He trailed kisses down the underswell, stroking his fingers over her belly. His hand looked massive against her tiny waist. “You are so small,” he said in wonder.
Then he realized it was her presence that filled a room, that made her seem regal and tall, not her physical size.
She didn’t speak, just arched her body into his hands, against his mouth.
He swiped his tongue around the circle of her belly button, then lower, skirting the top of the triangle of hair that hid her womanhood.
She gasped in shock. Her body squirmed away in an instinctual response to the surprise.
“What are…?” She let the question hang, and something akin to relief flooded through Niall. Certain pleasures were still new to her. When her body had gone rigid in her study, it was because she had never experienced a man’s fingers stroking between her legs, not because she didn’t want them there.
Niall looked up to study her face. Her violet eyes were wide with shock, wonder…and curiosity.
“I’ll be kissing you, Aileen,” he murmured, “everywhere.”
“Are you…are you sure?”
“Aye.”
Fear tinged her expression. She searched his face with her gaze. “You…it wilna hurt, will it?” she breathed.
He clenched his jaw. This woman had never been properly loved.
He placed a heavy hand on her thigh. “Open to me.”
Tension hummed beneath her skin as if she were a frightened bird. But she gazed at him in the eye and nodded. She’d said before that she trusted him, and now he knew that she did. He’d never betray her trust.
This show of innocence was an altogether different side of the strong, confident lady he knew. The lady who ran her castle efficiently, who endured the cruel husband, ultimately using her own sharp intelligence to control their relationship.
Aileen Munro was inexperienced. Frightened by the intensity of what she was feeling, frightened of what he could make her feel.
“Dinna be afraid,” he murmured. “You’ve naught to fear from me.”
In a way, that was a lie. They both had so much to fear.
Yet he couldn’t stop. Neither, it seemed, could she.
Spreading her legs wide, he moved down and eased himself between them. She opened before him. As if she needed some contact with him, her foot stroked along the length of his hip.
He inhaled a deep breath through his nose. When he spoke, his voice was gruff. “You smell like woman, like desire. You smell like you want me.”
“I do,” she whispered. “I want you.”
His cock throbbed, pulsing in demand.
He swiped the tip of his tongue over her. She bucked, but he held her firm. He trailed little kisses against the inside of her pale thigh. “You taste like heaven,” he murmured.
Consumed by her heat and her smooth flavor, he slipped one finger deep into her.
Her hips rose off the bed, and she cried out, a thin sound filled with desperate need.
She grew hotter against his mouth as the blood rushed between her legs, plumping her slick lips. Her channel throbbed around his finger, pulsing in time to her heart. The rasping sounds of her breaths grew louder above him. He circled his tongue around her hardening nub.
Slowly, he drew his finger out of her and then, just as slowly, pushed two back in. She was so tight. He groaned against her slick flesh, thinking of replacing his fingers with his cock, of her core clenching around him, drawing him out, bringing him to completion.
Do it, Aileen, he commanded in his mind. Come for me.
Over and over, he pushed his fingers into her wet heat. Her hands threaded in his hair and pressed his mouth against her.
She grew tighter, hotter. Her taste surrounded him, enveloped him. Her body twisted and writhed, but he held her firmly with his free hand, grazing his fingertips over her nipple. Gently, he suckled her sex.
Her whimpering noises stopped, her body arched and froze. Her hands fell from his head. From his fingertips, Niall felt her shudder. Deep pulses rolled down his fingers, up to his lips. Niall closed his eyes and let her pleasure flow into him.
When it subsided, he kissed her gently one last time, then drew back. Slowly, he withdrew his fingers, stroking her softly before he crawled up her body, rubbing his cock against her silky skin all the way.
Her eyes were closed. A small smile curled the corners of her lips. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was asleep, dreaming pleasant dreams.
“I’ll not be finished yet,” he said, his voice husky.
“Mmm.” Her smile grew, but she didn’t open her eyes.
Gently, Niall rolled her onto her stomach.
What he saw on her back made him hiss in a breath. Slender, raised silvery lines marred her perfect ivory skin. They crisscrossed from her shoulder blades down to the swell of her bottom.
Munro’s work.
“Aye,” she murmured, and he realized he’d hissed the words aloud.
A murderous rage flooded through him. With shaking fingers, he traced one of the lines. How could he have left her under that man’s thumb?
The scars ended just above the swell of her buttocks. She was trembling now, just a slight vibration of her body. Whether it was a reawakening fear or arousal, he didn’t know.
He pressed his fingers into the flesh of her arse and brushed his lips against her rounded cheek, breathing in the musky scent of her lust. Sliding his hand down her cleft, he felt her, still so slick and hot.
His fingers skated back through her drenched folds. He rubbed her gently, pushing the merest tip of his finger inside. She gasped.
Images bombarded him, of all the things he’d like to do to this woman. He could spend a lifetime searching for different ways to bring her pleasure.
Reality slammed into him like a punch in the gut. In a month she would be promised to someone else. Not him. Someone who might beat her just as Munro had.
Niall couldn’t stop the low growl that emerged from his throat.
“Niall?”
He forcibly relaxed his fingers, which had clenched and dug into her flesh.
“I keep thinking of you marrying someone else,” he bit out.
“There isna anyone else,” she said quietly, rolling half over so she could look at him. “There never has been.”
Her words, and the honesty in her voice, shocked him for a long moment. She’d just given him a gift, and he bowed his head, saying softly, “But there will be.”
“Nay. Never.”
He bent down and kissed her bottom where he had gripped her so tightly. She wiggled against his lips. He rubbed his thumb over the taut flesh, down to the crease where her arse met her thigh. His lips followed the path of his fingertips, reveling in the petal-like softness of her skin.
Her thighs were equally soft. He rubbed and explored them, moving lower to the backs of her knees, brushing them gently with his lips and fingers until she gasped.
Loving the wee sounds she made, he moved back up her body, kissing the rounded curve of her arse cheek, but he couldn’t avoid the scars. Hell, there were so many of them. Clearly, the beatings had become worse after Niall had gone. Before he’d left Dornoch, Munro’s beatings had never broken Aileen’s skin, as far as he knew.
Who had cared for her wounds? Who had held her through her pain? It killed him that he wasn’t there. That he hadn’t helped her.
Mistaking his silent fury for disgust, she twisted underneath him. “I’m sorry. I know they’re ugly—”
He pressed his hand over her back, not allowing her to move.
“Nothing about you is ugly or repugnant, do you hear me? Nothing.” He gritted his teeth. His voice had sounded harsher than he’d intended.
She stilled, and Niall swallowed hard. God, he’d let this happen. If only he’d found a way to stop it. But he’d been ineffective. Useless. Because of him, she’d suffered.
Closing his eyes, Niall imagined the beatings. He imagined her back covered with bloody, open w
ounds.
“’Tis my fault,” he choked out.
“What?” she gasped. “Nay!”
“I ought to have stopped him.”
“You couldna have.” She twisted again beneath him. “Please. Let me look at you.”
He released her, and she flipped over, half rising to wrap her arms around him as she gazed into his face.
“Understand this, Niall MacRae. Walter was a violent man. He punished me as he saw fit, and, aye, I hated him for it. But the guilt for my scars rests on no man’s conscience except for Walter Munro’s, do you understand? ’Twas his doing. No one else’s.”
“If I’d stopped him—”
Reaching up, she cupped his face in her hands. “You were half his age. A warrior, aye, but still just an untrained lad. I knew you hated him too. I knew you wanted to challenge him. I was worried he’d push you too far—’twas why I wrote my brother and told him about you.”
His eyes widened in shock. “You?” he whispered.
She nodded. “I told him of your potential. I knew he was hunting for trained guardsmen, and I knew you’d make him a loyal one.”
He just stared. He had no words. He’d never suspected this.
“You were bound to my husband, to this castle, and you did what any intelligent lad should have done. When a better, safer opportunity presented itself, you left.”
“I left you alone,” he said, his voice rough with self-derision.
Her fingers tightened over his cheeks, her eyes shining as she gazed up at him. “I was shackled to him by a sacred oath, until death. Naught could break that, not even an honorable young warrior. If you’d asked me to run away, I wouldna have gone. If you’d asked me to conspire against him, I wouldna have done it.
“You were not bound to him by unbreakable ties as I was. I was so happy you escaped from him. You suffered here.”
Niall shook his head, but he slipped his arms around her and held tight. The feel of the raised silvery lines beneath his fingertips deepened the ache in his gut.
“Never again,” he whispered. He meant it. He knew he would be forced to let her go. He understood that the Mackenzie would marry her to some high-ranked lord. He would find a way to live with that, because it was his duty to his laird.
But from now on, he would protect Lady Aileen. If any man touched her in anger, ever again, that man wouldn’t live another day to tell the tale.
But how could he stop it? If her next husband beat her, he’d probably never know. He closed his eyes as the pain of the truth ripped through him.
“Kiss me,” she whispered. “Please, Niall.”
He touched his lips to hers, at first seeking with desperate tenderness, and slowly allowing all his regret to flow out from the kiss. He nipped at her soft lips, sucked them between his teeth, and explored her sweetness with his tongue. The kiss evolved from a question to a claiming. As he kissed her, he settled her onto her back on the bed with him over her, resting his weight on one elbow while the other stroked her silky skin.
Easing his hand between her legs, he cupped her in his palm. Moaning, she ground wantonly against the heel of his hand, scorching him with the hot, wet folds of her sex.
Oh, aye, she was ready.
He drew back to gaze down at her. Her eyes glowed as she smiled at him. It was the first time he’d seen her look truly happy.
Biting her lip, she drew her arms around him and slowly opened her legs wide in blatant invitation.
Niall held his cock at her entrance, his control so near to shattering that his legs shook. Slowly, he nudged inside, closely watching the expression on her face.
Her lips parted. She wiggled, trying to rush him along, to force him deeper, but he took his time, again savoring every delectable inch her body took him in. Finally, with one last nudge, he sheathed himself to the hilt. Aileen’s breath released with a whoosh, and her body arched up to greet him.
She was wrapped around him as tight and hot as a glove. He groaned as the pleasure spread from his cock to his ballocks and through every nerve in his body.
Then he began to move. Slowly at first, so he could revel in her body gripping him so tightly. But then the world disappeared and there was only heat and friction and the clenching that stole his breath. She wrapped her legs around his hips, opening wide for him, pushing him deeper with her heels. Her nails raked over his back, and she gasped and sighed, her sounds of pleasure ramping up his desire for her.
Staring down at her face, he thrust deep, until his pelvis ground against her. Niall’s jaw clenched as he abandoned all thoughts not having to do with the intensity of this pleasure. Pressure built in his ballocks, drawing them up tight against his body, but he grasped for a thread of control and clung to it desperately. He wanted to please her. He wanted to make it last.
Aileen wriggled beneath him, making soft keening noises. The fist of her sheath gripped him harder, viselike. He couldn’t hold on, not for much longer. Sweat beaded on his temples. Her movements became more desperate. Her lips parted, and her eyes squeezed shut. Suddenly, she stiffened. Her nails dug into his back, and she cried out.
There it was again, that glorious pulsing. All around the most sensitive part of him, and he felt her everywhere—through him, over him, deep inside at the very core of his being. Niall rode the wave, and the taut thread of his control unraveled. In the midst of it, his own dam broke. With pulses that made him shudder all the way to his toes, he released his seed deep into her body.
With the last of the contractions, Niall collapsed onto his forearms. Beneath him, Aileen’s arms slipped to her sides. Niall smiled at her, then brushed a kiss against her slightly parted lips. She lay relaxed and limp, like a rag doll. Fearing he would squash her, he rolled to the side and pulled her against his chest.
He gathered her more tightly against him as a dark realization coursed through him. Having her just this once had not sated him. Instead, it made him ravenous for more.
Chapter Six
Niall claimed Aileen again in the dark, cool hour before dawn. She awoke to his hands unhurriedly sliding down from her breast to between her legs. Instantly, she was wet for him. She kept her eyes closed, half in her dream but fully experiencing every sensation his fingers offered.
Niall’s lips brushed hers. “Mmm,” she murmured, opening her mouth to him but still not ready to be pulled completely from sleep. He kissed her deep and hard—a lure, a promise of the pleasure to come.
Then his cock nudged her entrance. Her arousal made the way easy, and with one strong thrust, he glided all the way in.
“Niall,” she whispered against his lips.
He pumped into her slowly, leisurely, the exquisite rub of him against her sensitive inner walls making every pore in her body cry out with pleasure.
All of a sudden, a short, jolting orgasm erupted from her core. She gasped as it ripped through her, and she reached up to clasp her fingers behind his neck.
She came fully awake as Niall found his release, groaning with every pulse of his hot seed into her. Afterward, he tucked her into his side and within a few moments had fallen back to sleep, his breathing slow and steady.
Aileen slipped away from the comfort of his arms and crept back to her chamber, where she lay awake until an anxious Jannet bustled in to prepare her for the journey to Ellandonan.
***
Gilbert bowed low before the laird and stayed down until the Mackenzie told him to rise. When he finally raised his head, he struggled to stay calm. Mackenzie looked as if he considered Gilbert’s presence a joke. His meaty lips fairly twitched with mirth.
“Come to beg for my sister again, have you, Dunbar?”
“I have not. I come to you with a proposition.”
Mackenzie’s pale eyes lighted. “A proposition, have you? I enjoy propositions. Tell me what it is.”
“As you know, the vast majority of my lands lie in the Lowlands.”
“Aye.” The laird rubbed his hands together like the greedy bastard he was.
“I might consider trading Aileen for control of those holdings, plus all of hers, including Dornoch.”
The Mackenzie’s Highland minions snickered behind him.
Gilbert gritted his teeth. Greedy Highland barbarian. Though Gilbert’s blood was English and Lowland Scots, he’d learned to live with the Highlanders. He’d inherited a Highland castle and had made his way in this godforsaken place with more success than many of their own—they were too isolated and suspicious of anyone south of their borders. That had always been and always would be to their detriment.
He twisted his lips into a false smile. “Of course I could not do that. But I have an even better proposition, I believe.”
With a tired sigh, Mackenzie shook his head, and Gilbert noticed for the first time that his hair had begun to turn gray. “What could you possibly offer me that’s better than your Lowland property?”
Gilbert took a bold step forward. Instantly, the men sitting beside the Mackenzie rose, their hands on their sword hilts. Gilbert pretended to ignore them. Instead, he smiled and leaned closer to Mackenzie. “Perhaps the key to the whole of Lowland Scotland.”
***
On the fourth day of their journey through the Highlands, Aileen watched Niall ride ahead over the snow-speckled path, sedate on his horse, his posture straight. He never looked back.
The crisp, wintery air reminded her that it was her favorite time of year—it would be Christmas in just over a month and Hogmanay a week later. It had always been a time of joy and good tidings at Dornoch before her parents’ deaths, and even when Walter had refused to allow holiday celebrations, she always tried to bring those happy memories to the forefront.
Nevertheless, her melancholy grew as they neared Ellandonan. She and Niall were truly finished with each other. Her rational mind knew that it was for the best if he acknowledged her only when politeness dictated he do so.
Still, they’d spent many of their long hours on the road talking. Niall described how he’d flourished after he’d left Dornoch. He told her about the Four Years’ War, in which he’d become her brother’s chief lieutenant. He talked about how he had made his way at Ellandonan, recruiting and training the laird’s newest men-at-arms.
A Naughty Little Christmas (Cowboys, Cops, and Kilts: 8 Seasonally Seductive Romances from Bestselling Authors) Page 33