Page 37 of Sins of the Highlander

He nuzzled around her nipple, letting his warm breath tease her. Then when she made a soft sound of distress, he took her taut peak between his lips and devoured her.

Each time he suckled her, his balls clenched, poised for release.

He flicked her nipple with his tongue in rhythm with the movement of his fingers, and she stiffened, back arched, pelvis raised into his hand.

He feared he might come under his kilt.

Then she shattered beneath his touch.

He felt her inner spasms in the soft lips of her sex while her whole body shuddered with the force of her release. Her heart pounded against his hand between her legs.

Rob wondered if a body’s soul left it for a moment when the shimmering glory of bliss became too much for mortal flesh to bear. Was there a place between life and death where souls in the grip of ecstasy mingled together, a joining of spirits separate from the joining of bodies?

If such a place existed, Elspeth was there alone. Rob’s body still burned with unrelieved need.

And his head ached with daft thoughts that raced about like herring in a net.

Elspeth lay gasping, her chest rising and falling unevenly as she came back to herself from that shining place. Then she turned her head to look at him with such a trusting smile, Rob cringed inside.

A man who pleasured one woman while another flitted through his mind didn’t deserve that kind of trust.

She reached up a hand to palm his cheek.

“I never dreamed.”

He removed his hand from between her legs and smoothed down her skirt. Even though he ached to show her more, to finish their coupling and see if they could find that place where souls mingled, he was done. His cock tried to fight him, but his will held firm.

I never dreamed, she says.

Fiona hadn’t visited his dreams since he met Elspeth. He wondered if she ever would again.

***

“Almost, my lord,” Calum said, shielding his eyes against the glare of the loch. The crossbow bolt skipped over the waves and sank. The line attached to it floated for a bit before following the bolt down. If they couldn’t shoot an arrow into the yew tree on the far side of the loch, they’d never be able to rig a makeshift ferry to catch Mad Rob when he sailed back by. “Only shy by a few bow lengths. Still, a crossbow wasna meant for distance.”

Lachlan Drummond pressed his lips together in frustration as he signaled for Calum to pull the bolt back. Thanks to the attached line, at least he hadn’t lost any yet. “Ye have something against a crossbow?”

“I’ve heard my lord say they aren’t sporting, not when a bolt can slice through a man’s shield like it was butter.”

“If a man goes into battle, he ought to go to win. If he’s not canny enough to carry the most lethal weapon, he deserves to lose,” Lachlan said. He’d heard more than one man complain that a crossbow didn’t require the skill or strength of a longbow. The wicked wounds a crossbow left were enough to make it Lachlan’s weapon of choice. “A crossbow carries the day more often than not.”

Drummond reloaded his bow and shot another bolt. With the same result.

“Pity we’re no’ in battle, then,” Calum said.

“Do ye think ye can do better?”

“I dinna know, but I could try.” The Stewart’s retainer ran to fetch his longbow.

Drummond and his party had moved from the shore where they last spotted Elspeth and her captor to the rocky point jutting out into Loch Eireann. The body of water was narrow to begin with. From that jutting spit of land, it was no broader than a goodly sized river.

“If we can shoot an arrow with a line attached to it across the loch,” Calum had explained, “we can let the line rest below the water level and then pull it taut when the MacLaren comes sailing back by. If we clear the prow instead of sliding under the hull, the line will catch on the mast, and it ought to stop him dead in the water.”

“And then what?” Drummond demanded. “Lord Stewart doesn’t want us to shoot at him.”

“Aye, and he’s right. We might hit Lady Elspeth accidently,” Calum said. “Instead, we’ll build a raft and use the line to ferry ourselves out and board the boat.”

The Stewart’s man had all the answers, it seemed. So while Alistair Stewart and Drummond’s servant dismantled a henhouse for lumber to make a raft—and roasted a pair of chickens over a fire—Lachlan and Calum were trying to secure a line across the water.