He lowered his heavy head, trailing biting kisses down the column of her throat. His short beard, rough and stubbled, scraped hard against her delicate skin, sending shivers racing down her spine.
He bit down gently on the soft junction of her neck and shoulder, soothing the sharp sting with his tongue until Margaret squirmed beneath him, the mix of pleasure and pain overwhelming her senses.
He continued his slow descent, his lips tracing a deliberate path over her breasts. He pushed the fabric of her gown down pasther shoulders, fully exposing her to the cool air of the room and his heated gaze. The yellow firelight danced across her skin, casting her in gold and long shadows.
He didn't wait; he took a hard nipple into his mouth, his tongue swirling around the peak before he sucked hard.
Margaret arched completely off the bed, a loud cry tearing from her throat into the rafters. The sensation was too intense, too sharp to bear.
He suckled her relentlessly, his teeth grazing the sensitive flesh, sending jolts of electricity straight down to her clit. His hand between her legs never stopped its rhythm, his fingers moving in a maddening cadence, pushing her closer and closer to the very edge of the precipice.
She was trembling violently now, her entire body taut as a wire. The pleasure coiled in her belly, hot, heavy, and threatening to consume her entirely. She could hear the wet, slick sounds of his fingers moving against her flesh in the quiet chamber.
"Fergus," she moaned, her voice hoarse and unrecognizable even to her own ears. "I cannae, I'm goin' to…"
He lifted his head from her breast, his dark eyes locking onto hers with absolute authority. His chin glistened in the firelight, his lips swollen from her kisses. He looked like a predator, a mountain wolf who had finally run his prey to ground in the bracken. He smiled, a slow, wicked curve of his lips that promised everything.
"Nae yet," he said again, his voice a dark, unyielding command.
He kissed his way back up her body, his lips leaving fiery traces over her ribs. When he reached her mouth, he kissed her deeply, absorbing her desperation into his own throat.
His fingers froze inside her, buried deep, holding her just on the edge of release without letting her fall over. She whimpered into his mouth, her hips rocking desperately against his hand, craving the friction he refused her.
He eased the kiss slightly, resting his damp forehead against hers. Their breath mingled, hot, heavy, and loud in the tight space between them. The hunger in his eyes hadn't faded; if anything, it had become darker and more dangerous.
Margaret shuddered; she knew this was only the beginning of her undoing.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The room smelled of peat smoke, rain-damp stone, andher.
Fergus felt her everywhere. In the thick warmth woven through the linen bedclothes. In the heavy, copper-gold curls spread across the down pillow beneath Margaret's head. In the lingering, white-hot heat pulsing against his skin where her thighs still pressed intimately close to his.
The heavy oak shutters had been left half open to the night. Moonlight spilled through the narrow gap in pale silver ribbons, cutting across the bed in long, uneven bands of light and shadow. It touched her shoulder first. Then the soft indentation of her waist. Then lower, tracing the heavy curve of her hip beneath him with an unbearable gentleness that made his blood run slow and thick.
Fergus stayed entirely still.
His breath hitched, dropping low against hers. He could feel the quick, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest beneath his calloused palm. She was steadying now after the storm of moments before, though her pulse still leaped erratically under his thumb. Neither of them was calm. The air between them carried too much raw, heavy heat for that.
Margaret looked up at him through the dark. She didn't speak.
There was a flush of deep color in her cheeks. Her lips were swollen and slick from the intense pressure of his mouth. One thick curl had fallen across the long curve of her neck, resting directly over the swell of her breast, dark gold against her pale skin.
His gaze caught there. Locked.
God.
Something deep inside his gut tightened so much it ached. He had already touched her. More than just touched her. He had felt her whole body tremble violently beneath his, heard the raw, desperate sounds she made when she forgot her Lowland pride enough not to hide them. He had felt her short fingernails dig into his shoulders as if she did not know where to put the sheer agony of her wanting.
And still, it did not feel like enough. Still, the hunger clawed at him.
Not greedily. That would have been easier to manage. This was something worse. It was hungry in ways that had nothing to do with mere possession and everything to do with a clean, total undoing.
His hand slid down her side. His skin was rough against the silk of her waist.
Margaret inhaled sharply. The smallest, ragged catch of air escaped her wet lips. His jaw tightened until the bone clicked. He felt every minor reaction she gave him as though the nerve endings existed inside his own flesh.
The realization unsettled him more than the fiercest skirmish ever had. He had spent twenty years training his mind against weakness, distraction, and dependence of any kind. Desire was a manageable beast when it stayed simple—physical, a primitive need like hunger or exhaustion, acknowledged and controlled.
