Choosing the Highlander (24 page)

He didn’t give her an opportunity to respond. “There will never be another woman for me. With everything I am, I commit myself to you wholly and without reservation. Without condition, lass.”

He ran his hand down her side, over her hip, along the length of her outer thigh. His fingertips tickled the back of her knee, but rather than making her laugh, the light touch made her womb clench.

“I expect naught in return, not even a promise that you’ll take vows with me should I be free to court you properly in a few days’ time, though you may be assured I will do all in my power to convince you.”

She longed for him to rub his hand back up and bring her shift with it. The clothing between them was an affront to her. Despite her need, his words caused her distress.

She had never taken her parents’ wealth for granted. She had never been, would never be a freeloader. As justice was important to Wilhelm, fairness and equality were important to her, and what he suggested did not favor them equally.

“I don’t accept that. I won’t accept a promise that I’m not willing to return.”

“Then return it, lass.” He leaned over her, supporting his weight on his elbows. Crooking one leg over both of hers, he pinned her. If Milt had held her like this, she would have felt crowded and pushed him off, but Wilhelm doing so filled her with a sense of safety. Lips ghosting over hers, he said, “You are the wife of my heart. I ken you feel it. ’Tis more than lust between us. ’Tis more than I ever thought I could feel for another.”

She bit her lip. She wanted him more than she could fathom, but factoring even more prominently in her decision was the fact that he wanted her. He loved her. If she left him, she would break his heart. What did it mean that the greater portion of her concern was for him rather than herself?

Heavens. My mind is made up. I’m staying. I’m staying.
 

She closed her eyes as agony ripped through her soul. She wouldn’t indulge it though. There would be time for that later. Tonight was for Wilhelm.

Heaven help me. I’ve made my choice.
 

It might be selfish considering her loved ones back home who would never know what happened to her. It might be premature, considering she’d known Wilhelm less than a week. But there was no denying the truth of her feelings.

Someone check the temperature in hell, because Constance Emmaline Thurston just made a decision based on emotion.
 

She anchored her gaze on Wilhelm’s, willing the panic of her free fall to turn into exhilaration. Nope. It still felt like panic. Her exhale came out choppy.

Wilhelm’s lips compressed in a way she hadn’t seen before. A pleat formed between his eyebrows. Could he see she’d come to a decision? Could he guess how badly she was hurting, how badly she needed him to take away the pain?

“Lass,” he said, and sympathy shone from his gorgeous eyes. Yes, he understood. He returned to stroking her hair, this time with both hands. Somehow, in this position, the action seemed more intimate. He encompassed her head with each stroke. His breath fanned over her lips. His chest compressed her breasts. He was all around her.

She wanted him inside her.

“Tell me, my iron beauty, my Constant Rose, why this touch melts you so.”

A tear trickled from each of her eyes. “It’s not just the way you touch me. It’s you. All of you.” She sniffed as she struggled to put what she felt into words. “I thought I wanted success out of life, and success must be defined before it can be achieved. But I defined it all wrong. I left out the most important thing.”

“Aye? What might that be?”

She thought about her answer. “Sharing,” she said, testing the concept.

Yes. That was the word. That’s what she hadn’t considered with Milt. She’d wanted to include a man in her future, but she hadn’t wanted to
share
her future, as in allow another input into her future or to alter her plans to accommodate another. She’d wanted to retain control and compromise only where it suited her.

His hands stilled, cupping her head. “Sharing?”

She nodded. “I wanted my life to be this certain way, this perfect way. A man only figured into that if his goals were the same as mine. But with you—” She experienced an urge to hide her face from him, but fought it. Holding his gaze, she said, “With you, I actually think your satisfaction is more important to me than my own. I want you to have everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve. I want you to look back on your life when it’s over and think, yes, it was good. I want—heavens, I want your life to be good because I’m in it.”

As she spoke the words, a wonderfully unsteady heat spread through her core. There it was, the exhilaration. Panic still rode underneath, but in a way that heightened the thrill of giving into her emotions. Never in a million years would she have thought letting go of control would feel this freeing. A smile pulled at her cheeks as happiness filled her from head to toe.

“The thing I want most is for you to be happy.”
Leslie had spoken those words just before articulating her wish.

I’m happy, sis. I’m truly happy.
 

Wilhelm’s Adam’s apple moved. His thumbs rubbed her hair. “You are speaking of love.”

“I suppose I am.”

“Then all will be well for us, for wherever,
when-
ever we are, we shall always be together. Hear me? My greatest success shall be a lifetime of lending you my strength, my protection, and my love.”

“Is that a proposal?”

“Nay, lass. ’Tis a vow.”

#

Wilhelm marveled at the woman in his arms. Her beauty ran deeper than the contours of her features and hues of her hair. Her appeal lay in more than the softness of her curves and the clean, peachy scent of her skin. It shone in eyes that adored him and in a bravery of spirit that had led her to give him her trust and finally confess her secrets.

Even before she’d told him the incredible story of her origin, he’d felt that her coming to him had been divinely orchestrated. Now he knew for cert. He would cherish this gift always, and he would do all he could to be a gift to her as well.

He had to clear his throat before he spoke again. “Tomorrow, I would like you to tell me about your family and your future Vinland. But tonight, lass, what I would like—what I lust for with all I am—is for you to kindly relieve me of my virtue.”

No truer words had he ever spoken.

Holding her like this, so close to the position of lovemaking, and having her pour out her heart to him had his staff hard as steel. If he didn’t sink within her soon, he might die of wanting.

She had been lightly stroking his sides. The stroking stopped. “Your virtue?”

“Aye.” The way Terran had carried on with the lasses made Wilhelm look upon tupping as a frivolity a disciplined man would do well to avoid, like too much drink or too strong a thirst for violence. By keeping his mind on his studies and duties, he’d incurred Terran’s jesting.
Are ye in training to be a monk, Will? If ye doona use your prick, it’ll shrivel up and fall off, Will.
Och,
Will, if you doona want that bonny creature, I’ll be happy to put the roses in her cheeks.
 

Thanks to his parents and the fond looks and stolen kisses they would share, he kent there was more to tupping than the mere “scratching of an itch,” as Terran would oft call it. But he’d had difficulty imagining himself so taken with a woman he would spend hours with her in the marriage bed when he could be doing somat productive. Now, ’twas difficult for him to imagine wanting to be anywhere other than united in pleasure with his Constant Rose.

She placed a hand along his cheek. Her thumb traced the smooth skin above where his beard was coming in. “Darling,” she said, her voice whisper soft, “it will be my honor.”

He expelled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and raised her shift with a questing hand on her thigh.

With a sigh that sounded like, “Yes,” she opened her legs to him so he could settle in her intimate cradle. A shock of lust hit him like a mace when she raked her fingers up his buttocks, raising his shirt as he’d raised her shift. No passive kitten, his lady. In their bed, she would be a tigress.

“Fine, lass. You’re fine.” He delved into her mouth with deep kisses, reveling in the sensation of being skin to skin with her below the waist. In a proper bed, they would have room to strip each other and admire each other’s bodies, but snug in his plaid, they had limited freedom of movement. ’Twould be enough. He would make certain of it.

With his cock nestled sweetly against her silky stomach and his mouth feasting at hers, he let his hands learn all the shapes of her—the angles of her collarbones, the plump roundness of her breasts, the succulent heart shape of her bottom.

Skimming his knuckles downward from her navel, he said, “If I keep going, will I find you wet for me?” Never before had he spoken such bold words. Never before had he been consumed with lust, love or anything else a tenth as powerful as this.

She nibbled his lower lip. “Why don’t you keep going and find out for yourself?”

A growl rumbled from his chest. “Is that a challenge?”

“An invitation.” From the feel of her mouth on his, he kent she was smiling.

“Then I heed it,” he murmured, trailing kisses across her cheek to the warm place just below her ear. He tasted her salt, her sweetness.

Turning his wrist, he pushed his fingers down through her curls, down to explore her tender folds, down further to see what lay in their heated depths. When his fingers sank into a pool of slick moisture, he hissed, “Saints above.”

He sucked in a breath to steady himself lest he give in to the fullness of his pleasure too soon.

“Like what you feel?”

“
Och,
lass. You ken I do.” With difficulty, he found his control and ordered his thoughts. Thanks to Terran, his father, and countless married members of his clan, he possessed no shortage of knowledge on how to please a woman. He lacked expertise, but judging from the eagerness of Constance’s kisses, he did not think she minded.

Her slickness made it easy for him to glide over her petals and find his target, her pearl of pleaure.

Her body jerked and she whimpered.

Immediately, he eased his touch. Drawing gentle circles, he memorized her, and from the breathy moans rising in the night, his touch had the intended effect.

She murmured wee assurances like, “Oh, yes” and “please” between kisses, but it didn’t take his lady long to seek more than a passive role. Reaching between them, she took hold of his staff.

With a nip to her earlobe, he said, “Doona take me in hand, lass, or ’twill be the end before we’ve begun.”

In this, she did not obey. “Don’t take your time with me. I need you now.” She wriggled upward and guided him to where he played in her wetness.

She deserved more tenderness from him, more patience, but he had none left. Breath heavy in his lungs, he eased forward, joining them.

Constance grabbed his buttocks and urged him deeper.

The heat, the sharp pleasure, the need, it all drove him on. With great effort, he restrained himself, taking her easy and slow. But he could not gentle the long, low groan that forced itself from his lungs as he claimed her for his own.

Constance threw her head back and moaned, a sound as helpless as he’d ever heard from his lady. Pride replenished his breath. The determination to please her greatly restored his control.

Nature’s instinct took over. He moved with a deliberate pace, and his lady rose to meet him. She kneaded his hips and then locked her arms around his back. Their bodies fused from lips to groin, and the building pleasure robbed him of gentleness.

“Need you, lass,” he breathed as his thrusts gained in power. An urge akin to his battle lust filled him until he couldn’t hold back, not with her, not any longer.

“Need you, too. Give me everything. Please.”

In her eyes was a depth of craving that spoke to his soul. That look told him he didn’t have to hold back. His lady was brave and strong and possessed a power of her own. She’d been built to receive the totality of his passion.

Her soul called to his. Mayhap their connection had called her through time itself, for no other woman that had ever or would ever walk the Earth could be his match in every way as this woman was.

Love swelled in his heart as sensation expanded into every part of his being. He gave her everything, and she welcomed it all.

Chapter 21

Connie woke to the gray light of a winter dawn and the memory of what she’d done last night. Sex. With Wilhelm. And not just any sex. The best sex of her life.

She’d never known it could be
that
amazing. Their first round of “wedding by bedding” had catapulted her into an orgasm that explained the phrase, “Earth shattering.” She’d heard people describe sex that way and had wondered if she was missing something. Oh, she’d had orgasms before, but the ordeal of striving for one almost seemed to cancel out the miniscule moment of bliss.

Now she knew she had, in fact, been missing something. That something was a Highland warrior whose mind, heart, and body all called to her in a way that made what affection she’d had for former lovers seem silly in comparison.

She’d been missing Wilhelm.

For their second round, they had taken their time. Despite the tight quarters of their makeshift sleeping bag, she’d managed to pull off his shirt so she could skim her hands over his delectable abdominals. He’d wrangled her shift over her head and rewarded her for the twinge she’d gotten in her shoulder by feasting on her breasts for long, rapturous minutes.

Connie had learned the skin on the insides of her elbows, when licked, aroused her to an insane degree. She’d shown Wilhelm that a scraping of teeth over his nipple could be pleasurable when done firmly enough not to tickle. Discovering the right amount of pressure to apply had resulted in his boyish wiggling and much mutual laughter.

When they made love again, it was with a tenderness that had slammed the door on the regret still lurking in her mind after choosing to stay with Wilhelm.