The Highlander's Quest: A Sutherland Legacy Novella (The Sutherland Legacy Book 0)

by Eliza Knight

  “I’m going to pleasure ye with my mouth.” When he kissed the very top of her mound where her soft curls began, Julia gasped and clenched her thighs tight on his head.

  “Nay, dinna,” she murmured.

  “Aye, I’m going to, and ye’ll like it, I promise.” He met her gaze, still hazy with pleasure. Her cheeks were flushed, lips parted.

  He pried her thighs open and breathed hotly over her folds, watching the way she bit her lip to try to stifle a whimper. “If ye dinna like it, I will stop, sweetheart.”

  “All right… but I think ye’re right… I liked that already.

  Alistair chuckled and then dipped his tongue in again, teasing her folds with the tip. He nuzzled, probed, licked. Julia’s muffled whimpers grew to full-out cries of pleasure, her hands fisted in the coverlet, knuckles white. With his thumbs, he pealed her folds open, giving him fuller access to her nub of pleasure. God, she tasted like heaven. He suckled her, flicked his tongue over and over, nuzzled her folds, made love to her with his mouth like he’d never made love before.

  Julia’s thighs shook and she clenched. One fist unlatched from the coverlet to bury in his hair, holding his mouth to her center. She writhed beneath him, and when he slipped a finger inside her wet heat, her muscles squeezed him tight. She was so close…

  Alistair didn’t stop, but continued his intense ministrations until Julianna broke apart in the ultimate surrender.

  “Alistair!” she cried out as her body shook violently, eyes wide, mouth open in surprise, cheeks flushed pink.

  He smiled in pure male satisfaction. “I told ye, ye’d like it.” He gave her one more full lick for good measure, chuckling when she let out a surprised cry of pleasure.

  She nodded slowly, licking her lips. “Aye… Verra much. Can I… do the same to ye?”

  At the thought of her luscious lips wrapped around his length, Alistair’s cock surged. Already he throbbed against the mattress, and he knew he would not last if she took him in her mouth. “Next time,” he croaked.

  “On our wedding night,” she said with a wicked grin. “Ye’ll not be able to escape me then.”

  “Ye’re a vixen. I want ye so verra much,” he whispered.

  “Take me.” Julia lifted her hips in invitation.

  Alistair groaned, and moved to kneel between her warm thighs. Hands pressed to the insides of her knees, he stared down at her, all flushed and ready for him. With a tilt of his hips, his cock pressed against her slick entrance. He surged forward, burying himself to the hilt in one full thrust.

  She was exquisitely tight, surrounding him at once in a cocoon of pleasure. He fell forward onto his elbows and pressed his forehead against hers. For a moment, he was paralyzed, unable to move. He just breathed, trying to focus, to shove off the release that hovered on the verge of exploding.

  “That feels so good.” She nibbled his neck and wriggled beneath him.

  If she kept doing that… Alistair claimed her mouth, trying to distract her and himself for just a moment, but she flexed the muscles of her sex and tilted her hips up even farther. He groaned.

  “Dinna move,” he begged.

  “Am I hurting ye?”

  Alistair groaned. “Nay. Just the opposite.”

  “Oh, so ye’re saying this,” she lifted her hips again, “feels good?”

  “Och, aye. Too good.”

  She moved again, lifting her legs higher around his hips.

  Alistair tried to hold out, tried to keep his control, but the way she was moving beneath him was more than he could handle. He withdrew, then plunged back inside with increasing speed. He wanted to go slow. Wanted to drag out their pleasure, but she felt so damn good… And she was moaning, her fingers clasping his back, hips rising and falling to meet his. Julia was a natural at lovemaking. A natural at tormenting him with pleasure. He’d never been with a woman who fit him so perfectly.

  He tried to keep his pace measured, calculated to draw out her pleasure, but the vixen grew only more demanding. As soon as he felt her sex clench tight and begin fluttering, Alistair knew his intent to make love to her for hours was lost. He gritted his teeth and plunged ahead, riding out her climax.

  “Oh, so good, Alistair,” she gasped.

  Tremors shook her body, and his own shivers took hold, pleasure radiating from the base of his spine and surging forward. He quickened his pace, thrusting deep and hard until his release hit him like a gale force, crashing into him with a power he’d never felt before. A primal moan of ecstasy thrust from his throat, as his entire body shuddered against hers.

  Conscious not to crush her, he held himself upright on his elbows, but let his forehead rest against her shoulder, breathing in her feminine floral scent as he waited for his breaths to steady. Making love to Julia had been like nothing he’d ever experienced before. And he was going to get to do it again, every day for the rest of his life.

  “Julia,” he murmured, then kissed her lightly on the lips, stroked back the strands of hair that stuck to the sides of her face. “I love ye…”

  “I love ye, too, husband of mine.”

  His entire chest swelled as he gazed into her beautiful face. “Mine forever.”

  “And ever.”

  More Sutherlands!

  Are you ready for more Sutherlands? Coming Fall 2018!

  The Highlander’s Hellion

  Lady Greer has held the reputation of hellion since the moment she could walk. So, it is no wonder, that after being forbidden by her father, the Earl of Sutherland, she steals a boat and rows out into the firth anyway. What was supposed to be a relaxing autumn jaunt irrevocably changes her life when a storm ravages the chill waters. Just when she’s certain death is upon her, the sweet caress of land is at her fingertips… but so is a familiar, fearsome Highlander.

  Roderick MacCulloch, Laird of Gleann Mórinnse Castle, did not expect to find a soaked, and venomous, lass upon his shores when he is out scouting his property. When she demands he take her back to her clan, he recognizes her at once as the mischievous lass who taunted him at a festival several years prior. Perhaps he ought to give her a taste of her own medicine.

  Certain her father will be raising an army to find her, Greer will do just about anything to get home before she causes war between the Sutherlands and any other clans. When the handsome warrior says he’d be happy to escort her if she can pass three tests of skill, Greer thinks it might just be too easy. And she’s right. What was at first Roderick’s taste of revenge on the lass who humiliated him turns into a merry chase across the Highlands, that leads them both to passion… and maybe even love.

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  Excerpt from The Highlander’s Stolen Bride

  Chapter One

  Spring, 1322

  Northern England

  Eva de Clare had been told that every English lady looked forward to her wedding day. But she was pretty certain that was a lie. In her case, her wedding day was fast winning out over her worst nightmare.

  Standing in her father’s study was her betrothed—a man who’d been blackmailing her family for at least two years that she knew of. Somehow, he’d managed to wheedle his way down to this—her hand in marriage.

  Lord Belfinch stared down his nose first at her, and then her father. His thick brown hair was cropped close to his head and his face was as cleanly shaven as a sheep shorn too close to the skin, revealing pockmarks along his jaw line. Thin purple veins were visible at the plump parts of his cheeks, creating a map to his bulbous nose. Sharp, black eyes bore into her as he assessed her with a sneer of his yellowed teeth.

  This man who made her physically ill was to be her husband. Her father might as well have sentenced her to death, for she wasn’t only ill from looking at him, although he was extremely unpleasant, but rather because there was no blood pumping through his veins. Nay, a man that evil had to be filled with tar.

  Eva tried to hold in her shudder. She wished her sister, Jacqueline, was here to talk sense into their father. More th
an anything, she wished her mother was here to hide her in the woods on one of their wilderness adventures. A gust of wind banged against the closed shutters, as though her mother spoke to her from beyond the grave, or maybe tried to scare away the vile beast about to force her into marriage.

  Not a day went by that Eva didn’t mourn the loss of her mother, her dearest friend and champion. Lady Northwyck had allegedly passed away from a sweating sickness some years ago—after being abducted by the father of the man who stood in front of her.

  From what Eva had gathered, the illness had come about swiftly and ravaged her mother’s once-strong body. No matter how many times Eva tried to escape to go to her mother’s side, even if that meant she would be abducted as well, her father stopped her. She’d not even been able to say goodbye. Mother had never been sick in all the days Eva could remember. Imagining her wasting away and being helpless to do anything had only made Eva more aware of the fragileness of life.

  Eva had always wondered if her death was real or not, because just last year she’d received a letter in her mother’s hand saying that soon she would work out a plan to rescue Eva. But nothing had come of it. Her father had raged about falsehoods and trickery when he’d seen the letter. After that, any correspondence that came to her was opened and read by her father first.

  And now, it was painfully evident how much she missed her mother’s level-headedness.

  Belfinch’s blackmailing had started shortly after her mother’s death.

  With her sister married off to a lord nearer to London, and her mother gone, the only one she could argue her case with, and the only one who should protect her, was her father. But apparently, Lord Belfinch had a tight hold over her father.

  She’d discovered her father was being blackmailed by accident. She’d seen Belfinch leaving her father’s study two summers prior with a large jingling sack. Shortly thereafter, her father had levied an additional tax on their tenant farmers. Many were already struggling to make ends meet, and the tax nearly broke them. Eva had taken up the cause with her father, and when he’d stubbornly refused to back down, she’d asked about the coin he’d paid Belfinch. The look on her father’s face had been all the confirmation she’d needed. When he then admitted he didn’t have a choice, and he would not give her the reason as to why Belfinch was blackmailing him, Eva guessed it must have something to do with her mother’s disappearance. But instead, her mother’s disappearance had only been the beginning.

  Despite her pleading, her father had continued to make exorbitant payments to Belfinch without explanation. As a result, their farmers were defeated in mind and spirit, and even in body. And so was Eva. Where was her mother? Was she truly gone?

  Eva did all she could to help her people. She even wrote to her mother’s family in Scotland, but when she never heard back she assumed either her father was taking the letters or they’d not written her back. Jacqueline, too, tried to write to their family in Scotland, but when her husband found out, he burned the letter.

  After pilfering a few coins from the coin purse her father was supposed to give to Belfinch, she’d finally been able to convince a traveling bard to take a letter and send it out. Still, she’d not heard back.

  Too keep herself from going mad, Eva continued her wilderness excursions, teaching women to forage for food in the forest, since they often went without even their own portions of farmed produce. Jacqueline sent money that Eva snuck to the farmers so their children wouldn’t starve. But this couldn’t go on forever. Belfinch had to be stopped.

  But how? Was this it? Would spending the rest of her life with the lout be payment enough? And how would her people get on without her?

  There would be a revolt. The people of Northwyck would be in danger and once again, she felt completely helpless.

  Over the last few weeks while the negotiations were taking place, her father’s hair had grayed completely and lost the luster it had once held. New deep grooves had etched themselves in his face, and the whites of his eyes had gone yellow. Was it the stress of Belfinch’s noose closing around her father’s neck, or the guilt for the wrongs he’d done himself?

  “Papa,” Eva pleaded. She grasped her fingers tightly in front of her waist, wanting desperately to tell her father all the reasons this was a bad idea, but the man standing two feet away held a power over her that made her tongue dry and brittle.

  Even with the short distance between them, she felt like he was on top of her, suffocating her.

  Lord Belfinch was twice her age, and where her father had gone completely gray, this man looked to be getting younger. Not a wrinkle marred his eyes despite his years, and not a single gray strand colored his hair. There was a gleam of malice in his dark eyes that frightened her, and the way her father’s shoulders stooped as though the devil himself had given him a whipping was extremely disheartening.

  It would seem the only one who could stand up for her in this situation wasn’t her father, but herself.

  Turning from her father, she faced Lord Belfinch head on. Shoulders squared, spine straight, her stance belied the fluttering in her belly.

  “Lord Belfinch,” she started, fixing him with a steady gaze. “While I confess I do not understand the arrangement you’ve had with my father—”

  “You are correct,” he cut her off, sounding strangled, as though it took all of his willpower to keep himself from shouting.

  Eva pretended as though he’d not just interrupted. She was certain any reaction would give him the satisfaction he was looking for. “I am not chattel up for bidding. I must beseech you—”

  The man held up his hand, interjecting once more. “That is where you are wrong, young lady.”

  Eva bristled at his tone and his use of young lady, as though a lass of twenty-two summers were a mere babe. Well, in his case, she practically was. Even still, her chest tightened with anger. She stood so erect her spine might snap. It was hard for her to hold her tongue. Her mother had believed that children or women should be seen and not heard, and she’d grown up voicing her opinions, much to the irritation of her father. Lord Northwyck had indulged his wife, but could not tolerate the behavior in his children. But with Belfinch… Her throat was tight, and she lost her senses and the ability to speak.

  He rolled his eyes, disgust wrinkling his nose as he spoke low and nasally. “You see, you are chattel. Every daughter is.”

  Her belly threatened to upend its contents. Daughters were currency to him. Zounds, but if she were to actually marry him—which she swore right then and there she’d never do—Lord save her from having any daughters.

  She had to get away from him.

  “He’s right, Daughter. You must do your duty.”

  Another gust of wind rattled the shutters. Even her father, who stared hard at her as though he were mentally willing her to be quiet, jerked up as though the rattle had been just for him.

  “And this you must also understand,” Belfinch said. “I am not bidding on you, quite the contrary. Your father wants me to marry you so badly he is willing to part with a small fortune in order to see it done. I am getting paid to take you off his hands.”

  Eva opened her mouth to respond, but no sound came out. Her tongue and throat were so dry, she was certain if she were to breathe, her insides would turn to dust. How had he done it? How could he make her feel like less than nothing with a few disdainful looks and hurtful words?

  But perhaps it was not so much the power he had over her, but instead the lack of objection from her father. The fact he was allowing all of this to happen. Deep down, Eva questioned whether her father could truly want to get rid of her. In her heart of hearts, she just couldn’t believe that he would pay anyone to take her. He was being forced. That had to be it. Her father was forceful, harsh sometimes, but he couldn’t be completely without feeling, could he?

  What hold did Belfinch have over him? If he’d only trusted her enough to tell her when she’d asked those two summers ago, she might have been able to stop it.<
br />
  Feeling the telltale sign of tears prickling the backs of her eyes, Eva shifted her gaze to her father, who wouldn’t look at her.

  “Please, Papa…” She hoped her plea and the hurt she knew must be showing on her face would jar her father out of his decision.

  Before her father could answer, Lord Belfinch was once more interrupting.

  “The deed is done, my lady. The contract is signed. And I’ll teach you a lesson in contradicting me.”

  “Contracts can be broken.” The words escaped her before she had a chance to pull them back.

  Before she even knew what was happening, there was a loud crack, and her face exploded with pain.

  Eva stumbled backward, her mind a mushy jumble. Tears blinded her as the truth of what had just happened dawned on her. She caught herself, righting to her full height once more, the pound of pain in her face, the taste of blood on her tongue.

  Lord Belfinch had hit her.

  In front of her father. And her father had done nothing to stop it.

  Eva brought her hand to her face, feeling the heat of where his fist or palm had connected. She shot her father a look of pure exasperation. He was no longer looking at the floor. His gaze held hers, and he shook his head. Was she imagining it, or was it sorrow making the grooves in his face even deeper?

  “That is only a taste of what you can expect should you raise your voice to me again.” Belfinch stood before her, puffing his chest, his yellowed teeth bared.

  She hadn’t raised her voice, merely contradicted him. Done only what she’d done all her life, which was to express her point of view.

  But with a man like Lord Belfinch, any sign of disagreement would be seen as hostile. From this day forward, if the priest should give his blessing, if she was not able to escape, she would be his property, and all opinions she might have would be forfeit.