My Fair Highlander

by Mary Wine

  “Gordon—”

  “I want to see ye, lass.” He found the tie that held her waistband closed. He worked it through the eyelets quickly before sitting up and pulling her skirts right up her body and over her head. He tossed them over the edge of the bed and lay back down on his back with his hands working on the padded roll that helped support her cartridge pleated skirts. It followed her skirts onto the floor and he reached up to tug her open corset down her arms.

  “Much better.”

  “Is it?” Her chemise was free to flow around her body now but the fabric was thin, allowing the light to illuminate her curves. The neckline had risen back up to cover her breast, but the wet fabric was translucent.

  “Aye, lass, but not quite perfect yet.”

  She shivered, seeing the truth of what he craved in his eyes. She had never thought about whether or not her body was attractive. The knowledge that Gordon wanted to bare her and see what she looked like without anything to shield her sent a shiver down her body. He felt it, and his hands landed on top of her thighs, moving in soothing strokes along them. It was pleasing, the feeling of his hands on her legs, but at the same time startling. She nibbled on her lower lip with indecision.

  “This is perfection.” His hands slid all the way to her knees and beneath the edge of her chemise. He continued on up her thighs, his hands against her bare skin. It was too much, and she stiffened, pulling one knee over his body.

  “Ye need to learn to trust me, Jemma.”

  His voice was deeply serious. He captured her waist and lifted her up once more to set her down on her back.

  “You cannot expect me to simply do what you command. Not when we are talking about—”

  “About being intimate?” He pinned her down with his weight but didn’t move up her body so that their faces were even. Instead he remained lower on the bed, his hands returning to her thighs to stroke them with even motions.

  “You are not my husband.” She didn’t say it unkindly. “I cannot shame my father. Understand that, please.”

  His eyes flashed with something that looked like a challenge. “Ye think I do nae comprehend honor? Marrying ye is the simple way to gain what I want, lass. This is no about that. ’Tis yer trust I want to earn at this moment.”

  He raised her chemise, pushing the fabric up to bare her thighs. His hands slipped back down along the length he’d uncovered until he cupped each knee, his fingers spreading over each one before gripping lightly.

  “But making ye mindless with pleasure when ye don’t have to lie in me bed and submit to me touch, now that’s the challenge I’m taking up, too.”

  “That’s sinful talk.”

  He pushed her thighs apart with the grip on her knees, spreading her once more and keeping her that way by placing his body between her open thighs. She gasped as the night air brushed against the folds of her sex. A small portion of her chemise still covered her mons, but it held very flimsy protection against the determination glittering in Gordon’s eyes.

  “It’s honest, and isn’t that more in keeping with God’s law than everyone pretending that touching doe nae feel good?”

  His hand moved over her belly, rubbing and kneading the place that was so full of excitement.

  “Tell me ye don’t like having me hand on ye, or better still, prove yerself the creature I believe ye to be and tell me the truth.”

  He rubbed her belly again, and pleasure rippled through her. It was deep and hot in a way she hadn’t even imagined her body might feel.

  But she liked it and craved more of it.

  “I can see the enjoyment shining in yer eyes, Jemma, just as ye can see how much I like touching ye.” His hand slid down to cover her mons. She gasped as pleasure spiked through her. It was hard and forced the breath out of her lungs. Her clitoris pulsed with sensation that was almost acute.

  “I can smell how hot yer body is for mine.”

  His hand slipped over the edge of her chemise to gently stroke the folds of her sex. Just his fingertips touched her first, but she jerked with the contact because it was so strong. A bolt of need tore into her so strongly she whimpered. Her hands fisted in the bedding beneath her, and Gordon had to press his other hand down on top of her to keep her in place for his fingers.

  “Tell me, Jemma, tell me to stoke yer sweet flesh some more. I promise ye, it gets even better.”

  “Better?” Her voice was harsh and breathless, but her clitoris begged for what he promised. Her question gained a flash of his even teeth as he smiled and made another pass of his fingertips across her slit. This time, he slid two fingers into the folds and swept them down to the opening of her body. He only touched her clitoris through the twin folds of her sex, but that sent a flame of pleasure up her passage.

  “Aye, better, lass. Shall I show ye what pleasure it is that couples defy the Church to gain?”

  “Yes.”

  She felt as if she might die if she didn’t know the answer. Her heart was pounding so hard, her hearing became nothing but a rushing of her own blood. Her back arched, trying to lift her hips up so that she could gain the pleasure he hinted at. She wanted it, craved it so greatly that nothing else mattered.

  “I want it, Gordon.”

  “Then ye shall have it, lass, from my hand.”

  She craved attention on her clitoris. The little button throbbed at the top of her sex, making her mindless with need.

  “God, ye’re wet.” Now his voice was raw with need. She heard it and knew exactly what it was. He pushed her chemise up to bare her and leaned forward to suck on her clitoris. His mouth was impossibly hot around the sensitive nub. But she didn’t have time to care that she might be burned. He sucked on her clitoris and worked his finger in a small circle around the opening of her passage. The motion pushed her over the edge into a swirling pool of pleasure that was so intense she felt it tearing her apart. It was blinding and almost deafening, but she still heard her own cry echoing off the ceiling. Every muscle tightened, straining toward his mouth. The walls of her passage clamped down while the pleasure broke deep inside her.

  She lay there, boneless, unable to move anything except to draw in breath. Her chest rose and fell in shallow motions because she lacked the strength to draw deeper breaths. Gordon sucked a few last times on her clitoris before raising his head to watch her. Smug satisfaction gleamed from his glittering eyes before he crawled up the bed to lie beside her. His arms gathered her close while she struggled to regain enough strength to think once again.

  She didn’t want to. All of the fight that had been coursing through her before was completely gone, and in its place was a contentment she couldn’t recall feeling in far too long. She felt as if she was exactly where she should be.

  Which made no sense at all.

  But her body was glowing with delight, hands reaching out to touch him because it felt so very right. His kilt brushed against the tender skin of her inner thigh, making her open her eyes to look at him.

  “You didn’t take any pleasure.”

  He was still fully clothed, and he moved the moment she spoke, sitting up and pulling her remaining boot off. That action recalled their quarrel to her thoughts. He stood up but turned and tucked the bedding around her in a tender action that confused her.

  Extremes again. Tender and hard. She confessed to enjoying both.

  “I don’t understand you.” Or my own responses to you.

  He looked down at her, as if his gaze was memorizing the sight of her. Satisfaction glowed in his eyes when he was finished.

  “Trust is nae something that can ever be demanded, lass. Too many men think that what they have from their brides is trust when it is actually fear. Frightened by their fathers and clergy, they lie on their backs and submit, all the while cringing. My first wife was that way and I swore that I’d never repeat the mistake of taking a woman that was a feared of being with a man to me bed again.”

  “You have a wife?” Jemma felt her skin turn icy in a flash of horror.


  “Nae. I had a bride who could not enjoy being a wife, so I let her go to a convent when she begged me to. She says she is very happy there, and the Church dissolved our union in favor of her becoming a bride of Christ.”

  Jemma sat up, her eyes rounding with horror. She held the bedding tightly against her body to cover her nudity. The bed rocked, and a hard hand cupped her chin.

  “Do nae look like that, Jemma. Ye have nae been whipped and broken with the notion that women are placed in this life to service men without any pleasure for themselves. Yer passion is natural, the way God designed ye, and I want ye just like that.”

  “So what was this? Some indecent test? To assure you that I would be passionate enough to please you?”

  He chuckled, a harsh sound of male victory that was too arrogant for her pride to tolerate.

  “Aye, it was. Part of courting is discovering what manner of woman ye are. I don’t want to discover my bride hates the very idea of touching after the priest has blessed us.” His expression turned dark. “I’ve already done that once. Nae again.”

  So he was not repentant one bit, even if she found it unsettling. “This is not part of courting.”

  His eyes flashed at her. “It is for me. I am not some beardless boy content with soft kisses, and ye would be dissatisfied if I trailed after ye begging for yer attention. Ye are too much of a wildcat for that, Jemma. Part of ye needs to be taken.”

  “Then why stop short of making sure that I am ruined for anyone else?” Maybe she shouldn’t have asked that question, but it was one that burned for an answer, eating away at her until she could not resist the need to know.

  He released her chin and caught her hand in his. With a controlled pull, he drew her hand beneath his kilt and pressed her fingers against his cock. His flesh was hot and rigid beneath her fingertips, and she couldn’t suppress the shiver that went through her.

  “Feel me, Jemma.” Sharp and commanding, his words were edged with unsatisfied desire. “Open yer hand and feel just how hard my cock still is.”

  “That is indecent.”

  “It’s natural. Admit that ye wanted to touch me as freely as I was touching ye. With nothing between us, only skin and pleasure. Lying there and being touched is not enough for ye is it . . . wildcat?”

  It wasn’t. She had yearned to feel him . . . so much so that the craving had almost consumed her.

  Her fingers opened and closed around his member, the hot flesh too tempting to ignore. Need ate at her, blurring the line between right and wrong until there was only hunger and what she wanted to satisfy it.

  “That’s it, close yer hand around me staff and watch how much it pleases me.”

  His nostrils flared and his eyes filled with delight. His length was hot and smooth against her hand, but it was also hard, the length rigid and swollen. She slid her hand up to the top of it and felt a thick ridge that crowned it.

  “That is what yer passage was wet and eager for. My finger was but a tiny offering compared to what ye really hungered for.”

  He stood up, pulling his cock from her grasp. A ripple of satisfaction moved through her, reminding her that he had fed her hunger while keeping his.

  “But why did you not take me?”

  “Because I intend to wed ye, and I want ye kneeling beside me because ye know that I am yer match, not because ye believe I ruined ye. I want yer trust and yer surrender, and nothing else will do to satisfy me.”

  He picked up her other boot and walked toward the door, but he turned to look back at her.

  “If ye still want to fight with me over the issue, Jemma, be very sure that I will meet ye on the field as many times as ye insist before ye consent to wed me, but I will nae give ye what ye truly crave until ye are my wife.”

  He opened the door and shut it with a solid sound behind him. She sat poised on her knees once more in the center of the bed, completely stripped of everything that she had believed important in life. Everything she had been back at Amber Hill meant nothing here.

  But did she want to return to being that girl?

  Jemma sat down to contemplate that question because it was a very good one, considering that she did indeed like being pleasured like a woman. She looked around the bed and saw not a place to rest, but a place to feed the throbbing in her passage. It was lonely now that Gordon was gone; she felt the chill that had nothing to do with the open windows and everything to do with her choices.

  Surrender?

  Her pride bristled, but she couldn’t quite reject the idea altogether because he had been correct in one thing. There was a part of her that enjoyed being challenged when she tried to cast his advances aside. Deep down in that place where she enjoyed his strength was something that wanted to shout with joy because he had not taken her, and kissed her in spite of it.

  But more important than all that was the spreading glow of contentment that came from the fact that she was still a virgin. She ached for his possession and could not have reproached him for taking her when she asked him for it. The warm feeling wrapping around her came from the fact that he did indeed have honor, an unbending sort that kept him from taking her just because passion had been licking her unmercifully.

  Trust? Well, that was growing, and she feared that there was nothing she might do to hinder it.

  Anyon was waiting on him again.

  The sight of her did nothing to soften his mood; in fact it sent him to growling. His mistress smiled. Somehow, he’d failed to notice that the woman was very crafty. She knew him better than he believed and had used that knowledge to secure herself a position in his bed. Now that he was thinking about it, he had never asked her to be his mistress, but he knew that everyone thought she was. After all, he had done nothing to prevent it being said.

  “Anyon, I do nae want to be unkind to ye, but I will seek ye out no more.”

  She fluttered her eyelashes, but the motion only struck him as another ploy to bend him to her will.

  “I’ll be marrying Jemma Ramsden.”

  Anyon offered a disgusted look. “Why would ye wed a woman who just tried to run away from ye?” She walked toward him, her body wiggling in all the places that normally pleased him. Tonight even the extreme amount of cleavage she had on display failed to snare his attention. His mind was full of the soft rose-colored nipples he’d left behind the chamber door. Thinking of those buds sent a fresh bolt of need through his cock.

  Anyon pressed her hands flat on top of his chest and rubbed her breasts against him. “Ye deserve a woman who values ye. I would nae shame ye.”

  “Enough. I told ye, I’ll not seek ye out again.” He clasped her wrists and set her away from him. Anger flashed in her eyes, but she lowered her lashes to conceal it.

  “I will nae set ye out, Anyon, and I’ll see ye settled with enough coin to get yerself a husband who pleases ye.”

  “The only one who pleases me is you, Gordon.”

  He didn’t care for the sound of his name on her lips. How had he never noticed that she used his name to secure her own position? There was no hint of wounded feeling in her eyes, only taunted ambition.

  “And ye’ll mind how ye address me from hence forward. Ye were nae pure when ye came to me, Anyon, and ye are the one who came to me.”

  “Something ye seemed plenty happy about at the time.” Anyon failed to keep her temper under control, and it flashed at him.

  “As were ye, but it is past. I’ll have a bride very soon, and she shall be yer mistress.”

  Anyon laughed. “You may call her what ye will, but that weak-kneed creature will never be my mistress. She’ll hide in her chambers or run away from ye, mark my words on it. Then ye’ll be back looking for a woman who does nae whimper because yer grip is too tight.”

  “Anyon—”

  She blew out a hard sound, interrupting him and not caring if it was a slight to his authority as her laird. “I am a woman, Gordon, and that is what the beast inside ye needs. That girl will never satisfy ye. Never.”


  Chapter Six

  “ Tell me about the girl Gordon was wed to.”

  Ula jerked her head about, looking more startled than Jemma had ever seen her.

  “Who told ye about Imogen?”

  It was clear that the housekeeper wouldn’t tell her a thing unless she answered the question in a way that she deemed acceptable. The warning in her eyes spoke of loyalty to her laird. “Gordon did. He said he was wed and that the girl is now a nun. I believe this is a matter that I need to know about if he is considering marrying me.”

  “The laird should have told ye, but I agree that ’tis something ye have the right to understand.” Ula drew in a deep breath and looked about to make sure they were alone. “The girl was no good at being a wife, did nae care for it at all. She cried until her eyes were puffy every time he told her he intended to enter her chamber. She claimed that bed sport was sinful, and the awful truth was that she believed it.”

  “Many think that. Why do you say it is awful?”

  Ula stopped looking tired for the first time. The housekeeper placed her hands flat on the top of the stack of ironing she had been working to fold.

  “That poor girl had her thoughts twisted beyond what normal parents do with their daughters. I’m no talking about instilling a healthy respect for remaining pure, that is right, but Imogen took to lashing herself every morning after the laird left her.” Ula lifted her face and shot Jemma a hard look. “’Twas a horrible sight what that girl did to herself because someone twisted up her thinking. She could nae tolerate knowing that she enjoyed being a wife. Her back was a bloody mess when we discovered what she was about.”