“God above,” he said, low and reverent and wrecked. “Look at ye. Ye’re soaked for me already, and I’ve nae laid a hand on ye.” He had to stop and breathe before he could trust his voice again. “Yer hand. Bring it down. Slow.”
She slid her hand down her belly, over the red curls below, and he talked her through the rest of the way.
“Touch yerself. Soft, to start. Run yer fingers through yer sex, feel how wet ye are. Aye. Now higher, the wee swollen spot at the top that’s achin’ for ye—ye’ll ken it when ye find it.” He saw the moment she did, saw her whole body jolt and a broken sound tear from her. “There. That’s the one. Daenae press hard. Circle it. Slow and gentle, the way I’d do it with me thumb if ye’d let me near ye.”
Her fingers began to move, and her mouth fell open. Her eyes clung to his as if his voice were the only thing tethering her to the earth.
“Good lass. That’s it. Now, slip one finger inside yerself for me—just the one, deep as it’ll go—and keep the rest where it is.” He watched her hand obey, watched her sink a finger into her slick heat and shudder, and his restraint thinned. “Tell me how it feels. Every bit of it. Daenae spare me.”
“Tight,” she gasped. “And hot, and—it isnae enough, it isnae yer hand. I want?—”
“I ken what ye want. Ye will have it every night that’s left to us, but nae tonight. Tonight, ye take yerself there for me whileI watch. Add a second finger. Aye, like that. And keep that wee circle goin’ up top. Daenae ye dare stop it.”
He guided her through every inch of it, his fist clenched bloodless in the sheets to hold it where it belonged. When her rhythm faltered, he steadied her with a word. When her courage flagged, he gave her the next quiet order to follow and felt her catch it like a hand held out in the dark.
“There,” he murmured, watching her hips lift and grind against her busy hand, watching the flush crawl up her chest and throat. “Just there. Faster now, lassie. Both at once. Daenae stop. Whatever ye do, daenae stop. Tell me how it feels.”
“It feels…” Her voice broke clean. “Ragnall, it feels like I am goin’ to?—”
“I ken. I can see it comin’. Daenae fight it. Let me see.”
He watched her come apart by inches in the firelight, her head falling back, her breath breaking into small helpless sounds, her free hand twisting in his pillow, and it was the finest and the most ruinous sight he had ever seen. He did not touch her, though it cost him more than he would pay back for weeks.
He talked her through it in that same low, relentless voice, telling her she was bonnie, telling her she was his, telling her not to stop, until she came undone completely with his name on her lips and arched up clean off the bed.
The silence after was absolute.
She lay there flushed and wrecked and astonished, her breath slowing, blinking up at the dark canopy as if she had never in her life seen it before. Ragnall lay rigid at her side with his own want gone to a physical agony, his hand still fisted bloodless in the sheets, and called on every last scrap of discipline that thirty hard years had ever taught him.
“Sleep now,” he said. His voice was not quite his own.
She turned her head. Her eyes, gone heavy and dark, found his in the firelight. “And ye?” she breathed. “Ye didnae?—”
“Sleep, Olivia.” It came out rougher than he had intended. “Daenae look at me like that. Daenae say one more word, nae one, for I am a single breath from breakin’ the only promise I’ve made ye, and if I break it the night ye’ll nae forgive me, I willnae forgive meself.” He shut his eyes against the sight of her. “Go to sleep, wife. Ye’re safe. Even from me.”
He listened to her breathing softly and steadily until she finally fell into a deep sleep, the small, wondering catch leaving her. He stayed awake beside her in the dark for a long time after, aching and unfulfilled but happier than he had any right to be, staring up at the canopy and confronting the entire ruin of himself.
I want her. God help me. I want me enemy’s daughter so bad I can scarcely draw breath around her. Worse, I like her. I wasnae supposed to like her. That was the one rule I set meself, the only one that mattered, and I’ve gone and broken it toflinders, and there’s nae a soul alive I can tell it to and nay way on this earth to undo it now.
CHAPTER 17
Olivia woke warm.
That was the first mistake. She woke feeling warm and heavy, her cheek resting on a surface that moved gently up and down in a steady rhythm—solid, bare, slightly rough with dark hair, and clearly not a pillow.
Her hand was spread flat on it. Her fingers had, at some hour of the night, found the warm skin and decided to hold on.
A chest. She was half-lying on her husband’s bare chest with her hand over his heart, which was beating slow and strong and wide awake.
A low rumble vibrated under her cheek.
“Good mornin’ to ye too, wife,” Ragnall said, sounding far too pleased with himself. “Did ye like sleepin’ on me side of the bed?”
Olivia jumped off him as if he had caught fire.
She scrambled to the far edge of the bed in a tangle of loose hair and torn wedding gown and outraged dignity, clutching the coverlet to her chest. He had the gall, the absolute brass-faced gall, to fold his arms behind his head and watch her do it with the smug, lazy satisfaction of a cat in a creamery.
“Ye were the one,” she informed him, scarlet to the very roots of her hair, “who crept to me side of the bed in the night.”
