Swallowing audibly, she shook her head again.
“What, then?” he demanded.
She shrugged helplessly. She had no words. She couldn’t explain. She wanted him right now more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life and, at the same time, she felt as if she’d suddenly found herself perched on the edge of a precipice, and had no idea what she was doing there. Was goaded by some bone-deep, desperate imperative to back away, to seek safer ground.
She didn’t understand it. She was no coward. She was certainly no cock-tease. She wanted him. And not just for sex, but much more, which was the way she’d always believed it should and would be when she finally slept with a man. Here he was, the man she desired, and he desired her too. Twice before she’d been ready to plunge right in and have sex with him. So what in the world was wrong with her now?
Cian scrutinized Jessica. Now would have been a fine time to be able to deep-read his woman, but he couldn’t, so he turned his focus to her body instead of her mind.
Her jade eyes were stormy. Defiance shaped her stance. Her chin was uptilted, her delicate nostrils flared, her feet planted shoulder-width apart, like a little warrior.
Yet counterpoint to the blatantly telegraphed denial was—not merely invitation—but sheer feminine taunt. Look at me. Her spine was arched, her ass out-thrust, her heavy breasts proudly raised and displayed to their finest.
Her nipples were hard, poking through her snug white sweater.
And she’d just wet her lips again. Tossed her head in a challenging come-hither.
Don’t touch me/Come and get me, every ounce of her was saying.
Cian closed the distance between them, ducked his head, and inhaled sharply. She stepped back again, but not before he’d gotten what he’d been after. He smiled, pleased by her dichotomy. He fathomed it well.
She smelled of an exquisite combination of fear, defiance, and desperate sexual hunger. ’Twas a scent he’d waited all his life to smell, a desire that had intensified painfully in him over these past days.
He’d wager, even as learned as she was, she didn’t fully understand what she was feeling.
But he did. Perfectly.
It was all he’d dared hope for.
Jessica St. James had accepted him as her man, and for more than just this night. If she hadn’t, she’d not have smelled of this unique combination. A woman seeking only a night’s pleasure smelled of desire, little more. Certainly not fear and defiance, unless the man was doing something he shouldn’t be, things the woman didn’t want, and such a bastard should be put down. Women were precious, to be cared for, not despoiled and abused.
But a woman recognizing her mate smelled of those things because such recognition heralded significant life change. In his century, the woman would have recognized that babes were coming, that she was leaving her girlhood and her clan behind, bonding to a new clan, cleaving to her husband and his people, embarking upon the impassioned tear- and joy-filled route of her mother before her.
A strong, independent, modern woman like Jessica St. James would instinctively resist such change, in proportions equal to her desire for it. She was a woman accustomed to being in control. With him, her control would be threatened.
He intended to threaten the hell out of it.
It was time he made her his. Time he made it clear that, although she might one day lie with another man, none would ever be him, none would ever be good enough, none would ever make her feel the way he had this night. The way he would make her feel the next and the next and the next. He would sear his mark into her in ways she would never be able to forget. When one day she took another man to her bed, he would be on that mattress between them, a great, big, dark Highlander using up too much space, a barrier around her heart, forever alive in her memory.
When he reached for her and pulled her back into his arms, he got more of her womanly dichotomy, but ’twas a dichotomy a man could work with, verily, a wise man would savor.
For as she came into his arms, she turned her back to him as if to deny him, yet at the same time backed right up to him, thrusting her sweet ass against his hard, hot cock. She wanted what he wanted: claiming first, loving later.
With a soft moan, she quested back with her bottom. The sound ripped into his groin, stringing his testicles tight. Dropping his head forward, he cupped her jaw, slanted her face around, and kissed her, deep and long, pumping his hard shaft against her lush behind.
He walked her forward, one hand at her waist keeping her pressed back to him, the other on her chin. He nipped at her kiss-glossed, lush lips, tasting her with slow, firm sucking pulls. He trailed more kisses over the delicate shape of her ear, down the edge of her jaw, over her neck. He continued walking her forward until he walked them into something, not caring what piece of furniture it might be, so long as he found one.
Something to lay her down on would be good.
Ah, his descendant’s desk—better still! Groping blindly, he shoved everything off it, heedless of the crashing, tinkling sounds of objects hitting the floor. Filling his hands with her lush breasts, he bent her forward, over the ornately carved, cool wood. She gasped, bracing her palms on the high-glossed desk.
He needed to be inside her. Nothing less than final, incontrovertible proof that she’d chosen him for her man would sate him now. Reluctantly relinquishing those heavy breasts that jiggled so perfectly, so womanly, with his every thrust, he slipped his hands down to her jeans. “I’m going to take you now, lass.”
She jerked and arched her delicate spine, glancing over her shoulder at him. Her eyes were as wild as he knew his must be. “Yes,” she said raggedly. “Please, Cian.”
Please, Cian. He could listen to her say those words for the rest of eternity! Die a happy man, hearing her beg carnal pleasure from him. Die trying to give it to her, any way she wanted it.
“Are you wet for me, Jessica?” He knew she was. He could smell her woman’s heat. But he wanted her to say it. Wanted to hear her talk about how he made her feel, how she felt about him.
“I always am around you.” She sounded both marveling and miffed by the admission.
“Does that fash you, lass?”
“I’ve never felt, ooh!”—she gasped when he ground himself in a slow circle against her as he slowly undid the top button of her jeans—“this way before. I’m always turned on, and I can’t seem to turn it off.”
“It makes you feel out of control.”
“Yes.” She sounded fully miffed and not at all marveling now.
“You’re supposed to be out of control for your man, lass. That’s the way of passion. Think you passion is tidy? Neat?” He laughed. “Hardly. Not in my bed.”
“What about the man?” she demanded. “Is he out of control for the woman?”
He grunted. A man could never completely lose control with his woman. At least not a man his size with a woman her size. Still, that didn’t mean he wasn’t out of control in his thoughts, in his gut. He was. Just looking at her made something in him that had always been wild to begin with, even wilder. “I’m always hard for you. I got hard the moment I saw you that first night. And, nay, lass, I can’t turn it off, either. But unlike you, I doona try to. I give into the heat. The need. The pain of the hunger. I savor wanting you, lusting for you, thinking about all the things I’m going to do to you.” He cupped a cheek of her jean-clad ass in each big palm, squeezed. His voice deepened to a sexy, hot purr: “I relish every last thought of taking you, of knowing you as completely and intimately as a man can know his woman. And I’m going to know every inch of you, lass. You want that, doona you, Jessica?”
“Yes,” she moaned.
“By the time I’m done with you, you’ll never be able to forget me. I’m going to burn myself into you so deep that you’ll bear the imprint of me beneath your skin for the rest of your life. Tell me you want me to, Jessica.” Forgive me now for sins you doona even know I’m committing.
“I want you t—oooh!” Her reply tu
rned into a gasp when he thrust strongly against her.
He smiled with dark satisfaction. There was too much clothing between them. He needed to feel her slick and wet and tight, closing on him. Popping the remaining two buttons of her jeans, he shoved them down over her hips, baring her luscious little ass.
He sucked in a ragged breath, pushed her jeans to her ankles, but no farther, leaving her feet caught in them.
“You want to feel me inside you, lass?”
“Yes!”
“Slow and easy, or hard and fast? What would you have of me, Jessica?”
“Yes,” she wailed.
He laughed, a deep rumble of masculine triumph. A man dreamed of an unconditional “aye” from such an exquisite woman.
Lifting her hips, he repositioned her the way he wanted her. Nudging her feet back, he pushed her thighs apart until her knees bent to accommodate the angle, and stepped between them. Catching her jeans behind his boots, he kicked back, drawing them taut at her ankles, pinning her helplessly in her jeans, trapping her between his big body and the desk.
With her legs spread on either side of his thighs, he could keep them wide apart, her ass up-thrust, her soft folds exposed. In her prone stance, she could only take what he was about to give her. Not control it a bit. And if she tried to, all he’d have to do was kick back with a boot to still her.
Later he might give her all the control she wanted—though it would chafe him to the very core of his manhood, he’d consider letting her tie him nine ways to Imbolc if it pleased her—but right now any control he yielded her would weaken his, and his was as threadbare as the original pair of trews he’d been wearing the day he’d been imprisoned.
They’d fallen to rags half an aeon ago.
Jessi gasped when Cian stepped between her legs. She was so wet and ready for him! She couldn’t have moved her lower body if her life had depended on it, and she’d never been so painfully turned-on in her life as she was, helplessly spread for him like this.
He was behind her, her great, big, intensely sexual Highlander, and for a moment, she was reminded of the first time she’d seen him in the professor’s office, a shadowy intimidating presence in the mirror. And the thought occurred to her then that from that very moment, this very moment had been somehow preordained. Inescapable. That no matter which way she’d tried to go, it all would have ended up with her bent over a desk, breathlessly waiting for him to take her, to make her feel this wildly alive. There was a word on the tip of her tongue, something about events lining up in improbable ways. It wasn’t “synergy,” it wasn’t “coincidence” or “providence.” It might begin with an S, she thought. . . .
Then his big hands were rucking up her sweater, lifting her shoulders, tugging it over her head, freeing her aching breasts, and she thought about words no more. He cupped and kneaded, pinching and tugging her nipples to hard peaks before stretching her hands above her head and pressing her firmly forward, flush to the desk, pillowing her breasts on it. Her nipples burned against the cool wood.
“Hold on to the edge of the desk, lass. Hands over your head like that.”
Swallowing, she gripped the carved edge of the desk.
One of his big hands closed on the nape of her neck. He turned her head to the side, pressing her cheek to the desk. A band of intricate Celtic knot-work divided two inlaid panels a few inches from her eyes. His big palm cupped the back of her head, keeping her still.
He slid his other hand between her legs and began parting her slick, exposed feminine folds.
She mewled helplessly. His zipper was already open. She’d yanked it free herself the second time he’d kissed her, while the other MacKeltars had still been in the library. She waited, lower lip caught between her teeth, for that first burning hot thrust of him.
Her whole body convulsed when the hard, thick head of his cock prodded her with insistent, delicious friction. He rubbed back and forth in her creamy heat, spreading the erotic slickness on him, on her. She twitched, desperate for him to push inside her, to soothe her, to release the unbearable tension in her body. He kicked back against the jeans taut at her ankles, stilling her.
“Please,” she gasped, trying to press back with her bottom, but she was unable to move even that much, the way he was holding her.
“Is this what you want?” he purred, his voice dark and rich, guiding himself between her sleek, swollen labia. Torturing her, stopping, poised at her entrance.
“Yes, please, Cian,” she wailed.
He began to feed himself into her slowly. She clenched the edge of the desk, gripping it so hard she felt like she was gouging nail scores into the glossy wood. He was so big, so thick. Her body had never yielded for this before and her inner female muscles tensed, trying to resist the steely male intrusion, even as she was aching for it. She squirmed what little she could, desperate to accommodate him.
He hissed long and low between clenched teeth. “Bloody hell, Jessica, you’re tight!”
“Probably because I’ve never . . . ah! . . . done this before!” she managed to force out, swamped by raw, intense sensation.
He went still behind her, barely in her. “Tell me you jest,” he said tightly after a long moment.
“Cian,” she cried, “don’t you dare stop now!”
“You are maiden? At your age?”
“I’m not that old. Move, damn it!”
“By my time’s standards, ’tis unfathomable!”
“By mine, too,” she gritted. “So now that I’ve decided not to be a virgin anymore, is it too much to ask for a little h—elp!” He pushed forward, piercing her hymen in a smooth, even thrust.
He gave her but a moment of stillness to recover, to adjust. The brief stinging sensation passed quickly and once more she was burning with feverish need.
Gripping her hips with his big hands, he began to impale her slowly, inch by mind-blowingly delicious inch. Relentlessly he usurped every nook and cranny her body ceded.
“Can you take more, Jessica? I’m not yet half in, lass. Am I hurting you?”
“No! I mean, yes! I mean, yes and then no! Yes. More!”
He pushed yet more of himself in, stretching her, filling her, long and thick and hard.
She whimpered, clinging to the desk. It was unlike anything she’d imagined. She was certain there was no way she could take more of him inside her, but then her sleek inner heat would not only yield but thrill to him, both stretch and embrace, ease yet tighten hungrily around him. She was a velvet glove, custom-crafted for him. She’d been made for this man, she marveled, designed to sheathe him.
With one final, strong push, he thrust himself in to the hilt, the silky hair on his muscular thighs rasping against her silky bottom, and she cried out from the fullness of it. It was pain yet pleasure, it was too much, yet just exactly right. She was full of him, part of him, her body melting around him, adhering to him, making them one. It was raw, it was fierce, it was incredible.
Then he began moving! Easing out, inch by incredible inch, leaving her hot and empty and aching.
Filling her back up just as slowly. Driving himself into her sleek heat.
Cian stared down at Jessica’s pretty, silken ass as he worked himself in and out of her. Bloody hell, she was tight and hot and slick.
And virgin. He couldn’t believe it. He was stunned that this incredibly passionate, beautiful, smart woman had never lain with another man. He’d never have guessed it. He’d thought her an experienced woman.
But not Jessica. She’d come to him untouched by any other. And though it wouldn’t have mattered to him how she’d come, the fact that he was her first man, that he was the only one she’d chosen to accept, with the countless men who had undoubtedly tried to get where he was right now, filled him with an intense possessiveness, gave him a primal, masculine thrill.
The need to spill his seed in her had been riding him merciless as a Harpy since he’d pumped that first inch inside. He’d damn near exploded when he’d pushed through
her maidenhead.
He stared down at her, bent over the desk, her delicate spine arched, the paler skin of her full breasts crushed to the desk, the generous plump mounds spilling out the sides, her small, dainty hands stretched above her head, fingers clutching the wood, her lush, sweet ass thrusting up to meet him, he watched himself pump into her. It was the most exquisite, sensual sight he’d ever seen.
He thought of his prison, to maintain control. He needed her to find her pleasure before he took his.
Gritting his teeth, he began mentally reciting the parameters of his hell. Fifty-two thousand, nine hundred and eighty-seven stones.
He wanted to give her so much pleasure that each time she looked at him, her body would remember what he could make her feel, and begin hungering for it. Twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixteen of them paler gray than the rest.
He wanted to be her every sexual fantasy, as well as her man and her rock and her best friend. Thirty-six thousand and four more rectangular than square.
He slipped one hand in front of her, between her woman’s mound and the desk, found her silken nub with his thumb and began playing it, rolling his pad over it, lightly, gently. Nine hundred and eighteen stones have a vaguely hexagonal shape. Then faster and more firmly. Then backing off again, lightly, gently, rubbing slow circles all around her clitoris, without actually grazing it.
“Oooh—Cian, that feels so good!”
He eased out of her slowly, thrust back in powerfully. Teasing her nub with alternately slow and gentle, then frantic friction, he slid two fingers over her slick, swollen mound, pushing between her lips, to feel where they joined, where the thick, rock-hard shaft of his cock was entering her. Where they became one. Ninety-two stones have a vein of bronze running through the face. Three are cracked.
Jessi writhed deliriously beneath Cian’s sensual assault. One of his big hands was on her behind, firmly cupping a cheek, holding her still; the other was between her legs from the front, delicately, expertly working her clit, backing off until she was ready to scream, resuming again just when and how she needed it. She gripped the edge of the desk, quivering uncontrollably, as if being shocked by little sizzling erotic pulses.
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