Page 36 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

“I clearly would have won on my next turn, so mayhap I ought to claim my boon.”

He grinned up at her. He had her where he wanted her, and released his grip on her hair, lacing his hands behind his head as if lying on a sandbar in the hot sunshine. “Ye have me subdued, lass, so have yer way.”

That blush. He couldn’t see it in the dark, but the way she bit her lip told him her cheeks had heated.

She lifted her gaze heavenward, an exasperated gesture he was growing to love.

“I was speaking of the coin, and forcing ye to accept it, ye cretin,” she breathed against him.

Their lips were close. He once more wrapped his hand in her plait. Steady thrums throbbed southward, rousing him for the rut, rousing him to lay claim once more. “I thought ye nay lie.”

He nudged between her splayed thighs, settling his other hand upon her hip to anchor her, the one wrapped in her hair slipping along her cheek and nape. Listened to her breath hitch. Watched her amused smile persist and her eyes flutter shut as he sparked with need. As she began to undulate atop him, awkward wiggles at first as her body fought to take control from her mind, which did nothing but spear him with shards of lust.

“That’s the way, lass,” he urged, gruff praise full of heat coursing through his blood.

To mate. To be one with her again. He’d never returned to the same woman before. Never bothered to look them in the eye when he got them on their knees. He paid for a quick release and a quick forget. But ever since last night, he’d not been able to vanquish Brighde MacDonald from his blood. It was as if she’d crawled right under his skin.

He drew up her skirts, letting them fluff about her middle, as she trailed her hands from his shoulders, down to his waist, to his kilt, bearing down with more purpose on the part of him that needed sating, wanting to touch and feel her, be inside her.

His hand tangled in her plait, he palmed the back of her head, whispering huskily, “Reave what ye want from me—” Their lips collided on a groan. “And I’ll give it.”

Tongues danced. Devoured. “’Twould nay be reaving,” she breathed erratically, “if ye gave it freely.”

So delicious and soft. All day long, he’d thought of her lips as he’d battled himself about the ambush. As he’d touched her tears this morn and realized he was truly foked, he’d wanted to lose himself in her welcoming innocence. He couldn’t resist anymore. He yanked up his kilt, helping her draw up her skirts, and felt the nakedness of her crux, where he wanted to sink home.

“A babe could come of what we’ve done,” he cautioned.

She merely kissed more fervently, the floral scent from her bodice teasing his senses as he drank in her berry lips. A groan growled up his throat at the warmth and dampness that awaited him betwixt her thighs, of the feel of her gliding on him as her rolling intensified, on the sweet cry that strangled out of her throat as her nails dug into his shoulders, yanked upon his tunic, while he encapsulated her in his hold.

“Tell me ye want me, lass, and I’ll give ye my all—”

“Torm, aye, please,” she begged on a ragged whisper, palms cupping his cheeks and thumb pressed over the scab there. “One time was nay enough, and I thought I’d lost ye today…”

He heard nothing else. His hand fought free of her braid and hauled her up around her waist as his other jammed between their bodies, gripped his hilt, fought for entrance, and thrust home, hard, swift within her heat.

“Fok, sweeting,” he rumbled as she cried out into his mouth, as he swallowed every drop of her needy whine—mine—as he gritted his teeth, pain and pleasure lancing through him at how tight she felt gripping his girth.

Yet he bucked. Unable to hold still or let her control the pace, he corded his arms around her, held her to him in a death grip as he pummeled inside her, needing her.

“Brighde, sweeting, angel,” he breathed between her lips, flipping her to her back in a swift shift, bracing her as he dropped atop her and continued to thrust, as the boat rocked, as the water smacked against the hull with each swift slap of skin. “Mon ange parfait, la lumière de mes ténèbres.”

“I love how ye speak to me,” she whispered. “My poet…Torm, I need—”

“I’ll give it to ye, say what ye want and I’ll give it.”

“I want ye.”

She wove her legs around his back, as she tossed her head and gripped his face and talon and nape, her clasps frantic and restless, clawing down to his rear to spur him like a stallion. She raked her hands beneath his kilt onto his rear, beneath his tunic up his back, around his belly, scoring his muscles with her nails as he pulled against that tension, shoving up from her so her hands braced his stomach. Hoisting her thighs into his grip, he splayed his knees beneath her, pounded home. Utopia.

“Torm, I need, I…” Her cry was broken and filled with a release just out of her grasp as her head lolled helplessly, a precipice one step away from falling over.

“Grab it, my bonny lass,” he growled, hammering harder, his head dropping back, hearing her cries, feeling her nails score him further.

He collapsed atop her again. Lips crashing to hers. Hand once more grounding himself in her braid as he bit a path across her cheek and down her neck to the love bite he’d left last night, to suck upon it again. Stake his claim.

“Torm—”

“Brighde—”