Highland Thief

by Alyson McLayne

  The lightest of touches from her own fingers made her breath catch… She couldn’t imagine the pleasure from Kerr’s fingers drifting over them, from his mouth sucking on them.

  And she wanted to know. Desperately.

  She rocked against him again, her whole body undulating, and he responded, the beast at her hip growing even bigger, harder. His arm wrapped around her back and pulled her closer, and the sensitive tips of her breasts brushed through the hair on his chest. She cried out, sharp and needy, and he woke immediately—she felt it in the sudden stillness of his body, heard it in the changed rhythm of his breathing.

  Impatiently, she stroked her hands up and over his shoulders, cupped the back of his neck, and pulled his mouth down to hers.

  Their lips touched, and he let out a growl that sent shivers down her spine and to the tips of her nose and toes. She rubbed against him as he filled her mouth, their tongues tangling and sucking. He teased the sensitive cavern in a carnal dance—in and out, rubbing and licking, teeth grinding and nibbling.

  When he pulled back for air, she was too filled with fire to stop. She trailed hot, wet kisses down his throat and laved her tongue into the dips of his clavicle—completely lost to the sensuality of the moment.

  His breath shuddered from his lungs. He cupped her head and tilted up her chin. “Isobel?” he asked roughly, his eyes heavy-lidded and dark with arousal. A flush tinged his cheeks, and his mouth was swollen.

  She answered by nipping his bottom lip before drawing it into her mouth and sucking on it.

  His hands fisted in her hair as he thrust his pelvis forward, his cock pushing upward on the inside of her hip. Holding her tight and at his mercy, he angled his head and delved back inside her mouth, taking over, commanding her until all she could do was open up to him and accept all that carnal power.

  Surrender to it.

  She writhed against him as he kissed her like a man possessed—wanting more, wanting everything—and she whimpered with need and physical pleasure.

  Her leg wrapped around his hip, and her heel pressed into his muscled backside, trying to get closer, to rub all her soft dips and curves against his brawny strength.

  Releasing her hair, he slid one hand down her body to palm her exposed breast.

  She groaned at the contact, her head falling back and eyes closing. Arching her spine, she pressed the hard, sensitive nub at the center tightly against his palm. The rough calluses drove her mad.

  “God’s blood, Isobel. You’re awake, aye?” His voice was gruff, demanding.

  A brief laugh puffed up from her lungs. “Aye.”

  “Thank Christ,” he growled and then rolled her onto her back and settled heavily between her legs.

  She let out a surprised gasp and moaned at the weight and pressure of him right where she needed it. She wrapped her arms around his back, her legs around his hips…engulfed him with her body.

  It felt like coming home.

  Lowering his head, he took her nipple into his mouth and swirled it with his tongue. Then he stretched his jaw wide and took the soft mound deep inside.

  Her eyes rolled back as he sucked on it. Then he cupped her other breast and squeezed the nipple. She cried out and bucked her hips. She couldn’t think, only ride the waves of pleasure crashing through her.

  He pressed down with his pelvis, rotating his hips in a slow, steady circle. She squirmed against him, panting as the heat and pressure built in her loins. “Kerr! Oh, God. Aye, right there. Doona stop. Whate’er you do, doona stop!”

  Fisting her hands in his hair, like he’d done to her, she tried to tug his head upward for another kiss. But after releasing her breast from his mouth, he stopped. She glanced up…and saw that he was staring at her breasts.

  A moment of uncertainty squirmed in her belly.

  Does he like them?

  They were small and teardrop-shaped, with round distended nipples. He’d rejected her once before because of their size—or that’s how it felt at the time—was he thinking the same now?

  The memories came crashing back, and the lust that had ridden her moments before fled. Her cheeks flushed, but for different reasons this time, and she tried to sit up.

  It was impossible, of course; his weight trapped her beneath him, but she kept trying—releasing her legs from around his hips and shoving on his chest.

  He glanced up, startled, and a concerned expression quickly replaced his heavy-eyed arousal. He pushed off her immediately, sitting up on his knees.

  She scooted to the top of the bed, still facing him, and wrapped the shirt she wore across her chest and over her knees.

  “What’s wrong?” He grasped her foot in his hand as if to anchor her in place, to keep her close to him. “Did I frighten you?”

  “Nay, I’m not afraid.” She tilted her chin up and knew she was giving him her haughty look, but it was an instinctive movement.

  “Then what is it? You’re upset about something. Talk to me, Isobel.”

  “I’m not upset.” Liar.

  “Then why are you giving me that look?” he asked. “You do that when…” He trailed off, and a line appeared between his eyes.

  She didn’t want to know what he was thinking…except she did. Desperately. “When what?” she asked, shrinking a little inside at the scorn she heard in her voice.

  He crawled closer to her on his knees, a determined look on his face, and trailed his fingers down her face. “When you feel vulnerable.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Nay, you do it with me often. You use it to rule too, to remind people of your authority when you’re displeased about something, but with me…”

  “With you what?” This time her voice cracked a little, and tears pricked behind her eyes. He’d moved closer again and caged her within his arms, his palms pressed to the wall on either side of her shoulders.

  She had no escape. Nowhere to hide.

  “You do it when you’re scared about something.” He said the words slowly, as if he was putting the pieces together. “And when you feel rejected.”

  She glared at him and pushed against his chest again, but this time he refused to move. “Well, you weren’t rejecting me, so your theory is wrong. If I had allowed us to continue, you would ne’er have stopped.”

  He didn’t answer at first—he just stared at her. She forced herself to remain still, her eyes focused somewhere over his shoulder.

  “That’s not true, love,” he finally said. “No matter how hard it would have been for me—for us—I would have stopped. I want us handfasted before we join our bodies together. There is no escaping that outcome for us.” He gently cupped her cheek with one hand and turned her head slightly so she looked at him. “But you’re right, I hadn’t rejected you…so why did you think I had?”

  Everything inside her froze. And then her heart began to race. She had thought that—felt it in her heart, her body.

  She dropped her gaze to her knees, which were pulled tightly against her chest. Her fingers squeezed around the material of his shirt. “You were looking at my breasts,” she said softly.

  “I remember.” His voice had roughened a little, and she glanced up again. Desire was etched in every line of his face, and those dark, hooded eyes seemed even darker, more intense.

  “Did you like them?”

  His brows raised, and an overwhelming desire to escape welled within her. Why did I ask that?

  “I’m skinny, Laird MacAlister,” she blurted out angrily. “My legs, my hips, my chest. ’Tis naught I can do about my breasts being small.”

  “Is that what this is about, Izzy?” He sounded incredulous, and she squirmed in her skin.

  She tried to duck beneath his arm but he refused to let her go, and when she continued to fight him, he slid forward to sit on her feet. Slipping his hands into her hair like he had when th
ey were kissing, he held her still and forced her chin up so he could see the truth in her expression.

  And she could see the truth in his.

  He shook his head in wonder. “The most beautiful lass in all the Highlands, Isobel MacKinnon—my Izzy—afraid I’ll see her naked and find her wanting.” He brushed his thumbs across her cheeks. “Ye wee idiot, that couldnae be further from the truth. I find everything about you, everything you do, appealing, even when you’re trying to dunk me in manure. You’re not individual bits and pieces, Isobel, you’re a whole woman, and I want you in your entirety.”

  Those damn tears pricked the backs of her eyes again. “You didn’t always think that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I was younger. You said cruel things.”

  A stricken look crossed his face. “Tell me. I knew something was wedged between us. This is it, aye? What foolish, addlepated thing did I say?”

  She sighed and dropped her head forward until her brow rested on his chest. He loosened his hands around the strands and used his fingers to stroke her scalp. It soothed her.

  “It doesn’t matter. I was fifteen. I’m sure my perspective now would be different.”

  “’Tis true, but the feelings are still there between us. Is this when you tried to kiss me at Gavin’s wedding to Cristel? I’m sorry if I was cruel. I doona remember much of it. I was deep in my cups with the lads. Gavin was the first of us to marry, and we all felt he was making a mistake.”

  She snorted. “It was a mistake, but if he hadn’t made it, we wouldnae have Ewan. Or Deirdre.”

  “Aye, ’tis also true, and well worth Gavin’s years of torment. But I still want to know what I did, lass. Please.”

  She forced her mouth to open and her tongue to work. It would be good to say the words, to exorcise the memory from her mind. “You laughed at me. Pushed me away. You told me to come find you when I’d grown a bosom—which I never did—and then you went off with a very well-endowed widow.”

  He groaned. “I’m sorry. I should have handled it better. In fairness, I was a grown man, and you were still a lass. If I had been receptive to your advances, that would have made me the kind of man my brothers and I have put down.” His muscles tensed beneath her forehead. “A man like my father.”

  She looked up at him. Those dark eyes had hardened, and his jaw had clenched.

  “I may have overreacted because of that,” he continued. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Isobel. I can only imagine I must have been…discomfited.”

  She nodded, sympathy for him welling in her breast. “I can see that now. I know you aren’t a cruel man, Kerr, and you love bairns of all ages.”

  “Including you at that age.”

  “Aye. And I adored you. But I didn’t feel like a child at fifteen. Most of the lasses I knew were already flirting with the lads, some were kissing them, some were doing more than that. One girl in the village had even married at that age.”

  “And probably had a bairn six months later.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. I canna remember. The point is…” She struggled to put her thoughts into words, to describe the strength of her feelings back then—and the gaping wound that had ripped through her young body when he’d turned and walked down that hall with another woman. “I had such certainty, back then, and…”

  “And you knew that I was meant to be yours, as surely as I know now that you are meant to be mine. Me pushing you away—laughing at you—was the greatest of betrayals.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded. “It hurt me.”

  He pulled her into his embrace. “I’m sorry, love.”

  She rested her cheek against his chest, feeling spent…yet also lighter, somehow, at the same time. Maybe she would say “yes” the next time Kerr asked her to marry him. Or maybe she would ask him.

  Aye, that sounds like me.

  “Izzy?”

  “Mmmm hmmm?” she murmured, feeling like she could stay exactly where she was forever.

  “Can we speak about your breasts now?”

  Her eyes popped open, and she yanked back her head so she could see his face. “What?”

  “Well, you asked me a question, and then you ne’er let me answer.”

  “What question?”

  “If I liked them.”

  “Liked what?” But she knew what he meant, and heat scorched her cheeks. Now would be a good time for a horde of Englishmen to attack.

  “Your breasts. I do like them. Verra much. I can describe them to you from memory, if you like—the velvet feel of them, the sweet honey taste, the hard round nubs at the end that almost made me lose my seed like a lad—but I’d do a better job if I could see them again.”

  She pushed on his chest—hard—and he laughed as he tipped back all the way. He gripped her waist and pulled her with him so she sat with her legs splayed over his waist, staring down at him.

  The shirt she wore gaped open. His eyes drifted down to her breasts, and his laughter turned into a sigh. She fought the urge to cover up…but at the same time, she wanted him to look at her—to feast his eyes on her body.

  It filled her with nervous excitement, like a lass about to ride a horse for the first time.

  She was exposed to him, open to him. And he was right—she felt so vulnerable. But she also felt like she’d mounted that horse and was galloping across an open field, screaming with exhilaration.

  She searched his face for clues as to what he was thinking, feeling. His cheeks and lips were tinged red, and his eyes were dark and intent—the lids at half-mast and his pupils slightly dilated.

  A vein pulsed quickly in his neck, and she slid her hand up his chest and laid her finger on it. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the feel of his blood pounding through his veins—for her.

  When he released her waist and brushed over her nipple, she sucked in a startled breath—more a moan, really—and opened her eyes to watch his thumb circle the nub in a steady, intoxicating rhythm. The rough calluses scraped across her sensitive skin and sent little forks of lightning down between her legs and to her swollen lips.

  “In case you had any doubt,” he said huskily, “the sight of your breasts, so small yet still so soft and plump, with those hard round nipples pointing out at me, makes me want to throw away all my good intentions and bury myself here.” He gripped her hip and pushed up with his pelvis, his cock rubbing against her, causing her breath to escape on a shuddering sigh. “You make me lose myself, Isobel.”

  He grasped her hands, entwining their fingers so they were palm to palm, and brought them down to rest on his chest.

  His gaze was aroused yet determined, and she had a moment of disquiet. She let her eyelids drift shut, knowing where he was going next and wanting to delay it. This was Kerr, after all.

  “Isobel, look at me.”

  She shook her head. The blissful fog she’d been floating in was almost gone.

  “Look at me.”

  He’d commanded her, but beneath the words was an entreaty that spoke to a neediness within her. She opened her eyes…and found herself lost in the dark intensity of his gaze.

  He really had such a powerful, striking face. She could stare at it for hours.

  “We canna do this…” He pushed up with his hips again, and her lips parted on a groan. “…until we do this.” He squeezed her hands. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Aye…I understand, Laird MacAlister. And I’m not happy about it.”

  His eyes jumped to hers. “Why not?”

  “Last night, I asked you to stop pressuring me about marriage, but you ne’er listened—again. You do what you want, and to hell with what I want. You’re moving too fast. I feel like you’re trying to trap me.”

  Not only him; she felt trapped by her own needs as well.

  His brow rose incredulously. “I woke
up, Isobel, and you were kissing me. More than that. I was practically inside you.”

  “Did you want me to stop?”

  He chuffed out a frustrated breath. “Of course not.”

  “Then if I wake up beside you again, I’ll do it again—if I want.”

  He squeezed her hands. “Only if you say the words, sweetling. Not before. Tell me you intend to marry me, Isobel. Commit to me. Please.”

  It felt like an ultimatum, and her jaw clenched. “You’re not listening. Besides, I havenae heard you commit to me yet.”

  Surprise flashed in his eyes. “You’re right.”

  He sat up quickly, and she let out a startled squeak. He pressed her hands tightly between their bodies, causing her breath to catch in her chest. She did not want this now, but God’s blood, a part of her wanted to hear the words.

  What will he say? How will he commit to me?

  He lifted her hand and kissed her palm, the softness of his lips against her skin making her shiver. “I want to marry you, Isobel MacKinnon. I want to join our lives and our clans together.” He kissed her other palm. “I want to have children together, to lead our people together. Isobel, I want you. I commit my life to you.” He released her and slid his hands into her hair. “Please, dearling…say you’ll marry me.”

  She hesitated, that softer side of her wanting so badly to do as he asked, to be his…to shelter against him and lead beside him, to finally know how it felt to have that big body inside of hers—God knows she’d wanted that for years.

  But another part of her felt backed into a corner, like he was controlling her—again.

  And most importantly, not once in all those heartfelt words had he told her he loved her.

  A hollow ache formed in her stomach. “Nay,” she said quickly and swung her leg over his body. She stood and hastily retied the neck of his shirt over her body.

  He stared at her, a baffled, frustrated look on his face. “Isobel—”

  She fled to the table and stood behind the chair, her hands resting on the back of it. “I think we should return.”