touching her lips.

  ..ooOOoo..

  Lachlan did not sleep for very long. He dozed dreamlessly only until the workings and bustle of the inn and its other guest roused him. Muira was still fast asleep though, and still curled on top of his chest. She was breathing deeply and contently, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Looking at his wife, as she slept so soundly, caused a warm, glowing feeling to spread through Lachlan’s body, which culminated, most curiously, just to the left hand side of his chest.

  It was going to be hard for Muira at Eilean Donan Castle, he feared. He could not imagine that the other MacRae’s would take too kindly to having a Cameron settled in among their number. Lachlan also wondered if it would have a detrimental effect on his own position within the clan. However, deciding he would be better off thinking about things if and when the problems arose, he went back to studying his wife.

  He still had trouble believing that she was really his-but she was, his lips curls into a smile of very masculine appreciation. She most definitely belonged to him after the previous night’s love making and their early encounter that morning. Lachlan had been both amazed and delighted by how receptive she was to his touch, and how enthusiastic she was in his arms.

  If Muira had just been a woman from his own clan, then she could very well have been the bride that he would have chosen for himself, Lachlan reflected thoughtfully.

  He was dragged from his reverie by a light knock at the room door. He scooted out from under Muira’s soft, warm body, (grinning to himself and shaking his head when she still didn’t wake,) grabbed his kilt from the floor, put it on and then opened the door a fraction. Lachlan looked down into the face of one of the pub’s maids. The young woman bobbed in a curtsey and asked if he would like some hot water brought up before breakfast. Lachlan nodded his thanks and then shut the door, turning back into the room to find that Muira was finally stirring.

  “Good morning, beautiful,” he smiled, striding back across the room and popping a kiss on her upturned lips. She yawned, blushed, and smiled shyly back at him.

  The water, when it arrived, wasn’t enough to bathe in, but it was hot and enabled them both to wash themselves clean before dressing. Breakfast was as rustic as dinner, a hunk of brown bread, served with a wedge of cheese, some honey and few sour apples.

  “You’ll eat better tonight,” Lachlan promised, polishing off Muira’s unwanted apple, after finishing his own.

  His wife shot him a hesitant glance. “If your clan let me eat at all,” she murmured fearfully, staring down at her hands.

  “Muira-” Lachlan sighed, but she interrupted him.

  “Have you worked out what you’re going to say yet?” she asked timidly. “How you’re going to explain me? We’ll need to both have the same story if we’re to be believed.”

  She looked so terribly afraid that Lachlan wanted to reach for her and pull her into his lap. He rather thought he knew where such a move would lead however, so he managed to restrain himself.

  “Perhaps you should just tell your Laird the truth,” she murmured unhappily.

  Lachlan frowned. “I told you that I would think of something, Muira, that I would look after you and keep you safe,” he said, in a tone that did not brook argument. “And that,” he said finally, “is what I intend to do.”

  ..ooOOoo..

  Of course, it was all well and good making these bold, dashing statements, Lachlan thought later, as he helped to reload Muira’s things onto the back of the carriage, but how did one actually follow through?

  He was wondering if he could present the match in its most positive light, claiming that it had been a move on his part to try and strengthen the fragile peace that Graem, his Laird, was seeking between the two clans?

  Lachlan didn’t know if he could get away with that for very long though. He was quite certain that the Camerons wouldn’t keep quiet about the precise terms of his marriage to Muira if any of them were ever asked about it-a problem that foiled every lie that he wanted to concoct.

  So now, as he made for the stables, Lachlan was
wondering how far he could bend the truth. He could tell Graem that Muira’s honour had been compromised, and that he had been the only one in a position to help her.

  He could go so far as to say that it had been his finding her out on the road that had caused the trouble, which was more or less the truth. Graem would ask why she’d been out without an escort, but Lachlan was confident that they could think of some innocent reason.

  This really did seem the best route to travel he decided, as he saddled up Faidhiach, resolving to work out the bumps in the story as he rode the rest of the way to Eilean Donan.

  “Lachlan?”

  He turned towards the now familiar voice of his wife, surprised to find Muira standing amid the hay and stalls.

  “You really do mean to ride today?” she asked, sadly…? Lachlan frowned and tried to puzzle out her tone.

  “Well I was planning to,” he said slowly. “Just to stretch Faid’s legs,” he added, giving the horse an affectionate slap on the shoulder. “But if you want me to ride with you-” he began carefully.

  “Oh, no!” Muira said quickly, too quickly.

  Lachlan swallowed a smile. His chest was once again infused with warmth. “I was just going to give him his head for a couple of hours and then hop back into the couch with you,” he said, turning to check the girth, although he could imagine the blush that would be colouring his wife’s pretty face. “I didn’t think you’d want to arrive at Eilean Donan, effectively, on your own?” he said calmly.

  “No, I-” Muira stammered. “I didn’t-I don’t…” she took a deep breath. “Thank you, Lachlan,” she murmured. He shot her a smile and nodded, watching, still grinning to himself as she wandered back out of the stable.

  ..ooOOoo..

  Lachlan loved the feeling of freedom that came with the act of riding a horse at full pelt down the empty highroad. He was, guiltily perhaps, thinking about nothing other that the raw power he had at his command. Faidhiach gave an enthusiastic whinny and threw himself into the gallop, rounding the next corner only to pull up short. If Lachlan had been less of a horseman he would have been unseated, as it was, he surveyed the scene before him and cursed.