The pleasure—och, the pleasure was enough to make a woman lose her mind. But above all that, she needed one thing.
I want ye inside me,she told him either aloud or in her head; she could not tell which. And when he was…
She wanted to sob for the rightness of it.
Stay,she begged him.Inside me.
She’d ended up on top of him, knees cradling his hips, joined to him with all of her. She raised her head and looked into his face. The first light came through the window. Morning. And she could see him.
This man she loved.
His fair hair lay in a tangle on the pillow. In his face remained no trace of humor. Serious, they both knew this was. A claiming. Sacred as marriage.
“Do no’ move. Do ye no’ dare move. I want to keep ye inside me.”
“No’ two persons,” he agreed gravely, “but one.”
“Aye. Leith—I had no idea I could feel this way.”
“Nor I.”
“I should let ye rest,” she said, almost weeping. “Ye be an injured man.”
“I do no’ feel injured when I am inside ye. I feel—” He shook his head slowly, unable to say.
“Strong?” she suggested.
“Like naught can harm me. Naught could touch me. I will live forever.”
“Forever wi’ me.”
“Always wi’ ye.”
“I must go out soon. I maun get up from this bed, go out and act as if—”
“As if ye ha’ no just lain wi’ the man who may or may no’ be the next chief o’ MacLeod?”
Rhian gasped. “Oh, I forgot! How could I forget? Saerla Saw that Rory is no’ dead. Injured, aye, but still alive.”
“SaerlaSaw?”
“She sought and received a Vision.”
All the breath left him in a rush. “That is good. I am no’ the man to be chief MacLeod. Though”—he hesitated—“perhaps ’tis no’ so good, for ye.”
“What is good for you is good for me.”
“But—”
“We will find a way, Leith MacLeod.”
“But—”
“Isaid, we will find a way.”
A smile lit his eyes. “Aye, m’lady. Whate’er ye say. I am ever obedient.”
*
