He tossed her shift aside and it fluttered to the ground like a fallen leaf.
He was still for a moment, drinking in her image with a gaze so intense that she didn’t doubt he’d never forget it. Had it not been for the steady rise and fall of his chest and the pulsing beneath his kilt, he might have been a statue. She nearly jumped when he moved his hands, reaching for her. His touch on her hips was warm, though—even calming. It was impossible not to relax a little when he drew her close. His touch made her crave more and the wanting quelled her fear. Mostly, anyway. She could feel his fierce erection pressing against her belly, its stiff urgency so at odds with his tender touch. It was caught neatly between their bodies and she worried again about how it would feel inside her. Would it hurt? Would it…break her? No—she could feel her body readying for it. She was, it seemed, made for this—for him, his body, his cock. The realisation dispelled the last of her worry and stirred her core. Everything between her bellybutton and her thighs seemed to clench at once, and she swayed, rendered momentarily light-headed.
He placed one hand behind her head and the other against her back, steadying her before he pressed his chest against hers and lowered her softly to the ground. She shivered as her back met the cold earth, and he loomed over her, his kilt more disturbed than ever. He stroked her from shoulder to hip with his left hand while he buried his right in her hair, lowering himself until their lips met. He plunged his hand between her legs as he kissed her, his rough fingertips making her delicate skin tingle as he massaged it. They slid over her skin, which had grown very slippery—something Isla had never experienced until today. It was as if the longing she felt was escaping from her body, beckoning him in.
A minute
thud
announced that Alexander had removed his sporran. The leather strap that had secured it had brushed Isla’s thigh as it fell to the ground. She reached out and touched Alexander’s leg, which rested beside her own, and brushed his kilt with her fingertips. She searched for the hem and forced her hand under it when she found it, feeling her way to his groin as he covered her mouth with his and his hair tumbled into her eyes, blinding her. When she grasped his ready cock he moaned, the sound escaping only to be trapped between their lips. She moved her hand from end to end, pausing only to reach beneath and cup his balls. They were heavy and hot in her hand. He kissed her as he continued to touch her, fluttering his fingers in the slick cleft between her legs. He moaned again, and stray wisps of his hair brushed Isla’s cheeks. A hint of wetness met her fingers as she slid them over the blunt tip of his cock, and her hand glided all the more smoothly back down his shaft for it. Then, suddenly, he withdrew his touch, darting his hand below his kilt to seize her wrist.
Isla blinked up at him, for he had stopped kissing her. If his grip on her wrist had been any tighter, it would have hurt.
“Dinnae touch me any more,” he breathed. “I cannae take it.”
He released her hand, and Isla obliged his strained request, placing it innocently—or innocently enough, anyway—on his thigh. Her fingertips were still damp, and her core clenched and throbbed as she remembered the little bit of moisture spilling from the slit that divided the rounded end of his erection. What would it feel like when he spilt himself—all of himself—inside her? Would she feel the hot rush, despite how wet her core already was? Her fingertips tingled beneath the little bit of seed he’d already released. She thought she would.
He dipped his fingers between her legs again, resuming the massage that had caused moisture to trickle from her body, further dampening the already rained-upon earth. “What I’ll soon be doin’ to ye may hurt a wee bit,” he said, “and I dinnae want ye to think pain is all there is to it.” His lips brushed her neck and his breath tickled her ear. “Be still, Isla.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and she relaxed as best she could, lying back against the ground with her hair spilling over the earth. Alexander met her eyes, and she closed them. She didn’t have the energy to hold his burning gaze, not when his touch was making her head spin. God, she’d never imagined anything could feel like
this
! She understood now why he’d begun to spill himself—such pleasure demanded a physical reaction. The slippery folds between her legs tingled and burnt with delight, and her womb tightened sporadically. The fleshy tunnel that led to it clenched tight, as if to grasp something that wasn’t there yet—though she desperately wanted it to be. She’d take his cock now, if he’d only give it to her, and wouldn’t worry about how it might hurt.
Not
having it in her ached badly. She didn’t just want it now—she needed it. She tightened her grip on his thigh, driving her nails into his flesh, desperate to convey her urgency. He didn’t flinch, but rather rubbed her more quickly, gliding his fingertips over her slick skin and massaging the hard nub that begged for attention. She was sure she would burst.
She gasped suddenly, gripping Alexander’s thigh with a force that might have made a weaker man wince. Her entire body seemed to tense and tense again, riding the waves of sensation that swept through her core and into the rest of her. There was only pleasure—there was only his touch, making her writhe against the cold earth and cry out wordlessly. There was only Alexander. And when the pleasure ebbed, he was still there. She stared up at him with wide eyes, nearly breathless.
“Alexander…” she gasped, her voice barely a whisper.
He slowly withdrew his touch from between her legs, tracing a line down the inside of her left thigh with his fingertips. She responded automatically, opening her legs to his touch. He lowered himself between them, moving one of her legs aside gently, careful not to bump her broken foot. When he had settled between her thighs, he seized his kilt and raised it, momentarily revealing a flash of dark hair and a long piece of stiff flesh, gone reddish with desire. He embraced her, resting his hard cock against her dampened skin, ready to part the tingling folds and slide inside her. She placed her hands on his shoulders, gripping them tightly. This was it. This was what everyone had accused her of. And she couldn’t wait for it to happen.
Chapter Four
“Isla,” Alexander said.
“Aye?” It came out as more of a gasp than a word.
“Are ye sure? Are ye sure ye dinnae mind bein’ the lass that was bedded by a Gordon? Are ye sure…that ye want to be my wife?” His cock pulsed against the soft flesh of her inner thigh as he spoke, a hair’s breadth away from penetration.
“I havnae ever wanted anythin’ more,” she said, and it was true. The suggestion that she could still turn him away after receiving such a gift as his touch, after losing herself completely beneath it, seemed absurd to her. The climax he’d driven her to had been wonderful, but not completely satisfying. If anything, she only wanted him more now. If he could do that with his just hands, what would he be capable of when loosed upon her body, joined with it? And there was the fact that she wanted
him
—the essence of his person, his soul, she supposed—quite as much as she wanted his body. She knew now he was just as gorgeous on the inside as the outside, Gordon or no.
He entered her in one slow stroke, reaching deep inside as she gripped his shoulders. She pressed her mouth to his neck and bit down to stifle a cry as her core stretched to accommodate his considerable presence. God, it
did
hurt! She’d known when she’d seen his cock tenting his kilt, when she’d felt its length in her hand, that it couldn’t possibly fit inside her painlessly. How it ached! With pain…and with pleasure. And, as he pulled back, with longing for him to slide in deeply again, to fill her. It didn’t make any sense. But then, the fact that she was lying beneath a Gordon on the forest floor wouldn’t have made any sense to her a few hours ago. But she was glad she was. God, she was glad.
“Oh, Isla…” Alexander moaned, driving himself deep into her again.
She gasped beneath him. The pain was beginning to lessen with every stroke, but a deep one like that…well, it filled her with a different kind of ache. The place inside her he’d touched with the tip of his cock throbbed as he pulled away, almost hurting as she longed to feel him force his way there again. She shuddered when he granted her unspoken wish and gripped his shoulders more tightly, inadvertently squeezing water from the fabric beneath her hands.
He bowed his head and pressed his mouth against hers, roughly parting her lips with his tongue and delving deep inside. She kissed him back and he bore down on her, moving faster, with less care and more urgency. Her tongue slipped against his as he withdrew and plunged in again, mimicking the motions that were rocking her hips below.
She was clawing his shoulders in earnest now. She arched beneath him and the kiss was broken. Her saliva gleamed on his lips, causing them to glisten in the daylight as he tossed back his head, dark strands of his hair flying. He was moving so hard inside her that it hurt again, but in a way that made her want more.
One of her fingernails tore a slight run in the fabric of his shirt, the sodden material seeming to disappear beneath her grip as she felt she was dissolving beneath him—reduced from a living, thinking being to an entity of pure sensation and fierce craving.
He cried out and she joined him as he pushed her to climax. Her core contracted wildly around his cock, seizing it and urging him to stay, not to withdraw from her body, ever. She didn’t fight her body’s response. Instead, she yielded to it, arching herself beneath him and breathing raggedly as intense spasms made her exclaim wordlessly between gasps.
His seed rushed into her channel, hot and wet, just as she’d imagined it. Her body milked it from him, gripping him tighter and tighter with each wave of pleasure that washed over her. Having him inside her was so much better than grasping at nothing as she came. She gasped, dug her nails too hard into his shoulders and cried his name.
When they both were finally still, the only sounds were their heavy breathing and the distant cry of a lark. Alexander remained inside Isla, propped on his elbows, his pulse beating in her core, urging her own heartbeat to fall in time. It did, and perpetuated the feeling they had become one being. He withdrew slowly, pausing to kiss her softly on the lips. The head of his cock brushed her folds, setting off a last, smaller wave of toe-curling sensation. She sighed as he left her completely and the cold air hit her bare skin again.
He wordlessly retrieved her shift and dress, bringing them to where she sat on the ground, her hair surely wild and her left leg cautiously extended. She raised her arms at his urging and he pulled her shift down over her head, slowly feeling his way over her curves as he clothed her. He did the same with her dress, pulling it down over her body and smoothing its skirts against her thighs. Isla found the sensation of his fingers fluttering against her sides and thighs just as exciting as she had before they’d made love. She’d thought doing so would make her stop craving his touch, but it hadn’t. Though she was sexually satisfied—how could she not be, when her core felt weakened in the wake of such intense relief, and hot with his seed?—she still wanted to feel his skin against hers, to hear the beating of his heart. To be close to him.
After draping her cloak around her and tying it beneath her chin, he paused to refasten his sporran, then lifted her from the ground, cradling her and turning back in the direction they had come from, where the horses waited less than a mile away.
“Wait,” she said.
He paused, his expression soft as his eyes met hers.
“I’d like to visit the spring again, for just a wee bit before we leave.” Her throat was slightly sore from so much gasping, and her voice quiet, but she knew he’d listen.
He lowered her at the pool’s edge, and she stared into the clear water, seeing the speckled rocks that rested at the bottom, smoothed by many years of submersion. She bowed her head. This time, she prayed a silent prayer of thanks.
“So, is it true?” he asked when she turned to face him again.
She followed his gaze to where it rested on the water. “Aye, it’s true. A prayer sent from the bank of the Spring of Saint Himelin cannae but come true.”
He rested a hand on her shoulder, pausing thoughtfully before saying, “Aye.”
“So, you agree?” she asked.
He nodded.
“What was it ye prayed for, then?”
He bent so that his lips brushed her ear when he spoke, sending a shiver racing down her spine. “I prayed that I might feel your lips against mine again, without forcing them there.” He kissed her lightly, and her head span a little as she tasted his lips and remembered witnessing his silent pleading by the spring’s edge. That…
this
was what he’d prayed for?
“Come home with me now,” he said, scooping her up from the ground, “and I’ll see ye dried and your foot tended to.”
She let her head rest against his chest as he carried her, and listened to the sound of his heart beating against her cheek. She pressed a hand against her own breast and found that her heart pulsed in time with his. Perhaps their joining had done that—perhaps their hearts would always beat together now, as one. The thought brought a slight smile to her lips as he took long strides through the forest, carrying her towards its edge and the road that would lead them to Benstrath.
The horses were waiting where they’d left them, and were still damp although the rain had finally stopped. Isla gazed up at the brooding sky. It looked as if it might rain again, but even a moment of dryness was something to be grateful for.