Heaven and the Heather (27 page)

“
Oui!
” he shouted, face exploding in a smile from ear to ear.

Niall leapt to the task. He tore off his plaid with his free hand, sent it sailing across the cottage where it landed on the pallet of straw. He then attacked his tunic, jerking it over his neck. He grunted and snarled at the fabric that seemed intent on binding itself around his head.

Sabine gasped. Niall’s full manhood was as exposed for her as his face was not. She felt naughty for staring at him while he struggled so. Perchance she should tell him to stop, to go away. But she could not speak as she stared at the one part of him that was at the ready, even if the rest of him was not.

“’Twould work better to remove your tunic if you laid down your sword,” she managed over rapid breaths. What in God’s name was she saying?

“Aye,” came the muffled reply. The sword fell from one sleeve, tearing it on the way down.

“Niall—!”

The handle of the heavy piece of weaponry clanged down on his foot.

“Ow! Shite!” he exclaimed through the linen. He paused. “Sorry.”

This would not work, she told herself. He had to leave her, now. She would wait until the
comédie
was over, then tell him…perchance.

Two knives suddenly fell from his tunic and narrowly missed stabbing his feet. She wondered where he stashed those weapons, and just as quickly did not wish to know.

“Bloody hell!” Niall cried in frustration.

He tore the tunic from his body and tossed it over his head where it caught on one of the rafters.

Standing there, over her, breathing heavily from his exertion with his clothes, Niall looked every bit the male animal. Sabine swallowed. The firelight to his right side raked shadows over the sculpted contours of his chest and abdomen in tempting chiaroscuro. The scar from his encounter with the arrow was a reddened star-shaped blotch on an otherwise perfect form, one the great Michelangelo would have coveted with hammer and chisel. The blood rushed from her face, the breath evacuated her body just to view such a magnificent sight.

“May I join ye?” Niall asked stepping over the knives.

“Formality from a Highland
sauvage
?” she teased. A nervous giggle escaped, betraying her confused emotions.

“Aye….”

He leaned down and braced both hands on either side of the trough. “No invitation necessary, my love?”

“My love?” Sabine smiled. “
Mon Dieu!
”

“Not quite—” Niall’s hand slipped. He fell into the trough on top of her.

She laughed as he fought to regain any semblance of balance her tension evaporating as quickly as the water that leapt from the trough. Sprigs of heather flew out on tiny waves landing on the earthen floor. A splinter suddenly stabbed her buttocks.

She squirmed under him. “Ouch! Off of me!”

He scrambled off of her, suppressing a laugh, and stood over the trough. Sabine stared angrily up at him. “Leave me,” she demanded on a foolish whim. It was far from want she truly wanted, so she thought. She had no idea except what her body felt so strongly.

He laughed. “The time is ready for us, has been for a long time. I feel as if I have known ye for an eternity. To deny me with lies from yer heart would be a crime.”

All she could say was a breathless, “
Oui.
”

He gathered her in his arms and carried her against his body to the pallet, where he laid her gently down.

He leaned forward, until their lips met, wet and warm, with more passion than one kiss should have. Sabine yielded every piece of her body to him. Yet, she kept a small bit of her soul that allowed her to savor the moment in silent ecstasy. The moment when Niall would take her, when she would give herself to him. The moment she had anticipated, had dreamt of.

His hands roamed across her damp flesh, awakening her more and more, drawing her so close to him she could barely breathe. He glided a hand up her thigh and slipped it downward, fingers splayed and sweeping over them top of her leg. Her flesh danced under his touch as he gave her sweet torment with his fingertips.

Slowly, assuredly, he moved his hand up along the inside of her thigh. She ceased to breathe under the touch of such passion. His hand was fire upon her as it was so perilously near that place no man had ventured. She gasped and told herself to breathe so she would be a part of this moment and the moments she knew would follow.

Niall brushed his hand up to the top of her thigh and across the bottom of her belly, over the gently swell there. She was suddenly awash in gooseflesh as he teased her so. Her desire to have him touch her more, to place the fullness of his hand upon her built to bursting. Never did she think a touch could do so much, could make her body crave so much.

He placed both of his hands upon her now, more enticement than she could bear. She could not help but willingly gave her body and mind to this enchanting, precious moment. He slid his hand down again to that place between her legs, that place consumed now with enough heat to melt iron. She slowly opened to him, and was quickly rewarded with his smile.

“
A dèan gaol
,” he whispered to her. His burr lovely, comforting, becoming.

“What?” she asked breathlessly, feeling his manhood pressing down on her abdomen as he rested his body on top of hers. She trembled just a little. It was a good tremble.

“To make love,
amour
, Sabine,” he replied. “’Tis what it means.”

She reached up, burying her right hand in his thick hair. She took in his steady azure gaze, slowly found her voice and spoke the truth from her heart.

“I wish to make love…to you and no other.”

He nodded slightly, a wry grin on his face. “’Tis what we are doing.”

She smiled. “
Aye.
”

He drew her nearer to him. He eased her, sensation by glorious sensation, into knowing that at this very moment nothing else existed but the two of them. His art of
amour
made nothing else matter to her, nothing but this very time.

He drew his kisses from her mouth and anointed them upon her waiting flesh. He kissed her breasts, circling his tongue about the dark rounds of taut flesh and heightening her desire more than she had dared dream.

Slowly he drew his lips between her breasts, down her abdomen to the top of the dark triangle between her thighs. Her flesh quivered and released a tiny moan. Could such pleasure also be a torment?

Niall raised his gaze to meet her own. His eyes sparkled, rivaling the most precious sapphire, a gift he gave to her alone. She reached up and brushed the back of her hand across the strong angle of his jaw.
“Niall…mon amour…,”
she whispered.

“Sabine,” he said brushing her desire with his Scottish burr.

Taking a deep breath, he slid a hand under the small of her back with one hand and brought her body up into a smooth arch.

She gasped, her pleasure to difficult to contain. Shivers ran through her like a raging Alpine river. She slowly parted her legs as he bridged over her on taut arms, swollen with muscle. He kissed her, stifling another gasp and the moan that rose in her throat as he entered her. Nothing short of the world exploding would cause her to halt this moment.

He slid himself deeper into her and with one sharp pain he broke the mantle of her maidenhood. A moan escaped from her throat at the sharp pain, which was rapidly followed by a wash of pleasure as she surrounded him, her blood pumping molten through her body.

“
Mon amour….
” she breathed. “Again and again.”

She soon joined him as they danced passion’s
volte
. She matched his rhythm as they climbed the highest mountain in the Highlands. Breaths tore over their lips, lips that fought for purchase against each other’s flesh. They held each other, kept time together, without knowing there was time to be kept. Wind tore up the mountainside, over their skin, raising row upon row of gooseflesh. The air rushed down over them, thundering in their ears, or was it the weather outside? What difference did that make when the summit was so near? They climbed up into air warmer than what they left behind. The heat built upon itself. Their breaths charged out. Their heads dizzied. Bursting was inevitable.

And Sabine did burst from her very core, over and over, slipping down and climbing up again only to slide back down, over the top of a landslide that crashed down on her. Niall was there with her, every breath, every step, as her lover. She felt she would be warmed forever at the mere thought.

Awash in heat inside her Highlander’s embrace and happiness had a new name for Sabine:
MacGregor.

She fixed on his blue gaze. He had stolen a piece of her heat, yet she was not chilled, oddly enough she was warmed more. She did not mind that he had done so. Ever since she had seen him on that misty wharf, she had been revolted by him and had wanted him. Now she lay coupled with him, a testament to the unpredictability of her heart.

He moved inside of her. She closed about him when he kissed her, his tongue mingled with hers. He knew the French way of kissing very well. She had only experienced it once, and it did not compare to this. Nothing did. She hummed beneath him, lifted her legs, wrapped them about his thighs.

Niall looked down upon her. Damp locks of his hair hung from either side of his face.

“How d’ye feel?” he asked.

There were too many words to describe how she felt. All of them jumbled in her mind. She chose the first and not the most appropriate word.

“Hungry.”

“Aye, me too,” he said.

Niall climbed from the pallet. She did not let him from her sight.

“
Mon Dieu
,” he whispered. Never had he experienced anything like that before. He had experiences, but nothing that matched what threatened to make his knees buckle. Trying to be steady on his feet, he walked the few paces to the table. He picked up a quince and tossed it over his shoulder. He quickly surveyed the rest of the food he had brought into the sheiling. How could he think of his belly at a time like thi—?

He paused. A crunch and the scent of sweetness beckoned him to turn around.

Sabine sat up on the pallet, damp hair spilled down over one shoulder, breasts flushed with their recent lovemaking, nipples stiffened in the cool air, the fire laying shadows and light over the slender length of her body. A thin line of juice from the quince trickled down the hollow at the base of her neck down into the generous valley between her breasts and onward over her softly rounded belly to the luxuriant dark triangle between her smooth thighs. Niall’s knees began to give way anew.

“A picture of insane delight,” he whispered. “Even ye could draw it.”

Without warning, she shot him a seductive smile. “Can one find love here in your Highlands?”

“Aye, ’tis possible.”

She smiled and took another bite of quince, her teeth penetrating the golden flesh of the fruit.

Niall grabbed her wrist and took a bite of the fruit. Sabine ate at the other side of the quince until it was gone, leaving them passionate kisses, sweet and sticky.

Niall broke the kiss and trailed his lips down her body to the dark triangle between her legs. He took freely her own sweet juices, his tongue an instrument for her pleasure.

Weakened by rapture, Sabine slipped down on the pallet and opened herself further, as he made love to her in the French manner. She had only known of such ways in behind-the-hand whispers between Her Majesty’s attendants. She had to bite her bottom lip to keep from shouting her ecstasy out to the shadowy rafters. Hands cupping her breasts, fingers digging into the flesh, thumbs toying the nipples into hardness, Niall took her to the brink, his methods unforgiving and expert. Then he kissed her and seized her with his powerful body for another climb through the wind and water, up the highest mountain in Scotland.

chapter 15

Guarding A Secret

“S
top eating,” Sabine scolded. “Or I shall sketch you as you truly are.”

“Oh, aye?” Niall asked lifting one brow. The firelight played seductively off of his face. “And what am I…truly?”

She stopped sketching, briefly, and savored the recent moments as deeply as the current one. They had shared hours of abandon that would forever be upon her mind. A rare gift that no one could steal from her.

“You are an untamed
animal
,” she said. Praise Sweet Saint Giles, for that!

“Aye, well, I’m not the only beastie in this cottage. As I recall ye could have used a bit of tying down a wee while ago,” he replied with a grin.

“That’s why I’m sketching. Keeps urges at bay,” she teased.

She continued drawing Niall, completing the sketch she had begun at the castle when her eyes were innocent of him. Recently acquired knowledge emboldened her right hand to render the lines and contours as confidently as the man reclining against a stack of peat bricks before her. The pain in her fingers did not exist, or had she learned to ignore it?

“My God, ye’re beautiful,” he whispered, swiping meat juices from his lips with the back of his hand. “I wish I could draw ye, but I’m not the artistic sort. Not much use for drawing and such in the Highlands.”