by Caro LaFever
“Will and I made it.” There was a tart tone to her words. “Along with your new buddies, the Calhouns.”
Evidently, she knew about his plans for the north edge of his property. It didn’t appear she was intimidated. Rather she sounded as if she disapproved entirely on principle. He’d wondered what his da would have said about selling even a tiny portion of Ross land. He would likely have disapproved as well. But Hugh had said he’d needed one more carrot, and the north end of the property didn’t have any of his da’s precious pines.
“Your father would have been appalled.”
His spine straightened before he swung around to confront her accusation. “My da would have been happy to provide more work and opportunity for Pictloch. Which is what I’m doing.”
“What you’re also doing is selling Ross land.” The words spit from her mouth like pointed knives.
“True.” He picked up the dagger she’d thrown at him and threw it right back. “Ross land.”
Her dark brows furrowed.
“Mine.” He added the last to make sure she understood his claim and then marched away from her overwhelming beauty.
She’d ruined this by coming here and disturbing him. He needed time to take this glass house in and understand where she was going with these plants so he could give her something. He needed quiet. He needed data on her. He needed hours alone to decide how to get her. Leaving was the only thing he could do now. He’d have to return when she was sleeping or had gone to the village to shop.
Before he could move far enough away from her allure, her hand shot out.
Grabbing him in a tight grip, she stopped his flight with a jerk. Her touch went right through him like the cleave of the broadsword his Celtae Warrior used in his most popular computer game.
“Lorne.”
The trill in her voice when she said his name went through him, too. Went through him like a thin blade only a person who was very close could deliver. Straight into his gut.
His whole body shuddered at the hit.
The woman stilled beside him, yet she didn’t let go of his arm.
“Listen.” Her word whispered on his neck, telling him she was close. With any other person, he would have shied away, pushed back. With her, though, he realized again with another sharp cut, he wanted her to come closer.
Be nearer. Let him in.
“We shouldn’t fight,” she muttered. “Your father wouldn’t have wanted it.”
For the first time, he heard a thread of concession in her voice. Doc said he was impossible with people, but a genius at hearing the undercurrents of what they said. While his partner put on the show for investors or their staff, Lorne stood in the background and listened. Together, they always figured everyone out. He really wished, with all his might, that Doc stood right next to him.
She swished closer, the scent of her coating his skin and his wish disappeared in a blink of lust. No, he did not want Doc here right now.
“Will would have wanted us to get along.”
This time, he picked up a thread of warmth in her tone. He thought. He was pretty sure.
He chanced a look.
The woman stood right behind him, her face scrunched as if she was eating something nasty.
His heart stuttered.
Maybe he’d misread her.
Her hand tightened on his wool-covered arm when their eyes met. And then he knew he hadn’t misread anything. Her AF7817 eyes held mistrust, yet also acceptance of her new reality.
He could deal with the mistrust. He could also work with the acceptance.
But he didn’t care about either of those two emotions at this moment. What he cared about was the other emotion he spotted in her eyes. The something else he’d seen before. The something that made him determined he’d have her. See her naked and get naked too. Touch every inch of her priceless skin and get inside her.
Desire. She wanted him.
Her brown gaze radiated heat. Not the hot flames he’d seen right before he’d leaned in to kiss her in his bedroom. Rather, this was a slow burn, one he might be able to keep up with if he concentrated.
“I want to kiss ye again,” he stated. “Slow.”
She frowned and dropped her hand. “No.”
Lorne tensed in complete confusion. She wanted that, too. He could tell by her eyes. Why wasn’t she upfront about this like he was?
“You can go.” She waved at him as if he were a fly in her ointment.
That riled him. That wave.
Yanking around, he stepped right into her, pressing her body against a table. Her hips canted into his and for a moment, his brain went wild. He wrenched it back into working order, however, by breathing in and then out. The smoky, earthy smell of her plants and his land filled him, quieting his agitation.
She scowled at him, the dark of her brows slanting in displeasure like slashes of black paint on her white skin. She pushed on his chest. “Step back.”
Ignoring the flash of fire on his skin where she touched him, he closed his eyes to her beauty. He needed to do this slow this time.
“I don’t want to kiss you,” she sputtered.
“Don’t lie.” He kept his eyes closed, trying to pull himself into complete focus before he continued.
Her body went taut along his.
Another breath and something turned quiet deep inside. Something that had ached when he’d been a kid. The scent of peat had always reminded him he didn’t fit into this land and these people. The scent had always seemed to stick in his throat. Now the scent grounded him, made him realize he knew where he was to the bottom of his soul.
Knew his homeland.
Knew this woman wanted him.
His hands landed on the cool wood by her warm hips.
“What are you doing?”
If she’d been worried or angry, her voice would be high and tight. He knew this because he’d noted the way her voice rose and her Welsh accent turned hard when she didn’t like what was going on. Her voice wasn’t high or tight or hard.
“I’m asking you a question, Lorne.”
Her voice was low and lyrical. The words husked from her mouth telling him he was on the right track. She dragged his name out, a caress on the end of the n.
Lornnnne.
She hadn’t given him enough time here to discern what she needed. He’d thought of gifts like money or jewelry or maybe even some fancy garden tool. But perhaps he’d been thinking too hard. Doc said he did that way too much.
He opened his eyes.
She met his gaze.
His heart shot right to his throat and his hands fisted on the edges of the table. His hips pressed into her hot flesh and it was all he could do to keep his brain from blowing out like an overloaded fuse.
Her eyes were dark goldenrod, warm and heated. Her eyes were not the red dirt of rejection he’d seen on his rock.
“I want to give ye a kiss,” he croaked.
There were many kinds of gifts a man could give a woman. Lorne wondered why that simple truth hadn’t been the first thing he’d realized. He usually wasn’t such a slow learner.
Slow.
The word stuck in his brain. This time, he wanted to go slow with her. Take every single moment in so he could examine it in his memory later.
“What are you waiting for?” She cocked her head, her dark curls bouncing on her round shoulders. “Permission?”
She laughed, then. That husky laugh telling him he was on the right track.
Lorne leaned down, very slowly, and gave.
Chapter 15
Ceri shouldn’t. She knew this.
There might not be a lot of schooling in her past or a university degree hanging on her living room wall, yet no one had ever claimed Ceri Olwen wasn’t intelligent.
“You’re a smart girl and there’s a good thing,” her mam had often said. “Just keep that pride of yours in check.”
“You’re a cunning female, aren’t you?” Gareth had said at the end, before he’d
written her out of his will.
“You’re a bonnie lass, and that’s the truth,” Will had said. “But you’re a cannie one too, eh?”
This wasn’t smart.
The swirl of indecision yanked her back and forth inside, but she couldn’t overcome the one thing she wanted above all others. The one thing that made the decision for her.
Sex. With Lorne Ross. She wanted it so much.
She’d spent the years since she’d turned eighteen giving herself to a man who treated her like a doll—so her mam would have care as she died and her brother would be safe from social services. Because of her emotional scars, when she’d landed in Pictloch, she’d denied herself the joy of being a beautiful woman and the pleasure of sex. Will had needed her, she didn’t care to feed the gossip mill, and she and Elis had needed this place more than anything she desired.
Beauty would have only gotten in the way. As it always had for her before.
She’d hid behind baggy clothes and no makeup. Hid herself behind a determined focus on the castle and the estate. Hid her desires in her plans for her lotions and business. But right at this moment, for once, she was going to take. She was going to be beautiful in a man’s eyes and grab the sex she’d yearned for.
Even if it was with her enemy.
Lorne Ross stared right at her, his slate-blue gaze dark, his red hair bright. He didn’t respond to the dig she’d made, the saucy, sexual provocation she’d thrown at him to protect her shaky heart. The last of her weapons sliding off of her because she so desperately wanted to be new.
His gaze flickered to her mouth.
She felt as if he branded her.
Leaning down, so slowly she wanted to scream, he placed his lips on hers.
Dangerously gentle.
Ceri closed her eyes so the tears wouldn’t fall. Her heart thudded in her chest.
His mouth moved then, slid along her mouth like he were sipping on a fine whiskey. He didn’t open his lips wide and stab his tongue into her as her late husband had.
He gave her time.
Those dangerous lips of his pouted on the edge of her mouth. They seemed to delight in the crease of skin as if it were the sum of her sexuality and all he wanted was to spend the rest of his days with this one part of her.
Shock and stunned surprise gurgled in her throat.
The last time he kissed her he’d been frantic, almost wild in his need. She’d expected that again. A fast plunge into sex, a quick taking that would satisfy a lust she’d held inside for her entire life.
That’s what she’d wanted.
She’d thought.
He swept back to the center and sucked in her bottom lip in a tender nip. Instead of coming at her like a windstorm, this time he whispered around her. A cool, quiet breeze of a man, what her Scottish neighbors would call a caver.
Her mouth went slack as a low moan rose in her throat.
Lorne Ross didn’t take advantage of the opening. He didn’t swoop in with his hands and tongue and cock. Tracing the edge of her lips with his, he ambled over to the other side of her mouth and pouted once more, sinking into her with a lazy wisp of a tongue.
With Gareth, she’d done what he wanted. He hadn’t been an imaginative man and she’d learned quickly. But never had she felt the rise of her own temperature. Never had she felt as if she needed to take the lead so she’d get what she wanted. Never had she felt as if the fever inside had to be fed now.
Right now.
Her hands swept into his fire hair, yanking the curls from the man-bun, letting them tumble into her palms and around her fingers, heated coils. She angled her mouth to his, wanting his tongue, wanting more.
Right now.
“No.” His lean hands, strong and sure, caught hers, bringing them down to lie on the rough wood.
Ceri’s eyes popped open. “I want to kiss you.”
A flicker of humor flashed in the blue, reminding her of her earlier claim to the contrary. “I know.”
Flushing, she tried to tug her hands out from under his. “I want to touch you.”
“No.” He shook his head and his hair settled around his face in a crown of burnished golden flames. “I’m kissing ye.”
Before she could object, he leaned in again, again with a soft, light kiss. A furious need to know his taste made her mouth wet with want. “Please,” she moaned on his mouth, opening hers to him.
The man gave her a little. Gave her some. He opened his mouth, too, and let his damp breath move over her lips. But he didn’t use his tongue and he didn’t suck. He just opened and breathed into her.
Electricity zapped up her spine.
She wanted to stick her tongue into him, so desperately. Yet, she knew, somehow, it would ruin this. Ruin this most thrilling moment of her life.
Ceri did nothing except close her eyes once more.
Letting him take the lead he clearly wanted released something inside her. Gareth had always wanted her to be bold, the sexy siren. That was the box he’d built for her and she’d lived in it for seven years until his death.
This time, with this man, she sank into another dimension of herself, scared of what she found: A woman whose libido relished a man who gave while she trusted.
His lips opened a bit, as if he were taking her in, too. His body edged an inch closer, and she could tell from the length and hardness under his jeans, he was completely erect. Would he ejaculate prematurely again? Come before she could take him?
She didn’t want that. She wanted more, now.
She wanted her own satisfaction this time, as well as his.
Holding still, she let her hands go lax under his, a silent communication.
He grunted acknowledgment deep in his throat, a light puff of breath brushing her cheeks.
Not knowing what else to do in this strange, miraculous kiss, she relaxed into the unknowing. She breathed in from her mouth and her nose.
Lorne Ross came alive inside her.
He smelled clean instead of sweaty this time. He smelled like the crisp air after a rainstorm, like a shock of ozone filling her lungs. Then he on her mouth, in her mouth. His lips sucked on hers, opening her to his tongue. Finally, she had a tiny slice of what she wanted.
The taste of him.
Bonfire toffee.
The memory came to her—a sharp dart from the past. The only time her mam ever entered the kitchen was to bake her candy. The molasses and butter and sugar heating on the stove as Dilys told the story of Guy Fawkes stood at the core of all her childhood memories.
He tasted like that. Like sweet and bitter. Like warm memories and harsh truth. Her enemy slid his tongue into her, bringing with him the taste of her past and the reality of how many dreams she’d left behind.
The dreams swirled inside her once more, making her gasp and open her eyes.
He lurched back, his own eyes growing wide. “Did I do it wrong?”
His boyish earnestness hit her dead center. Everything inside her that had grown as hard as her mam’s toffee over the years, everything melted.
“Tell me what I did wrong and I’ll fix it.” His gaze went fierce with intense focus. “Let me try again.”
She shouldn’t laugh. Men weren’t happy when women laughed at them. They took it personally, they had their male pride. But he was so adorable with his fervent plea, she couldn’t help herself. As the ripple of happiness rode up her throat, Ceri realized she’d never laughed as much with anyone else on the planet more than this man.
This man who took her laughter with stoic endurance until she subsided.
His hands still pinned hers to the wood. His hips still canted into hers, telling her he hadn’t lost an ounce of interest. His gaze was blank now, though, as if he waited to be hit with certain rejection.
She didn’t approve of those blank eyes of his. Not at all. And she aimed never to see them any time after this moment.
The last kernel of hard armor cracked.
“Kiss me again.”
He jump
ed at her words and the blue went from blank to bright. “Ye reckon?”
Her husky laugh was her answer.
His golden-red brows drew down in concentration and his gaze fell to her mouth once more. “Show me what to do.”
Lorne had often thought sex and kissing were way overvalued. Not that he hadn’t wanted both during the years, and not that he thought he wouldn’t enjoy them when he finally got around to getting some.
But this.
He stared at the woman and couldn’t believe how much he’d underestimated the experience. His calculations had been way off track.
The woman met his gaze, the color of her eyes no longer easily labeled. They smoked with sexual heat that blurred any careful consideration he might’ve tried for. Her mouth was red and plump, as if the little amount of focus he’d put on them had brought them to life.
What would they look like after he bit them as he wanted? What would the color be when he sucked hard? His brain tried to figure out what the different shades were in coding, yet he was too far gone to make sense of the morass of his mind.
That realization made him go taut.
No, this was wrong. He needed to keep his wits about him, so he could remember all this. Imprint it into his brain and make sure that every time he had a chance with this woman he did it right.
“Come here.” She smiled, scattering his focus once more. “And I’ll show you.”
The silk of her forearms slid over his neck, making him realize he was damp with sweat. She didn’t seem to mind. Her smile never wavered and her eyes drifted half shut.
“When I kiss you,” she husked. “I want you to open your mouth wide instead of only a little.”
This. This is what he needed to do a good job. When given proper direction, he inevitably conquered whatever project lay before him. “Right. Got it.”
She hummed as he placed his mouth on hers and the vibration made his brain split apart like a string of coding cut off.
“Open your mouth,” she told him again.
The taste of her made him dizzy. Or not really the taste, he thought dimly. Rather it was the hot wetness, the roll of her tongue as it touched his and drew him in. The incredible softness of the inside of her mouth, the way her lips seemed made for his own.