A Gift of Myrrh

by Jodi Lynn Copeland

  With a loud gasp, Kristiana stepped back, effectively pinning herself against the wall. “You wouldn’t dare. Besides, as we both well know, I’m not a maiden.”

  She was right, normally Tavish wouldn’t dare. Tonight—and with this harlot parading as a lady—he certainly wouldn’t think to respond to the lust churning his blood, nor that pulsing through his suddenly erect cock, drawing his balls ever tighter. He wouldn’t have if at that moment the moon hadn’t escaped the clouds to reveal a secret yearning burning in her eyes.

  A yearning that made him forget his judgment to concentrate entirely on the wicked desires licking through him, the ones that told him to take what she offered and fuck her until she believed she had earned her keep. “Oh, but we both know what a scoundrel I am, my lady. And honestly, I’ve never been one to quibble over virtue.”

  He advanced on her in a blink. The coverlet fell to the floor as his arms encircled her back and his lips crashed down upon hers. For an instant, her mouth was still and then it moved, her tongue darting out to lick fiercely at his. He suckled at her sweet flavor, all but drowning in the depths of her unbridled want. He bent slightly and pulled her closer to grind his engorged penis against the valley of her sex.

  She whimpered into his mouth, her hips arching automatically, stroking his hard, hot cock with her thinly veiled pussy. Tavish felt her wetness cloaking the head of his shaft through her gown, and any trace of rationale he still possessed vanished. Thrusting his tongue against hers, he reached for the hem of her nightdress.

  Just when his fingers would have made contact with the flimsy material, Kristiana pulled free of his mouth. She stared at him, looking every bit the part of Aphrodite with her fiery hair a wild halo and passion suffusing her fine features.

  “Gaven,” she squeaked out, her breathing coming as uneven pants.

  He grinned at her breathlessness and brought his hand from her back to stroke a thumb over her swollen lower lip. “Gaven is my English name, my lady. I find I much prefer Scottish on your pretty lips.”

  She shook her head, her throat eliciting a high clicking sound. A noise that almost made him believe she was frightened. Only, he knew better. This chit was far from a blushing maiden. She knew the pleasures of the flesh and had come to live in this castle by way of her parted thighs. Thought to remain in this castle via the same means. She was no lady. At least, not beyond what her title afforded.

  “Please don’t…” she murmured.

  He parted the softness of her lips with his thumb, and her tongue instantly glided over the tip. He growled his appreciation, able to well imagine how her mouth would feel wrapped around his cock, the roughness of her tongue as she licked at the fluid that beaded on the head of his shaft then swallowed his hot come. His penis undulated with the erotic visions that coasted through his mind and, as though she felt the movement against her cunt, she stiffened and drew in a heavy breath.

  Slipping his thumb free of her mouth to stroke along her cheek, he rasped, “Don’t what, Kristiana? Don’t stop? If that’s what you fear, I’ve no intention.”

  “Please…do…stop…”

  Tavish ceased his strokes, taken aback at the genuine fear that seemed to echo in her request. “You wish for me to stop?”

  Her gaze registered on his. There was uncertainty there, but not fear. Passion, yes. Need, certainly. Desire, more than he could ever remember seeing in a woman’s eyes. In the murky depths of her gaze was the truth. She didn’t wish him to stop, not even if her next word was a huskily whispered, “Yes.”

  He resumed his caress, ran his thumb to her jaw, along the sensitive flesh of her neck to feel her thrumming pulse then lower to her collarbone. She trembled, a low cry of ecstasy tripping from her lips as he slid her nightdress off one creamy shoulder.

  He chuckled in response. Her whispered ‘yes’ was quite clearly the lie he’d deemed it. “You’re not a very good liar, my lady. Shall we see what you are good at?”

  * * * * *

  God’s teeth, what was the matter with her? This was her brother by wedlock. Nay, not her brother, given her marriage to Tomas had never been consummated. Still, he was a stranger. One who’d not only invaded her late night perch, but who was a bloody Englishman! Quite possibly the very man to have slain her husband. Worse, her father or brother.

  “Oh…Tavish…”

  Oh no! Who was making these words come out of her mouth?

  Of course, it was him, her rogue companion. As he’d done earlier this day, he’d drugged her with the potency of his kiss, with the cleverness of his hands. And she knew well his next move. Without a single ounce of shame, he would steal her virginity, make her another of a countless number of maidens he'd defiled.

  That couldn’t happen. She wouldn’t allow it. No matter how wickedly delicious the scrape of his beard and the wet heat of his mouth felt nipping at her collarbone, his rough tongue laving over her flesh as he exposed her shoulder to the brisk night air, this had to end now!

  “Oh, sweet Lord!” The words ripped from her mouth as Tavish tore open the satin ribbons at the throat of her nightdress with a single yank.

  Excitement welled deep within her at his savage move. A flame of raw desire spurred low in her belly and her thighs shuddered with anticipation as his rigid shaft once more ran the length of her cleft. She wished she’d have thought to wear undergarments to bed. If she had, her juices wouldn’t be seeping down her legs, thickening the night air with the tang of her arousal. More, they wouldn’t be soaking through her gown to moisten his thrusting staff.

  Even as she thought it, he dropped to his knees, removing his hard sex from her touch. The whimper escaped her mouth before she could stop it. With a hearty chuckle, he dragged her gown over her other shoulder and drew the material down until her breasts were exposed to the cool night air. Her nipples turned to hard, swollen peaks that he quickly placed his thumbs over and stroked. Her breasts grew heavy and the fire building between her thighs escalated to an almost unbearable ache.

  The devil before her tipped his head back and flashed a crooked grin, his dark eyes alive with lust. “You’ve a beautiful body, Kristiana. It makes my cock so very hard.”

  She thought to tell him she cared naught for his pretty words, even less for his indelicacy, but he dipped his tongue into the hollow between her breasts, and all her words died away. Grasping her buttocks in his large, callused hands, he drew her firmly to him, so that his immense erection pressed against her inner thigh. She couldn’t stop her throaty cry of pleasure any more than she could stop her mind from drifting to that moment when he would pierce her with his bulging manhood.

  She wanted that moment. She had wanted it earlier this day and she wanted it again now—even if it was wrong.

  Tavish’s mouth settled over her breast, clamping on an erect nipple, and the desire flooding her nether lips increased tenfold. Burying her fingers in his long, thick hair, she arched against his masterful mouth and moaned her desire as he twisted her nipple in his teeth. His hands moved from her bottom for the briefest of moments and then they were back, beneath the skirt of her nightdress this time, skin on sweat-slicked skin.

  His long, strong fingers petted her backside again and again, stroking up and down the seam of her bottom. They were so very close to her quivering center, he could thrust into her at any moment. Steal her maidenhead, rob her of her virtue, of her innocence. A damned Englishman no less. The very man she had sworn to protect her people from.

  Jesu! She could not do this, she owed it to her clansmen to stop.

  Passion turned to self-derision in a blind second, and Kristiana wrenched her hands from his hair to press at his heavily muscled chest. When he remained undeterred, his furious sucks and licks continuing, she plied her nails into his flesh.

  With a grunt, he pulled free and stared at her. “You wish to play rough?”

  “I wish not to play. We must stop this now. ‘Tis madness!”

  A lazy grin spread over Tavish’s face, and the
fingers that had been fondling her backside dipped low to tease the damp curls of her mound. “That it might be, my lady. But you’re such a tasty little strumpet I can’t seem to help myself.”

  His big fingers pushed past the soft down to stroke along the edge of her sex. She pinched her nails deeper into his chest, mewling her bliss over the tender assault. His throaty laughter reached her the same time as his words.

  He had called her a strumpet! And it was true, she was acting the part of a whore. Lifting her hands from his chest, she narrowed her gaze. “Unhand me. Now. Before your days of handling strumpets are brought to a painful and permanent demise.”

  His fingers stilled and his lips compressed. Puzzlement shone in his eyes. “Do you wish to be the one doing the seducing, my lady?”

  “Nay, sir. I wish to be the hell free from your violating hands!”

  The fury in her voice must have reached him, because with nary another word he released her. Kristiana stumbled backward until the stone wall was again at her back. She yanked her nightdress to her throat and clutched it there. For a long moment, she could only stare at Tavish, not his magnificent body stripped and laid bare to the night, but the guilt-riddled look in his dark gaze. Then reason took over and she bolted past him for the safety of her bedchamber.

  Chapter Three

  Two days he had ignored Lady Kristiana, two days spent with a half hard cock and thoughts of fucking her senseless running rampant through his mind. The latter was why Tavish had ignored her. After the way she’d bolted that night on the battlement, he no longer knew what to make of her.

  Had the fear he detected in her eyes just before she ran from him been real, or merely a game? Could she be toying with him, making him feel guilty for his advances so he would come to her and beg pardon, and then when she had him in her realm, she would become the vixen he first guessed her? Or was it her own guilt that ate at her, guilt for offering herself to an Englishman? As much as she seemed to want him, she had made it clear she did not approve of his heritage.

  And that was pure horseshit.

  He was no more the Englishman than his brother had been. He had been raised in that country against his wishes and in time had learned to accept it as his temporary home. That didn’t mean it was where his faith lay. No, that would always be here, in the country he loved like no other.

  Shaking free of his thoughts, he focused on Kristiana’s stiff back. Beyond her childhood home, she knelt before a trio of small headstones. This morning he had been forced to end the silence between them and ask her assistance in speaking with the villagers. He had been surprised at how easily she’d agreed. He was even more astonished that she chose to bring him here, a place she held sacred. As she rose from her perch in the clean, white snow and turned to him, his curiosity was sated.

  “My mother died from sickness when I was a babe. Every spring my father heaped her grave with the roses she loved. This year there’ll be no roses.”

  “And you would blame that on me?” he asked, not missing the bite in her tone, nor the wintry sting in her ice blue eyes.

  “I would blame that on your kind.”

  And which kind would that be? Tavish wondered, as she hurried past him. A scoundrel who dared to violate her whilst she was drunk from his kisses, or an Englishman? Clearly she spoke of his blood, for if anyone had been intoxicated that night on the parapet it was he. He had to have been drunk to have wanted the insolent chit so badly. And if that were true, then he was still inebriated, because as he watched her walk to the front of the manor, the sight of her rounded hips and her plump ass swishing beneath her long coat had his cock hard all over again.

  With a grunt, he cursed his body’s desire and followed her into the house.

  She stood in the sitting area, glancing around the dank, starkly furnished room—the place had been stripped of its finery. Her gaze lighted on him for the briefest of moments, and Tavish could not help but register the sadness there. If she had brought him here to further berate him, she had done so at a cost to herself.

  Compassion for all that had been taken from her these past months swept through him, striking a chord of understanding deep within. He knew the sense of loss that rallied through her eyes, knew how it felt to lose everything and every one you knew and loved. To be surrounded by a bleakness that seemed would never dissipate.

  On instinct, he opened his arms and took a step toward her. Her eyes flew wide, panic burst through her gaze and her ruby-red lips parted to form anO. He halted and cursed inwardly. If what he read in her gaze, in the delicate features of her face were accurate then she truly had not wanted his advances two nights prior. Was it possible he had imagined her lustful response to him in the courtyard as well? Or had that much been real but meant for another man, one she cared deeply for?

  “What kind of man was my brother?”

  Her distress fading, Kristiana lifted her chin. “An honorable one.”

  “And the villagers? How did they treat him?”

  Her full lips twitched until the slightest of smiles claimed them. “They loved him, of course. He was a brave man who fought for what he believed in.” Her mouth fell flat as she pinned him with a glare. “He fought for theright side.”

  As opposed to Tavish, who’d fought for the wrong.

  The barb pricked far deeper than he cared to admit. Struggling to keep his voice even, he pressed, “And how did he treat his lady wife? Did she love him as well?”

  Wrapping her arms around her middle, she fixed her gaze elsewhere. “’Tis really none of your business, sir, but we had a very special relation.”

  If that were the truth then why had Tomas called the woman garish, detestable in countenance? No man who had tasted her fiery kisses, felt the high, firm globes of her breasts pressed against his mouth, or the ripeness of her silky ass swaddled in his hands could make such a claim. His cock responded with a fierce pang of need as he recalled her throaty mewls of passion, of undeniable pleasure as he petted the folds of her pussy. She was a woman capable of great emotions, of far reaching desire.

  Of unyielding love…that which surpassed even death.

  Obviously, he’d been mistaken. It was Tomas she had thought to be kissing in the courtyard. Tomas she ached to have hold her, console her sorrow. Tomas who’d occupied her mind even as she had melted in Tavish’s arms and cried out his name.

  He bit back his growl of displeasure. He was by no means an unsullied lad, but he was also no scoundrel who cared naught for the imaginings of the woman he pleasured. If she were to cry out his name, she would damned well do so because it was he she savored behind her closed eyes. He, and he alone, she wished to have holding her, stroking her to orgasm, and not because she thought to earn her right to stay within the walls of Castle Wynderon, but because she wanted to be with him, to feel him fucking her deep into the night.

  And he realized with startling clarity that he wanted her to picture him thus. Wanted her to burn for his touch, long for his mouth on her breasts, her nipples, for the furious thrust of his hot, hard sex into the deepest recesses of her cunt. Circumstances be damned, he wanted her for his mistress.

  And why the bloody hell not?

  She already thought him a rake, why not live up to her belief and make her yet another mistress in the slew of lovers she had undoubtedly already assigned him?

  It would take only the slightest of provocation to garner her agreement. For as much as she might have imagined another man as he fondled first her ass and then her heated mound, it was not another man who had her pussy lips slippery with the dew of ecstasy. Not another man whose thumb she nibbled upon, or whose mouth she ate at again and again, like a starving woman possessed.

  She would agree to this arrangement. He need only decide upon the best way to approach her with his offer.

  Kristiana’s wistful sigh brought his attention back to her profile. His fingers itched to trail over her lovely alabaster skin, to peel away her coat and gown to reveal the feminine layers of lace
and cloth beneath. Then strip them away as well, until nothing but Kristiana and all her womanly charms stood before him.

  Only this was not the time, nor the place. Undressing her in a cold, empty house was certainly not the best way to make her see his reasoning. For now he settled on following her gaze to the object that held her enthralled—an oil painting of a formally garbed couple settled amidst several other portraits over the hearth mantle. The woman’s hair was swept back in the fashion of that day, the locks that were visible almost the same deep shade of red as Kristiana’s. Eyes of a brilliant green gazed adoringly at the man who stood near her. She was a striking woman, he a handsome man. A couple who’d clearly played some elemental part in Kristiana’s heritage.

  “Family?” he questioned, moving to stand beside her.

  She nodded, but spared him no glance. “My great uncle and aunt, Laird and Lady Garrick. She was such an attractive woman.” Her voice a gentle whisper, she added, “I’ve always wished to have been passed down her eyes.”