Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

by Ann Jacobs

  His brow knitted and he frowned. “What are you doing?”

  “Cooking.”

  “I can see that, why?”

  “I enjoy cooking. Which smell, sir?” She prayed her long-time specialty of chocolate dipped pirouette cookies had touched something deep inside him.

  He waved a hand at the room in general. “The earthy one, it smells like…”

  Her hope sank. “You don’t like it?”

  “No. I do. It’s…stimulating.”

  Stimulating? That had not been her intention with the scent, merely to draw him into the kitchen to investigate. Still, she was not one to miss an opportunity. Pasting on what she hoped to be a seductive smile, she started toward him, attempting to sway her hips without looking absurd, and purred out, “It stimulates me as well, my laird.”

  A scowl claimed Tavish’s face in a flash. She refused to let his dark grimace affect her. She had to be the strumpet he wanted, the carefree one that came apart each time she was in his arms. Her people counted on her. More, her body demanded his touch.

  Capturing her lip between her teeth to ward off her nervousness, she hurried the rest of the way to his side. She reached him and the mixed aroma of sweat and rich soap invigorated her senses. She tipped her head back to gaze upon his full mouth, and her body hummed with anticipation. Lifting her gaze to his, she laid her palms flat against the muscular plane of his chest and batted her lashes. “I want you, Tavish.”

  His lips firmed into a flat line, and for a long moment silence reigned. Then he laughed. A deep, delicious sound that warmed her heart and womb in turn. Kristiana didn’t know whether to be angry with his laughter or thrilled by it, so she stood still waiting for his response. Silently she prayed it wouldn’t be words he answered her with, but a fiercely probing tongue and equally inquisitive hands. Strong, skilled hands she burned to feel roaming the length of her spine, dancing over every inch of her hot, naked flesh, burrowing deeply into her arousal-slicked core.

  Tavish’s laughter died away. She held her breath when he lifted her hands from his chest and raised them to his mouth. With the softest brush of his lips over the back of each, he set her free and nodded. “My lady.”

  He went to the low counter and grabbed a cookie, then swiveled on his heel and walked past her to the kitchen entryway. He turned back when he reached the door and flashed his crooked grin. The one that made her legs go wobbly and her thighs grow ever damper with the dew of arousal. Then without another word, he left, munching on her cookie as if he hadn’t a single care in the world.

  * * * * *

  Damn these dreams!

  Had someone told him the day would come he’d actually ask to dream about his brother’s death, he would have thought that man an addled fool.

  But even those gruesome dreams were better than the torrid fantasies that haunted him now. Those of Kristiana swishing her way across the kitchen, her rounded hips and pelvis gyrating suggestively with every step and her full lower lip sucked between her teeth only to be released to purr about stimulation. In his dreams she didn’t stop at placing her hands to his chest. She went down on her knees before him and wrapped her insolent mouth around his aching shaft. And then she pumped him. With her sweet lips wrapped around his cock and her slender hands fondling his tightly drawn balls, she fucked him until he spilled hot come into her mouth.

  “Tavish¼“

  Dear God, the fantasies were becoming too real. That husky voice sounded so true, so—

  “Tavish, look at me.”

  The throaty purr was too close, too authentic to think it a dream. Kristiana was here, in his bedchamber. She called to him again, and he sat up in the large bed to gaze in the direction of her voice. The window. She sat perched on the windowsill. Framed by the moonlight, her wild red hair drifted enchantingly around her delicate face. She wore a gown so filmy and sparse of coverage, her high, firm breasts all but escaped its confines and her dusky pink areolas showed through the material clear as day. He lowered his gaze to where the nightdress covered her tight cunt, and his cock throbbed violently at the dark, triangular patch of pubic hair visible there.

  Bloody hell, if she had shown up naked, his shaft wouldn’t be so unbearably hard as it was now, gazing upon her barely clothed, perfectly endowed figure.

  “What are you doing here?” he growled.

  Her lips curved into a saucy smile, the same one she wore in his dream just before she took his engorged penis into her mouth. She pushed away from the window and started for him. “Stimulating you, my laird.”

  And it was working better than she could even know. Not that he needed stimulation to want her. She’d had his cock rock-solid since their encounter in the kitchen. Hell, she’d had him aroused since they shared that first kiss in the courtyard. Painfully so, since the moment she climaxed in his hand and he had tasted her come.

  Summoning his strength of will, he lied, “I told you, I don’t want you here.”

  She was at his side in a blink, lowering herself to the bed. Now that she had moved away from the moonlight, he could barely make out her shape. He didn’t have to see her to know what she wanted. Taking advantage of the fact he had once again kicked the bedcovers onto the floor, she aligned her body with his, pressed her hands to his naked chest and pushed him back onto the mattress. He complied out of shock more than anything else.

  His heart sped at her boldness, at the promise he had seen in her eyes just before she’d left the moonlight. What in the hell had come over her? He thought she had been toying with him in the kitchen. That she would refuse him the moment he agreed with her, in order to get back at him for doing the same. Her unabashed handling of his body didn’t feel like she intended to pull away. The erratic beat of her heart against his spoke only of want. Of the same lust that ruled him day and night.

  Dragging her heavy breasts against his chest so that his fingers itched to deliver them from their thin confines, Kristiana teased a kiss at the corner of his mouth. She rose up, scraping her nails over his torso as she went, and straddled him with her bare thighs. His entire body shivered with her light touch, with the sensation of her pussy intimately cradling his cock. She was already wet for him—her dampness seeped through his breeches and nearly pushed him past the limits of judgment.

  Though it was an obvious lie, he bit out, “I don’t want you.”

  Laughter, teasing and erotic, drifted from her lips. She slid her hand down his abdomen and scooted lower on his body. The feel of her wet cunt grinding against his hardened sex was almost too much to bear. He held his breath when her fingers feathered over the taut, hair-covered flesh at the limits of his breeches. They dipped beneath the edge of the material, the nails grating over his sensitive skin, and he could not hold back his moan any more than his curse.

  “You’re a bad liar, Tavish,” Kristiana goaded. “Shall we see what you’re good at?”

  The words were mocking, his own turned back on him, and damned powerful. She moved lower still and her fingers went to work on loosening his breeches. She had pressed her mouth to his navel and begun to lick when the stimulating smell drifted to his nose. “That smell,” he uttered. “It’s the one from the kitchen.”

  “Aye. I thought you might like it.”

  He did. Almost as much as he liked her own natural scent. Almost.

  This was insane. He couldn’t allow her to continue with her ministrations, couldn’t permit her to do whatever it was she thought to do with his body. She deserved so much more than what he had to offer. Satisfaction, yes, that he could give her. Passion, even that he would allow. But anything beyond that, notions of love and adoration, he had left behind years ago. Women were not to be trusted, just as most men were not, for no matter how they might pretend they wanted you for you, because they cared for you more than life itself, it was always some grander prize they sought in the long run.

  Clinging to that knowledge, he asked again, “What are you doing here, Kristiana?”

  Her fingers resu
med their task of loosening his breeches, and she responded with a throaty purr. “Giving you an early Christmas gift.”

  The earthy scent filtered to his nose once more and finally he was able to put a name to it. Myrrh. “You think to give me a gift of myrrh?” he asked sardonically.

  “Nay, my laird. I think to give you a gift of pleasure.”

  “Damn it, woman, I said I wasn’t interest—”

  His words died on a harsh grunt as her hand dipped into the opening of his breeches and cupped his bulging cock. She grasped the head of his shaft and ran her thumb over the moisture he felt building there. His penis pulsed beneath her touch, his balls drawing higher. The reckless urge to roll her over, thrust deep into her tight, wet pussy, and fuck her until his hunger for her was gone forever, claimed him head to toe.

  “Aye, my laird, ’tis clear you don’t want me.”

  Tavish shut his eyes and thought of the cruel harshness of war in a useless attempt to block out her actions, her insolent words. But not even the memory of the time he spent on the battlefield could bring an end to the lust coursing through his veins. No woman had ever affected him this way, overruling his sanity, his judgment. Not even that woman he had professed to love several years before only to have his adoration tossed back into his face. These feelings were simply not safe.

  He opened his eyes and snapped, “Leave me. I’m weary.”

  “So weary you’d take no pleasure from my mouth on your cock? From the feel of my lips suckling your penis deep into my mouth whilst my hands fondle your balls?”

  He gasped at her brazenness. He, the supposed rake, actually gasped over a virgin’s suggestion. He caught her wrists in his hands as she began the torturously slow descent toward his erect shaft. “Don’t do this.”

  “Aye. Do.”

  Her hands remained immobile, but her mouth continued its descent, until the scintillating heat of her breath rolled along the ridges of his erection, making him throb with the need to feel her sweet lips wrapped around his aching manhood. She licked the tip of his penis, and he growled with the sinuous swipe of her rough tongue over his cock, the feel of her long, silky hair teasing and tickling with each of her moves.

  She laughed huskily, in a way that fueled his blood past the boiling point. “You taste so very good. Salty yet sweet. I would like to suck your cock until your seed spills into my mouth, and then I would like to feel it embedded into the depths of my body. I would like for you to make me scream. Would you like that as well, my laird?”

  “Kristiana,” he warned.

  “Nay, Kristi. ‘Tis what my friends call me and we’re about to become friends. First, we must be rid of these clothes.”

  She pried at his breeches, and though the last thing he should have done was to help her, he freed her wrists and lifted his hips. He could almost see her triumphant smile in the dark. His own lips drew into a flat line as he called himself a thousand kinds of idiot.

  “You do want me?”

  She sounded surprised, as if she thought it had been easy for him to refute her time and again. She had no idea. Just as she had no idea how much his yielding to her would mean. He would not make her his mistress, for she deserved far more. While he had no use for a wife, he did want an heir and, more, he did want her. He would do right by her. As soon as time allowed, they would be wed—even if their union meant exposing the truth about Tomas. Until then they would give into the passion spurring them on and indulge in each other’s bodies.

  Kristiana dropped her mouth to his groin and suckled at the head of his shaft. The skin of his cock tightened and near painful pressure built throughout his body. As much as the idea of her fucking him with her mouth pleased him, he wouldn’t allow it this first time. This first time would be for her, to ease her into the pleasures of the flesh.

  “Stop,” he ordered.

  “Nay, you do want me, my laird. Admit it!”

  “Oh, I want you, Kristi. The need to fuck you has driven me all but mad these past days. But if we do this, we will do it right. And call me Tavish. It’s what my friends call me and we’re about to become the very closest of friends.”

  He heard her gasp as he caught her in his arms and rolled her onto her back, then there was no sound at all as he smothered her mouth in a bruising kiss.

  Chapter Six

  He’d lied.

  Tavish had to have lied when he said he couldn’t drug a maiden with his kisses, for surely Kristiana was drunk from the power of his mouth against hers. His hungry tongue thrust back and forth, in and out, robbing her of the ability to think, talk and breathe with its powerful stroke. And his hands…

  Oh, the man knew how to use them.

  He pulled away from her lips to trail wet, hot kisses along her jaw and down her neck. His tongue laved at her pulse point and she shivered at the lust pouring through her. Silently, she willed him to move farther down, to suckle at her nipples the way he had that night on the parapet. It was the cold that had first peaked her nipples that night. Tonight it was anticipation, excitement for the sensations claiming her mind, body, and soul, and, more, for those fantasies yet to be realized.

  He slipped his hands beneath her short silk and lace nightdress and the breath snagged in her throat. Once he was past the barrier of her thin gown, she’d expected him to go right for her mound, fondle her sex until wetness lathered her lips and soaked his fingers. Instead, his cool, callused palms slid up the length of her body, igniting a fire of need wherever he touched. He reached her breasts and cupped the fullness of one. His thumb flicked over her aroused nipple and she bucked up against him and licked the air in search of a fulfillment she had only before dared to imagine.

  Tavish plumped her breast in his hand, feeding as much as he could take into his mouth. His licks turned to sucks then to a fierce tugging that shot white hot desire straight from her throbbing nipple to her heated core. His free hand journeyed downward to stroke over her belly with a languidness surely meant to drive a lady mad with want. That skilled hand drifted farther yet, stroking the curly down at the entrance to her soaking sex and Kristiana’s hips instinctively lurched upward in search of the tender assault his roaming fingers would provide.

  Only that invasion never came, and a restless whimper broke from her lips.

  Pulling from her breast, he chuckled softly then brushed the softest of kisses over her parted lips. “Patience, Kristi. We are to do this right.”

  Nay. She didn’t wish to be patient. She wished to end this mindless hunger, to feel the length of his strong, thick shaft imbedded inside her virgin flesh. To finally be his, if only when the sun was set and no one was the wiser.

  Her heart twisted with the thought. She forced away the ache to concentrate on the man laying siege to her body. The man she’d come to care for whether she wanted to or not. She had chosen to take this path, to be his mistress. She had no right to ask for more. To want more— this would have to remain behind closed doors.

  Her thoughts left her when Tavish’s strong hands chased back down her body. With a flash of silk against the moonlight, he ran his palms up once more, raising her gown to reveal every inch of the naked skin beneath. He eased her forward to remove the nightdress, then set her back against the bed pillows and gazed down upon her.

  Though she knew his vision was limited at best, Kristiana couldn’t hold back her blush. She worried her lower lip as his silent perusal continued. He’d seen her breasts before and spoke of their beauty, but never had he looked upon her so fully, not even in the near darkness. No man had. What if she weren’t all he had imagined? What if he turned her away? She could take him wanting her for nothing more than a strumpet to dally with when the mood suited, but she couldn’t take his rejection. Not again.

  Speak, she silently urged. Or move. Anything but continuing to gaze upon her, his night-veiled eyes searing her flesh, liquefying her limbs with twin forces of expectancy and dread.

  Finally, his hand returned to her breast, lightly stroking her nipple
and sending pleasure coiling deep in her belly. “I have imagined you this way many times, darling. You’re far more ravishing than even my mind could conjure.”

  A breath she hadn’t realized she held whooshed from her lungs. Though his words comforted her on many levels, they also caused her blush to burn higher. “’Tis dark, sir. Surely, your eyes play tricks on you.”

  “Tavish,” he corrected. “And it’s not dark enough to hide your beauty.”

  Nor dark enough to hide his crooked grin. His voice was edged with a rough husk that spoke of passion, not humor, and still she could detect his errant smile. Her own mouth curved upward until her thoughts caught up with her.

  Was he truly joyous over their coupling? And if so, what did that say of his affections? Was it possible he cared for her as Mary claimed?

  Kristiana’s heart beat faster with the possibilities, prospects she knew better than to consider, to want. But she did want. She wanted him for her own, and more than just in flesh. She wanted him in name. For a lifetime.

  “Part your thighs, Kristi. I wish to drink in your sweetness.”

  Forcing away the blush that again threatened, she did as he asked, spreading her legs wide for fear did she not consent he would again peg her an awkward virgin and order her be gone from his chamber. Then she would have nothing. Not even his nights.

  Tavish’s thumb worked a slow path from her breast along the softness of her belly to her parted thighs. He feathered his fingers through her downy curls as he had moments before, but this time he didn’t stop when she arched into his touch. This time he rimmed her swollen mound, stroking the opening of her feminine lips until her sex grew unbearably heated and her juices dampened her inner thighs.

  “Nice. So very nice,” he spoke on a rasp.

  This was nice, but she wanted more. And she wanted it now. “Please, Tavish…”

  With nary a word, he drove a single finger midway into her core. Her breath caught with the rapid entry, then turned to a low moan as he stroked back and forth against her cleft. She writhed against his touch, whimpering her need when the pad of his finger scrapped over the distended nub and sent tremulous waves through her body.