His expression hardened just a little more. He pulled back his hips, and his lance jammed in against her entrance. He froze there with her dangling on tenterhooks. “Ye need me like this, lassie?” His voice cracked from the strain. “Do ye need me like this?”
“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes!”
He pressed forward a fraction more but still didn’t puncture the veil holding them apart. “Are ye mine, lassie?” he rasped. “Are ye mine?”
Her head sagged to rest on his shoulder. She would have said anything at that moment to get him to take her to completion. “I’m yours—only yours.”
In a flash, he gripped the back of her neck and picked up her head. He covered her mouth with a fiery kiss, his tongue meeting hers in a molten swirl of wet heat.
If her soul cried out for him before, it crumpled at his feet now. She swayed in his arms to the endless bliss of his lips joining hers. All the time, his shaft penetrated deeper into her sizzling channel until he snapped over the tight threshold and plunged to the limit of her tight clutches.
Ellen shrieked, but he wouldn’t release her mouth. He smothered the sound with his kiss. Without knowing how or when it happened, her body copied his steady beat. He created tiny incessant strokes deep inside her, then drilled deeper, where her most sensitive anatomy screamed for him. One mighty hand cradled her neck while the other guided her hips to his rhythm. The impact shot up Ellen’s spine until she couldn’t hold herself upright any longer. She whipped from one side to another. Only Louis’s arms prevented her from tipping over.
In the middle of this witch’s brew of intoxication and delirium, one vicious stab after another propelled her higher until she burst into droplets of quicksilver all over his muscled frame. She disintegrated in his arms, and her rising cries erupted in shrill screams to raise the rafters.
He didn’t try to silence her this time. He guided her head down to rest on his shoulder while he kept up his wicked thrusts to cleave her asunder. The more she climaxed, the more she opened to receive his commanding intrusions. Her being gushed out over him, and her fragrant sweat anointed his chest and stomach and neck.
His fingers clenched her neck, and he crammed his snarling mouth against her ear. “Aye, lass,” he growled. “Aye. That’s me, lass.”
Tingling sparks exploded all over her skin. They burst from her mouth when she screamed. They electrified his chest when her breasts dragged through the rivulets of sweat running down his ribs. They glued their two bodies together until any separation between them evaporated in the morning air.
Her screams reached the Heavens, and there they transformed into a sighing song of ecstasy. Her bones dissolved to jelly, but he kept grinding up into her to wring every last droplet of orgasmic rapture from her being.
Chapter 28
Louis let Ellen fall back on the bed, and he beheld her angelic face awash with that majestic luminescence of inner satisfaction. When he shifted his weight to lie down on top of her, she curled into a ball on her side. Her whimpering cries diminished to sighs, but he wasn’t finished with her yet, not by a long shot.
He guided her farther over until she rolled onto her stomach. He sank down on top of her, and his dripping shaft glided between her legs. Oh, God, yes, she was so, so good. He could never get enough of her.
She didn’t resist, and he wrapped his arms around her chest. He didn’t try to get inside her right away but let his tool plow her delicate sweetness apart. He’d learned a long time ago to let a woman set her own pace, and it paid dividends with Ellen. He caressed her engorged flesh back and forth in gentle, probing passes until she woke to the rising tide of her own insatiable need. Her nectar coated his length as he glided against her throbbing nub until he heard her noises change. Instead of subsiding into nothing, they shifted into a higher pitch and kept on rising.
She answered his nudging strokes by lifting her hips to meet him coming down. Her voluptuous ass smacked against his pelvis, and she angled herself so his shaft poked into her. She wanted him all over again, and he would give it to her, but in his own time and in his own way.
He weaseled one hand down her stomach and wedged it between her and the bed to finger her dripping slit while he worked into her from behind. Ellen went wild. She reared off the bed and backed into his thrusts in desperate hunger to get him inside her.
He chanted into her ear in a gravelly undertone, “That’s right, lass. Ye’ll have me, lassie, dinnae fear. That’s right. Och, aye, sweet lassie. That’s right.”
She whined inarticulate animal madness. Her hair stuck to his sweat, and salt stung his tongue when he kissed her neck and shoulders. She arched her spine to match his strokes when, without warning, she gave a sudden backward jerk and swallowed him whole into her tight cavern.
He roared in her ear as her muscles clenched to lock him into place. She squealed and yelped, but she had him and would never release him. His member sank home, and her curving contours surrounded his veins and sinews in such a tight fist he couldn’t withdraw.
She backed him onto his knees, shifted forward, and hurled herself back on him to the hilt. He struck her deep inside, and they both howled in mortal ecstasy. He seized her hips and pounded her to oblivion. She screamed and snarled over her shoulder at him, but she kept her hips angled to envelop him and threw back her head and screamed out, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” every time he penetrated her.
His lips twitched trying to express all the passion and enormity of it all. His body shook from the effort, but he couldn’t stop himself from driving into her harder than ever. Primal insanity took over. Where he got the strength to empty himself into her, he could never understand. Her energy demanded all of him. She would accept nothing less.
Holding her by the hips no longer sufficed. He passed one hand up her spine to her neck for the leverage to plow into her and beyond. She sucked him dry, and still it could never be enough. He had to keep stretching and yearning for something beyond her, something out of sight that urged him on to greater and greater feats of mortal fulfillment.
From a great distance, he became aware of her screams echoing through the inn. He ought to silence her, but he couldn’t even control himself. A tidal wave of pleasure surged out of him and exploded to fill her up. It tore him apart, but even that didn’t come near to voicing how he felt in that moment. Red hot lava poured out through his cock until it overflowed her and dripped onto the bed. He collapsed forward, his weight riding her down. She wilted under him and clenched the bedding in trembling hands. He hid his face in her hair, and his ragged cries pierced her ear. He only hoped she understood what she did to him because no words would ever explain it.
Louis eased off her to spoon her from behind, his hands cradling her precious breasts and her curvaceous ass nestled against his hips. She undulated in shining postcoital bliss. He kissed up her neck to her ear, and she twisted her head around to find his mouth. Her tongue swirled in a slow flowing dance of pleasure.
The thought of not seeing her for another three hundred years, of having to wait another three centuries to hold her in his arms wrenched his soul apart. He tightened his grip on her, savoring the feel of her for as long as he could, never wanting the moment to end.
She shifted in place, looking up at the ceiling with her ear cocked toward the open window. “Listen.”
Louis kept his eyes closed and focused his ear until he heard horses’ hooves clattering into the yard outside.
“We should get out of here,” she whispered. “They’ll search the inn one of these times.”
“Ye’ll be long gone,” he murmured.
Her head shot up, but he refused to look at her. The pain of knowing he had no choice but to let her go back to her own time was overwhelming at that moment. He had to do it. It was the only way to protect her. And that was more important than anything else.
“I told you I’m staying here.” Her voice cut him to the quick.
He pried his eyes open to find her staring down into his face. “I cann
ae stand to see ye in danger, lass. We’ll be together in yer world. Go back there now. Ye must see the sense in that.”
“And you must see the sense in me staying here,” she countered. “You said yourself I won’t be any safer there than I am here. We’ll catch a ship for America. We can travel down to Edinburgh, or even London. We’ll be all right.”
He shook his head, determined to protect her at all cost. “Please, lass. Do it for me.”
Her face spasmed in sudden pain. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to get rid of me.”
“Then it’s a good thing ye do ken better.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, then leaped off the bed and snatched up her shift. She started whirling around the room putting her clothes on as fast as she could. “I don’t care what you say. I’m not going back. If you don’t want me to stay with you, I’ll go on my own.”
Louis frowned at her. “Why don’t ye want to go back?”
She sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on her stockings. “Don’t start asking questions,” she fired back. “You won’t tell me why you don’t want me to stay, so you’ve got nothing to say. You don’t want me. That’s plain.”
“Ye ken I want ye, lass,” he insisted. “Did ye no’ just tell me to prove it to ye? Have I no’ done that at least?”
She rounded on him in a fury. “You call that proving it to me? You took me under false pretenses. You used me for your own selfish gratification when you had no intention of staying with me. Go on. Go to America. I’ll go somewhere else.”
“Ye cannae do that, lass,” he pointed out.
“I don’t need you. You probably don’t want me to stay because I’m not good enough for you anyway. You want to keep carrying a torch for that wife of yours. Yeah. I see it all now. You had a good time, and now you want to erase the evidence from your own mind that you ever betrayed her memory.”
Her words stabbed him in the middle, and he gasped, “Ellen!”
She didn’t look at him again. She jumped up and tugged her dress on, buttoning it up as she kicked her feet into her shoes. “Don’t lie in bed too long, or the Redcoats will find you. See ya around.” She rocketed for the door and her hand closed around the latch.
Louis watched in horror. She was really walking out on him. He couldn’t move fast enough to intercept her. “Stop!”
She froze with her back to him. Her fingers trailed off the door handle, and her lithe frame stretched taut, but she didn’t turn around.
Louis’s breath caught in his chest and his heart stood still watching his fate poised on the brink of disaster. He fought to choke out the words. “All right. Dinnae go back, just…just dinnae leave. Stay.”
She jerked around, and her midnight eyes impaled his guts. “You won’t send me back?”
He let out a ragged gasp. “No.”
Her shoulders heaved as she leaned her head against the door.
“Ellen,” he rasped.
She whipped around to glare at him. “I’m not going back.”
“All right,” he whispered. “All right.”
She stepped toward the bed but came to a halt in the middle of the room and scowled at everything around her.
He sat up and put out his hand to her. “Come back to bed, lass.”
She flashed her eyes at him once, then stomped over to the bed and sat down next to him, but she kept her back to him.
“Lie down,” he told her.
She grumbled under her breath, “I’m already dressed.”
Chapter 29
The whole scene played out in Ellen’s mind as she materialized in Ree’s living room and sat down on the couch. Ree studied her friend’s features for any clue. Then the dreaded moment came when she asked, “What happened?”
Ellen stuffed that image down hard where she didn’t have to see it or think about it. It wouldn’t happen because she wasn’t going back to San Francisco.
Louis rummaged around in his sporran, then buckled it into place over his hips before he sat down at the table to sharpen his saber.
Ellen observed him from the window. “Can we catch a ship for America in Edinburg, or should we go as far as London?”
“We’re no’ going to America.” He didn’t raise his eyes from his task.
Ellen frowned. “I thought you wanted to. I thought you wanted to catch up with your friends.”
“I’ll no’ catch up with them as long as ye’re here,” he replied. “If ye’re staying, I’ll no’ go with them. Ye and I’ll take a ship to Europe, or somewhere else.”
“Why?” she asked. “What’s wrong with America?”
“The others are there,” he replied. “We’ll go the other way.”
She frowned, unable to figure out what was wrong with him that’d he turned the tables on her so fast. “What about the information I got in Aberdeen? What about the Cipher’s Kiss? Don’t you want them to find it?”
“I dinnae care about the Cipher’s Kiss. If they never make it, it’ll be too soon for me. Ye’re here, so we’ll go our own way. If ye care so much about the Cipher’s Kiss, write them a letter and tell them all. I dinnae care one way or the other.”
She gaped at him in stunned silence. What in the world happened? How could her decision to stay behind change everything so fast? “I…I…” she stammered. “I don’t understand.”
He rested the saber across his lap while he stuffed the sharpening stone back in his sporran. “It’s simple, lass. Ye’re here. Ye’re staying here. That means we’ve got what, seventy years, if we’re lucky, before ye grow old and die. I dinnae want to spend that time hunting the Cipher’s Kiss. It’s no good to me and never was.”
Her mouth fell open as she stared at him. Seventy years before she died of old age—if they got lucky. She’d never even considered that simple fact. She would die, and he would keep living. “Don’t you want to…?”
He let his arms sink onto the chair. “Dinnae I want to what?”
She struggled to formulate a coherent thought. “So…you don’t want to help your friends at all? You don’t want the Angui to…to continue?”
“What’s the use?” he asked. “Ye’ll no’ be there. Ye’ll be long gone. Did ye no’ remember that? Once ye’re dead, ye’ll no’ come back. Ye’ll no’ be there in San Francisco while the rest of us work on the Cipher’s Kiss. The one woman I would want to spend the rest of me life with will be gone, so what’s the point? I’ve no more reason to go to America or to work on the elixir. It’s all over for me, and in a few years, it’ll be all over for ye too.” He thumbed his saber edge.
She couldn’t stop staring at him, searching for the mystery that remained hidden from her. Her brain smoked and churned trying to figure out what it was.
“Did you have children?” she asked.
His bright eyes flashed to her face once, and then he looked away. “No, I never had any children.”
She swallowed hard to say the next words. “Don’t you want any?”
He let the weapon bang down on the chair arms and raised his troubled eyes to her face. “No, lass, I never want children. If I did, I’d be as obsessed over this elixir as the rest of them.”
“I guess Ned and Ree think they’ll have children one of these days.”
He grumbled under his breath, “No, Ned doesnae want children, either. He’s already had them.”
Ellen jerked back from the words. Ned had children? Did Ree know that, or was she making this elixir in some misguided notion of giving him what he’d lost? Why couldn’t she find the right question to ask that would help her understand what he wasn’t saying? Did she imagine all this, or was he really hiding something from her?
She turned to gaze out the window. She no longer possessed the energy to stay in this twisted situation. If he wouldn’t come right out and tell her what was going on, what was the use in staying with him?
He got to his feet and slid his blade into its scabbard, then arranged his plaid. “We must be off, lass. We�
�ll slip out on yer invisibility spell and make our way down to Edinburgh. If they follow us or we run into any trouble, we’ll just keep going until we find passage over the Channel.”
She cast her eyes across the landscape, not wanting to go anywhere with him with this doubt hanging over her head. “Would you want to go to America if we could have children? Is that why you don’t want to go?”
His footsteps came to a halt behind her. “I told ye, lass. I dinnae want to spend the time we have together hunting that elixir when it’ll do us no good. They’ll no’ come near making the elixir until 2018, and ye’ll be long dead by then. We can enjoy the time we have left, and when ye’re gone, I’ll go find me mates. Ye dinnae have to bother about that.”
She rounded on him, but determined calm steadied her nerves. “There’s something you’re not telling me. You’re hiding something from me.”
“And ye’re hiding something from me,” he returned. “Ye winnae tell me why ye dinnae want to go back to yer own time when ye ken we could be together there as well as here. It’s naught to do with me, is it? Is it something to do with the elixir?”
She stiffened, and white-hot lightning raced in her veins. “Just drop it, okay? You asked me to stay, and I stayed. Now drop it.”
“Then ye drop it too,” he rumbled. “Ye’re no’ the only person in this room with secrets. If we’re gonnae do this thing, we’ll both be better off no’ asking awkward questions.”
She turned her back on him again. “Okay. If that’s the way you want it.”
“That’s the way ye want it.” He stormed across the room, yanked the door open, and glanced back over his shoulder before he walked away. “I’m going downstairs to settle with the landlord. I’ll meet ye down there when ye’re ready, and then we’ll go on our way.”
He left her standing there in a ferment of competing emotions. What just happened? None of it made sense. Okay, so his argument about not chasing the Cipher’s Kiss made sense, but that wasn’t the real reason. He basically admitted that himself. She never gave him any explanation at all for why she refused to go home. At least he made up a story to placate her. She didn’t even bother to do that. She couldn’t comprehend a man who’d been hunted for centuries had to kill to protect himself and his people in a society where carrying a saber was no big deal, would understand her concern about returning to San Fran in 2018 having killed two people. In her time, murder was a big deal. How could she face Ree and the others? How could she face Ree again thinking that she may have sent her back here on purpose to commit the very murder Ellen had such guilty feelings over? How could she make Louis understand that?
Spellbound by the Angui (Cipher's Kiss Book 2): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 20
