“The devil’s had me. Is it any wonder I want to sleep in an angel’s arms?” His fingers stroked her skin as delicately as he might stroke the feathers of one of those birds. His breath nudged the base of her spine. “You can fly me straight to heaven.”
Something touched her. His mouth. Dear God, he kissed her there, and she couldn’t bear it. Bunching the blanket in her fists, she demanded, “What are you doing?”
Her voice got higher, and he murmured, “Sh. I’m not hurting you.” The air from his assurance melded with the breeze. “Can you identify that fragrance?” he asked.
“What fragrance? There’s only crushed grass.” She shut her eyes against the twin sensations of embarrassment and pleasure, and the scents of the day came to her more acutely. “The woolen blanket. The tang from the sea.”
“And you. You’re like a perfume, enticing me to sample you.” With the flat of his palms, he rubbed the muscles of her upper back, then slowly descended along her spine. He cupped her buttocks, then lightly touched one finger at the top of her cleft. She jumped, her eyes flying open.
“Don’t! That’s not nice.”
“Nice?” He chuckled. “I cannot think of anything nicer. Unless…”
That finger roved down, waking nerves she didn’t know existed. She tried to close her legs against him, but somehow he’d gotten his knee between her thighs. She gave up her last tenuous hold on dignity and tried to crawl away.
He crushed her onto the blanket with his body and with his hand on the back of her neck, turned her face to the side, and brought his face to hers. She caught a flash of his intent as he commanded, “Taste this.”
He crushed their lips together, and she tasted him. Smoky warmth and salty passion. A savor that blocked out the scents, the sights, the sounds of the day and left her wanting more of him. Just him.
Lifting himself, he rolled her over and tucked her back beneath him. The chemise was bunched under her shoulders, still draped across her front, but this time he didn’t use care in raising it. This time he just grabbed and jerked, as if he couldn’t wait to see, and when he could, he groaned. “You are perfect.” His turbulent watching devoured her. “Let me…” He urged her arms up. “I want to see it all.”
He flung the cotton garment away as if it were nothing but a rag, looking at her as if she were his fantasy come to life. Embarrassment burned away under the heat of his gaze, and pride and the first tendrils of desire took its place.
Desire. How could she recognize it?
“I take my rights, as any good man must. Don’t you remember that night in the witch’s hut?”
“I don’t. I swear I don’t.”
“Let me remind you.”
She turned her head away, denying memory, but he wouldn’t allow her to separate herself from him, or from a single moment of the day.
His hand moved deliberately, and he touched a nipple with just one fingertip. One fingertip, and her nipple tightened. Her breasts ached almost as if he’d hurt her.
But it had only been one fingertip. One incredibly gentle fingertip.
His touch didn’t feel alien. It seemed familiar, as if she’d experienced it more than once. Really experienced it, not just dreamed it at night. Not just imagined it in the day.
“Don’t you remember that night in the witch’s hut?”
He circled her nipple, watching his own movement with a fascination that seemed foolish. Foolish. She lifted her head and looked, too, and the sight of his dark hand against her fair skin captured her. Moving gradually, afraid he would stop if she made a sudden movement, she brought her arm up and pillowed her head with it.
He didn’t stop. He just looked at her face, his eyelids drooping. “What do you feel?” Slowly he expanded the circles he drew. One by one he added fingers until his whole hand brushed her. “Tell me what you feel.”
“I can’t.” He wanted her to talk, when she could scarcely drag her attention away from the growing torture deep within.
This was just like her dreams.
This was better than her dreams.
Obligingly he lifted his hand. “Does that help?”
Just like her dreams. He would take her to the edge. Then he’d stop. “Nay!” She grabbed his hand and placed it back where it belonged.
He smiled, slow and sure and hot. “This is what you want?” Cupping her, he pressed heavily.
That relieved the pressure. Not enough, but it helped. “Aye.”
He held her, then lifted his other hand. He reached for her other nipple; drew back. “Would you like me to touch you there?”
Anticipation choked her, but she managed to insist, “Aye!”
“First tell me. Tell me how you feel.”
Didn’t he understand? She couldn’t talk, much less describe—
He lifted both hands away.
“It feels good.” She spoke in a rush.
“Good?” His hands hovered close to her body. “How?”
She tried to find the words. She truly did. But all she could say was, “Really good.”
His fingertip touched her other nipple, and she almost came off the blanket. “Describe that,” he said.
“It burns.” Desperation drove her to eloquence. “Like a splash of icy rain or a winter’s wave.”
“It’s cold?”
“Not cold. Shocking. But”—she struggled for the right word—“proper.”
“Proper?” He grinned, a shark’s smile. “I never do anything proper.” Taking his hand away anyway, he replaced it with his mouth.
She sucked in a shocked and ragged breath as his tongue licked her delicately.
“Tell me.” Air puffed across the wetness of her skin. “What do you feel?”
“All my skin is hot, and I want…so much.”
Taking her nipple into his mouth, he suckled, wreaking such havoc she groaned. Horrified at the primitive need she’d unconsciously expressed, she covered her mouth.
Reaching up, he took her hand away. “That’s one of the sounds I want to hear.”
Permission didn’t ease her embarrassment, but when he held one breast and squeezed the nipple, she groaned again.
“Tell me how you feel.”
“Out of control.” She tried to clutch his hair.
He lifted her arms back up. “Tell me.”
“You’re right for me,” she cried. “This is right…”
“Because you’re mine.”
She didn’t answer. He demanded too much.
“Say it.” He shook her shoulders lightly. “You’re mine.”
She tried to remember she was the MacLeod. That everything and everybody in Fionnaway depended on her. That her mother had made an impulsive decision to wed, and they’d all paid. That she didn’t really know much about Ian.
“I won’t say it. I can’t.”
He drew back, framed by blue sky and drifting clouds. The wind fluttered his dark hair, teasing the locks like gentle fingers. The sun sought his face, fighting the shadow for the pure pleasure of caressing his nose, his brow, the soft, plain curve of his lips. One of his bees buzzed close, dreaming it could drink of his nectar.
And Alanna was jealous of the wind, the sun, the foolish bee.
“Is it because you believe my father? Will you not take me because I’m a”—he stumbled over the word—“half-breed?”
“Nay!” Without the protection of his body, her skin chilled. Without his wanton caress, her body suffered.
He looked away. The sun blazed onto his face, lighting him harshly, revealing his thoughts. He’d been rejected before. He didn’t believe Alanna.
And to see him now, frustrated, disappointed, made her forget duty and honor for the greater delectation of making him happy. So she told him the truth that she had hoped to keep as a weapon. “I’ve lived here all my life, and swum in that ocean, and never seen a selkie. But I’ve heard the tales, I’ve seen the evidence, and while we don’t talk about it, of all the clans, the MacLeods are the last to deny their
existence. Your father’s not lying, is he?”
His chest rose hard and sharp as he took a breath and braced himself against the blow. “For once in his life, he’s honest.”
A selkie. All her life she’d longed to see one, to have the chance to truly believe that everything about her heritage was true. Now she lay with a man who turned his face away, who expected to be renounced for his birthright, and the rightness of it sang like a chord from some heavenly chorus. “It explains so much.” Reaching out to touch his face was as brave a thing as she’d ever done.
He flinched slightly as if he expected a blow.
Instead, she stroked his cheek with her fingertips, half expecting he would transform himself and disappear like the clouds above.
Instead his jaw clenched.
Digging her fingers into his beard, she turned his face back to hers. His eyes with their mystical silver sparks looked at her deeply. Too deeply, and she found herself saying, “You’re not the first, Ian Fairchild, to brag of a selkie parent. That’s why…” But nay, she could not tell him. Not yet. That information was reserved for her husband.
More, it wasn’t important right now. Right now she had to give him what he wanted. She had to make him happy. “Ian, I’m yours.”
Those brown eyes watched her warily, and suspicion stiffened his generous mouth. “Truly mine?”
She found herself tugging him toward her. “Aye.”
Untangling her fingers from his beard, he examined them. The short fingernails, the freckled skin, the calluses from grinding herbs. Then he scrutinized her face, wary and hopeful at once. In a gentle tone he said, “If you believe that—if you accept me as I am—then, my darling Alanna, there’ll be no escape for you. You are truly mine, now and forevermore.”
And taking her hand, he laid it on his ring.
Chapter 19
The stone felt cool and smooth, almost alive. Ian trapped Alanna’s hand between both of his and looked deeply into her eyes. “You freely give yourself to me?”
She began to feel dizzy as around her, the world changed. Colors brightened, senses heightened; she had said she believed, and Ian now took her into a different world. One she dared not name.
His compelling gaze held her as she repeated, “To you.”
“Listen to me.” His warm, deep voice wove a spell. “You’ll remember this day.”
“Of course.” The stone warmed.
“All of the day. Everything. There’ll be no more forgetting between us. Whenever the scent of crushed grass drifts to you on the wind, whenever the rough wool of a blanket scratches your skin, whenever you see clouds drifting through a blue sky, whenever you hear the call of seabirds you’ll think of me.”
He wanted too much, and she tried to deny him. Nay. But the word wouldn’t form on her lips.
“Whenever pleasure is so great as to be almost pain, whenever you long for more than you can have on this earth, you’ll think of me. I’ll be all around you, always. You’ll never go a moment without knowing I’m there. I’ll be part of you, forever.”
Was this a claiming, or a curse?
“Do you understand?” he whispered.
If it was a curse, it came too late, for she knew he was right. Even if at this moment a great draft swept them away and set them down on the opposite ends of the earth, she would remember him. Him, this day, and her yielding. “Aye.”
He let go of her hand slowly, as if reluctant to separate from the mystical bond of their souls.
Slowly she came back to the hill, to the whispering grasses, the breeze across her skin, and gleaming blue sky over Ian’s shoulder.
He stripped off his trousers, tossing them on top of her chemise in some kind of symbolic dominance. His shirttail covered the parts she didn’t want to see, yet still she looked him over, all over, as if knowing would diminish her fear.
He towered over her as she lay on the blanket. She knew of his height already. She knew his shoulders filled out his shirts and his hands were capable. She hadn’t realized, though, that his thighs were knotted with muscle. They rippled beneath the tanned skin like an unspoken warning. With them he would control a horse…or ride a woman.
Kneeling beside her, he held out his shirt-clad arms. “You do the cuffs.”
He hadn’t mentioned she would know his aroma. But she did. The masculine odors of saddle leather and fresh air mixed with his own scent. And what scent was that? The combination of earthy odors urged her to sit up, to do as he instructed, to complete this act before heat and frustration burned her to cinders. While she still had the chance to hold back a little of her soul.
She wiggled the fastenings free and with an inattention that matched his own, discarded them into the grass. He didn’t even notice, but kept his gaze fixed to her face as she opened his shirt and deliberately spread it.
A fine black mat of hair covered his chest, tapering down to a point. Then it expanded again as if to cover that which should be private. But nothing was private on this man. His body fairly shouted, “Look at me!” His erection rose, large and sculptured, drawing her gaze.
As he slipped free of his shirt, she contemplated running again. Then the full effect of the sunshine struck him, and her mouth grew dry. He was beautiful. Beautiful and menacing and—
He caught her chin in his hand and lifted her face to his. “Mine,” he reminded her. “You’re mine, and I won’t hurt you. You will believe me.”
She just stared.
“I scarcely hurt you the first time. You remember how careful I was.”
She heard the echo of his voice again. Don’t you remember that night in the witch’s hut?
His hand slid down her neck, over her breast, behind her back, and he tipped her over onto the blanket. “I certainly won’t hurt you now.”
She was torn between shutting her eyes and leaving them open. Between touching him and desisting. Yet some instinct or forgotten memory made her slide her hands around his shoulders as he lowered himself to her.
He liked that, she thought, for he paused for a moment, hanging over her with an expression of anguished gratification. She understood anguished gratification. She’d experienced it before, and now at the pressure of his chest on hers, it swelled in her again.
The scent of the wool blanket and the crushed grass rose from beneath her as he gently kissed her mouth. Gently, until she remembered the pleasure of his kissing. Then he pressed harder, opened her more. Her breath came faster, and she clutched at him.
But he wore no shirt, no clothing at all, and her fingers clambered along his bare skin, desperately seeking something to hold, something to keep her connected to this earth.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “Touch me. Touch as much as you want.”
She did want. She wanted very badly. His muscles contracted as she moved over them. She found his collarbone, explored the cords of his arms, wandered tentatively to his chest. He didn’t move, didn’t even breathe when her fingers delved into the curly hair to seek out his nipples. She stroked them gingerly, trying to imitate his earlier seduction, and all the while she wondered—did he like that as much as she did?
“You’re killing me,” he answered her unspoken question, speaking between clenched teeth. “I’m going to expire from frustration.”
So he did like that. Emboldened, she slid down over his ribs, but he caught her.
“That’s all I can take.” He placed her hands on the blanket beside her neck. “Another time when I’m not quite so hungry for you…although I can’t imagine when that would be.”
She wanted to protest. Then he kissed the cord in her neck, sliding down it as if it were a directional arrow on a country road. He suckled one nipple, then another, and she was sure nothing could ever feel so good, yet be so frustrating.
Until he touched her. There.
A shaft of memory entered her mind. A hard, throbbing thrust. He had done this before. She’d done this before.
She looked into his eyes and gasped at the flame.
This would be no genteel blackmail, but a primitive claiming. If he took her now, what she feared would come to pass. He would seize control of her lands, her life. She would not be Alanna alone; she would be part of him.
In the witch’s hut. Lightning. Thunder. Her lover’s voice. Pleasure—and pain.
“Don’t you remember that night in the witch’s hut?”
“What?” she cried out as if an answer would emerge from the air.
Her cry didn’t seem to startle him. He seemed to know what she was discovering, and his dark face gleamed with triumph. “Mine,” he said. “Remember.”
“Nay!” Caught in a riptide of panic, she shoved him so hard he sprawled backward. Scrambling to her feet, she fled. Grass slapped her thighs; she panted as if she’d run for miles. But it wasn’t exhaustion that drove her, but desperation. Not physical need, but emotions.
She didn’t get far. Once again he tackled her, but this time he didn’t roll to catch her. This time he let her land flat on her face, then held her down as she squirmed.
“You promised,” he said, and his voice shook. He spun her over, and she let out a little scream at the rage on his face. “You said you were mine.”
“Aye, but—” But what? She didn’t even know. She only knew that if she let those memories in, let him in, everything would change. Something waited within those memories, something frightening.
“No.” Slashing the air with his hand, he said, “No buts. You’re mine. You can fight all you want, but you’re mine.” He dragged her through the grass until her bottom rested on his thighs and her legs were spread around his waist. With one arm he lifted her. With the other hand he positioned himself. “Don’t you dare shut your eyes.” He nudged at the center of her.
She was on the ground. He sat above. Her position was submissive. His was dominant. She glared at him as she fought him, trying to buck him off.
He grinned, but not affably. This grin accepted the challenge she presented and warned of his tenacity. “That’s it. Don’t make it easy. Make it a war, so I can win.”
She shouted then, every swear word she’d ever heard. She twisted and struggled. Nothing affected him. He just kept grinning and holding on to her carefully, allowing her to move—but not away from him.
A Well Favored Gentleman Page 18
