by Jessi Gage
“What is it ye hope to gain from sharing my bed?” His voice stopped her. “Ye already have a bairn.” The creak of a stall door followed his question. Footsteps whispered on the packed-dirt floor. With her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw him as a towering shadow emerging into the broad aisle of the barn. He must have been checking on Rand.
She frowned at his question. He made it sound like she had some ulterior motive besides being attracted to him. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she hedged.
“Ye want to couple with me. Why?”
She rolled her eyes; she’d understood that much of the question. It was the part where he seemed to have a problem with “sharing a bed” with her she didn’t get.
Tamping down her offense was getting old. If he was going to be bold, she would be, too. “You’re easy on the eyes,” she clipped. “I’m attracted to you, and we’re married, so why not, right? Am I missing something here? Shouldn’t I be the one asking you why you don’t want to ‘couple’? Oh, wait, I did. And you wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”
He moved closer, stopping a foot away, which meant his voice now came from high above her. “Are ye a wanton woman?”
The question had been dark. Dangerous. And it kicked her offense into full-on anger. “I’m knocked up and I want sex with my husband. If that makes a girl wanton, then I suppose I am. What of it?” She lifted her chin in challenge.
“I’ll ask again. What is it ye hope to gain? The truth, Melanie.”
Her heart sank to hear him call her by her given name, and this sudden edge of hostility confused her. It felt like he was accusing her of something, but what? She was also insanely aroused. Not only had her eyes adjusted to the dark well enough to see his serious and seriously-handsome face, but his looming presence filled her with an irrational sense of security. Add to that his scent of leather and man, and her lips trembled for another kiss.
She didn’t want to lash out any more. Anger released itself to the night like steam from a mug of cocoa. “Pleasure,” she whispered, her breasts reaching for him with her quickening breath. “That’s the truth. I want to feel your body under my hands. I want to feel you inside me as you make me your wife in more than just name. And I want pleasure for you, too. Especially for you. You’ve given up almost everything for me. Giving you pleasure is the only way I can think of to thank you.”
He blinked with surprise. “I dinna expect your thanks. ’Tis not why I stole ye away from Steafan.”
She rolled her eyes, but this time with affection instead of annoyance. “Duh, I know that. You’re so darned honorable you’d never do anything for something as paltry as my thanks. It’s not just about thanks. I love you, you stubborn Highlander.”
She cupped her hand over her mouth. The ornery thing had just blurted that which she had yet to fully admit to herself. Considering how much it hurt to have Darcy reject her physical advances, she was in no mood to bear his inevitable rejection of her heart. Mortified, she turned to run away.
But his arms went around her. He hadn’t lied when he’d claimed to be quicker.
“Do ye mean that, lass?” he asked, bending over her back, holding her.
“No,” she lied, trying to pry his arms away. “I’m out of my mind. Don’t listen to a thing I say. Let me go.”
“No. I willna. And I think a confession spoken in ire is more trustworthy than one spoken in calm.” He turned her around and lifted her face to his. “I love you, too, lass.” He kissed her.
The world spun into a kaleidoscope of brilliant sensation. Everything around her went off balance, but Darcy was solid and real beneath her clutching hands. He was her everything.
She didn’t worry about where home was or whether she’d ever get there. Darcy loved her. She loved him. Right now, that was enough.
She parted her lips as she had in bed, inviting him deeper, needing him inside her any way she could get him.
He gasped and broke the kiss, holding her possessively tight, but with a rigidity suggesting he couldn’t decide whether to accept her invitation or not. It didn’t escape her attention that he held her against his hip rather than straight on. He didn’t want her to feel the evidence of his desire. She wasn’t the only one wanting more than she was getting from her spouse.
Whatever held him back from loving her with his body, her newly acknowledged love for him made her sympathize. Instead of rising up on her toes and coaxing him down into another kiss, she said, “It’s okay. I won’t ask for more than you can give. I won’t even press you for an explanation. Not tonight, anyway–if you come back to bed with me and hold me.”
“Ye think ye can set terms with me?”
“A girl can try.”
“I dinna ken what to do with ye,” he said, his tone somewhere between playful and exasperated. “Ye are a contrary and demanding thing, but you make me smile, and so I canna hold it against ye, try as I might.” He sighed. The sound was significant, as if he’d released something that had been pent up along with the breath.
“Ye may not press for an explanation, but I shall give ye one. I canna lie with a woman. I am too large. I didna expect it to be a problem as ye are already with child and I kent when I married ye we’d have but a short time together. I didna expect you to want me in that way. But though I canna give ye what ye seek, I shall give ye everything else a husband ought to and more. I vow this to you, Malina. You shall want for nothing while ye are with me.”
She stared at him in the dark. Her jaw went slack with shock. So that’s why he kept rejecting her advances. He thought he was too large.
Did he mean his height, or his uh-hem?
“What do you mean, you’re too large?” she asked carefully. “Do you mean you’re too tall?”
“’Tis not for my height they call me Big Darcy,” he said, and she heard the shame in his voice.
Her shock collided with a girlish impulse to giggle not just at the topic at hand, but at the ridiculous notion that a man might be too big for a woman. She had felt him–behind her in the saddle, lying in bed mere minutes ago. His erection was impressive to be sure, but too large? Was there such a thing as too large? If so, she’d never heard of it.
Judging by his grave tone, he truly believed his boy parts were too big, not just for her, it seemed, but for any woman. Suddenly, she didn’t feel like giggling any more. In fact, a profound sadness weighted her down as she considered how he might have come to such a conclusion.
What if he had tried to be with a woman and hurt her? Judging by what she had overheard between Edmund and Fran, that scenario would make sense. If Edmund’s total lack of foreplay had been representative of lovemaking Highland-style, she could understand how an awkward first experience might lead Darcy to the conclusion there was something physically wrong with him.
She wanted to pepper him with questions. She wanted to demand to see him, all of him, so she could judge for herself whether he was “too large.” But she sensed he had just laid his heart open to her and if she immediately questioned him, it might undermine his willingness to be open in the future.
Slow. She needed to take this slow.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much for telling me. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. I didn’t mean to say it earlier, but I do love you. Even if we won’t fit together. If intercourse is out of the question, I can live with that.” She highly doubted intercourse would be out of the question, but this moment was about his need for acceptance.
Her eyes grew warm at the way tension eased from his shoulders and his gaze softened with relief. His hands transformed from heavy weights on her shoulders to lithe butterflies as his fingers traced up her neck. She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him tight, molding herself along his front. He didn’t stop her, and she felt him hard, pushing at her stomach.
Neither of them spoke for several minutes. At last, he cleared his throat and said, “Does intercourse mean what I think it means?”
She smiled against his breastbone. “It
means joining together, coupling.”
“’Tis sorry I am I canna give ye that, lass.”
“I don’t mind. There are plenty of other ways you can give me what I’ve been craving.”
He went tense in her arms. “What are ye speaking about?”
She ignored the question. “And there are ways I can bring you pleasure, too. We don’t have to have intercourse to consummate our marriage and to enjoy each other in bed.” She tilted her face up to find him looking at her with wide eyes, as if he’d never contemplated intimacy as anything more than intercourse.
His breath rasped in the darkness. “I’d think ye were trying to make a fool of me, but I dinna think ye’d take joy in making another person feel foolish.”
“I’ll never try to make you feel foolish. Never.”
“I willna pretend to ken of what ye speak, but ye’ve caught my attention to be sure.”
“Would you like to come back to bed and trade pleasures?”
“Och, lass. You’re serious.” When she only nodded in response, he said, “What did ye have in mind?”
“I’d like to use my hands on you and feel your hands on me.” Just imagining his large hands teasing her sensitive nub made moisture gather between her legs. Thinking about wrapping her hands around him, seeing the look on his face as he came for her–her breath quickened and her body swelled with desire. “I’d like that very much. And using just our hands, there’s no danger of you hurting me.”
“And this would make ye happy?”
“Very happy.”
“Christ. Ye may be a wanton woman, but ye are my wanton woman. Show me where to put my hands, and I’ll be happy to bring ye what pleasure I can.”
Chapter 15
Malina sagged in his arms there in the aisle of the stables.
“Are ye all right?” he asked as he scooped her up. Concern for her eclipsed the stirrings of desire her bold words had caused.
“Uh-huh. Just horny.”
He didn’t ken the meaning of the word. “Is there aught I can do to help?”
“Yes. Take me to bed. Now.”
He carried her from the stables and made haste for their room. Mayhap ’twas the bairn inside her, making her weak. Or she might be exhausted. The poor thing had nay gotten proper rest the night before.
When he took her into their bedroom and laid her down, she pulled his face to hers and captured his mouth in a kiss that set his soul on fire. She nibbled at him with her lips and teeth. Her hands kneaded his back. The soft noises coming from her made his cock hard as steel.
“Are ye feeling well, lass?” he asked, the words garbled because she wouldn’t stop kissing him.
“Uh-huh,” she said without taking her lips from his. “Light. We need a little light.”
He didn’t ask why; between relief that she wasn’t ill and renewed arousal, he wasn’t thinking clearly enough to ask questions. He just obeyed, lighting the lantern and returning to his ravenous wife.
When he bent over the bed, she tugged at his belt and said, “Off.”
He froze with uncertainty.
“Now,” she demanded.
“I dinna need to be naked to use my hands.”
Malina growled, a throaty, frustrated sound that belonged in Africa’s jungles, not in a bedchamber in a Scottish keep. “Fine. Have it your way.”
There was nothing graceful about her normally delicate hands as she clawed up her shift, revealing the ivory length of her legs and higher. “Touch me here,” she commanded. When she pressed his hand to the warm place between her legs, he gasped with shock and lost his footing so he fell on the bed.
He pulled his hand back instinctively. He’d believed for so long he couldn’t tup a woman and had convinced himself ’twould be wise to never touch one and stir temptation. Now his wife was asking for the most intimate of touches. Once he touched her there, he would lose his head as surely as he’d already lost his heart. Every touch on the secret places of her body, every caress of her most precious treasure, would sear Malina on his soul.
’Twould be hell to let her go after this.
But that fear wasn’t enough to make him put an end to what was happening. Not that his wee tigress of a wife would have permitted such a thing. Taking advantage of him being off-balance, she pounced, pushing him onto his back and straddling his legs far more swiftly than he’d imagined a woman with child should be able to move. In one brisk gesture, she pulled her shift over her head. It fluttered to the floor like a swan alighting on a loch.
“I’ll let you keep your kilt. This time. But you’re going to have to tolerate at least one of us being naked.”
He barely made sense of her words for the shock of seeing a woman completely bare and sitting astride him as bold as a cock in a henhouse. Malina was glorious. Her body was a beautiful miracle.
Her rounded belly held the gift of life, her creamy breasts the gift of nourishment. His mouth watered at the sight of those abundant mounds, but not for the taste of mother’s milk. ’Twas the taste of her skin and the feel of her rosy nipples pebbling on his tongue he craved. At the juncture of her thighs, soft curls protected her fertile soil, soil another man had planted his seed in.
Rage surged.
He gripped her satiny thighs. He needed to make her his. However he could. He wasn’t too proud to let her show him the way.
“Show me. Tell me what to do.”
“First, I think a demonstration is in order.” Not waiting for him to respond, she skimmed her hands up his legs to explore the very thing he’d spent his adult years being ashamed of.
When she found him beneath his plaid, he sucked in a breath, waiting for her reaction. Dreading her reaction.
“Oh, Darcy,” she sighed.
He closed his eyes as mortification climbed his neck in a hot pulse. She would send him back to the floor for being too large. She might laugh at him as Anya had done. She might take back her love, which meant more to him than aught else ever had or ever would.
But when her hands began doing incredible things to him, he realized she wasn’t overly upset with his size. Mayhap his warning had prepared her.
He opened his eyes to find her gazing softly at him, her teeth releasing her plump lower lip. “You’re perfect. Just perfect.”
Her words sent a wash of peace over him as her touch pulled fire through his loins. If it were possible to feel too much in one’s heart, to feel too wonderful in one’s own skin, he felt that way now.
“Christ,” he breathed, his hands gripping her hips, drawing her forward so his plaid lifted up and she stroked him against her pale belly. Unbidden, his hips thrust forward. He pushed himself deeper into her hands, needing things from her he couldn’t name.
“That’s it, baby. Let me take you home. Let go. Let go for me.”
Neck straining with pleasure, he closed his eyes and gave himself over to his bride. In less than a minute, his stones drew tight to his body as carnal delight built at the base of his cock. He couldn’t stop the growl that burst from his throat as liquid fire surged up and out of him.
He spilled over her hands. His heart pounded like a wild thing. His body was more alive than it had ever been, but he didn’t think he could move so much as a finger.
She stroked him lightly as he came down from a cloud of debilitating pleasure. Her lips curved up at the edges in a smile that meant she’d enjoyed touching him. It hadn’t been a chore for her. And she didn’t seem to care that his seed covered her belly and hands.
“Malina mine,” he whispered. He could say no more for fear his shaky voice would reveal too much of himself to her. Her affection and acceptance had cut him to the quick. He was raw. He was in love, deeply and frighteningly so.
“When you’re recovered, I expect you to return the favor,” she said with an impish smile.
Certain there was nothing he could do for her to match the joy she’d just given him, he said, “I will do my best, lass.”
* * * *
Melan
ie had never felt more confident in her body than when she’d begun showing her pregnancy. Always a curvy girl, she felt at home with those pregnancy curves instead of at odds with them. Her body was doing what it was made for. Carrying a baby made her feel feminine and beautiful. Powerful. She felt even more so as she sashayed from the bed to the ewer, knowing Darcy’s eyes followed her every move.
She wrung out a cloth and cleaned herself, then returned to him, letting her hips sway, feeling her breasts jiggle with her steps, proud of her rounded belly. When she unfastened his belt, he merely watched her, a wonderfully sated look in his eyes.
She’d put that look there. She’d shown him the acceptance he’d been lacking, and he trusted her now, perhaps more than he’d ever trusted before. Her heart soared with satisfaction. Her body burned with desire.
“I’m going to undress you, now,” she said, giving him a chance to protest if he had any lingering discomfort.
Not only did he offer no protest, but he flaunted his trust by lacing his fingers behind his head, showing off his strong triceps. “Go on with it, lass. ’Tis no use hiding from ye now.” His voice purred from his chest, soft and relaxed.
She grinned as she peeled back layers of muted brown wool. Her breath caught when she spread his kilt and he lay completely naked before her. He was all long, strong limbs and hard-working muscle. The sun had burnished his shoulders and arms a rich, satiny gold. His torso and stomach were a lighter tan, his natural color, and dusted with dark blond and cinnamon-colored hairs that beckoned her fingers to play. A line of darker hairs led from his belly button to the rich tuft of sandy brown hair between his legs. Curving to the side from the center of that tuft, long and broad, even in his semi-softness, was the most mouthwatering male member she had ever seen, and that included the ones she’d imagined in her fantasies.
“You are beautiful,” she said as she wiped him clean with loving, gentle swipes of the cloth.
“I am pleased ye arena too disappointed.”
“Disappointed? I’m not disappointed at all. I’m pleased. I have a big, strong, handsome, capable husband. I find you completely stunning. Completely desirable.”
