Samantha tensed, but she remained passive, staring stubbornly up at the skylight, reminding herself to blink. To breathe.
He was her husband, this was his right.
And, she realized with astonishment, she wasn’t the only one struggling to breathe.
The soap slipped and slid over her open sex, a hard but not unpleasant surface. It pressed against the throbbing little peak bared by her split legs in a way that caused her inner muscles to pulse and clench around emptiness.
Then the soap was gone, replaced by a wandering fingertip searching through the cushiony softness until he found slick, warm flesh.
Each of them made very soft, very different inarticulate sounds.
“Ye’re wet,” he groaned.
“I’m underwater,” she told the skylight, more than a little anxiously.
“I ken that, bonny.” He chuckled, his clever, elegant finger parting her inner folds to probe at the entrance of her body. “But this dampness has nothing to do with that.”
She knew that. She felt it, even underwater. His finger circled her opening, aided by a rush of desire somehow impossibly wetter than the water surrounding her.
“My dirty wife,” he crooned darkly. “Let me wash ye. Let me clean the memory of any other man from this flesh, because after tonight, no other man will touch ye. After tonight, ye’ll never want anyone else to.”
That wasn’t what they’d agreed to, was it?
His ruthless fingers drew upward, delicately brushing the little peak throbbing beneath the vulnerable hood of her sex.
Samantha’s vision blurred as he began a gentle assault upon that place so excruciatingly sensitive, she couldn’t keep her hips from flexing and twitching in time to his measured movements.
She tried to keep quiet. To keep control. To enjoy it, but not too much. She gritted her teeth against the pleasure, but the soft notes climbing her throat became harsh when they escaped her lips.
Dear God. It had never been like this. Not ever.
She moaned when he replaced his finger with his thumb, circling the pliant flesh with sweetly abrasive motions. She sobbed in an inhale when a finger slipped inside of her, rubbing and curling, eliciting unspeakable sensations that struck her mute.
The pace of his dual stroking increased, along with her heartbeats, until she was clutching the sides of the bath with white knuckles to keep from writhing or lashing from side to side.
He controlled his thrusts with absolute precision, his long fingers working together to create a wash of pulsating bliss that seemed to rise from somewhere deep, deep inside her, until suddenly every muscle in her body tensed and arched. It broke through her like a tidal wave, brimming over her veins and washing her flesh in a crescendo of effervescence. The peaks of the pulsing waves lingered, the valleys only a momentary respite before she was barraged again.
Samantha kept her neck arched, her eyes fixed on the sky above and, even through the heavy storm clouds …
She saw the stars.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Gavin thought she looked like a water goddess, draped half out of the tub, arching in that lithe, sinuous way of hers. Riding his hand with that same rolling grace with which she rode a horse.
Even like this, spread open and helpless, she was a wild, unattainable thing.
God, but he wanted to train her to his hand. To respond only to him, ever.
When she began to tremble with a sudden and intense exhaustion, her movements more of an escape attempt than a come-hither, he reluctantly pulled his fingers away from her softness. She sank back down into the water, as though she’d become a part of it.
He couldn’t describe this ferocious, possessive welling of instinct that had seized upon him. All he knew was that it began the moment she’d reached for him in front of Liam. The moment she’d chosen him in a room full of people who thought she ought not to.
A sensation of unprecedented wonder had seized upon him, and not let him go since.
It intensified with every steady, uncompromising answer she gave to the frightening Mackenzie Laird. In the past, Gavin was among a very small handful of people who’d stood against the Demon Highlander and lived.
His bonny was certainly the smallest.
In the innumerable empty nights he’d spent with countless empty women, he’d never wanted inside anyone with such desperate intensity.
Not even Colleen …
Surging to his feet, he gathered her up and tried not to enjoy the feel of her slick, thin arms around his neck as he retrieved a drying cloth woven for a man of his size. Lord, she felt like a scrap of nothing in his arms. He could carry her like this for a whole day and not tire of it.
For a lifetime, perhaps.
Shoving that disquieting thought aside, he set her on her foot and steadied her until she found her balance. “Hold fast to my shoulders,” he directed gently as he wrapped the plush towel around her shoulders and bent to dry her.
Though she looked a bit dazed, she didn’t stand passively beneath his attentions as he’d expected her to.
The hands on his shoulders slid up his neck, then seized his jaw and pulled his lips the rest of the way to meet hers.
She made a sound he’d never heard from a woman before. There was nothing coy or teasing in it. Nothing seductive or husky or practiced in the least.
It was pure. Honest. Need.
And he was lost.
Maybe he’d been losing himself slowly since the moment she’d barged into the Highlands, guns blazing, eyes snapping, and tongue lashing.
Now these were lashes he could give in kind.
He fastened his mouth to hers, pouring all his skill into the kiss, and greedily drinking all the pleasure he could.
She tasted like rain and sex. Like the storm bearing down upon them, wild and dangerous.
Dear gods, what was happening to him? He was Lord Thorne, the legendary lover. Sex with him was a blend of practiced, systematic technique and unparalleled performance.
Somehow, with this wee bit of a woman, he felt thrown to the mercy of something he’d promised never again to submit.
Passion.
Raw, unparalleled, unbridled desire. It stormed through him with all the bone-trembling strength of the thunder.
Before he realized what he’d done, he had her on her back on the floor, devouring her with a hunger he’d never before felt. He’d become a frighteningly insatiable beast with teeth and claws and a fathomless wellspring of desire. There was no time to get to the bed. They were going to consummate their marriage here.
Now.
In front of the fire and beneath the storm.
Their skin was still slick and slippery, and her back was only cushioned by the towel and the lamb’s wool rug beneath it.
For a panicked moment, he had the absurd urge to jump to his feet and run. To escape the connection strengthening between them, to flee this surge of terrifying, warm emotion that glowed beneath the fire of his lust.
In the past, he’d have said something cruel and callous. He’d have done something provoking, anything to establish some distance …
But … that would mean he’d have to lift his mouth from hers.
And that just fucking wasn’t going to happen.
In her embrace, he was barraged by sensations he’d not felt in twenty years. Helpless. Pathetic. Sentimental …
Powerful. Passionate. Predatory.
Wanted.
Not simply in the realm of the physical—he’d never been lacking on that score—but something in her eyes called out to him. To his soul. It was as though her gaze pleaded for what her pride would not allow.
She’d wrapped her arms around his neck and her long, long legs around his waist with surprising strength for one so injured. It was his only consolation. That her hunger—her desperation—seemed to match his own.
Their kiss spun out of control, their tongues sparring, their mouths clashing and releasing, only to go at each other from a different angle. He ni
pped at her lower lip as it slipped along the seam of his and she made a sound that vibrated into his throat, rippled along his spine, and spilled into his already full cock.
For a moment, he feared the worst … That with one moan, she’d unman him.
What kind of woman held such power?
Abruptly, he tore his mouth from hers and rose up on his arms to stare down at her with a wretched sort of bewilderment while he focused on bringing his lust under control, starting with his breath.
She really was nothing special. Right? Her hair wasn’t artfully mussed or curled, but slicked to her head and mostly hidden behind the fluffy towel pooled around her. Her face wasn’t delicate, pale, or painted. Her cheeks never rouged, her hands never softened with creams. Her long body nearly disappeared beneath his.
But those lips, a wide bow that could punish as well as give pleasure had become the object of his most salacious introspections. He’d counted those freckles in his memories. He swam in the pools of her eyes, like some oasis of warmth in his cold, gray world.
Treacherous heat spilled through him as he gaped down at her, spreading entirely until he felt as though he might immolate.
“What have ye done to me?” he demanded roughly.
Her eyebrow lifted and she glanced around as though a bit baffled. “Nothing, yet … You’ve been doing all the … the doing.” She winced rather adorably at her inability to articulate, and then gave a defeated sigh as she peered up at him with an exhausted sort of sadness permeating the haze of her artless passion. “Am I not … you want I should do more? Is it my turn to make you—”
“Nay, lass.” He put his finger over her mouth. Momentarily wondering just who she’d been with before. This Grant fellow? Had that bastard caused the insecurity that hovered over her features?
No wife of his would feel thus. Not ever. “It’s always my turn.”
She melted under his next kiss, he made certain of it, filling her mouth with warm silk and soft strokes of his tongue. Once again, he drowned in the dizzying rush he experienced in the process. He hoped she didn’t note how his fingers trembled when they shaped to her jaw and followed little droplets of water as they escaped down her neck, fleeing their demise against the warmth of the fire.
Unable to resist, his mouth reluctantly left hers to rescue a few. He caught some with his lips, others with his tongue. Kissing and laving down her graceful neck to her collarbone, and then below.
Her breasts were high and tight, her nipples deliciously small and taut. He’d not thought she had much of a shape beneath her workshirts, but there was certainly enough here to feast upon.
Perfect. They were perfect.
She was perfect.
With a growl, he claimed her breasts with his mouth, raining a storm of worship upon them that had the exact desired effect. Her legs parted wider beneath him, and she pressed into him, pulling his hard body closer.
Without leaving her unattended, he swept away his trousers and settled in the cradle of her thighs.
His breath hitched when she reached between them and pulled his sex away from where it throbbed against his stomach and positioned it against her.
“Shit,” she whispered.
He froze. “What?”
“Big,” was all she said.
“Aye.” He grinned.
His teeth ground together as he pushed slowly forward. He dropped his head to the side of hers, so he didn’t lose himself in her body like he did in her eyes. She was small, snug, and oh, so deliciously wet. She writhed beneath him, doing her best to accommodate.
“I don’t think…” she whispered. Then, “Oh!” as he curled his hips sharply, stinging into her, stretching her wide with one long powerful thrust.
An involuntary shudder overtook him, followed by waves and waves of impossible heat.
“Don’t. Move,” he ordered through his teeth. Christ. It was too much. She was too sweet. Too tight. Too soft.
The stars called his name too soon, and he answered them by throwing his head back and roaring his pleasure to the storm. He could feel them pulse behind the clouds, could nearly sense his place among them as pleasure pulled him from himself, tore him apart, and then reshaped him. Creating a creature of chaos where before there had been order, and Gavin knew as he crushed his wife to him, that he might never be who he once was.
* * *
Samantha bit down on her lip as she witnessed the splendid sight of her husband caught in the throes of bliss. His every muscle corded tight as his body went rigid above hers, his beautiful features locked in a grimace that looked like it might be pain, but she knew better. It was the exact pleasure he’d given her in the bath. The kind where you couldn’t be sure your body still belonged to you anymore.
She closed her eyes, focusing on the hard, hot, spasming flesh inside of her. On the warm jets of seed bathing her occupied womb.
This was what she needed.
Now she could relax somewhat.
Though she didn’t want to. For the first time in her life, she didn’t want this act to be over. She wasn’t ready for him to collapse upon her, then roll over to fall asleep.
She wanted more. More of this slippery, exquisite friction. More of his incomprehensively large sex, now that the fullness had finally stopped being uncomfortable. More of the magic his fingers had given her in the bath.
Oh well, she thought. If she pleased him this much, there would probably be a next time.
After an eternal moment, he dropped onto his elbows over her, his dark green eyes drowsy but still glittering with intensity as he pressed his forehead to hers. The gasps of his breath exploded against her cheek in hot bursts.
It was done. Now they were man and wife in every sense possible.
Now her child was safe.
She closed her eyes, and in doing so her awareness no longer resided behind her eyes … but inside her body.
Inside her body, where he still remained. Hard. And hot. And pulsing.
What?
Five breaths. Five breaths was all it took him to recover.
A hum of masculine satisfaction rumbled deep in his throat before he threaded his fingers through hers and slowly guided them above her head as he finally began to move.
Her eyes flew open and she gasped at the sight. Even though she’d seen him dozens of times, his beauty still had the power to startle her if she wasn’t prepared.
Hadn’t he just…? How was he still…? Oh God, that felt good …
“The only Mackenzie trait I’m glad of, lass,” he said by way of arrogant explanation. “We spend ourselves more than once.”
Jesus Jehosephat Christ.
Samantha’s eyes fluttered closed again as each slick, slow glide branded her with unparalleled sensation. She concentrated on opening her legs wider, on taking him deeper, on trying not to lose herself in the lyrical nonsense he murmured against her ear.
He stretched her, filled her, opened her, with sleek, almost ruthlessly patient movements. His eyes burned down at her from features growing ever darker as night loomed.
The muscles in her back, in her buttocks, in her thighs couldn’t help but respond to the whispers of pleasure that mounted into waves, and threatened to become pulses. She tried to call back the tiny mewls that were quickly becoming sobs.
What was this? She’d been beneath a man before … but not like this. Not a man like him. This building pleasure wasn’t just the alchemy of a man and a woman fulfilling a biological imperative or a marital contract. This was something deeper than that.
So much deeper.
And the depth of it shocked and terrified her.
His controlled breaths frayed and fractured into gasps, then jagged pants. “God,” he bit out. “You’re too lovely … I’m too deep.”
She could attest to that.
The release that took her wasn’t sudden as it had been in the bath. It built in slow waves, made more intense because she stood on the shore watching them come for her, knowing she’d be swep
t away. That she’d drown in it, become a willing victim of its awe-inspiring force. Suddenly she couldn’t move at all. Her body became a prison of pleasure, arcing against it as he rode her through crashing peaks of unimaginable sensation.
Somewhere through the storm of bliss, she was dimly aware of his low sound of surprise when his body gave a great shudder and then several rhythmic spasms. She reveled in her body’s sinuous clenches around the hard flesh buried inside of her. The pleasure noises he made harmonized with the melody of hers, and the thunder created the perfect percussion to their erotic crescendo.
A pleasant, heady exhaustion blurred the moments in which they remained tangled into incalculable measurements. Eventually, he lifted off her, took a cloth and dipped it into the bath, and returned to wash the remnants of their pleasure from them both.
She fought heavy eyelids as he used a separate towel to dry himself, and the rest of her with patient blots and long drags. She felt drunk, almost like she’d done upon waking in his arms half out of her mind with laudanum.
She was dimly aware of a dull ache in her leg, and was certain that so much flexing and straining couldn’t have been helpful, but what did she care?
Lord, had her husband just quite literally fucked the wits out of her?
She glared at him through slits between lids that felt increasingly swollen with sleep. She’d be mad if she wasn’t so damn content.
“Poor bonny,” he crooned to her as he lifted her yet again and conducted her to the bed. “It’s not many a lass who can survive me. Ye’ve done decently well.”
“Decently well?” she huffed, a stab of indignation permeating her bliss.
“I told ye when a woman loses consciousness around me, it’s either a swoon or exhaustion.” He wiggled arrogant brows at her, and lifted her arms so he could pull her nightgown over her head.
“Oh, spare me.” Her jaw cracked on a yawn as she passively allowed him to dress her. “I’m a cripple,” she said with a scowl. “Just wait until all my parts are in working order, then I’ll show you decent,” she muttered as he moved to his side of the bed and rummaged for something on the stand beside it.
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