Highland Grace (17 page)

But his seed nearly burst from his loins when
he felt the rush of Jesslyn’s juices drench his fingers. Groaning,
he moved his hands from her buttocks to the curve of her back as
she collapsed against him after her orgasm, her arms around his
neck and her cheek resting on his shoulder. He pulled the long,
flaxen, damp locks away from her shoulders and placed a kiss on one
of their curves.

* * *

Jesslyn was still a bit light-headed from the
intensity of the release Bao had given her. But she wouldn’t be
fully satisfied until they’d truly mated. She opened her eyes and
saw the blue-veined thick, hard,
ready
, member of her
husband. Graeme had begged her to touch him, taste him, but then
he’d made her feel awkward, telling her she wasn’t doing it right,
so it had turned into more of a chore than a pleasure for her. Now
she wondered if he’d been comparing her expertise to that of Lara’s
all those years. Mayhap she really wasn’t good at it. She gazed
again at her new husband’s manhood and she wanted to touch him,
love him the way he’d just done with her. Before she could talk
herself out of it, she reached down, lifted it in her palm and
squeezed.

He jerked and thrust her hand away.
“Nay!”

Oh God.
She
was
terrible at
this after all. “Al-all right.”

He put his arms around her and held her
tight, his face in the curve of her neck. “I’m sorry, my love. I
won’t explain why, but I can never bear that touch.”

She nodded. At first, she just felt relieved,
but then his words sank in and her heart cracked. ‘Twas clearly
something terrible from his past. Mayhap, at least for now, ‘twas
best not to know.

“Now, where were we?” he said after a moment,
placing his hands on either side of her jaw and bringing her lips
up to meet his own.

Jesslyn lay across Bao’s chest now, resting
on her hip against his thigh with her legs still slightly bent at
the knees, but no longer holding her weight. Some primal part of
her understood that this man needed to stay in control of their
lovemaking; that she should simply relax and give him complete
access to her senses in order for both of them to find their
pleasure.

He rolled to his side, delving deep into
Jesslyn’s mouth with his tongue, exploring the recesses, caressing
the inside of her lower lip. He suckled her bottom lip a moment
before moving down her jaw and teasing the dimple in her chin with
the tip of his tongue and then kissing it. His hands positioned
her, gently pushing her to her back and lifting her arms above her
head. “Don’t move these until I say you may,” he murmured, meeting
her eyes a moment.

Her heart leapt, but she agreed with a quick
nod of her head.

Then he caressed her with his mouth and his
hands. Everywhere. Over every bare inch of skin. But one. He
kissed, licked, touched, pinched, nibbled, stroked, until she was
sobbing with the need for release. “Please, take me!” she begged.
He’d rolled her onto her side and was tickling the back of her
knees with his tongue, following that with open-mouthed suction
kisses and nips with his teeth. The action made her womb heavy with
the need to be filled.

He raised his head from his ministrations.
“How? How would you like me to take you, Jesslyn?”

“However it please you!”

“Then I shall take you first with my fingers.
And then, mayhap, with my mouth—would you like that, love?”

“Aye!”

“And then, while you are still in the throes
of release, I shall push myself deep inside of you and mate with
you the way I’ve dreamed of doing again so many times since our day
at the waterfall.” He pressed her onto her back once more and
lifted her knees, spreading her thighs wide as he held them down
against the bed. First, he looked at her for long minutes, which
made her cringe with embarrassment. Then he bent his head and
breathed in her scent before taking a long stroke from bottom to
top with the tip of his tongue.

She cried out, her hips coming up off the
bed. She dropped her hands to the top of Bao’s head.

“Nay, lie still or I can’t pleasure you the
way I know you crave. And I've not given you permission to lower
your arms, either.” When she settled back with them flung above her
head once more, he lifted his hand from her thigh and slowly
entered her pulsing canal with his middle finger.

She twitched and trembled, gave out a soft
moan of pleasure, but forced herself to lie as still as she’d been
ordered to do.

With his other hand, he opened her labia wide
and began his oral onslaught as he stroked in and out of her. He
licked and nibbled. He teased her inner lips with the turgid tip of
his tongue. When she felt a new flow of love juices rush from her
passage, he glutted himself on it, groaning in delight, increasing
Jesslyn’s need by thrice.

She tossed her head from side to side, a
strangled cry pushing past her clenched teeth. “Oh, God,” she
ground out, a feeling of hot and cold voluptuous pleasure running
down her limbs as Bao stroked some inner pleasure center inside her
womb. She opened her thighs wider still.

She was already close to climax when Bao
began to flick her clitoris with the tip of his tongue as he
massaged the sensitive spot in her vagina. She spasmed. “Ahhhh!”
she screamed, feeling her orgasm in every nerve ending of her body.
Her hips tensed and lifted high off the bed as she splintered into
a million specks of starlight. And just as she felt the last wave
crashing over her, Bao did something to give her another one. Three
times more he sent her reeling into heaven. And, just as he’d said
he would, as the last one was ebbing, he lifted her knees over his
arms and pushed himself inside of her, riding the wild tide of her
release.

* * *

Bao’s gaze settled on the junction of their
bodies. Black hair mingling with flaxen. Male encircled by female.
Hard mating with soft. He closed his eyes tight and clenched his
teeth as he struggled to keep himself from coming. She was just as
tight as she’d been the first time. So narrow, in fact, that he’d
thought he might hurt her again when he entered her. Thankfully,
however, she’d been more than ready for him this time. But the feel
of her inner muscles contracting around him was almost more than he
could withstand without allowing his own release.

He felt her relax back on the mattress and
opened his eyes. “You are so lovely,” he said fervidly. His gaze
dropped to her slightly rounded belly. Lovely, and carrying his
bairn, he reminded himself. “We must finish this with you astraddle
me, for I fear I’ll be too rough with you otherwise.” Placing his
arms under her back and shoulders, he rolled to his side and then
his back, remaining inside her. Now she lay on top of him, limp,
hot and drenched from the dew of her recent exertion.

“Can you stand one more, my love?” Bao asked
as he rotated his hips under her, teasing the hooded nub of her
pleasure center with his pubic bone. He pressed her hips down
further, forcing her to take more of him inside of her. Her sheath
tightened around him and Bao gasped.

“Mmm. That feels good,” she mumbled. She
raised up from her prone position on his chest and, using his
shoulders as leverage, allowed him to manipulate her movements in
the way he enjoyed.

Bao lifted his head and suckled her right
breast into his mouth. He was close, so close. But he wanted to
feel her climax around him, feel her milk him of his seed with
those strong inner muscles. He nipped the turgid peak with his
teeth.

She gasped and her sheath clenched.

Bao threw his head back. “Ahhh!” His hips
jerked up just as she pressed down on him. His seed burst forth in
the most intense pleasure-pain he’d ever experienced as he held her
hips down and ground into the convulsing channel that so snugly
clamped around him.

She cried out and collapsed onto his
chest.

Bao kissed her temple.

After a moment, she lifted herself from him
and he hissed in a breath, his cock still ultra sensitive to the
tug of her feminine channel, but he didn’t try to halt her
retreat.

She rolled off of him and onto her back.

They spent some time catching their breaths
and then he rolled over and kissed her, holding her head still with
his palms on either cheek. After a long moment, he broke the kiss.
“That was better than all the times I’ve imagined having you
again,” he murmured against her lips.

She smiled. “Aye.”

He took possession of her mouth once more,
lifting her limp arms and placing them around his neck, deepening
the kiss before stroking his hand over her breast and down her
side. He rested his hand over her swollen belly where their babe
dwelled and felt the
tap, tap
of his bairn on his palm. He
grinned against her mouth. “I believe we awakened the babe.”

The babe tapped harder then.

She giggled. “Aye,” she said and placed her
hand on his arm. “I’m glad you gave me your babe that day at the
fall,” she murmured. “I’ve wanted it from the moment I realized its
existence. Thank you.”

“You
thank
me for getting you with
child and then leaving you to defend your condition, take care of
yourself and your bairns, without benefit of husband?”

Jesslyn shrugged. “Well, mayhap not that part
of the tale.”

“Aye, I should hope not.”

* * *

“You’ve truly been traveling around the
Highlands for so long? ‘Tis so exciting!” Branwenn said to their
first footer as he sat with her at the table and devoured his meal.
He must not have eaten for a long while, she thought sadly. She
glanced once again at her grandmother, who sat a few feet away by
the hearth with Laird Donald enjoying a glass of spiced wine. She
still held the pouch of salt in her lap that the stranger had given
them when he’d requested entry. Branwenn hoped he could afford to
give away his meager supply. Tho’ he’d told them upon entry that he
was of a good family, that his name was Reys ap Gryffyd, and that
his father had been lord over a large estate to the south, his
clothes were quite worn. But, they were of the finest scarlet and
his leather boots, the work of a superior craftsman, giving
credence to his assertion of gentle birth. Mayhap, he’d simply
fallen on hard times during his journeys.

Reys shrugged. “Aye. It pleases me to meet
new people, but the land this time of year is difficult to travel
o’er,” he replied after swallowing the portion of swan he’d jammed
into his mouth.

Branwenn ran her eyes over their guest. He
was such a handsome man. With eyes as blue as midnight and hair as
black as pitch that fell just over his ears. Shorter than the
Highland men liked to wear their own, but still very attractive.
And he was tall of stature, too. A good augury for the new year. He
was a big man as well. Not as big as Bao or Daniel, of course, but
at least as big as that devil Callum. And she’d been eyeing that
strange stringed instrument he’d placed next to him on the bench as
well. Would he be willing to play it for her later? She hoped so.
She loved music. Always had. In fact, Bao used to tease her
mercilessly when she was a bairn because she was always trying to
make sounds with anything that she found lying about. He especially
hated it when she put dried peas in one of the silver wine flagons
and shook it vigorously. For hours. The memory made her grin. “By
what name do you call that instrument?” she asked, tipping her head
in its direction.

Reys glanced down at it. “‘Tis a
crwth
; ‘tis akin to a stringed lyre.” Placing his hand on
its rounded base, he stroked the polished wood. “This be an
instrument well known in the land of my kin.”

“And where be that?”

“
Cymru
, some know it as Cambria.”

“‘Twas the land of my mother!” Branwenn
turned on her seat and called out, “Grandmother! Reys is from
Cambria, just as my mother was!”

Her grandmother’s nod held indulgence. “We
must hear all about you, lad, and what’s brought you so far from
your homeland,” she said.

“Aye,” Laird Donald agreed, “Mayhap, after
you’ve finished your meal, you’ll come sit by the hearth and give
us a song or two and tell us your tale.”

“Aye, I’ve a yearning to do just that,” the
man replied. Turning back to Branwenn, he asked, “Where be your
mother, lass? I’ve a longing to see a fellow countryman after all
this time.”

“Alas, she died giving birth to me.” His look
grew more intent and she felt herself blush. “I was raised by my
brother, Bao, who’s the mightiest warrior in all this world.”

“Bao? An odd name for a Highlander,” he
said.

“‘Tis the name given him by
his
mother; she was from Cathay,” Branwenn replied.

Reys’s spine straightened and his look
sharpened. “Was your mother’s name Gwenllian wreic Gryffyd of
Penrhos?”

A cold chill ran down Branwenn’s spine.
“Aye,” she said slowly. “How know you this?”

“I didn’t, not with any certainty, until
now,” he replied softly. “She was
my
mother as well.”

Branwenn leapt from her seat, as a
high-pitched ringing resounded in her ears. “I don’t believe you,”
she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She swayed a moment
before collapsing in a heap on the floor.

After a stunned moment, Reys leapt to his
feet and pushed the bench aside, then knelt down beside her.

“Branwenn!” Laird Donald shouted. He rushed
over to the prostrate figure, lying half on and half off the dais,
and placed his hand on her cheek.

“What happened? Is she hurt, Lachlan?” Lady
Maclean asked, struggling to rise.

“She swooned, I believe,” Reys said.

“Aye, it looks that way,” Laird Donald said.
“Let’s get her into a more comfortable position. Help me lift her
onto the dais, lad,” he said to Reys.

Lady Maclean came up to stand near Branwenn’s
prone form, worry in her eyes. Motioning to the young servant that
stood next to them all, she said, “Here, lad, get us a bit of water
and a cloth.”