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She frowned. “I imagine that made them feel as if ye did nae care about them.”
Her words struck him to his core. He had not cared about the lasses, not as he already cared for Sorcha, and he did feel guilty thinking upon that. “I did nae offer any hope for a future with me, and I made sure they understood there was nae going to be one. But that dunnae excuse how I behaved. I dunnae have excuses. All I can say is that until I held ye in my arms, I had nae ever wanted to. I had nae ever wanted to allow someone that close to me.”
She quirked her mouth. “It dunnae make ye weak to let a woman close, ye ken.”
Her words stilled him. How had she known the thoughts he had not voiced? It was astonishing to him and a gift he would defend with his life. “I ken it now,” he said gruffly, holding her tighter and running his hand through her silken hair.
They lay head to head, body to body, their hearts seemingly beating as one. When Sorcha let out a sigh, he glanced at her. Her brows dipped together in a frown. “What’s the matter, lass?”
She bit her lip, then released it and spoke. “I’m so happy, and I fear it will nae last. I feel as if our time together is borrowed.”
His fingers curled reflexively around her arm. “Dunnae fash yerself,” he said fiercely. “I vow to ye that this is just the beginning, nae the path to the end.”
She took a deep breath, as if she was going to argue something, but she released it on a whoosh. “How pretty the stars are tonight. So bright and beautiful.”
He pointed to the sky with his free hand. “Do ye see the star that shines the brightest? It looks like an eye?”
He studied her as her face became a mask of intense focus. “Aye! I see it,” she said in a breathless whisper.
He grinned, her excitement contagious. “My da always said that was the eye of the first MacLeod laird watching all his descendants and judging whether they were worthy or nae. It seemed every time I was out at night with him I saw that star, and he would say it was because I had much improvement yet to make. It got so I feared the night, which made my da furious. Once he forced me to accompany him and my brothers on a hunt in the darkest hour of the night, and when he realized I was too scairt to walk alone in the woods, he ordered all of them to leave me and ride back to Dunvegan. I was nae allowed to return until I caught the wild pig we were hunting.”
“How old were ye?” she asked, her words vibrating with anger.
He had to cast his mind back, as it had been many years since he’d thought of the night he’d shamed himself so. “Seven summers,” he replied, then shook his head. “Nay, six summers.”
“Yer father was a beast,” she gasped.
“Nay,” he said. “Harsh, but only because he wanted us to be fierce warriors.”
She suddenly shifted and climbed atop him, resting her chin on her folded hands upon his chest. Their faces were a hairsbreadth apart. “Is that how ye would train yer sons?”
“Nay,” he replied. He stilled, realizing she had made her point without him even knowing what she was doing.
She grinned. “I’m pleased to hear it.”
His body stirred with awareness of her pressed so firmly against him. God’s teeth, he needed to touch her. Thankfully, he knew no one would come for them; his men knew better than to intrude. And even if someone was foolish enough to search them out, they were well hidden, and he would hear them before he and Sorcha were seen. With a wolfish smile, he slid his hands to her back, running his fingers up and down the perfect curve that ran from the top of her bottom to the base of her neck. She shivered and moaned, and her breath quickened. An ache sprang to life in his gut, a pulsing longing to flip her onto her back, spread her legs gently, and claim her body as she had begged him to do so recently. To feel her that way, to be so deep inside her… He groaned with the painful need.
“I want ye,” he bit out, his voice husky and ragged.
She reached behind her with both her hands and brought them to the top of his, which now rested near the base of her spine. She grasped them firmly and led his hands over the delicious curve of her bottom to just below where her legs began. Pressing her hands firmly atop his, she leaned toward him and brushed her lips against his ear. “Then take me.”
He squeezed her flesh hard, flipped her onto her back as he had yearned to do, spread her legs in a deft move with his knee, and settled between her thighs. Leaning on his right hand, he used his left to tug down her bodice until her creamy, full breasts spilled out. He brought his mouth to her nipple and suckled it with one long, exquisite pull, lashing and teasing the taut bud with his tongue.
She hissed and bucked upward, arching her chest into his mouth, letting him know she liked what he was doing very much. Her hands fisted in his hair and pushed his head harder toward her chest. He chuckled, released her right bud, and showed her left bud the same attention. His blood roared in his ears, and his heart beat furiously as he settled his mouth between her thighs, and gained access to the core of what made her a woman. He lingered over her, torturing himself and her, by tasting her and teasing her into such a frenzy that she had to cover her mouth on a scream of need before he took her over the edge and offered her release.
When she lay quiet and panting, and he had put her gown back in order for her, she quirked an eyebrow at him. “That was nae what I meant when I said take me.”
“I ken,” he replied, coming to settle beside her once more. “But when I join with ye, Sorcha, it will nae be on the forest floor and things between us will be settled in a permanent way.” He didn’t want to mention marriage again, not until he was certain she would agree and until he understood fully what this woman meant to him. She was a drug. A temptress. A light in the darkness he had dwelled in, and when he looked at her or thought about her, his heart ached. But what did that mean? He sensed he’d need to know how to persuade her to be his wife if agreeing to do so still meant that he may have to go against the king.
She rolled to her knees, her hair enticingly tousled, her lips swollen and rosy from his kisses, and her eyes heavy with her own desire. “I think it only fair I give ye the same torment and release ye just gave me.”
“Ye dunnae need to convince me,” he assured her with a grin.
Her hands came to his thighs, and she gained her own access to him as he had to her. As she lowered her mouth to his staff, he could not contain the groan of pleasure that tore from deep within. She was true to her word about offering him the same exquisite torture he had given her. She took him deep within her warm mouth with hard pulls and then withdrew, stroking greedily down one side of his staff and then the other. She was tireless in her attempt to treat him as he had her, bringing him to the very edge and pulling back repeatedly with a wicked laugh.
The next time she did it, he growled, “I ken ye’re trying to break me. It will nae work. I’ll nae be joining with ye this night, but I will be finding my own release in a breath if ye dunnae give it to me. I’m dying.”
Her answer was to take him once more into her mouth and offer him pleasure unlike any he had ever known. When she was done, he gathered the little remaining strength he had and pulled her up onto his chest, then nestled her back at his side. “There is nae a doubt left in my mind that ye are truly abean bhàsail.”
