by Anna Durand
A look of pure amazement slackened his features. He gazed at my face, pumping into me once, twice, three more times before collapsing onto the bed beside me. He pulled me into his arms, cradling me against him. The aroma of heather and vanilla still permeated the air beneath the scent of sweat and sex. The sheets lay crumpled and tangled around us.
I rested my chin on his damp chest. "I've never done anything like this before. Having sex with someone I just met."
"Neither have I."
"What?" I popped my head up to scrutinize him, but he didn't look like he was kidding. "Are you serious?"
His mouth twisted into an irritated expression. "I understand why you'd think I'm some sort of Casanova, given the offer I made, but you've got me wrong."
The notion he wasn't a player set my heart to racing, my thoughts spinning around the axis of a single, forlorn hope. Could he fall for me? Cut that out this instant, you moron. He wants sex, period. But he disliked me thinking of him as a Casanova. Maybe…
Apparently, I'd learned nothing whatsoever from my affair with Presley Cichon. I chewed the inside of my cheek for a couple seconds, then then I gave in to my curiosity and peeked up at him. "So you're not an inveterate seducer?"
His entire face relaxed, his lips curving up in a lazy smile. He tugged the sheet up over us. "I've never been called an inveterate anything, much less a seducer."
"How many — " I averted my gaze to his pecs, lips clamped between my teeth. "Sorry, I was about to ask something impertinent and personal."
One big, warm hand came up to stroke my hair. In a tone far too tender for our arrangement, he murmured, "Ask away."
I rolled my eyes up to meet his. "What about the no-personal-questions mandate?"
"Considering everything I've just done to you… " His smile broadened, crinkling the skin around his brilliant eyes. "I think we can temporarily suspend the rules."
My heart leapt. Really. It felt like it might spring out of my chest to do cartwheels on the bed. Haven't learned a damn thing. Maybe I was an idiot, but I couldn't pass up this chance. Scrolling my index finger round and round on his chest, my gaze ensnared by the flickering candlelight that danced in his shimmering, jewel-like eyes, I asked my question. "How many women have you slept with?"
"In my life? Six, including you."
My finger froze. I arched my brows and said, in a tone I hoped came out sexily teasing, "Only six? You're so ancient, I figured you must've had fifty or sixty, at least."
Lachlan tapped his fingertip on my nose. "Very funny. I was married for twelve years, and before that, I was selective. I had to care for a woman to take her to my bed."
"And now you're slumming it with me."
His jaw snapped shut with an audible click. He stared at me, hissing a breath out his nostrils, for several long seconds. "Never refer to what we do together as slumming. You're not a prostitute."
"But you don't care about me. You don't even know me."
"I — " He ran a hand over his face, then pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, his eyes closed. When he looked at me again, his expression was shuttered, unreadable. "I like you, Erica. And I want you. Can that be enough?"
"Well, that was our agreement. Sex only." The odd tension between us had my stomach churning, and the lovely languidness I'd been enjoying began to disintegrate. I had to change the mood, fast. My cheek on his skin, I listened to the rapid beat of his heart. "It's your turn. Ask an impertinent question."
He dragged his fingers down my spine, swiping them across each notch, until his hand came to rest over the dimple of my buttocks. "How many men have you been with?"
"Three, counting you."
"One of them would be the bawbag who bullied you."
"Presley? Yes. Unfortunately."
Lachlan's hand stiffened on my backside. "I've no right to feel this way, but I hate thinking of you with him."
"So do I." My shudder was only part fake. I couldn't believe I'd ever let Presley touch me. My skin crawled at the memory of our nights together, though at the time I'd enjoyed being with him. What a fool I'd been. I believed he cared about me, wanted me, needed me. The discomfort faded swiftly, though, as I realized the import of what Lachlan had just told me.
He hated thinking of me with another man. A dangerous little ember of hope sparked inside me.
"Enough personal questions," Lachlan said, sliding his hand down to squeeze my butt. "Shall we get back to the fun?"
"Absolutely." I slung my leg over his, my nipples skating across his chest, hardening from the light friction. He was rousing too, as evidenced by the sheet tenting over his crotch. "Next are you going to tie me up?"
"What?" He gripped my chin, rotating my face toward him. "I would never do anything that might possibly hurt you."
"I just wondered, because you held my wrists earlier. More than once."
His eyes closed for a moment, his lips tight. When he looked at me again, his gaze conveyed tenderness, with a hint of a playful glimmer. "I was trying to keep you from clawing my head."
My heart skipped. "Did I hurt you?"
"No, but it was awfully distracting."
"Oh." I splayed my fingers over his chest. "Thank you."
He squinted at me. "For what?"
"I begged you to fuck me and you did." I cuddled closer. "It was the best sex of my life."
"First of all," he said, smoothing a hair from my face, "you didn't beg. You commanded. And I must obey the bonniest, sexiest lass I've ever met." He fingers roamed down my arm. "It was the best sex of my life too. No thanks are necessary."
Bonniest. Sexiest. My body responded to those words as if he'd shoved his hand between my thighs again — with a delicious, tingling heat.
A smirk tightened his lips. "Again?"
I gazed up at him through my lashes. "How did you know?"
"Because you're looking at me like you could devour me in one bite." He grabbed my ass in a possessive grip. "I could devour you for sure."
"Then please, feel free. Tonight, think of me as your all-you-can-eat buffet." I nodded at his blossoming arousal. "Don't let that go to waste."
He gave a mock yawn. "Maybe I'm too exhausted. You are a handful."
I grabbed a condom packet from the table. His stiffening erection prodded my backside as he rolled over onto his side behind me. When I lay down on my back, he settled a possessive arm over my belly. His smile was slow and sensual, smoldering with a fire that burned only for me. My skin tightened. I sprang upright, stripped the bed sheet away from his body, and straddled him. His hands settled on my thighs, caressing up and down, exerting more pressure with each pass, his fingers massaging deep into my flesh. Hovering above him, I raised the condom packet to my lips.
Lachlan arched one brow as if dubious, but he'd stopped breathing. His lips parted, his tongue caught between his teeth. His penis bobbed between my spread thighs. My breath hitched, my arousal exploded in a flood of liquid heat.
"Ah Christ," he groaned. "You are going to kill me."
"No." I ran the condom packet over my lower lip. "Just torture you the way you tortured me. Make you beg. Get you so hard you can't think and the only thing you can manage to say is please, Erica, please."
He gripped my thighs, right under my hips, his thumbs nudging my mound. "Please, my sweet Erica, my erotic goddess, please."
"That'll do too." The words came out breathless. I loved it when he said my name that way, all smoky and soft, as if he were whispering an incantation, a love spell woven around the two of us.
I ripped the foil packet with my teeth.
Lachlan's eyed flared wide, then drifted half closed. He pulled gently, urging my knees to bend just enough my sex lowered to within inches of his erection. His shaft jutted against my inner thigh, rubbing a drop of moisture from its reddened tip onto my skin. He eased one hand between my legs, his fingers grazing my mound as his thumb brushed my clitoris with shiver-inducing effect. "Ye are for certain the bonniest, sexiest woman on e
arth."
"You said that already." I rolled the condom down the rigid length of him, taking my time as I sheathed his velvety flesh. When my fingertips skated over his balls, he hissed in a breath, hips wriggling. He tried to pull me down closer, with his hand on my thigh, but I rose up instead. His look of pure desperation and carnal hunger had my nipples aching and need spiking through my sex. His forehead crimped, his mouth went tight.
I did this to him. I made him crave me so badly he couldn't catch his breath. Excitement electrified my skin, awakening goose bumps that spread up my arms and out over the rest of my body.
"Ah, gràidh, ahm begging ye — " He hissed in a breath, scraping his thumb over my clit and down my cleft. When I gasped at the riot of sensations, he gritted his teeth. "Yer killing me."
"Said that before." I curled my fingers around his impressive erection, gliding my hand up and down, the ribbed condom slippery against my palm. "Don't you have anything new to say?"
He swallowed audibly. "The facts bear repeating."
I sank down onto his shaft, taking him all the way. It felt so good I moaned. He grasped my hips, his fingers digging in. He stared at me with the intensity of a cougar eying its prey. I laid my hands on his chest, bracing myself, and rode him with languid strokes, watching his shaft slide in and out. Never in my life had I mounted a man, never had I suggested it, never had I felt so at ease being naked with a lover that I dared do anything so audacious. This was me — Erica the boring, Erica the conservative — in control of a strapping giant of a man, doling out his gratification and wringing every last ounce of mine from his scorching-hot body. I intended to savor this for as long as possible, to make Lachlan as wild for me as I was for him.
He hissed through his teeth. "You're so wet."
"You told me that already too." I threw my head back, drowning in the bliss of our bodies merging, of him buried inside me with each thrust.
He bucked up just as I slammed down and gave a choked shout. "Can't be original when yer driving me mad." He clutched my hips to him as he bucked into me again. "Ah! Faster, lass, faster."
I rose up off of his shaft, gazing down on him, marveling at the gloriously impassioned man beneath me, at my mercy. My strong Highlander darted his gaze over me, eyes feverish. Pained wrinkles cinched tight above his nose. The pleasure escalating within me seared my body, and his blatant urgency turned me on even more. He was crazed for me. I had the upper hand. And I wanted only one thing — to make us both convulse from earth-shattering orgasms.
Swaying my hips, I took my swollen breasts in my palms and pinched the nipples.
Lachlan huffed short breaths, his skin glossy with sweat. His voice was rough, strained. "Erica, have mercy on me."
"Never."
Chapter Fifteen
I impaled myself on his rock-hard shaft, crying out from the blast of pleasure. Our bodies slapped together in a frantic rhythm punctuated by his grunts and my hoarse cries. My hair flapped around me, fanned over my cheeks, tickled my throat. A memory crashed over me, of the feather Lachlan teased me with while I was blindfolded, and my body flashed back to the intensity of that moment, the wild abandon it provoked in me. I ground my sex into him, driving him deeper than ever, my every muscle tensing for the climax.
Lachlan let out an explosive growl, clamping my hips down, and punched into me. Half his body lifted off the bed with the force of his thrust. We slammed back down onto the mattress still joined, the concussion plunging me onto him in the instant he came. He pulsed inside me. His yells echoed through the house. Then his thumb found my clit, rubbing and rolling it, his fingers curled over my mound.
Frantically, I rode him, with his thumb tormenting me, bound to his shaft by his powerful hands. With a power I'd never experienced before, I crashed over the edge. My sex clenched around him, my whole body contracting. The ecstasy of my orgasm unleashed primal, unbridled cries from deep inside me. By the time the final wave ebbed, my throat was dry and I was panting for air.
I slumped onto Lachlan's chest, spent and satisfied beyond description. He glided his hands down my back and up again to comb his fingers through my hair. The gentle sweeping of his fingers on my scalp soothed me into the weightless trance between sleep and wakefulness. I summoned my voice with great effort and whispered against his chest. "Thank you for dinner — and the virtual tour of Scotland."
"You're welcome." Still combing his fingers through my hair, he lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed each knuckle. "I'd be honored to take you to dinner tomorrow night."
"Mmm." Words, and thoughts, fled me. I knew only the joy of this man's body, his touch, his voice.
"A proper dinner." He laced my hair between his fingers. "Nothing like the club the other night."
My mind stirred at the mention of the club and the memories it triggered. Magnificent Lachlan steadying me on my ridiculous stilettos. His amused expression. The whisky. How he'd tasted when I sneaked my tongue into his mouth. In the present, I smiled up at him. "I would love to have dinner with you."
"I'll be honored to escort you."
"Honored? You're being sarcastic, right?"
"Of course not. You are an elegant, captivating woman." He slapped my ass and I yelped. "You're also fantastic in bed. I lucked out when I picked you for my holiday fling. And you lucked out too, since you admit I give you the best orgasms of your life." His mouth stretched taut in a barely restrained grin. "I supposed you ought to thank me after all."
I smacked his chest, though not hard. "Arrogant Scot."
"Cheeky American."
We both laughed.
A moment later, he eased me off him so he could retrieve the bottle of Talisker whisky he'd stashed on the floor, beside the wooden chest, along with a round, black box. Lachlan handed me it to me. "Highland chocolates from Iain Burnett. These are caramels, as rich and silky as you."
I peeled the box open and nearly dropped it when I saw the perfect little chocolate hearts nestled inside. Hearts. Romantic candies. "Uh, thanks. I love caramel."
"You don't look pleased."
Lifting my gaze to his, I mustered a smile for him. "I am pleased. These look yummy."
He pulled me down beside him and we reclined in bed together, the sheets covering us from the hips down. I snagged his shirt from the floor and donned it, while he went topless — which was fine with me. I adored his chiseled chest. I adored his body, period. And his eyes. And his smile, his laugh, his affection for my dog, his tenderness with me, the chocolate hearts, the way he called me gràidh. That strange heaviness in my chest returned.
Lachlan touched a chocolate to my lips. "Open up."
I complied and he slipped the candy onto my tongue. I sealed my mouth around it, not chewing, letting the confection warm to my body temperature and dissolve, the succulent sweetness a pleasure almost as satisfying as Lachlan's body. I began to chew with languorous indulgence, releasing the savory, decadent caramel sheltered inside the chocolate shell. It drizzled over my tongue, a sweet and sensuous delight, and I moaned my appreciation.
Lachlan cleared his throat and shifted his hips under the blanket. A suspicious lump had appeared under the covers. I swallowed the remnants of the candy with a rapturous sigh. He licked his lips and poured whisky into a glass, then downed it in one swig. He repeated the process twice more.
"You okay?" I asked.
"If I don't drink myself into a stupor — " He decanted more amber liquid into his glass. " — I'll take you again."
"And that's a bad thing."
He clapped the glass down on the bedside table. "I've never made love to a woman more than twice in one night."
"I've never been made love to more than twice in a night, so we're even." I snagged the whisky bottle from him and gulped it straight from the mouth. When the whisky burn hit, I shook my whole body in an exaggerated shudder, my lips flapping. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. "Let's break new ground together. What do you say?"
Eyes stormy, he tore the bottle fr
om my grasp and smacked it onto the table. "I must obey, milady."
"My slave?" I skimmed my hand down his chest to the bulge growing under the sheets. "Oooh, I could get to like this."
I took another gulp from the bottle. He surged toward me, lashing his tongue across my lips to lap up the traces of whisky. In that sultry tone he'd perfected, he said, "Heavenly."
Setting the bottle down, I leaned back against the headboard. "How about tomorrow I give you the grand tour of Chicago? I mean, you're here on vacation, so you should experience the city."
"With you as my tour guide, I'd follow anywhere." His gaze wandered down my body to my behind. "Since tour guides walk in front, I'll get to admire your lovely erse all day long."
"Hate to burst your bubble, but we'll be walking side by side."
"Even better." He shoved a hand under my ass. "I get to hold your lovely erse all day."
I slapped his arm. Reluctantly, he pulled it away. I threaded my fingers through his, loving his firm-yet-gentle grasp when he curled his fingers around my hand. "Tomorrow, I'll show you all my favorite places in the Windy City."
"Can't think of a better way to spend the day." He brushed a kiss across my lips, exciting my skin with the barest touch. "Thank you."
"Wait till you see where I take you before you thank me."
"I appreciate the offer." He lifted my hand to his lips, feathering kisses over my knuckles one by one. "But the taking bit can happen right now."
"Well, get to it, mister."
Lachlan scooped me up in his arms and laid me down on my back, flat on the mattress with the pillow tucked under my head. He slithered up my body, covering me inch by inch with his own body, muscles flexing, skin heated, his erection hard against my yielding flesh. When his mouth reached my ear, his breaths teased my skin. "Time to break new ground."
"Three times in one night?" I raked my tongue over his throat, over that tender spot where jaw met neck. "Are you sure you're up for this, an old man like you?"
