“That's a very fine way to say bastardy, yes.”
“—I was talking about who you are. You are brave and bright and bold and strong. And those things, heavens defend, but they can take a man's breath away. But I think I know something about strength, and I know that too often, we are strong because we have to be.”
For some reason, Nicholas's soft words made Ava's breath catch in her throat. She swallowed hard, fighting down a wild irritation that he could make her feel this way.
“I'm myself,” she said finally, twisting around to face him. “No tragedy made me. No man made me think I had to defend myself, no one rejected me so that I thought I would always have to be on my own.”
Even as she said it, she wondered if it was true. There were darker times, when she was younger, less sure of herself, times she didn't like to think about, and she was suddenly sure that Nicholas had guessed at least some of them.
“I do not do the things I do because I am afraid,” Ava snapped. “I am not some broken thing that mended itself all frantic to defend what I had left.”
“I know you are not,” Nicholas said. “All I do know is that the way you are takes my breath away.”
Ava wouldn't have believed him if it was daylight. In the light of day, she would have found a dozen reasons to think he was laughing at her, to assume that he was teasing her as he so often did. In the dark, when she could just barely make out his face, she heard his voice. She could hear the truth in it, and it threatened to take her apart.
“Nicholas?”
“Yes?”
“I want to kiss you.”
The silence stretched between them like sticky pine sap. She could feel the way Nicholas's body tensed. Then she heard him carefully let out a breath that he had been holding.
“I am, as you said, a man, and not a beast. Tell me what you want from me. Just tell me.”
Ava's response was instant.
“I want you to forget that I told you not to touch me all those nights ago.”
Nicholas drew his breath in hard, and then, almost faster than she could understand, his arms were around her, drawing her close. She could feel the warmth of his body bleeding through his clothes, and she could feel also, his arousal, the hardness at the very core of him.
There was nothing threatening about this, however, nothing that told her to stand up and to flee, or to strike him and to make him sorry for ever daring. Instead, it felt as if he had opened something in her, some depth of heat and need that she had never even known was there.
She thought he would kiss her again, as he had twice before, but he stopped a hair from her mouth, so close that she could feel his breath. The tickle of his breath over her lips made her squirm. Ava became aware of a deep yearning inside her, and she was becoming increasingly certain that Nicholas was holding the only answer.
“Kiss me,” he said, and there was a challenge in his voice. “You said you wanted to, and I never thought you would be a coward...”
His taunting words made her bare her teeth. It worked in a way that sweetness and coaxing never would have, and she leaned forward that last inch, so fast and so vicious that she could taste blood from the cut she had reopened on his lip.
He tasted so good, like something she had wanted her whole life, and when he moved a little, she reached up to twist her fingers in his hair, keeping his head still. She was aware of a drumbeat, and then she realized that it must have been her own heart, beating fast as if she had been running down the slope of the mountain. Nicholas smiled against her mouth.
“Easy, easy,” Nicholas murmured soothingly. “I am not going anywhere. I will be right here...”
“Show me,” Ava said. She could hear her breath coming fast, and that was before Nicholas chuckled. In between one moment and the next, he pulled her on top of him, letting her rest her weight on his body. She knew that she was no slip of a girl, but he handled her as if she were as light as a feather.
"Nicholas! What am I doing...?"
"Whatever you want to. Here, put your legs on either side of my hips..."
Confused, Ava did as he told her to do, and then she felt a deep blush come over her face. She was straddling Nicholas's strong body as she would a horse, her knees on either side of his hips, sitting back on his muscular thighs. There was something at once powerful and vulnerable about the position. She was looking down on him, but she could also tell how powerful his body was underneath her. When she set her hands on his strong chest, she could feel the muscles there.
Intrigued, she slid her hands underneath his tunic, running her palms from his belly up to his chest.
Nicholas made an impatience sound, and with another one of those lightning fast moves, he pulled his tunic off, baring himself to the waist.
"It's cold!"
"I don't feel it," he said with a grin. "Touch me more, and I'll never need to wear clothes again."
"Won't you be a sight when we ride into town then," she retorted, but she couldn't resist running her hands down his body. She marveled at the hair on his chest and his belly, how underneath it he was both smooth and scarred. He caught his breath when her palm brushed against a mark high up on his shoulder.
"That's new," he said.
"Does it hurt?"
"No... not exactly."
Intrigued, she brushed her fingers over the healed wound again. It was raised up from his flesh, a new scar and one that would likely be with him for the rest of his life. She could feel his entire body shudder when she touched it, and she brushed her fingers over it again and again.
Finally, with a slightly strangled cry, Nicholas seized her wrist in a grasp that was not painful, but very firm.
"Enough," he growled.
Ava laughed.
"What do you like better?"
He hesitated, and something about that hesitation made Ava's heart beat double time. She shifted a little on his thighs, aware of a warmth between her legs, something warm and needy.
"Show me," she said softly.
Nicholas groaned a little, bringing her hand down between them.
He fumbled with his trews for a moment, and then he pulled out his manhood, letting it rise up between them.
"Here," he said harshly. "I want you to touch me here."
"Show me," Ava said again.
She wanted to touch him, wanted it with a startling need for something that she had never thought about before, but she found herself oddly shy. Would she do it badly? Would Nicholas laugh at her?
Nicholas murmured something that might have been a curse or a prayer, and then he was wrapping her hand around his manhood, his fingers curled around hers. She was startled by how silky his skin was, how underneath that silk was pure steel.
Nicholas made a strangled sound when he showed her how to stroke him, and that heat inside her yearned for him, for more of this.
"Do you... do you like this?" she murmured.
Nicholas's laugh was a harsh and strained thing.
"So much, darling Ava, beautiful girl."
"Now I know you're addled to say that."
It had been a joke, but apparently Nicholas hadn't cared for it.
In a swift motion, he rolled her off of him and had her on her back on their thin mattress of blankets.
"I hate it when you say things like that," he growled, looming over her like the beast she knew he wasn't. "I want to show you how very beautiful you are, but more than that, I want to see you."
"Are you meant to be scaring me?" asked Ava, doing her best to hide the tremor in her voice. "This isn't frightening me at all."
It wasn't fear in her just then, not when Nicholas grinned at her with a wolf's sharp hunger or when he reached for her clothes. Instead, it was an anticipation that struck to the core of her, like a sweet, high, and silvery song
“I don't want to frighten you, darling,” Nicholas murmured. “I just want to show you how very wrong you are.”
Ava squawked with protest, but then Nicholas was tugging a
t her clothes, pulling them off of her body with a single-minded determination that she was startled didn't leave them torn. Faster than she would have thought possible, she was naked on the blankets and aware that she might have miscalculated at some point.
“See? Beautiful.”
Ava made an incoherent sound. She knew how she looked, too tall, hard as a board and almost as flat as one. Her body was a thing that did as she told it to do, that she had trained to endure and to fight and to win. It wasn't something that a man like Nicholas Whitfield should be looking at with that particular hot need, and she barely knew what to do.
Fortunately, Nicholas knew.
“You will not believe me, so I suppose I shall have to show you how much I like all of this, how beautiful you truly are and what you are worth...”
“And how are you going to do that?”
He met her eyes again even as he came to lie down next to her.
“Tell me to show you.”
He was challenging her again, and Ava nodded.
“All right.”
Instead of replying, he leaned in to kiss her, deep and slow, and somehow, kinder than he had been before. It had not occurred to Ava how many ways there were to kiss someone, how many moods there might be to the single simple act.
Just as Ava was losing herself in the kiss, however, she became aware of Nicholas's hand coming up to caress her small breasts, one after the other. She would have said that she had experience with this activity. Boys had been trying to touch her since before she had them, and she ran away or left them bloodied.
She hadn't understood how very pleasurable she could find a man's touch until Nicholas stroked her with patience and sweetness, finding the sensitive parts at the sides and underneath the weight of the curve. Suddenly, she could feel tingles of electricity through her body starting from his touch. Her nipples were as hard as pebbles, and when Nicholas rolled one between his fingertips, she groaned at how very good it felt
Still, he was kissing her, and she could forget everything when he did that. Kissing was like another language, one where she could not be misunderstood. When he kissed her, she knew he wanted her, that his need was as great as hers.
She barely noticed that Nicholas's hand was traveling before he swept over her belly, over the soft tuft of hair between her legs to the softness underneath.
"Nicholas!" she hissed, grabbing at his hand.
He grinned.
"Tell me I can," he murmured. "I'll make you feel so very good, darling..."
Her breath caught in her throat, and after a moment, she pulled her hand away. Her eyes closed for a moment, and then they came open again as she gasped. His fingertips traced her lower lips with infinite care, waiting until she parted for him. He dipped his fingers low to her opening, and then he brought the moisture that had gathered there up to the apex of her sex, where there was so much sensation and need that she almost cried out at his first touch.
"Shh, shh, it's all right, darling. If it is too much, tell me... but I do not think that it will be too much."
His fingertips glided over the center of her desire, and it was as if he were speaking to her in yet another way. His touch made her body stiffen, drawing the strands of heat that threaded through her tight. She felt like she was going to snap, as if she were going to go insane if she did not change something, shift, get more, get less...
Another few moments, and it was like the snap of the lake ice in spring. Her entire body went stiff, and she thought that somewhere very far away, she was crying out. Ava flailed blindly, reaching for Nicholas, clawing at him when she did so, anything to keep her tenuous grip on the world around her.
The pleasure felt like a red rush over her. Ava couldn't see, couldn't hear, all she could do was feel the tremors that shook her like a reed shaking violently in the wind. Though she knew that it was likely only moments, it felt as if somehow, Nicholas kept her at that peak for hours, making her feel every moment of her climax with him.
She whimpered a little as Nicholas pulled his hand away, feeling oddly bereft, almost empty. It seemed as if he understood what she meant because he looked down at her with a tenderness mixed with hunger.
"More?" he asked, and she nodded.
She gasped when he came over her, this time with his knee pressing between her thighs. Nicholas rained kisses all over her face, making her gasp with the pleasure of it, and then she cried out when she felt the blunt tip of his manhood at her entrance.
"Shh, shh, calm, darling..."
She coasted on the pleasure as he stroked the tip against her overly sensitive skin, and then she could feel him tense. Something deep and ancient and womanly inside her knew what was coming, and there was just a moment of panic before he thrust forward, and a bright hot pain tore through her.
"Nicholas!"
The pain was already subsiding, and Nicholas was kissing her neck now, nibbling at the soft skin there, the pleasure washing away the traces of pain that were left. She moaned his name again, and then he started to move, pushing in her with the rolling motions of a wave at sea.
Even in her exhausted state, Ava could feel his pleasure tugging at her like a tide, drawing her along with him. She didn't think she could take another climax, but she was lost in the daze of need between them.
She wrapped her arms around him, and inspired, she lifted her knees as well, giving him more space, opening her legs wider. The effect on Nicholas was immediate and obvious. He gasped as she had done before, and his rhythm stuttered. She could feel his control whipping away as his motions grew more urgent.
“Come on,” she muttered in his ear. “You wanted to show me so much, didn't you?”
She tangled her fingers in his hair, tugging a little, and Nicholas groaned. With one final thrust, he found his own climax, pumping his seed deep into her body with a muffled roar. Ava found herself crying out with him for some reason, startled, shocked, and pleasured all at once.
Nicholas didn't collapse on top of her as all the ribald jokes said he would. Instead, he pulled away gently and collapsed to one side before gathering her in his arms.
“I told you I could make you feel good,” he murmured softly.
She laughed.
“I really don't think you have any idea who won that one at all.”
The wind whistled beyond the mouth of the cave, and they rolled back into the blankets together. Ava knew that everything between them had changed. At some point, they would have to deal with that. Right now, though, all she wanted was to be in Nicholas's arms, and together, they drifted off into a blissful sweet sleep.
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chapter 14
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Despite having not slept in a proper bed in what felt like ages, Nicholas awoke feeling better than he had in a long time. Something just felt good, felt right, and then he looked down at the naked woman in his arms and remembered why he felt like that.
So beautiful. Perhaps now she'll at least take me more seriously when I say that.
He looked forward to telling her again if she didn't take him seriously, however, and that was something to look forward to.
Nicholas disentangled himself from Ava gently, smiling when she only uttered a token protest before turning over to sleep again. It was barely dawn yet. She could sleep a little longer. Nicholas rose up from their pallet to venture out of the cave, thinking vaguely to check on Cobie and then to return for more sleep.
That idea lasted exactly as long as it took to look at the traces of blood on his skin, dried and discreet now. For a moment, he wondered if he had gotten some kind of wound, but then realization set in, and he stumbled back into the cave.
“Ava. Ava, wake up.”
“No, I don't want to.”
“Ava, we need to talk.”
Ava blinked at him and sat up, still wrapped up in the blanket. She flinched a little when she was sitting up, and Nicholas felt a hot scalding shame wash over him.
>
“Are you all right? Are you in pain?”
She squinted at him as if he had started speaking French to her.
“You're acting very strange this morning.”
“Why shouldn't I be? I didn't know I was ruining a virgin last night.”
She blinked at him, her ridiculously dark eyelashes like fans against her pale cheeks. Then her gaze grew hard.
“I do not feel particularly ruined, just so you know.”
“And the rest? I saw blood, Ava. Were you a virgin?”
She lifted her chin with a defiance that he usually found endearing, but now made him want to tear his hair out.
“So what if I was?”
“Are you serious? Don't you know...”
“Of course, I do,” she said tartly. “Bastard, remember?
Nicholas was struck silent by it all, and Ava took the opportunity to give up on the blanket and to reach for her clothes. Now that he was looking for it, he could see how stiff she looked, could see the slight traces of blood revealed on her inner thigh.
“Here, wait, don't do that yet.”
She gave him a narrow look.
“Why? Are you not done pitching a fit yet over something that matters not at all?”
Despite her sharp words, she allowed him to push her back onto their pallet. Ava's gaze was wary, which stung. It made him want to sweep her into his arms, to touch her and comfort her, but he knew from the way she looked that she would not welcome that.
Instead, Nicholas took a deep breath and went to his pile of gear, pulling out the waterskin and some woven fabric intended to staunch wounds. He wet the fabric and brought it back to where Ava lay.
“Will you open your legs for me, please?”
“I think I've heard that before,” she said with a slight smile, but when Nicholas only flinched, she sighed and did as he asked. When he pressed the cool fabric against her flesh, however, she jumped slightly, and then, seemingly almost against her will, she sighed again, softer, almost breathy.
Nicholas cleaned her with the gentlest motions he could. He knew with a pang that this was how gentle he should have been last night. Instead, he had rutted over her like a bull in heat. Nicholas knew he had given her pleasure, but in light of what he knew this morning, it hardly seemed like an adequate exchange.
The Highlander’s Promise (The Highlands Warring Scottish Romance) (A Medieval Historical Romance Book) Page 7
