Kresley Cole - [MacCarrick Brothers 03]

by If You Deceive

  People generally liked her, and she’d always made friends easily. And if she turned on the charm? She was nigh unstoppable. MacCarrick didn’t stand a chance, she reasoned, and the poor man probably sensed his heart’s impending surrender—which would explain his increasing coolness.

  Naturally he would put up a brusque front as a defense! For a bachelor of his advanced years, yielding to marriage was one thing, but yielding one’s heart was quite another.

  And he’d already betrayed hints of his growing affection. Late into each night they touched and kissed and talked of nothing serious, learning each other’s bodies. He taught her how he liked to be caressed and wanted her to reveal what she desired from him.

  He’d nuzzle her neck and her breasts so gently, kissing her lips tenderly. He’d compliment her, pleasure her, and then gruffly insist she sleep against him as he held her close.

  Whenever they were alone in their cabin, he would walk around naked and unabashed—what male wouldn’t, with a physique like that?—and she would lie on her front, chin on her hands, gazing at him in wonder. As she studied his unclothed body moving, she couldn’t help recalling some of the scenes she’d witnessed in La Marais. Applying the general ideas to him, her curiosity grew each minute.

  Every morning, she’d joined him at the basin to explore him as he struggled to concentrate on shaving. She’d run her fingers over his backside, then to his torso and lower, which always earned her a trip to the bed.

  Her attraction to him was getting worse. Every encounter between them made her want two more, and her affection for him wasn’t far behind. Especially since he’d begun once again to demonstrate that sense of humor she’d enjoyed. Her heart melted each time he grated teasing words to her with a self-conscious grin.

  At breakfast today, he’d looked out from behind his paper and said, “Have you been cheating when you gamble on board?”

  “As if I need to. Winning against the passengers is as challenging as hunting cows.”

  “Doona scoff, young lass,” he’d said, making his brogue low and rumbling. “Cows can be wily beasts.”

  She’d batted her eyelashes as she asked, “Ethan, would you lay down your life to protect me if a cow had me cornered?”

  “Aye”—he’d resumed reading—“I’d smite the bovine down.”

  Maddy had laughed until he’d folded the paper down, with his brows drawn and his lips curling into that unpracticed grin.

  She sighed happily. MacCarrick would resist her, of course. Ah, but in the end, it will do him no good.

  She decided, then and there, in the middle of a hand of blackjack, that she was going to make the Highlander fall in love with her.

  The problem with telling Madeleine not to be underfoot was that she’d listened.

  Ethan had expected her to make a friend or maybe two—not to gather up a gaggle of women to follow her around and emulate everything she did. They’d even stopped donning jewelry because she wore none.

  Though Madeleine had proved to be charming and sociable, Ethan was still surprised at the sheer ease with which she’d made friends. Having never quite managed the feat himself, he’d always believed it difficult.

  She played cards and gossiped with them all day, having no trouble staying away from him.

  And this meant that if he wanted to see her, he had to pursue her all over the ship. He’d strived to stay away, passing most of the days in the ship’s club room. Since the majority of male passengers were gentlemen of leisure and landowners, the reading journals available on board consisted mainly of agricultural periodicals.

  Ethan was out of study with the subject. He could man a howitzer and shoot a target between the eyes from half a mile away, and he knew the comprehensive geopolitical conditions of every country in Europe and Asia, but the newest farming techniques for loamy soil proved foreign to him.

  He’d decided that since he was traveling to Carillon, one of his working estates, he could examine the operations while he was there. So he’d dived into the journals, intending to learn—and to keep his mind from Madeleine.

  But staying away proved challenging, knowing what awaited him. On the few occasions he’d approached her, her face would light up, making it all the more pleasurable to see her. No one in memory had smiled upon seeing him, and he always had to stifle the urge to look behind him.

  Today, the longest he’d made it was an hour before he’d found his feet eating the distance to wherever she was. Even merely watching her from afar was agreeable to him.

  So he spent the days in a state that he could swear was close to bloody pining, counting down the hours until night when he could have her all to himself.

  He, Ethan MacCarrick, craved a woman’s attention.

  And he felt himself lowering his guard around her. He’d actually caught himself wondering what she would think about Carrickliffe, and about his brothers and their wives—and, ach, that sounded odd.

  Madeleine was already friends with Jane. This situation could get tricky if Ethan hurt the girl terribly.

  What had Quin predicted? That Ethan wouldn’t know up from down anymore? Bully for you, Quin, you’ve got me pegged. His lips curled. But she chose me over you, you sod.

  Things used to be cut-and-dried for Ethan. He used to be detached from others, but now he wasn’t so sure. At least with her. Even as he looked hard for things to dislike about her, at every turn he was burdened with additional examples of how well she fit with him.

  Each night he and Madeleine indulged their lusts. He’d experienced more pleasure at her hands than he had in a decade before. He could get used to that—if he wasn’t careful.

  Toward dawn, they continued their nightly battles in bed wherein he attempted to get her to sleep against him instead of balled up in that way that made his chest feel uncomfortable.

  If someone had told him a week ago that he’d be fighting to make a woman cling to him in sleep, he’d have laughed.

  If he could just have her fully one more time, he thought he could beat this constant need. So every time he touched her, he would take more. He kept his fingers inside her longer, wanting her to crave the sensation of being filled, to train her body to hunger for his. If the situation had been reversed, this would have been the way to make him want more. Conditioning.

  He knew he was playing for more now, though he didn’t understand precisely what he wanted from her.

  Yet she remained unfaltering. He was beginning to believe she truly wouldn’t sleep with him outside of marriage. If so, once they landed he would only be able to put her off for a few weeks before she demanded matrimony. Or she’d leave.

  Now neither of those scenarios was acceptable.

  A plan began to form. Other women had enjoyed his coarse treatment. Cold and domineering had served him well in the past, getting him into the skirts of more women than he could count—it could work with her as well.

  Twenty-nine

  That night after they’d eaten, shared a bath, and were both naked in bed, Ethan proved Maddy’s theory again and again.

  Though he plied her with champagne, he was brusque and distant with her—which amused her because she viewed this as the desperate, last-ditch defense of a rattled bachelor.

  She could handle his moodiness. It wasn’t difficult because the idea of sharing a life with him appealed to her more and more, especially after a day like today—she’d left food on her plate and had enjoyed tea without hauling water up to her window; tonight, after their light, teasing touches in the bath, the promise of complete pleasure lingered between them.

  “Ethan, I’ve noticed you’re cross with me tonight for some reason,” she asked innocently. “Have I done something to offend you?” Besides threatening the wall around your heart.

  “I want to take you,” he said curtly. “You’re supposed to be mine, and I’ve already claimed you. Tonight I mean to be inside you again.”

  “Honestly, Scot, your moods confuse me so. I can hardly keep up with them. Maybe
it’s the champagne and I’m overly sensitive, but your treatment of me is very erratic—”

  He pressed her shoulders to the mattress, levering his massive body over hers. But she wasn’t afraid in the least. “Just lie back, wench.”

  She snickered. “Did you call me wench? Well, you certainly dated yourself there, didn’t you? Sometimes I forget how old you are. What’s your age, anyway? Thirty-seven? Thirty-eight?”

  “I’m thirty-three.” Looking completely at a loss, he released her. “Am I…do you think me too old for you?”

  “Not at all, Ethan,” she answered honestly.

  “Then admit it, you will no’ sleep with me because of my scar. I’d never had any trouble seducing before I received it—”

  She laughed then, clutching her stomach, rolling on the bed. “You’re fishing for a compliment!”

  “Are you mad? Stop bloody laughing!”

  After several tries, she finally did. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t imagine you would be so vain.”

  “I was no’ fishing for a compliment.”

  “Then how would you explain your comment, when you know very well why I won’t sleep with you, and you know it has nothing to do with your appearance? And so, to appease your hungry vanity—”

  “Damn you, witch, I am no’—”

  “—I will tell you that I find you utterly attractive, handsome, and virile.”

  His words seemed to die in his throat. His brows drew together as if he’d been confounded.

  “I was going to tell you that morning in Paris,” Maddy said, “but you kept ridiculing my poverty, and I didn’t want to relinquish the one chink I’d uncovered in your armor.”

  He looked away when he asked, “And the scar?”

  “I’m sorry you were hurt, in whatever mysterious fight you were in.” She brushed her fingertips along it. This time he accepted the touch, his eyes briefly sliding shut. “But the mark highlights the fact that you’re a strong man, who’s been honed by a hard life.”

  He scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “I doona understand you.”

  “This is all a test, isn’t it? You want to see how deep my affection for you goes or to determine if I’ll be able to put up with your surliness and tolerate you in marriage.”

  “Aye, if that’s what you believe. And only one thing can prove it—and that’s for you to let me have you now.”

  “Scot, that’s not fair.”

  “Do you no’ want to convince me?”

  She nibbled her lip, wondering how he would react if she attempted something she’d seen again and again and had always been curious about. He certainly didn’t seem the type to chastise her for being overbold.

  “I wonder if”—she pressed a kiss to his chest—“there might be something else I could do to prove my affection.” Another kiss lower. His entire body tensed, and his thick erection pulsed. “Something I’ve been imagining.”

  “You canna be talkin’ about,” he shook his head hard, “about that—” He hissed in a breath when she nuzzled the trail of hair below his navel, letting him feel her hot breaths. His hands shot out to cradle her face, and he rasped, “Ah, you beautiful lass, you are….” He shuddered, drawing his knees up around her. “You’ve been…you’ve been thinking about this?”

  “Uh-huh,” she murmured, kissing the rigid indentations of his stomach. “When I watch you shave.”

  “You canna tease me with this.” His brows were drawn as if he were in pain. “You doona know how badly I want it.”

  “I’ve always been curious to try this.” She slowly rubbed her cheek along his shaft, making his knees fall wide open.

  “Pull your hair aside. I want tae see you takin’ me.”

  Once she’d pulled her hair over one shoulder, she leaned down again, letting him feel her breaths against the slick crown before she flicked her tongue over the slit.

  His eyes rolled back in his head.

  His reaction emboldened her. He needed this, truly ached for something she could gladly give him. When she circled her tongue around the smooth head, closing her eyes in bliss, she discovered that she ached for it, too. Enthralled with this new delight, she teased and played, wanting to do this all night.

  “Ah, God, that’s it,” he grated. “Now take it in your mouth….”

  She hesitated, then ignored his command, beginning to feel a kind of power with the act. Again and again, she lapped at the moisture on the crown until he was arching his back, seeming in anguish.

  “I have no’ had this in a verra long time,” he said, choking out the words. “Play later.” He grasped her head in his shaking hands, easing her down.

  But she drew back. “I want to savor my first time.”

  “Indulge—me,” he growled.

  “What if I said no?” She pursed her lips and blew against him, making him shudder and buck his hips. “Looks like I hold all the cards—”

  Like a shot, he grabbed her by the waist, tossing her to her back. As she sputtered and cried out, he pulled her around, positioning her so he could repay her in kind. He appeared menacing over her as he clutched her wrists under her back, pinning her so she couldn’t move.

  “Looks like wee lasses should no’ play with men like me.” When he took his time settling between her legs, she gasped helplessly, knowing she’d never been more aroused. “Especially no’ in bed.”

  Ethan sidled his shoulders under her knees until her legs rested over his back.

  Then he merely grazed his lips up her satiny inner thighs, making her pant, her breasts rising and falling fast. He lazily placed wet licks against her belly, slowly descending from her navel.

  “Spread your legs.” She did, opening her sex to him, and his cock pulsed, wanting to be buried inside it.

  Though he’d only planned to tease her as she had him, when he saw how visibly luscious she was, he couldn’t stop himself from pressing his opened mouth directly to her core. He slid his tongue out to taste her for the first time and found her so deliciously slick.

  Instantly, he groaned, his fingers biting into her soft thighs. She cried out at once, undulating against his mouth. As he delved harder with his tongue, flicking her clitoris, her heels dug into his back in total abandon.

  Then he somehow made himself draw back.

  She raised her head and opened her eyes, brows knitted in confusion. “M-more,” she panted. When she looked at him so hungrily, he nearly wasn’t able to deny her.

  “Now do you ken how I felt?”

  “Yes, yes.” She tried to free her hands, writhing with her legs spread, until he didn’t know how much longer he could keep his mouth from her. “Ethan, I-I won’t tease you. I promise.”

  “Good, Maddy.” He forced her legs wider to take her more deeply, to get more of the exquisite taste he’d only sampled.

  “Oh, my God,” she moaned, making his breaths come rough. He’d begun grinding against the bed.

  He spread her flesh, took her clitoris with his tongue and lips, then slowly suckled her. “Yes,” she cried, arching her back, rocking her hips to his mouth. “Ah, Ethan…”

  As she began to climax, she moaned his name again and again, making him certain he was dreaming—no man could know this much pleasure. When he’d suckled her spent, her legs trembled around his shoulders and neck.

  He released her, moving up to take her place, but she clutched his chest, rubbing her face against his neck. She whispered in his ear, “I love the things you do to me,” making his chest swell with pride and his erection pulse unbearably beneath her.

  Then she kissed down his body, her hair trailing down his heated, sensitive skin. He yelled out when her hot little mouth closed over him. Wet, sucking, hungry…

  He growled, “That’s my good lass. Nice and deep.” Disbelieving, lost, he struggled not to clench her head to hold her while he thrust. She was taking him greedily, moaning around his shaft. It was as if he were an outsider looking in as she had a love affair with his cock—she adored him wit
h her tongue, consuming him with licks and tender kisses.

  The experience was mind-boggling. She worked his flesh lovingly, yet wantonly, mystifying him. But when she was about to bring him to come in her mouth, and he felt himself on the verge of losing control completely, he gave a defeated groan and pulled her away.

  “Ethan?” she asked, her tone dazed when he drew her up to his chest. “Am I doing it wrong?”

  “No, no. I just doona want tae do anythin’…tae make you shy with this.” Feeling wicked, his cock about to explode, he looped an arm around her neck and kissed her.

  As he teased her with her taste, he began to handle his shaft. “A particular favorite,” he said against her lips, “want you tae love it as I do.” He stroked harder, his other hand palming her arse. He broke away to ask, “Do you want tae watch me?”

  Wide-eyed, she nodded, and he eased his grip around her neck so she could look down at his fist pumping furiously.

  Her eyes on him only aroused him more. When he came, the force of his release was violent. He yelled out, and his back arched sharply, seed spurting up across his torso as she gaped.

  Once he’d at last finished, they lay catching their breaths. Feeling overpoweringly satisfied, he held her for long moments, petting her hair. Damn, if she hadn’t enjoyed giving him a below job—yet another example of how well she fit with him.

  He finally made himself rise and clean off, but when he returned, she cried, “Oh, Ethan! Your injury is bleeding!”

  He glanced down at his chest and shrugged.

  “Come here, please.” She eased up on her knees and beckoned him. “Let me check you.” When he returned to the bed, she sidled close to examine him. “You didn’t pull the stitches open, thank God. But it’s bleeding more than I thought it would.”

  As she rose to collect a wet towel, he tilted his head to stare, riveted by her pert arse. “I dinna take you for the nurturing sort,” he said absently.

  Towel in hand, she said, “I will be with a man like you.”

  “Like me?”

  She climbed back into the bed with him. “Yes, Scot, you’re the dark horse I’m betting on.” She lovingly brushed his hair from his forehead, catching his gaze. “You get all my extra sugar and apples.”