Seduced by a Highlander (33 page)

His promise, along with his intimate kiss, frightened her and sent a scintillating spasm down her spine at the same time. Her clothes felt heavy, suffocating. She wanted to rip them from her body—and then start on his. Passion, like the swell of a rushing wave, washed over her. She tilted her hips, rubbing herself along the length of his full erection.

He groaned from someplace deep in his throat. His eyes gleamed, pinning her to the bed as he rose off her. “So then, ye wish my defeat to come quickly?” His lips hooked into a slow, sensuous smile as he shook his head. “Another woman who is the bane of her knight.” He stood over her and pulled at the laces of his breeches, freeing himself.

Isobel’s heart stalled at the sight and size of it springing upward like a lance ready to pierce the heavens. Oh,
that
was going to hurt.

“No’ yet,” he growled, closing his fingers around the thick shaft and squeezing.

A muscle between Isobel’s thighs convulsed.

“First,” he whispered, bending to her and slipping his other hand under her skirts, “tell me that ye’ll be my wife… and then let me lick ye here.” He rubbed his finger over her engorged bud. His smile deepened when her eyes widened in surprise.

“I will marry ye, Tristan MacGregor,” she gasped while he stroked her.

“No, ye cannot,” she protested weakly. “It is immoral. It must be.” She closed her eyes as another tremor of pleasure coursed through her.

“Immoral it might be, but I promise ye’re goin’ to enjoy it.” He kissed his way up the soft flesh of her trembling thigh. Her body jerked. She wound her fingers through his silky hair, torn between pulling him away and driving him closer. His mouth was so hot, so hungry as he kissed and nibbled his way upward to the damp mound at her center. When he flicked his tongue over her, spasms wracked her body, and she shuddered to her soul. She tried to squeeze her knees together, but he hooked her leg around his neck and buried his face deeper. His tongue darted inside her, then licked its way up over her scalding need. He kissed her there, pulling her sensitive flesh with his lips, then sucking her into his mouth with a tender pressure that made her cry out. He did not cease, but drank to his pleasure, spreading her wider with his fingers to taste her more fully.

Isobel felt dizzy, drunk with want. Her breath came hard. Her thoughts went dark as ripples of feral passion, sheer titillating delight, consumed her. She dug her fingernails into his shoulders, undulated her hips beneath the ravenous stroke of his tongue, his teeth. She tried to speak, to tell him how good he felt, but only tight, languorous gasps escaped her lips as he brought her to the pinnacle of ecstasy.

She grasped for him as he moved away, leaving her weak and panting for more. He smiled in the candlelight and tugged his breeches down over his thighs. His shirt and boots he flung away next. Isobel’s languid gaze took
in the glory of his hard, naked body, the slight tics of his trembling muscles as he moved toward her to slowly peel away her kirtle and shift until she lay exposed to his dark male desire. She wasn’t afraid anymore. Whatever he meant to do, she wanted it, needed it.

“Hurry,” she whispered on a stilled breath.

He was there instantly, poised over her, kissing her demands away with his mouth. Her nipples grew tighter, pressed against his chest, tickled by his coarse hair. He dipped his head and sucked each in turn with a maddening mixture of tenderness and wild desire.

“No’ yet, my love,” he whispered on an uneven breath as he surged his length against her. “Och, hell.” He rose up on one splayed hand and with the other clasped his thick, glistening shaft as his seed shot upward in three long spurts. For an instant, he looked as astounded as she did. Isobel was mortified for him, but happy at the same time to know this had never happened to him before. Then his dimple twinkled at her as he scooped up a drop of his passion’s nectar off her belly and spread it over her red-hot core. “My body will wait fer ye nae longer.”

“Nor will mine.” She felt indecent saying it, but she didn’t care. She reached for him, yearning for his mouth, his kiss. Oh, it was the first thing she had come to love about him.

Their lips met with equal fervor, open, tongues meeting with the same urgent desire. He slowed, guiding the broad head of his cock to her opening. Stilled on a breath of anticipation, they stared into each other’s eyes, seeing all they needed. He broke through her barrier with a slow, salacious thrust that somehow managed to feel excruciatingly good while threatening to tear her in half.

“No, no!” she cried out, clutching him to her, thrashing her head back and forth. “It pains me.”

He stopped moving and stilled her with a gentle hand and soft, tender kisses. “There is nothin’ to fear,” he soothed, capturing her anxious gaze with his adoring one. “Relax yer breathin’, my delight. I will go slowly. The pain will subside.”

He kept his promise and moved slowly, thoughtfully, all the while looking deep into her eyes, tracing the contour of her mouth with his fingers, his lips. He whispered to her of how she felt and how desperately he wanted her—withdrawing and advancing with long, languid thrusts.

Ecstasy darkened his eyes, tightened his jaw, and the mere sight of him over her, aching to drive his body hard into hers and exercising enough control not to, made Isobel’s nerve endings burn. She lifted her legs around his waist and dug her toes into his back. Even though it was painful, she liked it and what it was doing to him. She didn’t want him to stop.

He smiled at her boldness just before he took her bottom lip between his teeth and impaled her to the hilt.

She didn’t cry out in pain again after that, not when his hot flesh felt so exquisitely good.

Boldly, she outlined the muscles of his chest with her fingertips, her mouth. When she stroked her palms down his tight buttocks, he lifted his weight off her, withdrew slowly to his head, and then drove her deep into the bed. She cried out his name and he slowed again, this time dragging her hands up above her head. He dipped his mouth to her nipple and sucked it into his mouth, pulling in and out of her quivering body with slow, deliberately exquisite care.

He whispered her name on a ragged breath as he burst inside her. But he withdrew before he was done and stroked her nub with the damp brush of his stiff erection.

With his hot liquid spilling over her from the tip of his lance, she cried out one last time with the thrill of her release.

T
ristan watched her rummage through the bags in their room wearing nothing but his shirt. He grew hard almost immediately but talked himself out of making love to her again so soon. Still, it was difficult not to want to take her from behind when she bent over one the sacks and the alluring curves of her buttocks peeked back at him.

“Are ye certain ye dinna’ want my aid?”

“No.” She held up her palm. “Stay exactly where ye are.”

He smiled and pulled the thin blanket covering the bed a little higher on his hips. His bonnie siren had reverted to blushing. He found it quite appealing to be the only man in the world who knew what a fiery temptress his bashful goddess truly was. Hell, she’d had him panting like an animal in season. He had been with many women, but none of them had ever roused such fevered responses from him as Isobel had. Always mindful of not creating a bairn in every burgh, he prided himself on his command over his body. He had never once lost himself completely to passion,
prematurely expelling his seed only to ache all over again to release his full bounty inside her. Her eager, curious touches and unrestrained responses drove him wild with desire until he barely recognized himself. Hell, but the tales were true. Love did make a man surrender all.

“Thank goodness, I have found it.” She spun around, smiling and holding up a small bundle in each hand.

Tristan wanted to leap from the bed and throw her on it beneath him. “Aye, thank goodness.”

“It is the bread and cheese we ate outside Dumfries,” she informed him merrily as she climbed back into bed.

He nodded, catching the flash of her smooth thigh.

“Are ye hungry?”

He smiled up at her from his pillow. “I’m always hungry fer yer delectable kitchen wonders. I fear I will grow fat livin’ with ye.”

“I will make certain ye do not.”

His blood scorched a straight path to his groin when she smiled at him beneath the veil of her lashes.

“My brothers have been enjoying my cooking fer a decade, and they are not fat.”

“Who taught ye how to cook?” he asked.

“My mother. I was almost the same age Tamas is now, so she had plenty of time to teach me. I used to love to watch her cook. She taught me every spice and the medicinal value of almost every plant.”

“Ye miss her.”

“Of course.” She smiled, remembering her mother’s gentle voice and radiant smile. “We never stop missing our parents after they leave us.”

“That is true.” He folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “I would like to travel to France to see my aunt Anne.”

“Robert’s wife?”

“Aye.” He opened his eyes. “She lives in a convent. I would like to see her again.” He looked at Isobel and smiled. “Ye have the same color hair as she has.”

“Was she like a mother to ye also?”

He shook his head. “My mother would never have allowed it. She would deny it, but she favors me. I think ’tis because I resemble her brother.”

“She is going to hate me, Tristan.”

The quaver in her voice pulled him to her. “She will no’ hate ye. I will see to it.” Hell, he didn’t want to think on this now. “Come here, lass.”

Patience was a virtue, he told himself as he turned her on her side and spooned his body close to hers. He had to repeat the phrase a dozen more times as he closed his arms around her and pressed his hips to the softness of her backside. “All will be well,” he promised her and brushed his fingers over her breast. He kissed the waves of her hair and then scooped her lush tresses away and pressed his lips to her nape. When she moved her rump against him he went as hard as his sword. “Careful, lass,” he groaned, moving away from the heat of her body. “I know ye’re sore, but I can be a merciless bastard.”

“I do not believe it.” Her soft laughter emboldened him to show her. She did not stop him or move away when he regained his position close against her back and cupped her bottom in his hand. “I want to make love to ye again, Isobel.”

If she couldn’t, if she refused him, he would do as she asked, for nowhere in him was there a desire to ever hurt her. But she swung her arm over her shoulder and looped it around his neck, pulling his hungry mouth closer to hers. When her tongue darted over his swollen
lip, his control snapped. He rubbed his hot shaft between her buttocks and groaned into her mouth, devouring its softness.

His hands sculpted her shape beneath the gossamer fabric of his shirt. The warmth of her skin drove him mad with desire to get closer, be inside her, and feel that heat encompass him. He spread his palms over her soft belly, her firm, round breasts, and outlined the tight tips with broad strokes that made her squirm against his hard curves.

His shaft throbbed and swelled harder. He could wait no longer. His fingers tarried at her knee until he felt her breath against his cheek, short and shallow. Her passion for him nearly caused him to burst, and his heart along with it. Lifting her leg, he spread her wide and guided his moist tip along her scalding opening. Her muffled cry against the pillow as he entered her coaxed him to patience. He moved slowly, pressing his hips to her, deepening his thrust with tender expertise.

“We fit nicely, aye, my betrothed?” his voice rasped against her ear. He licked her lobe and then clutched it gently between his teeth.

“Ye are too big.”

“And ye are tight and hot.” He groaned and slipped his hand between her legs to stroke her center while he moved against her from behind. She grew firmer, wetter in his fingers. Her breath came hard. Her body tightened even as her leg relaxed over his. He withdrew slowly, then sank deep inside her again, clutching her to him.

“Tristan, I—”

He halted her words with a kiss that bound them together as intimately as their bodies, all the while petting her, rubbing her until her sheath tightened with little
spasms around him. He impaled her deeply, withdrew even more slowly, relishing every stroke, every warm, wet shudder of her body as they drenched each other in the rapture of their release.