“You have made me happy,” she added.
“I am pleased to know that.”
“I believe your rituals have brought it about.”
“As they are meant to.”
“I do not refer only to the changes in my...womanly state,” she said, blushing endearingly, “but in other ways, too.” Her eyes took on a distant look, as if she were thinking.
“How so?”
“My memories of my family...they used to be dark and unhappy, tied as they were to the end days when the illness came. More recently I think of the happy times, before then.” She lifted one shoulder. “I do not understand why, but it is a good thing and I thank you for that.”
He found her comments pleased him, unaccountably so. He did not like to think of her having only dark memories about her loved ones. He knew that state far too well. Craving her, he took her into his arms and kissed her.
Her hands roving his chest beneath his jacket instantly roused him. When her fingers brushed his bare skin where his shirt was open at the neck, he put his finger under her chin and looked down into her eyes. “Come, let me undress you. It is warm today and I have longed to hold you in my arms naked, skin to skin.”
“No.” Her expression altered. “Someone might pass.”
“No one ever passes by.”
“I do not wish to undress.”
He cocked his head to one side. “That does not bode well.”
“Why ever not?” Chloris shifted one foot, nudging a rock with her booted toe.
He was teasing her, they both knew that, but still he wondered about her hesitance. “Because my magic and our encounters have emboldened you as a woman, as a lover, and yet you will not be brave enough to undress before me.”
“But I am emboldened.”
Lennox responded by folding his arms across his chest and offering her an expectant smile.
“I can engage with you,” she insisted, “and I enjoy everything we have shared.”
“I would hope so, but how emboldened are you?”
Her pretty mouth lifted. “You challenge me, sire?”
He nodded. “What is it that you want from me today?”
His demanding question appeared to let something loose in her, for she cast down her eyelids but not before he caught the mischief in her eyes. “It is too hard to speak it aloud.”
“Show me.” With his fingertips he encouraged her, stroking over her skin from throat to the edge of her gown.
She responded visibly, her bosom swelling as her breathing quickened. “Have you put a suggestion in my mind by magic?”
“No.” He laughed softly. “But now I am even more eager to learn your thoughts, since you think I should take the blame for them.”
“I want you.” With one hand on his shoulder she nodded at the ground.
He arched an eyebrow at her, then dropped to his knees.
She hitched up her skirts, revealing her legs, blushing delightfully as she did so.
“You truly have become wanton.”
“Under your spell, yes.”
It made him proud to hear her say that, but was that accusation he saw in her eyes? It was, but there was humor there, too. She had entranced him, too. Unruly passion built in him, his cock painfully hard for her.
Pausing barely a moment, she pushed him over onto his back and then stood over him with one booted foot on either side of his hips. She lifted her skirts and petticoats in order to straddle him.
“Ah, I see.” He ran his hands around her stockings where they were tied with ribbons above her knees. She truly was attempting to show him how bold she could be.
She put one hand on her hip. “Are you outraged?”
“Intrigued, perhaps.”
Her cheeks were flushed. Then she lowered herself over him, knees on either side of his thighs. Her skirt billowed out around them, her warm inner thighs a tantalizing weight against him, and so close to the straining erection inside his breeches.
“As I am intrigued by you.” She tugged his shirt free of his breeches and pushed it up, baring his chest.
He rose to assist, amused by her actions. Casting the shirt aside, he arched one eyebrow expectantly. She stared at him for a long moment, and then began to stroke his chest, her touch inquisitive.
Lennox rested back on the ground. The pungent aroma of bluebells and moss and pollen rose all around them. She ran her fingertips over his skin, and Lennox felt more than just the stimulation, he felt the bond between them needling beneath his skin as she explored. A rich swell of fertile magic bedded in him, and he marveled at how potent their connection was. It strengthened his magic. That was irrevocable. Carnal congress always did, but not like this. With Chloris everything about the experience was enhanced and magnified.
She bent and kissed his chest, her tongue tasting his skin.
Lennox grumbled. “You’re making me impatient for you.”
She chuckled, her eyes flashing as she looked up at him from the place where she currently tended to him, kissing the hard line of his muscled rib cage as she moved lower to where his cock strained to be inside her.
“It is good to see you so emboldened, Mistress Chloris.”
“Do not call me mistress or you will disarm me, and I know what I want.”
He glanced down at her hand, where she fumbled with his belt. “That you do.”
When his cock bowed out, free from the restraint of his clothing, she clasped it in her soft hand. For a brief moment Lennox had to close his eyes and think of something else in order not to come undone too quickly.
He could not resist watching her for long, however.
A possessive look shone in her eyes as she stroked his length. How good it would be to see her riding him, and he felt sure that was her intention. Her fingertips touched him tentatively at first, then she grasped him firmly and stroked him up and down while she bent to kiss his swollen crown.
“Chloris,” he warned when her tongue made contact with his skin.
Again she chuckled. “You taste so good,” she whispered.
Her breath on his inflamed member made him reach for her, but his hand on her shoulder did not stop her. She took the swollen head of his cock into her mouth and ran her tongue across its seam.
“Chloris,” he warned again, speaking through gritted teeth this time, “I must be inside you.”
“When you are inside me, I can’t adore you like this.”
“You adore me in other ways, and I feel every one.”
Mercifully, she lifted her head and looked at him, her eyes shining and her lips parted. “You do?”
“The clasp of your body, it is the best thing I have ever known.”
She seemed awestruck by that. Adjusting her position, she crawled over him and kissed his mouth. Meanwhile, her hand guided his erection between her legs. When he felt the clasp of her body as she eased down, he moaned into her mouth.
“Oh, yes,” she murmured, holding tight to his length with her hand and sitting upright, so that she could bear down on him some more, “it is too good.”
His cock was already slick with her juices. Then her sheath enclosed him entirely. He reached one hand around her neck and drew her down. When their mouths met, they locked together.
“I feel brazen, mounting you this way,” she whispered.
He noticed the blush on her cheeks. “Being brazen suits you.”
She rocked back and forth, as if discovering him.
“Ah, but that feels good,” he murmured.
She lifted up and then eased back down, and as she did her lips parted, her expression revealing the pleasure she felt.
When she ground down, firmer still, the head of his cock was squeezed tight in her embrace, deep within her. Lennox withheld a curse and arched up, holding tight to her hips through her skirts.
Then she began to move with more speed, to buck and ride him rhythmically.
Lennox watched, reveling in her triumphant actions, her freedom.
C
lutching at him with her hands she growled and writhed, her inner flesh clasping him over and over. She splayed her hands on his chest for balance, and it drew fire from him. Moaning loudly, she shivered, her eyes rounding as she looked down at him, querying him.
“Aye, you feel that, that is the magic our connection brings about.” He put his hands beneath her skirts and thumbed her damp folds, making her cry out.
She threw her head back, her hips working faster still on him.
With his cock buried deep inside her, he savored the way her body tightened on his cock as she found her release. Lennox groaned deeply, for she was milking him and he wouldn’t be able to hold back. He wanted it to last and last, but his ballocks were primed. “I am fast coming undone,” he warned, urging her to break free.
As his climax approached she held tight to him, forcing him to stay inside. “I want to feel you,” she insisted.
Lennox was powerless to do otherwise than grant her request. His sac lifted, his seed pumping into her tight sheath.
Her entire body rippled and shuddered, a startled gasp escaping her, but still she held tight.
Lennox moved his hands to her waist, holding her steady while she caught her breath. “You look so very beautiful.”
She stared down at him, her eyes sparkling.
“Shall I tell you what I see?” he asked.
“If you must.” She chuckled.
He glanced over her. “Your womanly power fully realized.”
She flashed her eyes at him. “You set me afire, Lennox, and all of this only makes me wilder.”
He nodded, stroked her hair back from her face, and then he rolled her over onto her back and pulled free, so that he could kiss her properly.
On her back on the mossy ground, her hair spilled free and it looked like a shaft of sunshine across the forest greenery, just as she brought sunshine to him.
The bower they sheltered in was redolent with fecundity.
Under him, his woman was passion personified.
Lennox groaned against her throat, kissing her there.
He felt magic surging within him, the most powerful ritual of all, because they were so intimately connected. The life force that surrounded them was palpable in the air. Drawing on it, he whispered in the Pictish tongue, requesting that she would be as richly fertile with nature’s magic as was this precious haven.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tamhas Keavey watched his cousin heading toward the stables from his window. Dawn had scarcely broken and yet there Chloris was, fully dressed and hastening along the path to the stables as if she had an urgent appointment to attend.
Tamhas frowned. She would rather be out riding than anything else, it seemed.
It occurred to him that he should perhaps accompany her on one of these early rides of hers. If the morning air benefited her as much as she said it did, she might be in a more pliable state when he next invited her to share a carnal tryst.
The foolish woman ought to look kindly on his offer. Her husband had begun to refer to her as if she was an embarrassment. It would be her good fortune if she fell pregnant by another lover, giving Gavin Meldrum the heir he wished for.
Tamhas stepped closer to the windowpanes, his breath clouding the glass.
As a younger man he had been quite smitten with Chloris. She had acted like a nun, though, rejecting his advances. He remembered it well. So many evenings spent together while she would read and sew, and he would sit and lust after her, imagining her undressed with her legs spread. How pale she was back then, and how he would have enjoyed putting a flush on her cheeks. It would have been so easy to slip into bed with her, but she denied him.
When he’d suggested marriage to expedite the matter, she’d refused him. He had pursued necessary fornication elsewhere, but even after all these years Tamhas found he still had a hankering need to possess the thing that he had lusted after as a youth, even if only for a short while.
The best he could do for her when she refused him was to marry her off and get a good arrangement out of it, but now she was back and in his house and he wanted her again. How enjoyable it would be to see her on her back for him, at last.
He pictured it, and found it most pleasing.
When her fleeting figure disappeared into the stable, Tamhas returned to his bed, vowing to rise earlier one morning and join her.
* * *
The sky was streaked with pink and amber light when Lennox left Somerled to meet Chloris that morning. He urged his horse to a gallop. Shadow had fast learned the routine and huffed on the morning air, relishing the journey as much as his master relished the woman who waited at the end.
Lennox dismounted and let Shadow roam free to graze while he strode to the edge of the forest and stared out across the land for sight of her. When her figure appeared on the ridge and she waved his way, relief poured through him. He steadied himself with one hand against a nearby tree trunk, biding his time, but he could not resist stepping out to meet her when she closed on him.
She looked tousled, as if she had rushed to dress. That made him want to undress her all the more. He wanted to see her completely naked in his arms, so that he might picture her that way when they were apart. He captured her in his embrace, teasing her with hungry kisses on her neck and bosom.
“Lennox, you are wilder than ever.”
“That is what you have done to me.”
The sound of her laughter made him so happy. He took her hand and led her to their favorite spot.
“It is so beautiful here,” she said.
“It is, but especially so when you are in it.”
She looked at him as if she thought he were teasing her, but he meant it. “You have become the forest queen.”
“I am not one of your witches, Lennox.”
“That does not matter.”
She strode alongside him, smiling. “I will humor you because you are so charming.”
Her resistance to flattery only made him want to flatter her more. She was not used to it, he assumed. That was a crime.
When they reached the bluebell glen she paused and sighed. “I will dream of this place, forever.” She met his gaze. “Of being here with you.”
That tugged at something deep inside him.
He did not want her dreaming of him. He wanted her by his side. The notion surprised him, and he pushed away the urge to state it aloud. Instead he drew her down onto the forest floor. Tugging at her gown, he edged it down at her bosom. Her creamy flesh swelled from the lace edge of her shift. Ducking his head, he kissed her, sighing against the soft, responsive flesh as he moved to crouch over her. With quick, nimble fingers, he prized the edge of her gown back, and one nipple rose up, stiff and eager for his tongue as he closed his lips over it.
“Oh, Lennox.” Her hands closed about his head.
Kissing her heavily he worked his tongue over the stiff peak, his free hand worked her other breast free, until she was gloriously exposed, both breasts on display for him. Drawing back to observe, his cock grew rigid, for she looked so gloriously undone, so ready to be plundered. When he leaned closer to kiss her in the shadowy dip between her breasts, his rod pressed against her hip, and she cried out.
“Lennox.”
“Something you need, my sweet?”
“You are outrageous, you know what it is.” Her head rolled against the mossy ground, and several strands of her tresses came free to curl against the side of her neck.
“You want me to give you more air?” He backed away.
She grabbed his shirt, holding him to her. “No, I...I want you.”
Lennox laughed softly. How adorable she looked with her cheeks flushed. “And you shall have me.”
She viewed him with suspicion. “You tease me so. You make me say it aloud and make a show of myself for your fun.”
“Of course, but I cannot help myself because you are so desirable when you are this way. There is no malice intended, only joy in hearing you whisper your need. A man cannot hel
p enjoying that when it is so genuinely meant.”
She stared up at him as if thinking on what he said, and her candid innocence was so beguiling that he vowed he would not take his eyes off her face, he would watch while he pleasured them both, eager to see every moment reflected in her eyes.
He shifted, placing one knee between her legs. With haste, he pulled her skirts higher. When she wriggled to assist, as eager as a wanton, her knees parting and rising up, Lennox once again had the overwhelming urge to see her naked, to adore every measure of her, to know it intimately.
She moaned with pleasure, and it drove him on. He closed his mouth over her shoulder. She rose up into his embrace. As he glanced down, the sight of her loosed hair tangling over the top of her pale shoulder blades made him reach for her laces, to see more of her. Chloris rippled in his arms and pressed her face into his neck. Speedily he pulled the laces free, then eased the flaps of her dress open.
A gasp escaped her. Her fingers tightened on him.
He took it as encouragement. Pushing her gown down from her shoulders, he unraveled the ribbons on the back of her gown, eager to have her completely naked. He’d only been able to imagine it, due to the hurried nature of their encounters, and it was not enough. He pushed his hand beneath her loosened gown. “Yes, I shall have you naked today.”
“Lennox, no!” Her body stiffened. “Please don’t.”
Too late were her pleas. In that moment he felt the very thing she was attempting to hide.
“No!” She pulled away from him, turning her face away from his as she twisted her arms behind her back and attempted to pull her gown into place, her fingers trembling as she struggled to find the laces.
Alas, her desperate actions only exposed what she attempted to hide.
Lennox stared in disbelief, then drew back, horrified by what he saw. Beneath her gown her beautiful skin was marred by deep scars, scars that spoke of a harsh beating, so harsh that her skin had been torn and healed poorly, leaving welts that would remain with her for life.
Grabbing her by the shoulders he halted her attempts to cover herself.
She shook her head and there was a crazed look in her eyes, the nature of which he had not seen there before. “Let me go, I beg you.”
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