He slid to the left with a subtle shift, but even that small movement had her stirring, a little hum in the back of her throat. Her eyes fluttered open, blue and heavily lidded, as if she sensed him watching her. She smiled lazily, as one does when first awoken from a pleasant dream. He refused to think of another reason she might look up at him like that. One that involved no clothes and a night of undulating limbs.
“Good morn,” she murmured.
Ian cleared his throat and then grunted. Afraid to speak or move. The desire he’d had for her the night before was still there, tenfold. And he was a mere inch from her, seeing how hard he was for her.
“Thank you for helping me last night. I’ve not slept so well in a very long time.” She stretched, arching her back and pressing herself more against him, and then she gasped, her eyes flying toward his as her hips surged forward and felt the evidence of his desire he’d been trying to hide.
She might have been innocent in that she’d not yet lain with a man, but that look told him she knew exactly what an erection was.
“You…” She started but then bit her lip.
Neither of them moved. Their eyes locked. A mountain of thoughts passed, cultivating into one thought he couldn’t stop repeating: Just one more kiss.
He knew that kissing her was a mistake—especially in his current state—but this would be the last one. In a couple of days, they’d be at Alistair’s, and he could put real distance between them. Get back on the right path. Back to his future as a bachelor. To protecting Scotland and training others without the sweet torment of her as a distraction.
Until then—they had this moment for him to have one last taste.
Ian leaned in and captured her mouth, damning himself as he did so. As soon as their lips touched, a bolt of lightning struck, and he lost all sense of what was right and what was wrong.
Rhiannon eagerly kissed him back, their tongues finding each other in the middle as they slid easily back into the frenzied, passionate kiss they’d shared before. God, how he loved the taste of her. Couldn’t get enough of her. If things were different, he wouldn’t hesitate to make love to her over and over.
If things were different.
But they weren’t.
Yet, he still kept kissing her. Rolling her onto her back and pressing himself against her. Rhiannon moaned as she gripped her leg, wrapping it more tightly around him, allowing him to press the hardness of his arousal to her heated center. Ian groaned, shockwaves of pleasure rocking through him. Why he did that, he had no idea, other than instinct, because now all he could think about was sliding inside her. Claiming her.
The very last thing he should be doing.
Rhiannon was not meant for him, even if lying here like this, kissing her as though his life depended on it, felt so right. It was so very wrong.
Her hands slid over his shoulders, kneading the taut tension he harbored there. The weight of worlds seemed to melt away with her touch.
“This is madness,” he murmured against her lips, kissing her gently over and over. “I canna want ye like this.”
“I cannot either,” she said, her fingers sifting through his hair as she kissed him back.
“We need to stop,” he groaned, kissing her harder.
“We do,” she panted.
But they didn’t. If anything, telling each other they needed to stop only made them kiss more. And then his hand was slipping beneath her gown, his palm skimming the softness of her calf, the dip behind her knee, and she whimpered with pleasure. Ian groaned, his fingers pressing into the back of her thigh.
All right, that’s it. He forced himself to cease kissing her, shoving himself back onto his knees, his arse hitting his heels, and then he practically threw himself out of the tent to get her out of his line of sight. All sense of control had abandoned him, and that seemed the only way to gain some of it back.
Rhiannon’s surprised gasp echoed in the early morning, along with an angry cat mewl. He found himself staring into the eyes of Goosie as if the feline were judging him for what he’d done or maybe how he’d ended it. Wide yellow eyes, slitted black in the center. The black hair rose on her back. She hissed at him as if to say she was disappointed in his behavior.
Ian muttered an expletive under his breath and shoved himself to standing, marching a dozen paces away with his cock rock hard. He unlaced his breeches, took himself in hand, and finished the bloody business, praying it helped relieve him from the curse of desire.
But even as he spilled his seed, even as pleasure wracked his body, it felt empty. What he wanted was to be fully sheathed in the woman he’d left breathless in the tent. He cursed again, louder this time.
What was she doing to him? Not in his presence for more than a sennight and she’d already irrevocably changed him, made him question his entire philosophy on life, his future plans. How?
Ian returned to camp to find her munching on a Bannock, her cheeks still rosy from their intimate embrace, but otherwise looking as peaceful as anyone might on a beautiful summer morning in Scotland.
“Feeling better?” she asked, a slight smirk to her lips. Did she know what he’d just done?
“Nay,” he growled, snatching the Bannock she held out.
