by Anna Durand
A tiny sob burst out of me and all the fear and tension that had kept me upright rushed out. I slumped into him, my forehead falling to his chest. He wrapped his brawny arms around me, tucking me within his comforting embrace. I was home.
He crooked a finger under my chin and raised my face to his. "Did you think I'd give up so easily? A few weeks is nothing. Told you I'd wait as long as it took, because you're worth it."
"I know, but I told you —"
"Hush." He took my face in his hands, brushing my tears away with his thumbs. "If I learned anything from Lachlan and Erica, it's that second chances come along if you're patient. And when you get a second chance with the one person you love more than anything, you jump on it."
"Erica said I… broke your heart."
"You did." He held my face, preventing me from flinching away. "Easy, mo chridhe, I'm not a weakling. I can handle a broken heart." He tilted my head back, slanting his down to within an inch of my face, those gorgeous eyes shining with love. "Now it's your job to heal it."
My finger hurt. I glanced down to find I'd been twisting the ring around my fingertip, carving out a red line in my flesh.
"You spoiled the surprise," he said, and snatched the ring away. He yanked it, snapping the chain and letting the silver links plummet to the ground. He held the ring between his thumb and forefinger. "This belongs to you."
I couldn't breathe. "You still want to marry me?"
He shook his head, the picture of affectionate exasperation. "Havenae you been listening? Ahmno letting our second chance slip away."
"You're jumping on me?"
His lips curved into the sexy smile I adored. "That'll come next, you can count on it. First…"
He dropped to one knee before me, proffering the ring, his face tilted up to behold me with undeniable love. "Calli Douglas, will you marry me?"
"Yes." I held up the appropriate finger, ready to accept the ring. "After my divorce is finalized, of course. That happens in less than seven weeks. Can you wait?"
"To marry you, yes." He slipped the ring onto my finger. "To make love to you, no."
"Get up so I can kiss you senseless, mo chridhe."
Aidan surged to his feet and pulled me into his arms. "I missed you."
"I missed you so much. Can't believe I took so long to come here."
"Thought you were going to kiss me."
I flung my arms around his neck and crushed my mouth to his, reveling in the softness of his lips, the way he yielded to me and opened for me, inviting me to plunder his mouth. I explored him with long, lazy strokes of my tongue, relishing the taste of him after two interminable weeks apart. He answered my every movement with his own, twining his tongue with mine, molding his lips to my mouth as if we were fused together. Inseparable. Inevitable.
Though we broke the kiss, his lips grazed mine as he spoke. "I love you, Calli. Would've waited forever, but I had no doubt it wouldn't take that long."
I combed my fingers through the silky waves of his hair. "We are meant for each other. No other man on earth could understand me like you do."
"Stopped thinking we don't know each other well enough, eh?"
"The letter changed everything. You have a real way with words."
"I wasn't sure you'd like what I wrote. Never said flowery things like that before."
"What you wrote made me cry." I trailed my fingertips down his cheek. "In a sad way at first, but later in a good way. I read the letter again on the plane. You amaze me, Mr. MacTaggart."
"You amaze me too, Mrs. MacTaggart."
I arched my brows. "Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren't you?"
"Always. Impulsive, remember?"
I could do nothing except laugh and kiss him and touch him — and love him, without reservation or inhibition. For the rest of our lives, for every second I had with him, I would love Aidan with all the devotion in my soul.
He glanced around, lips compressed and eyes narrowed, as if searching for something.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Looking for the closest place where I can strip you naked."
Desire rippled through me, hot and liquid. "Outside?"
"Not making love to you in my brother's house, when he's home with his wife and bairn." Aidan caught sight of something, smiled with satisfaction, and swept me up into his arms. "Found it."
He carried me toward a small grove of apple trees laden with ripe, red fruit and set me down on the grass beneath the largest tree, in the umbrella of its shadow.
"Growing apples in the Highlands," he said, settling in beside me, "is a difficult task. Almost takes a miracle to keep them growing and bearing fruit. Must be good luck to make love under the fertile bows of a Scottish apple tree."
"Are you implying this is a magic fertility tree?"
"Maybe it is." He dug a condom packet out of his pocket, holding it up. "I've been carrying this around so I'd be ready whenever you turned up. Should we use it?"
"What exactly are you asking me?"
He laid a hand over my lower belly. "Would ye like to start trying for a bairn today?"
A baby? I could've dreamed up a hundred reasons why we should wait, but none of them mattered anymore. The idea of having a child with Aidan made my heart swell.
I snatched the condom packet from his fingers and tossed it aside. "Does that answer your question?"
He chuckled. "Well enough, aye."
Lying stretched out on the green grass, elevated on my elbows, I admired the view as he shed his T-shirt. Acres of tanned skin tantalized my imagination with thoughts of tracing every line of muscle with my fingers and my tongue. My mouth watered at the prospect.
"By the way," I said, "Rade insisted on giving me a financial settlement to compensate me for the years I gave him."
Aidan paused with his jeans half unzipped. "Did he?"
"Yes. A hundred thousand dollars."
He gaped at me for several seconds, but then a grin lit up his face. "I'm marrying a rich woman."
"Does it bother you?"
"Not in the slightest."
I clasped my hands over my belly, my feet shifting in restless movements.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Even though we're not married yet," I said, "I'd like to give you some of the money, to get your business going again. We'll be sharing everything soon enough, and I don't want to wait."
He stood there in silence, hands lingering on the waistband of his pants, for a long moment.
"I could be a manly man and say no," he told me. "But I can tell you want to do this, and I can't deny my future wife anything."
"Thank you. I hope this doesn't wound your male pride."
"Donnae worry, love. Ahmno sensitive."
Yes, I'd learned that about him weeks ago. And it was one of a countless number of things I adored about him.
While he resumed unzipping and pushed his jeans down, revealing the sleek and beautiful length of his engorged penis, I observed with growing lust. "I do love watching you strip. Maybe I should stuff a few hundred-dollar bills in your waistband."
He kicked his pants away. "You get me for free. Donnae take my clothes off for money, remember?"
"Oh yes, you did mention that once upon a time."
My fiancé stood naked before me. Glorious, unashamed, towering above me like a Celtic god.
Aidan knelt over me, his knees straddling my thighs. "Time to unwrap my gift."
His gift. He was my gift too, the most precious one I'd ever received, the one I'd never asked for but couldn't live without. That night in the club, when he'd crashed into my life, I couldn't have predicted how much he would change my world. But he had known, always.
You will fall for me.
I'd keep falling over and over, every time he smiled at me or kissed me or made love to me. This wicked Highlander was mine.
Epilogue
Eight Weeks Later
I lay
naked on a king-size bed inside our new home, a two-story farmhouse a five-minute walk from Lachlan and Erica's place, watching as my husband of two hours and forty minutes kicked off his shoes. A kilt swaddled his hips, cascading down his thighs. Beneath the plaid, his ever-stiffening penis tented the kilt. Like any proud Scotsman, my Highlander had substituted a kilt for the pants but had worn the rest of the tuxedo — including the shoes and socks.
Only Aidan MacTaggart could pull off a look like that.
Now he took hold of the kilt, and with one flick of his wrist, sent it plummeting to the floor. His erection waved in the air, thick and long, the tip reddened and already damp with a drop of moisture. As usual, he'd forgone underwear.
Aidan knelt at the foot of the bed. "Wish you'd let me take you to a posh hotel. It is our wedding night. Or afternoon."
He'd whisked me away from the reception early, at my request. I needed time alone with my husband.
"Rather start our life together in the home we'll share," I said, and tickled his knee with my toes. "You know I don't care about fancy stuff. I want you. That's all I need, today and every day."
"It's all I need too." On all fours, he crawled up my body until his hands and knees straddled me. He stopped with his head over my belly. "We are going on the honeymoon, even if Lachlan did pay for it."
"Lachlan and Rory. It was their wedding gift to us." Two weeks in the south of France, at a villa on the Côte D'Azure. "Can't wait to see the French Riviera. Sure you don't mind bringing the puppies with us?"
"Wouldn't be the same without the furry lassies." He ducked his head to swipe that agile tongue over one nipple. "Though I'm glad Jamie took them for tonight, so I can have you all for myself. Cannae wait to see you lying nude on a private beach, for no one but me to see."
"You have become rather possessive of my body."
He kissed my belly. "Let me show you how much I covet your body."
I bent one knee and grazed it against his cock. "I covet yours too."
He hissed in a breath as I hooked my leg around his hip. "Thig mi air do mhuin."
"No clue what that means, but I'm game for anything."
"Means I'm coming to mount you." He laid a hand on my belly, gliding it lower and lower until his fingertips teased the hairs on my mound. "No need to fannadh anymore, unless you want me to watch."
"I want you inside me."
"Dé an doimhneachd?"
"You have got to teach me Gaelic. What's that one mean?"
"How deep."
Lifting my hips, I pressed his palm into my mound so his fingers skimmed my clitoris. "Deep as your slat can go. I want you so deep inside me I can feel you come, like you're a part of me."
"We are a part of each other, mo leannan." He thrust his hand between my folds, caressing the skin, fondling my clit. When I arched my back and moaned, he grinned. "I'm impressed you learned a Gaelic word all on your own. Slat? Never taught you that one. Where'd you learn it?"
"Rory told me."
Aidan's hand stilled, his eyes went wide. "That bloody bod ceann —"
"I'm kidding," I said, helpless not to laugh at his adorably offended expression. "Your brother's not a dickhead. But I learned slat from the Internet."
"Did you now." That hand began to stroke me again with leisurely ease, stoking my need, making me wriggle against his palm and clench my fingers in the sheets. "I'm going to show you things the Internet cannae teach ye."
"No better teacher than Aidan the Magnificent."
He pulled his hand away, glided a palm to the inside of each of my thighs, and spread me wide for him. "We come together this time."
Joined hearts, joined lives, joined bodies. He'd always taken care of my pleasure first, before taking my body, though I invariably climaxed again when his impassioned love-making drove me over the edge along with him. But this time, on our wedding night, it seemed appropriate we find our pleasure as one.
He planted his hands at either side of me, his arms straight and his face above mine. "I love you with everything I am."
"I love you, Aidan, so much."
He slid inside me, slowly, delicately, filling me until it seemed we had merged. He, a part of me. I, a part of him. Forever.
I clung to him as he began to pump his hips, pulling his cock out of me and then driving it deep inside again, the pace languid and deliciously torturous. With my heels flat on the bed, I hoisted my hips up to meet his thrusts, my mouth open on a string of moans and gasps, the desperation to come mounting like a spring wound ever tighter. He pumped faster, harder, grunting each time he lunged into me and blustering out a breath when he retreated. I locked my legs and arms around him, begging him to never stop, to make me come, to never stop.
My body went rigid, my release hovered so close I could almost taste it, the promised pleasure like a bite of a decadent dessert hovering a breath away from my lips. His hips pistoned at a frantic pace as his cock pounded into me, making me cry out.
In the instant my orgasm wrenched my body, the ecstasy flooding over me, his release pulsed inside me and he threw his head back, shouting a long litany of Gaelic. I clutched him and cried out again and again, lost in endless waves of bliss. Aidan pumped into me twice more, then shoved a hand down to massage my clit, ever determined to see my climax through to the very last. When I thought my orgasm would never end, it at last faded away on a final, shuddering wave.
He collapsed beside me and pulled me into his arms, cradled against his powerful body. We both breathed hard, nearly breathless from the incredible rapture of our love-making. With my ear pressed to his chest, I listened to his heartbeat while it gradually slowed.
"The wedding was beautiful," I said, "but this was more fun."
My thoughts traveled back to the wedding and the two of us reciting our vows atop a hillside behind Lachlan and Erica's home, surrounded by a carpet of purple heather. It seemed appropriate we join our hearts and lives on the same hill where they had taken their vows. After all, I would never have met Aidan if he hadn't gone to Dance Ardor in hopes of re-creating his brother's journey to lasting love.
"Weddings are for the guests," Aidan said. "This was for us."
"I finally got to meet the infamous Rory, but I didn't see the caber."
"He was in a good mood today, because of the wedding." Aidan shook his head. "The man needs a strong woman to shake some sense into him."
"I'm sure he'll find the right girl someday."
"Not unless she ties him up and drags him away from his office."
"Let's not talk about your family anymore tonight."
"Anything my wife wants." He rolled onto his back, taking me with him, and I wound up sprawled on him. His fingers traced small, delicate circles on my back. "Should I worry about your brother's intentions with my sister?"
I laughed, recalling the sight of Gavin and Jamie engaged in a secret conversation. They'd slipped away from the crowd at the outdoor reception — held at Lachlan and Erica's, of course — to a spot off to the side where they could have some privacy. Aidan had spotted the pair and poked me in the ribs, his lips twisted as he nodded toward Gavin and Jamie.
"What are they up to?" he'd asked me.
I'd shrugged. "No idea. Maybe a quick tryst."
He'd looked so adorably horrified at the idea. "Bad enough he had her in a hunting shack in the woods."
"Young love. What can you do?"
Back in the present, ensconced in the arms of my wicked Scot, I propped my chin on his chest and said, "Gavin and Jamie may be the next couple to tie the knot. Do you have a problem with that?"
"Not so long as he treats her right."
I raked my nails down his chest. "You mean as long as he doesn't act like the two Scotsmen I know, who seduce us American girls at first sight."
"Exactly."
A phone rang, muffled but nearby. I sat up, trying to decide if it was my phone or his. "Sounds like mine."
"Let it go
," Aidan said. "We're on holiday."
"Better check it, just to be sure."
He wriggled out from under me and marched across the room stark naked to dig my phone out from under my wedding dress, which had wound up piled in a chair. He glanced at the phone's screen and cursed in Gaelic.
"What's wrong?" I asked, sitting up.
"It's the surgery," he said, and tossed me the phone.
I caught it in one hand.
"My checkup?" A few days ago, I'd signed up with the MacTaggart family's GP, a prudent step considering we wanted to have a baby. "Probably calling to tell me the blood tests were fine. It was a standard physical, that's all."
"They called on our wedding day. Must be urgent."
"Don't turn into a worry wart. That's my job." I held the phone to my ear. "This is Calli."
"Miss Douglas —" The woman halted mid-sentence. I recognized the melodic voice of the surgery's nurse. "Pardon me. It's Mrs. MacTaggart now, isn't it? Congratulations, dearie."
"Thank you."
"We've got your blood results and there was a wee bit of a surprise. I thought you'd want to hear it right away."
"Surprise?"
"Yes." The woman made a delighted little noise. "You are pregnant, dearie."
"What?" I virtually screeched the word. "That's incredible. I thought it would take longer to happen, but this is such perfect timing."
"Congratulations, gràidh."
She'd called me darling. It would've been sweet, if I hadn't been overwhelmed by the news. "Thank you for calling. I have no idea what to say."
"Tell your husband, that's what you should do."
She said goodbye, and I said it back, not thinking anymore, acting by rote. I dropped my phone on the bed and looked at Aidan.
He grasped my face in his hands, searching my eyes. "What is it? Are you ill?"
"No, not at all." I laid my hands over his, unable to stem the tears trickling down my cheeks, and smiled. "We're having a baby, Aidan. I'm pregnant."
For a couple seconds, he stared blankly at me. Then he let out the loudest, most uproarious whoop I'd ever heard, head thrown back, arms flung wide. The whoop segued into laughter and he leaped onto the bed, bowling me over with him. Tangled in each other's arms, we laughed and cried and kissed. The kissing grew more heated, our hands began to grope, and his penis began to swell once more.
