“Gordon,” she whispered, venturing farther inside.
“Moira!” he cried softly, straightening, his brow furrowing as he ran his gaze over her, making her warm despite the thinness of the fabric, and her nipples harden as if he had touched them. “What are you doing here? You should go. If anybody finds you here—”
“I realize this isn’t proper,” she said, “but I couldn’t let you go without seeing you once more, in private.”
Where they wouldn’t be interrupted. Where they could be alone, together.
As she came closer, his body grew more tense, his gaze more searching, as if he couldn’t quite understand.
“Tomorrow, you go to Edinburgh and I’ll be going to Glasgow in a few days,” she began, “and I didn’t want to leave without saying…without telling you…”
Now that the time had come to say the words, her confidence seemed to have disappeared along with his cravat.
His expression softened. “What is it, Moira?” he asked, still keeping his distance, as if he were afraid of what might happen if they got too close, as she ought to be, but wasn’t. “What did you want to tell me?”
“I love you,” she whispered, the words so simple, yet so potent. Words she had never said to Robbie.
His eyes shone in the firelight and his lips curved into a smile. Finally, he moved away from the mantel toward her.
“Moira, my darling, I love you, too,” he said as he met her in the middle of the room and took her hands in his. “I care about you more than any other woman I’ve ever met. I love you more than I ever guessed it was possible to love anyone. I hardly dared to hope you could ever love me, yet my feelings were so strong…right from the moment I met you.”
“Mine, too. From the moment I saw you running down the hill to help me, like Galahad.”
“Hardly a Galahad. I stumbled.”
“Yet you recovered so gracefully,” she murmured as she lifted her face for his kiss.
No wonder they’d kept their distance here, and in the dining room, because the instant their lips met, their passionate desire exploded. His mouth took hers, hard and strong. She returned his passion, measure for measure.
This heated kiss, this intense embrace, was as different from the others as a grown man was from a boy.
As she was no girl, but a woman, and a woman willing and wanting, eager and excited, thrilled by the power of his need that equalled her own.
“Marry me, Moira,” he said as his lips left hers to trail across her cheek and down the line of her jaw, while his hands continued to caress and stroke her. “Please, marry me. Nothing would make me happier than to spend the rest of my life with you. Moira, please say yes.”
She wanted to—oh, how she wanted to! Yet once before she had agreed to marry, and that had been disastrous.
Gordon drew back, his gaze searching her face as she tried to think, to separate the yearning from practicalities, the reality from the beautiful dream. “My school,” she said quietly, still holding on to him, not willing to let go. “What about my school? And your practice?”
He ran the tip of his finger along the curve of her jaw. “I know how much the school means to you, so I would never try to stop you from building it. As for my practice, there are plenty of lawyers in Edinburgh. One less will make little difference, and perhaps Dunbrachie could use a new one.”
“There aren’t any solicitors in Dunbrachie.”
That practical observation brought a smile to his face. “Then, my dear, my darling, as soon as I can see that all my current clients have new solicitors, I’ll pack my books and bags and return.”
“You would give up your practice in Edinburgh for me?”
“I’d do much more than that,” he assured her as he bent his head for another deep, soul-searing kiss.
Confident in his love, she returned it eagerly, wantonly, untying the sash of her robe and letting it fall unheeded to the ground as she leaned her body into his. Knowing that he loved her, certain that she loved him, all restraint fell away and she gave herself up to the desire that had been too long denied.
Until he broke the kiss and drew back, panting, and a pang of dismay caught her. “Did I hurt you?” she asked anxiously, for in her selfish need, she’d forgotten about his wounds.
He shook his head. “It’s not that,” he huskily replied. “We aren’t married yet, so I should behave with honor and make you go.”
She heard his words, but his body and his eyes told her something else. And she paid more heed to them, as well as the yearning of her own heart. “Tomorrow you’ll be going back to Edinburgh, and I must go to Glasgow to raise money for my school. It may be weeks or months before we see each other again. I want you to be sure of me before you go, Gordon. To prove to you that I won’t change my mind. I want you to believe that I can and will be constant.”
He started to speak, but she pressed her fingertip to his warm lips. “I want to show you that I believe you when you say you love me. I want to show you how much I love you.”
“Moira, I do believe you. There’s no need for further proof.”
She slid her hands down his long, strong arms. “I think there is. I want there to be,” she whispered. “Gordon, please,” she murmured, pressing her anxious, nearly naked body against his. “Please, make love with me.”
Chapter Eighteen
At first, Gordon didn’t respond, as if he was weighing the evidence in his mind, and she feared she had finally stepped over the mark, been too brazen and gone too far.
But then…oh, then!
It was as if the vessel holding his desire shattered, to release the emotions bottled within. He took her in his arms and kissed her with such passion, she could scarcely breathe.
She didn’t care if she never breathed again, as long as he let her stay with him and kept kissing her. As long as he wanted her with such fierce yearning, a longing that quickly engulfed and enflamed her, too.
For one brief instant, she realized that she had never felt anything even close to this overwhelming physical need for a man. Never in her life had she wanted to know every inch of a man’s body, and to have him as familiar with hers. To kiss and stroke and caress, to lick and touch and graze.
With fervent hunger to do all that and more, she broke the kiss to undo the remaining buttons of his shirt. She abandoned any pretence of maidenly modesty as she lost her patience. She tore off the buttons in her haste before capturing his mouth again. She shoved his shirt aside to slide her hands over his hot, naked chest above the bandage still wrapped around his torso.
Then, oh, then! He swept her up in his strong arms and carried her to the bed, setting her down as gently as if she were made of delicate glass.
But as he stepped back and tugged off his shirt, his eyes told a different story—that he was looking at a woman, and one he wanted as much as any man, civilized or primitive, had ever wanted a woman. That his whole being was concentrated on assuaging a physical need as powerful as the one coursing through her body.
Just as quickly his boots were off and then his trousers, until he was completely naked except for the wide swath of linen around his middle. The rest of him was bruised, battered, and beautifully nude.
Powerfully, primitively ready to love her.
With a last mental gasp, modesty and the strictures of society reared up in her mind, a distant shout of wary caution that once she let this man possess her, there would be no going back. Her maidenhood, once gone, could never be retrieved.
That what she was giving up, giving to him, was something she could only give to him, and no one else.
Her flash of doubt, her moment’s hesitation, must have shown in her face, for his expression changed and he reached for his trousers. “Go,” he said softly. “Leave me, Moira.”
“No!” she cried, grabbing for his trousers and pulling them from his grasp, her qualms overruled by the need to be with him and to prove to him how sincere she was. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you.
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“I want to be with you,” she said even more firmly as she yanked her nightgown over her head, revealing her body to him.
“I want to love you and for you to love me,” she whispered as she reached out to take both his hands and draw him onto the bed with her.
“Please be with me,” she said as she brushed the hair from his brow and looked into his smoldering eyes, seeing in them all that she had ever hoped to see in the eyes of a man who loved her. “I want you, Gordon, here and now and forever. I want you to make love with me. I want to make love to you.”
Although his body betrayed his animal desire and their bodies were nearly touching, he didn’t act. “Moira, you don’t have to prove yourself to me in this way. I believe that you love me. I believe that you’ll be true to me, even if we have to be apart for a time.”
He meant it; it was plain in his face. And she was sure he would be true to her, no matter how long they had to be away from each other. She also trusted her own feelings, confident that what she felt for Gordon McHeath was no fleeting fancy, no shallow emotion based on flattery and pride. She had faith that she could rise from this bed right now without another kiss or caress, and they would still be married one day, their union lawful and free of the risk of scandal. He didn’t need to possess her body to know he had her heart.
So the only reason to be with him here and now was…because she wanted to be.
And oh, how she wanted to be! “I believe you, Gordon. I trust you. And if you really want me to leave, I will go—but only because you ask me. Otherwise, I’ll stay, because I want to be with you tonight, Gordon. I want to love you and have you love me. I want something good to remember if things get difficult in the coming days. I want to remember what it’s like to hold you in my arms, to be yours in every way, until we can be married. Will you give me that, Gordon? Will you let me stay and make love with me?”
“I haven’t the strength to refuse. I love you so much and I want you too much,” he whispered as he gazed down at her.
He bent down and his lips covered hers with a gentler kiss, a touch of tenderness and promise. A demonstration of the kind of devotion they would share once the fiercer passion was spent.
With gentle yet insistent pressure he moved his mouth over hers and insinuated his tongue between her parted lips. Her body relaxed, and she felt free of worry and care.
As his tongue slipped into her mouth, he shifted until his hips were between her thighs. She slid her hands over the plane of his back, across the brief expanse of the bandage and over the contours of his buttocks. His body was like a new country whose terrain she wanted to learn and explore, as she had once explored this house. Except that he was much more interesting.
As he leaned his weight on his left elbow, his right hand grazed with agonizing leisure over her body, from the curve of her collarbone over the roundness of her breast and the ridges of her ribs, across her taut belly and lower still.
As their lips and tongues moved in a sinuous dance, she reached up to glide her palm across the breadth of his shoulders, aware of the muscles beneath the hot flesh, the tense sinews and smooth skin.
He broke the kiss, licking the edge of her jaw, then the lobe of her ear. Like a dancer stretching, she arched her back as his hand crept up again to knead her breast. But he did more than touch and stroke. She gasped with surprise and arousal when he sucked her pebbled nipple into his mouth, then groaned with exquisitely tense agony as he circled the tip with his tongue. He continued to lick and tongue and tease until she squirmed beneath him, breathlessly, wordlessly, urging him on.
Needing him to go on, so fervently that she reached down to take him in her hand and guide him to her, raising her hips to meet him.
Now she had no thought of the future, or the past—only the present, here, with this man she loved. Now she thought not of morals or scandal, only trust and passion. She would have him, as he would have her, together as man and woman were meant to be.
When he entered her, she bit her lip against the brief, sharp pain as he shoved past the tender barrier of flesh.
He paused, hesitating, looking down at her with loving concern. “I should have waited until we were married,” he muttered, making as if to pull away.
She held him fast, for she had no regrets. Not now, not ever. No matter what happened. Not even if she never saw him again, although she would. He would come back to her. She was as sure of that as she was that the sun would rise, or the world would keep turning. He would be true and faithful because it simply wasn’t in him to be otherwise.
As she would be true and faithful to him.
“Too late,” she replied, smiling her encouragement and love. “Happily too late. I am yours forever, Gordon, whether I stay now, or go.”
He smiled, and the remorse left his features. “I should have known that once you resolved to do a thing, you do it, without fear or favor. Without conditions or regrets.” He kissed the tip of her nose, then each eyelid. “I pray God I never give you cause to regret this.”
“You won’t,” she assured him as she wrapped her arms about him. “You won’t.”
His gaze dropped to her body beneath him—the rosy peak of her nipples and her soft, round breasts; her slim waist and flaring hips. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured before he went back to pleasuring her breasts, first one, then the other and began to thrust with seemingly slow deliberation, as if to taunt her.
She met him thrust for thrust and when his speed increased, so did hers. Her lips parted as she uttered words and sounds, hardly aware of what she was saying, except that he must continue. He mustn’t stop. Not yet. Oh, sweet merciful heaven, not yet.
Touch her there. And there. Oh, yes. Don’t stop.
She grabbed his shoulders and half raised herself so that she could pleasure him as he pleasured her, sucking and licking his hardened nipples, letting the dark hairs tickle her nose, rejoicing as he groaned softly and pushed harder. Faster. Deeper. Each time better, stronger than the last.
It was like climbing to the highest levels of a warehouse, up and up, reaching for something just out of reach. Something wondrous, she was sure. Something like…
That!
She clenched her teeth to keep from crying out loud enough to wake the servants. She gripped his shoulders as if afraid of falling as her body pulsed. And then he shoved his mouth against her shoulder to stifle the roaring groan that rose from deep within his throat as he jerked and thrust and bucked, moving with her and in her.
Until he stopped.
Panting, he pulled back and she collapsed against the pillow, as out of breath and sweat-slicked as he. Sated and satisfied. Truly his, as he was truly hers.
He moved away a little and laid his head against her breasts as their breathing slowed. He sounded as if he’d run a footrace—and he was supposed to rest.
“I hope I haven’t hurt you,” she whispered. “I didn’t realize it would be quite so…so…like that.”
He raised himself on his elbow to look at her and spoke with grave sincerity. “I’ve never felt better in my life, and I’ve never made a more important contract.”
“Contract?” she repeated, confused.
He reached out and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Indeed. A very solemn verbal contract that we are to be husband and wife, and confirmed in a most exciting, if unusual, manner.”
She frowned, some of her enjoyment of this night gone. “Even if we don’t marry, I would never sue you for breach of contract.”
He kissed her forehead lightly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you of that. It’s just that I’m a solicitor and tend to think in legal terms. I give you my word I won’t sue you, either, should you change your mind.”
“I won’t,” she said firmly. Then she gave him a shy little smile as she remembered how wanton and wild they both had been, and how glorious he had made her feel, and she ran her hand across his chest. “Especially after tonight.”
His smile warmed her
in more ways than one. “Then I trust I didn’t disappoint?”
“Not in the least.” She frowned. “I hope I didn’t.”
“Not in the least. In fact, I confess myself most pleasantly surprised,” he said, stroking her arm in a way that sent both shivers and thrills of excitement through her.
She wanted nothing more than to stay, to lie beside him and spend the whole night, but that was impossible, at least for now. So it was with reluctance that she moved away from him and sat up. “I have to go, Gordon, and you have to rest.”
He sat up, too. “My heart wants to argue against that statement, but my rational mind counsels me not to be foolish,” he said with wry acquiescence. “Besides, I don’t want to give myself a relapse. I want to be completely well as soon as possible.”
“I want you to be completely well as soon as possible, too,” she said as she got out of bed and picked up her discarded nightdress.
“Don’t put it on just yet,” he pleaded. “Let me look at you a moment longer in the firelight.”
“You make me feel like an artist’s model,” she said, slightly abashed as he studied her.
“I want to memorize the sight of you thus,” he replied. “You’re like a goddess—only better, because you’re mortal. I wouldn’t feel competent to make love to a goddess.”
“I suppose if you displeased a goddess, she could turn you into a pig or a cow,” she replied. “Not that I think you would disappoint,” she added as she returned his scrutiny, her gaze traveling over his naked, muscular body.
“You had better go,” he said huskily as he covered himself with the sheet, “or I may forget my rational wisdom and make love with you again.”
“If that’s a threat, it’s not a very good one,” she said, her body moist and ready again, her breasts tingling with anticipation of his touch.
His eyes flared with desire as he threw back the sheet. “Come here, Moira. Please.”
She did.
Highland Heiress Page 17