The Dark Highlander

by Karen Marie Moning

  His grip was tight on her waist, almost painful, his body rigid behind hers. The sheer size of him was daunting, being clutched between his powerful thighs, held tightly to his broad chest, made her feel delicate and overwhelmed. He seemed different in his own century, and she wondered how he’d ever passed as a twenty-first century man. He was all warrior and imperious command. His was regal Celtic blood, hot and passionate. He was man enough to swing the massive claymores that decorated the walls in The Cloisters. Man enough to survive, even thrive in such a rugged, untamed land.

  She’d hardly noticed his silence when they’d first rode out, too fascinated by the vista, but now it was a chill wind behind her making her skin prickle.

  “Why are we stopping here?” she asked nervously when he slowed the horse to a trot near a copse of rowan trees.

  His reply was a soft, biting laugh as he shifted in the saddle so the hard thickness of him rubbed briefly against her bottom. Despite how nervous he was making her, lust filled her to a dizzying degree. There were questions, zillions of questions she should ask, and suddenly she couldn’t recall a single one. Her mind had blanked alarmingly when he’d rubbed against her.

  He reined in the stallion, dropped to the ground, and dragged her from its back. Off balance, she fell into his arms and he crushed her mouth with a hot, savage kiss.

  Then he shoved her away, leaving her gasping for breath and clutching at air. She stood, watching with wide eyes as he grabbed a folded length of plaid from behind the saddle. Without a word he dropped it to the ground, spreading it with the toe of his boot. He slapped the stallion lightly on the rump, driving it away.

  “I thought you told Silvan you were taking me to see a medieval village. What are you doing, Dageus?” she managed. She knew what he was doing. She could practically smell it on him—sex and lust and ruthless determination.

  No matter that she was ready for him, she backed away a few steps. Couldn’t help it. Then a few more. Tiny breaths slammed into each other, clotting in her throat. That danger she’d sensed in him so many times before had escalated to an extreme pitch.

  His gaze was mocking. A strange flash of temper and impatience whipped through his eyes. “You had your hand wrapped around my cock last eve, Chloe, and you want to know what I’m doing? What do you think I’m doing?” he purred with a baring of teeth that only a fool would term a smile.

  Nostrils flaring, he stalked toward her and paced a slow circle around her. Stripping the thong from his hair, he raked his hands through the braid, freeing it. It spilled in waves of midnight around his body. The beast is loose, Chloe thought with a bone-melting surge of excitement. She pivoted slowly to keep pace with him. She was too nervous to allow him at her back.

  He fisted a hand in his shirt behind his neck, yanked it over his head and flung it to the ground.

  The air left her lungs in a great whoosh of breath. Dressed in nothing but black leather trews, hair falling about his savage face, he was forbiddingly beautiful. When he bent and stripped off his boots, the muscles in his powerful back and wide shoulders rippled, reminding her that he was twice her size, his arms were bands of steel, his body a meticulously honed machine.

  Something about him is different. . . .

  It took her a few moments to understand what it was. For the first time, she was seeing him without his eternal reserve and icy control. His gestures were no longer smoothly executed. Standing there, legs splayed, he was pure male aggression, insolent and unleashed.

  She was startled to realize she was panting softly. That big, rock-hard aggressive man who was coming unraveled was going to make love to her.

  He paced two more silent circles around her—oh, yes, there was a reckless masculine swagger in his walk—then closed in on her, his hand working at the laces of his trews. He was regarding her with mocking, possessive amusement as if he sensed she verged on fleeing, knew he could outrun her, and rather hoped she’d try.

  As his big hand undid the laces, her gaze was drawn there, down his rippling stomach to the bulge in his pants that was . . . quite large. And soon to be inside her.

  “M-maybe we should do this really slow,” she stammered. “Dageus, I think—”

  “Hush,” he snapped, as he freed himself from his trews.

  Chloe closed her mouth, staring. The sight of him in leather pants half-undone, legs spread, hard body glistening gold in the sunlight, with his thick erection pushing hungrily up would be engraved in her memory until the end of time. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t even swallow. She sure as hell wasn’t going to blink and miss a minute of it. Nearly six and a half feet of raw, pulsing man was standing there, his hot gaze raking her, as if he were contemplating which part of her to taste first. She simply stared, her heart hammering.

  “You know I’m no’ a good man,” he said, his voice deceptively gentle, belying the steel beneath it. “I’ve made no excuses. I’ve given you no pretty lies. You came with me anyway. Doona pretend you doona know what I want and doona think to deny me. Twice now you’ve tried to go back. There is no going back with me, Chloe-lass.” He hissed the last words, his lips drawing away from his teeth. “You know what I want and you want it too. You want it just the way I’m about to give it to you.”

  Chloe’s knees nearly buckled. Anticipation shivered through her. He was right. On all counts.

  He stalked. “Hard, fast, deep. When I’m done, you’ll know you’re mine. And you’ll never think of naysaying me again.”

  Another predatory step toward her.

  She didn’t even think about it, she just yielded to the instinct: her feet spun her about and she broke into a run. As if she could outrun him. As if she could outrun what she’d been trying to outrun since she’d met him—the reckless, terrifying intensity of her desire for him. As if she even wanted to. She wanted him more than was wise, more than was rational, more than was controllable.

  Still, she ran, a final symbolic resistance and—a part of her knew—she ran because she wanted him to chase her. Thrilled with the knowledge that Dageus MacKeltar was running after her and when he caught her he was going to teach her all those things his eyes had been promising. All those things she wanted so desperately to know. She sped through the tall, thick grass and he actually let her run for a time, as if he, too, were enjoying the chase. Then he was on her, taking her down to the ground on her stomach beneath him. Laughing as he took her down.

  His laughter turned into a rough growl as he stretched his big hard body the full length of hers, his erection an iron bar prodding her behind through the fabric of her gown. She wriggled, panicked by the feel of how large he was, yet he gave no quarter, wrapping his arms tightly around her, pinning hers to her sides. He rubbed himself back and forth between the cleft of her bottom, growling in a language she couldn’t understand.

  Banding her arms with one of his, he slid a hand between her body and the ground and cupped the vee of her thighs. She cried out at the shatteringly intimate touch. Every nerve in her body awakened brutally to a sharp, hungry emptiness. Muscles deep inside her bore down on nothing, aching to be filled and soothed. His strange temper, his roughness, fed a desire in her she’d not known she had. To be taken, consumed by the man. Hard and fast and without words. Every bit as animal as she’d known he was the day she’d met him.

  She liked the danger in him, she realized then. It stirred a reckless part of her she’d long denied, been a little afraid of it. The part of her that sometimes dreamed she was in The Cloisters at night and the alarm systems had failed, leaving all those glorious artifacts unprotected.

  His weight was so heavy atop her she could scarcely breathe. When his lips grazed the back of her neck, she whimpered. When his teeth closed on it in a little love-bite, she practically screamed. She was dizzyingly aroused, hot, achy, and needy. Then his big hand was on her face, a finger slipping between her lips and she sucked on it, willing to take and taste any part of him she could get. With his other hand he shoved the skirts of her gow
n up, his fingers ruthlessly probing her exposed soft folds, spreading the dampness, slipping and sliding. As the hard maleness of him prodded her bottom, he worked a finger inside her and thrust deeply.

  Chloe cried out and pushed back against his hand. Yes, oh, yes—that was what she needed! Small broken sounds escaped her lips as he deftly slid a second finger in till he reached her virgin barrier. Gently, but relentlessly, he thrust through it, covering her bare neck and shoulders with searing, open-mouthed kisses interspersed with tiny bites. The pain was fleeting, a small tearing, swiftly surpassed by the pleasure of his fingers moving inside her, his mouth hot on her skin, his powerful body rippling against hers. He was her most private fantasy come to life. She’d dreamed of this, him taking her as if there were no force on earth that could prevent it.

  None could, she thought dimly. Since the moment she’d seen him she’d known it would come to this. It had never been a question of “if,” it had always only been a question of where and when.

  Then he was nudging, thick and hard as steel, against those soft, delicate folds and she made a small helpless sound of distress. She’d seen him. She knew what was coming, and didn’t think she could take it.

  “Shh,” he crooned against her ear, thrusting forward.

  “I can’t,” she half-sobbed, as he began to push inside her. The pressure of him trying to enter was too intense.

  “Aye, you can.”

  “No!”

  “Easy lass,” he purred. He drew back out the small inch he’d gained, wrapped a hand around himself and tried again, slowly. Though she wanted desperately to have him inside her, her body resisted the intrusion. He was too big and she was simply too small. With a barely smothered oath he stopped again, then he was roughly bunching the thick folds of her gown into a wad beneath her pelvis, raising her bottom higher for him, at just such an angle.

  Then his full weight was on her again. He curled one powerful arm around her shoulders, the other around her hips.

  He rubbed himself back and forth between her legs until she was pushing wildly back against him. At this new angle she felt exposed and vulnerable, but knew it would make it easier for him to enter. When she was crying out incoherently, he pushed himself in slowly, easing inside, his breath hissing from between his teeth. She panted, struggling to accommodate the impaling thickness of him. Minutes inched by as he pushed deeper, taking every tiny bit her body yielded. Just when she was certain he’d seated himself to the hilt, that she had all of him, he pushed a final time with a rough sound, deeper still, and she made helpless mewling noises.

  “I’m in you, lass,” his voice was a deep burr against her ear. “I’m part of you now.”

  God, he’d been in her since the moment she’d seen him. A larcenous thief, he’d broken and entered her, claiming residence just beneath her skin. How had she lived without this? she wondered. Without this fierce, savage intimacy, without this big intense man inside her?

  “I’m going to love you now, slow and sweet, but when you come, I’m going to fuck you the way I need to. The way I’ve been dreaming about since the moment I saw you.”

  She whimpered in reply, burning inside, desperate for him to move, to do as he promised. She wanted both: tenderness and wildness, man and animal.

  “When you bent back inside your friend’s car that day, Chloe, I wanted to be behind you, just like this. I wanted to slip your skirt up and fill you up with me. I wanted to carry you up to my penthouse and keep you in my bed and never let you go.” He groaned, a soft rough, purring sound. “And, och, when I saw your legs sticking out from beneath my bed—” He broke off, abruptly switching to a language she couldn’t understand, but the exotic dialect in his husky voice wove an erotic spell around her.

  He withdrew slowly, filled her again, thrusting in long, slow strokes, nudging deep. The largeness of him stirred nerve endings in places she’d not known existed. She could feel her climax building with each sure thrust, yet the moment she was about to reach it, he withdrew, leaving her aching and nearly sobbing with frustrated desire.

  He filled her almost lazily, purring in that strange language. He withdrew, inch by inch, with excruciating slowness, until she was gripping the grass in thick handfuls and ripping it from the ground. Till with each thrust she struggled to arch against him and take more of him, keep him inside her so she could gain her release. For a short time she thought it must be her fault it kept eluding her, or perhaps he was just too big, then she realized he was deliberately withholding it. His big hands on her hips, he was pressing her down when she tried to arch up, preventing her from controlling the pace or taking what she needed.

  “Dageus . . . please!”

  “Please what?” he purred against her ear.

  “Let me come,” she wailed.

  He laughed huskily, his hand sliding between her pelvis and the bunched fabric beneath it, prodding at her folds, exposing her taut nub. He flicked a finger over it and she almost screamed. A heartbeat passed, then two. He flicked lightly again. “Is this what you want?” he said silkily. His touch was expert, tantalizing, torturing, not quite enough, meted out with the sure skill of a man who knew a woman’s body as well as she did.

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  “Do you need me, Chloe?” Another light pass of his finger.

  “Yes!”

  “Soon,” he purred, “I’m going to taste you here.” He brushed the pad of his thumb over the hard nub.

  Chloe slammed the ground with her palms and squeezed her eyes shut. Those simple words had nearly—but not quite, damn it!—pushed her over the sweet edge.

  He pressed his lips to her ear and whispered in a sultry, erotic voice, “Do you feel like you can’t breathe without me inside you?”

  “Yes,” she sobbed, dimly aware that there was something déjà vu-ish about his words.

  “Ah, lass, that’s what I needed to hear. ’Tis yours, then, aught you want from me.” Cupping her face with his large palm he turned her head to the side and slanted his mouth over hers at the same moment he thrust deep and held, grinding his hips in circles against her bottom, pumping into her. As she arched back against him he tightened his arm around her waist and deepened the kiss, his tongue plunging in tempo with his lower body, both driving into her. The tension gripping her body suddenly exploded, flooding her with the most exquisite sensation she’d ever felt. It was different than what had happened on the plane; this was a deeper quake at the very core of her, immensely more intense, and she screamed his name as she came.

  He continued the steady thrusting until she went limp beneath him, then he drew her hips up and back, raising her to her knees and drove into her, the heavy weight of his testicles slapping against her hot, aching skin. With each thrust she whimpered, unable to prevent the broken sounds spilling from her lips.

  “Och, Christ, lass,” he hissed. Rolling her with him onto his side, he wrapped his arms around her so tightly she could scarcely breathe, and thrust. And thrust, his hips flexing powerfully behind her.

  He breathed her name when he came and the broken note in his voice, coupled with his hand moving so intimately between her legs brought her to another swift climax. When she peaked again it was so intense that the edges of darkness folded gently around her.

  When she roused from the dreamy half-doze, he was still inside her. And still hard.

  He took her to the village of Balanoch much later, which was actually a bustling little city. They ate in the central square, far from the shops on the outer perimeter that housed the smellier, noisier trades such as the tanneries, the smiths, and the butchers. Chloe was famished and ate with gusto strips of salted beef and fresh-baked bread, cheese, some kind of fruit tart, and spiced wine that went straight to her head, making her just tipsy enough that she couldn’t keep her hands off him.

  She saw things in the busy village that sealed beyond a shadow of a doubt—not that she’d really had any left—that she was in the past. The houses were wattle and daub, with tiny y
ards in which barefoot children played. The shops were constructed of stone with thatched roofs, their wide faces sporting shutters that opened horizontally, the bottom one displaying their wares. Beside the tanner’s vats, she’d watched young lads shaving skins with currier’s knives. At the blacksmith’s forge, she’d stared in fascination at a strangely compelling smith while he pounded a long length of red-hot steel, sparks flying.

  She’d peered in the single window of the goldsmith’s abode and glimpsed books therein, at which point Dageus had threatened to toss her over his shoulder if she tarried overlong. When she’d started up the stairs, he’d backed her against the door and kissed her until she lost not only her breath, but all memory of where she’d been trying to go.

  There were chandlers, weavers, potters, even an armorer and several kirks.

  She couldn’t help herself, she gaped, and a dozen times or more Dageus had gently closed her mouth with a finger beneath her chin. She lost count of how many times she muttered something inane like Ohmigod, I’m really here!

  They didn’t stay in Balanoch long, however, nowhere near long enough for Chloe to thoroughly explore; but frankly, she was more obsessed with exploring the big beautiful man who’d done things to her that made her feel as if she were coming apart at the seams.

  They stopped several “leagues” as he called them, from the village, near a copse of oak trees, beside a tumbling stream that widened into a shimmering pool.

  When he slid her from the stallion this time, his gaze was tender, his every touch a languid caress, as if wordlessly apologizing for his earlier roughness (which she hadn’t minded a bit!). And when he took her again it was in the sun-warmed pool, after he’d gently washed those parts of her he’d battered. He went slow this time, giving her dozens of hot, wet, lazy kisses, lavishing her breasts with tiny nibbles and caresses. Lying her back at the edge of the pool, slipping between her legs and hooking her calves over his shoulders so he could taste her as he’d told her earlier he would. Lapping sweetly until she was wild for him, then dragging her back into the pool and lifting her astride him. She clung to him, staring into his eyes while he filled her and became part of her again.