Hannah and the Highlander (23 page)

She peered up at him with a question etched on her features when he stilled her busy hands. He rolled over, pinning her beneath him. While the flare of her nostrils, the sudden tight grip of excitement on her face, incited him to action, he used his position to hold her still, so he could work through the question he needed to ask without interference.

“Do you—”

Ah hell.
His throat closed up.

He sucked in a deep breath and tried again, aware that she lay quiescently beneath him, that she stared up at him, patiently awaiting his next words.

“Do you … really hate your room?”

Her chuckle vibrated through him in an enticing rumble.

“Do … you?”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned up to kiss him. At the very end of the sweetest kiss he'd ever known, she whispered, “With a passion.”

Why he laughed he didn't know. It was truly a disaster of monumental proportions. A woman's welcome in her new home set the tenor for the marriage. And that he'd been so utterly wrong in his choices bothered him.

Because he'd been so certain.

He probably laughed because she did. Because her revulsion twined with an amusement, an élan, he found irresistible.

“I'll … have it redone.” He tipped his head to the side and surveyed her. “Do you like … puce?”

Her response was a full-bellied chuckle, one he felt compelled to taste.

When he finished kissing her, for the time being, at least, and he lifted his head, she stroked his cheek and said, “You doona have to redo it.”

“I do.” It was imperative. She'd mentioned she liked green. He could have it done in a bright spring heather.
Ah. An excellent idea.
Then their rooms would match.

“I could always just sleep here,” she murmured.

Another excellent idea.

They kissed for a while more and his passion began to flare—and then another thought struck him. “Why … why do you not like the … brown?” It was, truly, the loveliest color on earth.

“Oh, please, Alexander.” She pouted. “Let it go.”

“I canna.” It was like a thorn in his side, wedged right there next to his passion. “Why…?”

She sobered and gazed at him for a long while before answering, “I dinna realize it, but it is, indeed, the exact color of my eyes.”

He thumbed her lashes. “Beautiful.”

She snorted and turned away. He grasped her chin and directed her attention back to him.

“Beautiful,” he insisted.

“My eyes are no' beautiful.”

“Liar.”

“They are no'. Lana has beautiful eyes. So clear and blue, like a summer sky. And Susana, my other sister … her eyes are a stunning green.” Hannah put out a lip. “My eyes are like mud.”

And it hit him. Like a fist to the gut.

As incomprehensible as it was, Hannah believed she was not pretty.

Hannah, with her alabaster skin, her thick ebony hair, her delectable curves—and, aye, her exquisite, mesmerizing topaz-
brown
eyes—was the most glorious creature he'd ever seen. His chest constricted. His throat clenched. Frustration sizzled through him. Ah, how he wished he were, indeed, a poet. How he wished the words could flow right now.

He would tell her, convince her with some lyrical sonnet, some magical prose, exactly what he saw when he looked at her.

But he knew the words would not come. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't issue forth the flood of beatitudes she needed to hear.

He would show her instead.

He would show her how beautiful she was in his eyes.

So there would be no doubt.

*   *   *

Hannah didn't completely understand Alexander's expression as he stared down at her. There was an odd mixture of dismay and determination … and something else she couldn't quite name. She hoped it wasn't pity.

How mortifying to admit the truth of why she deplored her room. And to him. But it wasn't as though he couldn't see it every time he looked at her.

She was not beautiful. Certainly not as striking as Susana or as angelic as Lana.

She wasn't a troll, either, but all her life she'd known she simply didn't stand a chance of competing with her sisters' blazing presences. She'd always worried she could never truly win a man's love—that she wasn't quite pretty enough. It had been a silly, irritating fear, one she'd sloughed away whenever it niggled at the back of her brain. She had so much to offer and she truly liked herself and, she convinced herself, she didn't need a man's love to be whole.

But now that she'd met Alexander, now that she'd come to know him, that tiny spark of a fear had ignited into a roaring blaze.

She very much wanted to win
his
love.

It was a pity she didn't know how.

It hurt to bare her soul, her fears. To him. Like this. Wound together with him in his bed, naked, his hard body pressing into hers, his heat surrounding her.

It hurt to stare into his eyes as he loomed over her; the moment was far too raw.

Frantically she searched her mind for some jest, some offhand comment, something to shatter the brittle ache inside her and ease this discomfort, but she couldn't pin down her wispy thoughts.

And then every thought scattered, whipped away by a great gust roiling in off the churning sea. Because he framed her face in his enormous hands—her ordinary, plain,
unremarkable
face—and kissed her forehead. “Beautiful,” he murmured.

He kissed her brow. “Beautiful.”

Her cheek. “Beautiful.”

The tip of her imperfect nose. “Beautiful.”

He went on, touching his lips to every inch of her face, repeating the word again and again after each and every buss. And when he had exhausted the options of her features, he pulled back her hair and started working on her ears. They were largish and poked out a bit, so it took a while to acknowledge every inch, but these he declared to be beautiful too.

When he got to her neck, he became distracted and forgot to say
beautiful
, but he mumbled it occasionally as he worked his way over the sensitive column.

Aside from the great welling in her chest at his tenderness, his devotion, his dedication to making her feel pretty, his efforts delighted her in other ways as well. Her nerves began to hum. Her skin rippled with pleasure. The tiny hairs on her arm prickled.

Oh, she wasn't some phenomenal beauty and she knew it, but the fact that he would dedicate himself to convincing her she was, was enough.

If she hadn't loved him before—if she hadn't been drawn to him physically and attracted to him spiritually and besotted with him emotionally—she certainly loved him now.

He was, indeed, the most gorgeous, captivating, fascinating man she'd ever met.

And he was her husband.

A bubble of joy welled up. The urge to laugh, crow, rejoice, filled her.

But she did none of these things. Instead she threaded her fingers through his hair and gripped tightly until he, perforce, raised his head. He gazed at her with a curious look on his face.

“You,” she said in a tight voice that threatened to fail her, “are the beautiful one.” And she pushed him away, tipping him off her and onto his back. He was much larger and stronger than she, but he allowed it. Perhaps he'd been stunned by the ferocity of her tone.

He opened his mouth to respond, but she didn't hesitate. She straddled him and kissed him silent. His lips moved warmly, wetly, beneath hers. As she devoured him, she settled on him more fully, rubbing against him where their bodies touched, entranced by the feel of his hard belly on that aching spot between her thighs.

She lifted her head and smiled at him. His eyes were glazed over. His jaw slack. His fingers played restlessly over her hips.

With great deliberation, she leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Beautiful,” she announced.

His brow, his cheek, the tip of his crooked nose.

“Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.”

His scar.

He winced as she kissed him there. Tried to turn away. “Hannah…”

“Hush.”

From the place it began on his temple over his cheek to the puckered end near his chin, she peppered the wound with tiny kisses, murmuring her acceptance of him, of his perfect imperfections. All of them.

She trailed her lips over the muscled column of his neck and nuzzled him there, as he had her. Then she licked her way over his collarbone and the flat slabs of his chest, riffling her fingers in the wiry hairs, dabbing his nipple with her tongue, glorying in his taste, his scent, the response of his skin.

He lay beneath her silent and still, but he watched with glittering eyes as she explored him. His hold on her hips was gentle, but his fingers drifted in languid circles, awakening her, inciting her.

When he shifted, restlessly, something nudged her bottom. Something insistent and hard.

A shaft of need lanced her.

She stared at him, at the hunger etched on his features.

As delightful as this was, this slow, lazy, lingering discovery, she wanted more.

Holding his gaze, she braced her palms on his chest and edged back, just a tad. She rose up and settled her silken cleft over the length of his cock as it lay across his belly, engulfing him in the damp embrace of her folds. When she rubbed against him, back and forth, he shuddered. His lashes fluttered.

“Lord … have mercy,” he breathed.

Mercy?

Not a bit of it.

It excited her that she could stir him.

It thrilled her that she could make him writhe and pant.

Slowly, teasingly, she bathed him in her arousal, stroked him in a relentless massage.

Ah, but she tantalized herself as well. With each movement, the hard bundle of nerves at the center of her being scraped against him. And with each nudge, shards of pleasure blossomed.

It wasn't long before she had to have more.

As she lifted up again, his nostrils flared. His gaze locked on her hand as she searched for and found him.

His cock was heavy and full, slick and hot in her fist. His pulse thrummed along his length. Her fingers drifted over him, caressing and testing his girth, but not for long.

She'd never been a patient woman.

With a small adjustment in her position, she guided the head of his cock into her weeping channel. Every nerve awoke and sang as she slipped down and down, impaling herself on his glorious length. She didn't stop until he was fully seated in her. He filled her so perfectly, so completely.

Testing the fit, she edged forward and back; she gasped as new sensations, new bursts of pleasure, exploded in her. Thusly encouraged, she tried a new movement, and yet another. She rose up and dropped down. She circled him. She rode him.

One particularly glorious lunge made her body seize as a wave of delight took her. She clenched around him and the wave swelled. She wasn't sure if the groan echoing through the room was hers or his or a twining of the two.

Though sweat formed on her brow, though her breath caught and her heart raced, she worked him relentlessly, pleasuring herself—and him—in a lazy, languorous ride.

But her need grew. Hunger raged within her. Some inexorable force compelled her to move faster and faster still. She planted her palms on his chest, glorying in the feel of him beneath her, around her, and in her. She allowed her instinct, the savage, knowing woman within, to direct her thrusts.

He hissed out a breath as her pace, her intensity, increased; his fingers tightened on her hips. “Hannah,” he growled. His body tensed, his muscles quivered. She had the sense he was yearning to flip her over, to cover her and take her and slake his passion. But he did not.

It was clear his discipline cost him.

She resolved to make this worth his sacrifice.

His attention locked on her breasts, bobbing with her every move. He loosed his hold on her hips and took them, one in each hand, thumbing her nipples and then, to her shock, pinching them.

It was a gentle pinch, but the scream of sensation it sent through her was not gentle in the least.

Ach.
Had she thought she'd been savage before?

With a growl she sank her fingers into the flesh of his chest and raked him. He hissed and tightened his hold. Something wailed within her, screamed, clawed for release.

As though he could no longer hold back, his hips began to arch, to thrust into her, meeting her movements with an urgency that bordered on ferocious. Slick with sweat and arousal, bound in an insanity she'd never experienced, they battled against each other and with each other and for each other.

Her grunts and his groans echoed through the room, along with the sharp slap of flesh against flesh.

Faster and faster, tighter and tighter, wilder and wilder she pummeled him, each lunge on the knife's edge. Barreling toward oblivion, but going there together.

It was magnificent torture. She was stretched on a rack of bliss, poised between pleasure and some grating, aching need. She kept reaching for it, but it danced away, just beyond her grasp.

And then, just when she thought she could bear it no more, just when she thought she might expire from the agonizing frenzy of unfulfilled need … he swelled inside her. The added pressure, the tightness of his fit, the sudden jolt of his cock, scraped at her sanity, loosening her grip, catapulting her up and away and beyond this bed, this room, this consciousness. Lights exploded behind her lids; glory rained through her.

He snarled something that might have been her name as he closed his fingers on her thighs in a pinioning clasp; holding her tight, he thrust up and up and up, though he was already as deep as he could go. Each manic lurch sent new waves of delight through her, but none so much as the hot stream of heaven that filled her as he released.

Instinctively she clutched at him, but as she reached her bliss—as she succumbed, dissolved, melted—her muscles lost their vigor; her deliberate clenches became no more than feeble squeezes and then uncontrollable ripples.