Her fingers trembled as she unfastened her bodice, but they trembled with eagerness. He lay against the bolster and watched her with wonder. She untied the front of the gown and pulled it from her shoulders. The chemise followed. She sat half bared to his gaze.
“Rhian.”
He lifted her somehow with but the one arm. Hoisted her so his face nestled between her breasts, just where she wanted him. His mouth made a hot trail across her skin to her nipple, which he captured. She cradled his head while he suckled her, and she wondered how a woman could endure such pleasure.
“Do no’ stop, Leith. Please,” she murmured as she arched to him, urging more. “Never stop.”
“Never.” He whispered the word against her damp flesh before taking her into his mouth again. Making her part of him.
One breast and then the other, stoking the fire within her. It rose steady and strong. It rose wild.
“I need to taste ye,” she told him raggedly. When she looked into his eyes now, she saw what she felt. Hunger and flames.
She caught his face between her hands and kissed him. Good, but not enough. She kissed him deeper, and he growled. Tearing herself from his mouth, she kissed a path downward, tasting the skin at his throat, his chest, followed the trail of hair still farther. She slid her hand ahead of her till she found the bulge there.
“Rhian—”
Still not enough. She slid her hand inside his leggings and wrapped her fingers around the heat of him. Hard for her, he was.
She wanted to straddle him. To take him inside her. She caressed him instead, marveling at the smoothness, the strength.
With a gasp, he exploded, fountaining warm seed over her fingers. Her reaction—a rush of power and titillation—shocked her.
This she could do to him with a mere touch.
She wanted that to happen again, only inside her.
“Rhian,” he moaned, and drew her back up to lie on his chest. They gazed, searching, into one another’s eyes.
She saw there what she felt. Wonder. Victory. Naught of doubt.
“Beautiful lady, fro’ this moment, I am yours. Understand that? Yours alone.”
Foolish tears clogged her throat.
He said, still more devoutly, “I will no’ give ye up. Never for aught. I will no’.”
“Ye may have to go back to MacLeod. If Rory be dead—”
“Hush. Do no’ speak o’ that now. We will strike a truce. We will find a way.”
“To be together.”
“We are together.” He threaded his fingers through hers, clenched them tight. “Just like this.”
Unbreakable. A bond that twined the two of them together. Against reason, against common sense.
How strange it was that he had lived the whole of his life at MacLeod—a place she could see on a clear day. Going about his life. Practicing at arms. Paying court to other women, for she knew full well such a man had done. Laughing and drinking and enjoying.
And she here, following her more serious pursuits. Lighting fires, and putting them out. Soothing troubled waters. Taking the place of her ma, the born peacemaker. Neither of them aware of the other all those years. And now neither of them able to live without the other.
Gravely, they gazed at one another. “How can this be?” she whispered. “So strong. So complete.”
He shook his head slightly. All humor had fled his face. “I canna say. Rhian, merciful angel, promise me but one thing.”
“What is it?”
“That ye will no’ doubt me. Do no’ doubt wha’ I feel for ye. It is true.”
