Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03]

by Wedding for a Knight

  “Oh!” Her heart flipped helplessly at his words, and a torrent of pleasure washed through her. Sweet, sweet bliss, the likes of which she’d ne’er thought to experience. “I—I . . . distracted you?”

  Faith, she could scarce believe it.

  “You, and none other,” he assured her, lighting a flurry of soft, heated kisses along the slope of her neck, each touch of his lips on her flushed skin arousing sensations that set the world to spinning around her.

  Dear, sweet saints, indeed, but he ignited a tempest inside her that would soon be impossible to contain. Especially where her blood burned the hottest.

  He pulled back to look at her. “Then, as now, you alone held the power to stop my heart,” he told her, skimming his hands along the curving lines of her body, letting them pause at the side swells of her breasts to stroke and caress with featherlight touches. “You, and no one else, stole my breath and, aye, fired my ambitions.”

  “Your ambitions?” She could scarce find her tongue.

  “To win you,” he said, his voice thick. “To work as hard as I could to make myself worthy and viable enough to seek your hand—and then, years later, when I thought I’d met that goal, and others, I—”

  “Shush you, say no more.” She pressed two fingers across his lips. “I am yours now, as was e’er my most fervent hope and dream. And you have proved to me that you love me with the same fervor I have e’er loved you.”

  Something in his face changed upon hearing her words, and her heart dipped at the transformation. Some of the tingling warmth rippling over her woman’s flesh drew back to linger in a slow, tremulous pulsing deep inside her core . . . a tightly coiled waiting.

  “You do love me, then?” she had to ask.

  “I have dreamt of you every night of my life since I was two-and-ten.”

  He was still caressing her breasts, and now began flicking his thumbs back and forth across her nipples, tracing slow circles around their edges, the deliciousness of his touch melting her, making his no-answer answer fade into the oblivion of visceral pleasure spreading through her.

  “You dreamt of me?”

  He nodded. “Nigh every night. And if I did not, it was only because sleep eluded me. But even in those times, you were there in my heart.” That, at least, was a truth he could share. He had held her in his heart, cared deeply for her.

  He still did.

  Especially now.

  Leaning forward, he planted a wee tender kiss on the tip of her nose. “To be sure, my precious minx, your shadow walked beside me in my every waking hour.”

  She watched him from heavy-lidded eyes, leaned back to allow his stroking fingers greater access to her full, firm breasts, her body accepting what he could offer her even as the slight tremor in her voice underscored her heart’s plea for more.

  Her disappointment that he refused to tell her he loved her.

  Truth be told, he didn’t know if he did, even feared himself incapable of any emotion deeper than ambition, pride, and the hot-burning desire he felt for her.

  Her vital, voluptuous womanhood . . . her bright smile and the way her dark eyes appeared to hold the very sunfire in their depths when they glowed with excitement. Having her near made him feel alive.

  It was enough for him.

  He’d make it enough for her.

  “Aye, lady mine, I have always wanted you. Never you doubt it. ’Twas only your over-flowing coffers and the emptiness of my own that had me declaring I’d return you to Baldoon.”

  He moved his hands to slide gentle fingers to and fro in the warm softness of her breasts’ lower swells, sought to use pleasure to dispel the slight frown that creased her brow upon his mention of her coin.

  “What will it take to make you realize that a deep heart holds a thousand times more worth than the deepest of purses?” she asked him, her magnificent eyes glinting with fiery MacLean heat again.

  A joyous strumming began somewhere deep within Magnus’s chest. Not in his heart. Och, nay, not there. But close enough to make him uneasy.

  “Do you not ken I’d rather have you than all the richest nobles in the land combined?” she said, her voice strong and firm. “Shall I tell you that I enjoyed each shattered offer of marriage my brothers sought to gain for me—e’er in the hope that someday, somehow, I could be yours? Every word is true, my lord. Never you doubt it.”

  Magnus stared at her, knew without looking down that the almost-real chunk of granite sitting near their feet had just sprung a rending crack.

  A deep fissure, indeed.

  And one that made him highly uncomfortable, for if he wasn’t careful, he’d fall right into it.

  “Well?” she pushed him, reaching to light a finger through the dusting of red-gold hair on his chest. She thrust out her pretty chin, let her sheer will demand an answer. “Do you know it?”

  “If I didn’t yet, I do now,” he said, knowing himself lost. “The saints know, I would even if you hadn’t voiced the words. Your eyes talk more than plain, my lady.”

  She smiled at that. “So do yours, Magnus MacKinnon,” she declared, eyeing him boldly. “I know you love me—even if you will not admit it.”

  “Then let us waste no more time and allow me to show you how very much I . . . adore you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  GUSTS OF RAIN BUFFETED the shutters, and a cold draught swept through the narrow gaps in the wooden slatting, but the hearth fire still smoldered well enough and the peats gave off a fine, red glow, sufficiently warming the room.

  Not that Amicia needed a peat fire to warm her.

  Not this night.

  A rapturous, languid heat spooled through her. Despite the sameness of her bedchamber, everything in her world had changed.

  He was stroking her, his skillful hands melting her beneath his every caress, each light graze of his thumbs over her tightened nipples stealing her breath until it came in urgent, shallow gasps. Liquefying her.

  “Oooooh, but your hands are the sweetest magic.” She sighed, then bit hard on her lower lip, her cheeks heating.

  “You needn’t blush, minx,” he said, looking up at her as he cupped and weighed the fullness of her breasts. “Spending you bliss is my greatest wish this night and your plain speaking, your boldness, pleases me. You may always tell me what excites you—indeed, I would wish you to.”

  At his words, a great sigh rose in Amicia’s throat, a deep and sensuous purr, and she closed her eyes for a moment, savoring his touch.

  “And will you tell me what excites you?” She looked at him again, somehow getting out the words, the deep, throbbing tingles at the very center of her insisting she ask. “Do-o you like touching, p-playing with my breasts?”

  In answer, he lifted them and began palming their hardened peaks, his heavy-lidded gaze still holding hers. “There are no words to tell you what it does to me, how much it pleases me, to hold the heaviness of your breasts in my hands, Amicia—to fondle and caress them.”

  “You do not . . . do n-not think my nipples are too big?” She had to know, whether the heat staining her cheeks intensified or no. She did have over-large nipples and they’d always . . . shamed her.

  Her husband choked, the smolder in his gaze deepening to such a heated degree a flood of thrilling dampness blossomed there where she burned the hottest. Dear saints, she even caught a whiff of its tanginess—as he must’ve, too, if the slight flaring of his nostrils was any indication.

  “They are big,” she blurted, glancing down at her thrusting nipples, flustered even as her arousal had her squirming on the table edge.

  “They are perfect, lass. You are perfect. My living dream—you and only you,” he vowed, his deep voice even huskier in his passion, its buttery-rich smoothness rolling all over and through her, undoing her.

  Still watching her, he took his hands from her breasts and licked his fingers, wetting them one by one. Then, lowering his gaze, he touched his fingertips to her nipples, let the damp ease the lascivious glide of his t
humbs over the straining peaks. His own breath coming hard now, he lazily circled and rubbed, examined with careful deliberation the tight puckered flesh of her areolae.

  Overwhelming sensation streaked through her. Saints, he’d fixed his hot gaze on her nipples with intense concentration, studying them as if each wee crinkle in the tight-budded rounds held the dearest fascination for him.

  Oooooh, but he thrilled her. Truth be told, she feared she’d soon burst from the spiraling pleasure his every caress sent winding through her body.

  She knew her heart was bursting.

  His words—You and only you—were still sliding through her, over and over again, each sweet repetition searing itself into her soul and banishing endless nights of empty longing as easily as sunlight lifts an early-morning fog.

  Faith, just looking at him left her breathless with need and filled her with the fiercest, primordial yearnings.

  “Do not ever doubt my desire for you.” He lowered his head, bringing it deliciously close to the top swells of her breasts. So close that his warm breath hushed across her skin.

  “And be glad that you have such fetchingly large nipples, my minx, for they please me greatly,” he added, glancing up at her as he toyed and plucked at them.

  Amicia’s breath caught at the pleasure of the insistent little touches, the firm but gentle pullings, the quickening want low by her thighs almost unbearable now.

  Liquid fire poured through her veins, and just looking at him set her pulse to hammering. Candle glow from the night taper shone in his auburn hair, highlighting the rich-gleaming luster of the red-gold strands.

  She swallowed hard, her mouth going dry as her gaze latched onto the hard, throbbing length of him, the nest of soft, cinnamon-colored curls sheltering the heavy fullness of his manhood.

  Following her gaze, he smiled at her—the most beatific smile she’d seen on him since their youth. His dimpled smile, the well-remembered creases appearing at either side of his mouth to delight her.

  And she drank deeply of its warmth, for one giddy, breathtaking moment seeing nothing else, the very world around her seeming to fragment and vanish so she could lose herself in him.

  “You may look and examine all you wish, lovely,” he said, his own gaze lowering, drifting from her breasts to her belly and . . . lower. “I will consider myself well-blessed if you are pleased with what you see.”

  “Pleased?” Amicia’s eyes widened, heat sluicing the length of her.

  Ne’er had she seen anything more magnificent than Magnus MacKinnon in all his naked, golden glory. And ne’er had she known such a deep-burning ache to touch and feel.

  “You do more than please me, my lord,” she breathed, sheets of molten fire consuming her. “You . . . you intoxicate me.”

  He glanced at her, his smile going wicked. “And, you my sweet minx, besot me beyond all reason,” he vowed, lowering his mouth to her breast. Groaning deep in his throat, he began flicking his tongue back and forth across her hardened nipples, swirled its velvety heat round and round, testing and savoring. “The look and feel of you, the taste of your skin on my tongue, your scent. . . .”

  “My scent?” Amicia’s every nerve ending snapped to attention, a floodtide of the most delicious tingles yet racing across her most private heat. Hot, rapid spikes of them, again and again.

  She gripped the table edge, holding tight lest she slide to the floor and melt into a puddle at his feet. “Do you mean the fragrance of my bath? The little pot of heather-scented soap I use?” she asked, knowing full well he didn’t, but needing to know for sure.

  Some wild, wanton part of her burning to hear him tell her.

  Describe in his own richly sensual voice the intrinsically feminine scent that, even now, was wafting up from her very core to drift about them in a heady, musk-tinged cloud that screamed of her desire for him.

  Her arousal.

  His own unabashed need pouring off him, he pulled a nipple deep into his mouth, grazing it lightly with his teeth, then sucking deeply for a few heart-stopping moments before he released it to answer her.

  “I mean the scent of you, lass,” he murmured against her breast, the heat in his words assuring her he found the musky aroma arousing indeed.

  He lifted his head, pinned her with a look of darkest sensuality. “See you, that lusty scent we are now breathing is the very essence of you. Its dew gathers there where you burn the hottest and where your damp heat awaits to enchant and delight me.”

  Still, annoying little jabs of doubt tripped down her spine as she sniffed the chill air—sniffed as unobtrusively as she could with his hot blue gaze on her.

  But blue stare or no, her sense of smell did not desert her. The scent hung thickly in the lust-tinged air, its musky tang proving not unpleasant but pungent all the same.

  And base enough to have her cheeks flaming despite her excitement.

  “Do you truly . . . eh . . . like the scent?” Those niggling doubts wouldn’t quite let her believe it.

  “Like it?” His brows shot upward and a look of genuine incredulity spread across his handsome face. “Lass, I savor the scent of you . . . relish it.”

  Touching a finger to her lower lip, he rubbed gently, that simple gesture flooding her with sensation. “You should believe me, sweetness. Will you?” He leaned forward to nip and nuzzle the soft skin just below her ear.

  Amicia nodded, emotion tightening her throat.

  “Good, for I swear to you that the fragrance stirs me just as much as the sweet hollows and curves of your naked flesh,” he said, the husky undertones in his voice and the way he was smoothing his hands along the lower contours of her body banishing her doubts.

  “See you, a woman’s scent is highly individual and a man who lov—a man who cares deeply for his lady will recognize her scent amongst a thousand other women,” he told her, the languorous glide of his hands on her skin spilling pleasure through her.

  “So, take heed, precious, and never doubt that it besots me immeasurably to breathe in the essence of you,” he assured her, gently kneading the curving rounds of her hips and buttocks, then trailing the tips of his fingers back and forth across the slight swell at the top of her tummy.

  “A woman’s musk also reveals when a woman desires a man,” he added, the intensity of his gaze and the glow of the hearth fire on his hard-muscled body making hers go even more liquid.

  A little moan of begging acquiescence escaped her when he turned his attention to the outsides of her spread thighs—thighs he yet stood between and was now easing wider apart, slowly but deliberately opening her legs to their widest possible stretch.

  Exposing her.

  Amicia’s breath caught, her already-tingling woman’s flesh responding at once to this new and greater assault with astonishing intensity. “W-what are you doing?” she gasped, the words a breathless moan as he fastened his gaze on the heart of her. “Must my legs be so . . . so wide apart?”

  “I am readying you,” he told her, carefully urging her thighs a few inches wider. “And, aye, your legs must be opened, lass. As wide open as you can stand it, for the farther apart they are, the better exposed you are to me, and the greater will be the pleasure I can give you.”

  “I am already fair dying of the pleasure,” she blurted, the rivers of liquid golden heat pulsing through her woman’s flesh sweeping away her modesty.

  “You have not yet even tasted pleasure,” he swore, brushing a kiss across her lips. “See you, whether you are a bold, lusty lass or nay, you are yet untouched. I would be sure you are well roused enough before we move to the bed—and unless I have forgotten all I e’er learned about pleasing a woman, your enjoyment will be heightened if we first indulge in a bit of touching and caressing.”

  “And your enjoyment?” A fiercely sweet heaviness, hot and languid, began weighing her belly. “What of making you roused enough?”

  “Ah, my minx, but I told you.” He shook his auburn head. “You rouse me—just by being you. Look down at you
rself, my heart, see how beautiful you are in your arousal. Watch me touch you.”

  “Touch me there? Play with me?” she breathed, doing as he asked, the speaking of it exciting her almost as much as his intimate touch.

  “Saints, yes, but I shall play with you, lovely,” he growled, sliding his hands round to the tender insides of her thighs, caressing her with the lightest of circular strokes. Exploratory touches he worked ever higher until his fingertips just brushed the welter of curls between her thighs.

  “Ooooh!” Amicia cried, nigh shooting off the table’s edge at that first stimulating contact.

  “Shush,” he soothed, lightly toying with her lower hair, taking great care not to let even the tip of a finger touch the heat of her slick-dampened woman’s flesh. “Be at ease, and just feel . . . feel my touch and get to know my hands on you.”

  Scarce able to breathe, she watched him, looking on as he returned his hands to her thighs. Very deliberately, he smoothed down to her knees and then back up again, each bliss-spending stroke sending a new floodtide of heated tingles ripping across the hot-pulsing flesh at her core.

  “Your scent is stronger now,” he said, his voice husky with his own need. “Can you tell?”

  Oh, could she! The scent was near overpowering—a cloud of baseness pressing close around them.

  But she nodded, the whole of her body quivering with desire. Faith, the deep-stabbing ache of being so vulnerable, so fully open to his hungering gaze and questing explorations, almost made her delirious with hot-burning need.

  But another, admittedly wee part of her cringed at the imminent execution of the very thing she found so stirring.

  He was about to go down on bended knee, let his handsome face hover just above her deepest secrets, lock his blue gaze on hers and . . . scent her.

  Fill his lungs with the essence of her and intoxicate himself on her musky, female scent.

  Aye, that was what he was about to do.

  There was no denying it.

  She could see his intent written all over his bonny face. Truth be told, it stared right back at her from his dimpled, wolfish smile, the determined gleam in his eyes.