The Chieftain's Yule Bride - a Highland Christmas novella (Clan MacKrannan's Secret Traditions #10) (12 page)

Callum was breathing just as hard as she was.  He pulled her up to stand with him, and her legs would hardly hold her as he kissed her hard, running his hands lazily over her back and fondling her bottom.

"Please let it be my turn..." she mumbled against his lips.  She wanted to give to him.  Needed to share.

He held her head and rested his brow on hers as he glanced down between them.  "Go on, then."

Still too shaky to get his belt buckle undone, it took her a few goes before it came free.  The kilt dropped away and his hands came onto her bottom again, pulling her close, kneading her against him.  God he was hot and
so
hard... the first feel of his huge erection against her stomach ran through her like an aftershock.

"Let me touch you, Callum..."

She held his gaze and went wandering.  A guy of his height was bound to be rather big in all ways, which she'd no experience of... and when she traced her hands all the way down from his massive shoulders until she reached her goal, she found out just how big a guy he was.

You are kidding me...

He hadn't said anything about her blonde pubes so she wouldn't be making any comments, but her amazement must have shown.  She followed it with an honest smile.  This was just Callum.  All of him.  He shuddered when she stroked him his entire length, feeling every ridge of his pulsing want.  Her fingers had no chance of meeting her thumb when she grasped him, still looking into his eyes and seeing them dangerously full of lust.

Freya sank to the quilt and brought him with her, urging him to lie on his back.  Outside the cottage, darkness was falling.  The fire's flames illuminated their bodies as she bent over him, letting her hair caress his thighs.

"Definitely my turn, chieftain... put your hands behind your head."

She breathed in his musk and felt her clit throb for him.  Fingered him down his length while she drew her tongue up the other side.  With a feather touch she fondled his sac and licked around his crest, learning him, feeling him shaking along with her.

"Callum..."
It was true.  Saying his name was just like licking him.  And then she closed her mouth around him, taking as much of him in as she could and lapping with her tongue until he couldn't stand it.

An arm came on her waist and she was twisted round, her legs pulled apart over his face.  It sent her wild, sucking at him and working her hands up and down him while he licked all around her opening.

She saw his hand reach out for the bottle and guessed the real why of that now, and revelled in him spreading the oil all over her sex and massaging it in.  With the size of what she had in her mouth and grasp, Freya wasn't sure if even this would be enough to make it possible but oh god she needed this man inside her.

So much she would have missed with her own plan to be the dominant Morrigan... so much she had been given instead.  Now she was the one on her back again, her lubricated body pushed high on the cushion ready for coupling, watching this magnificent man tearing a packet open in his want for her.  She was about to take a risk that days ago she'd have called deranged and now thought it no risk at all.

"Don't... I want just you, Callum MacKrannan.  I was sent to you, wasn't I?"

He looked like one of the fertility gods, all muscle and virility and primed as he came onto her, bracing his hands above her shoulders and easing her thighs wide with his knees.

"I never doubted that... and I claim you now, Freya Harper, the Fair Lass of Monlachan..."

There was something ritualistic in the way he matched her name up with the portrait and himself, and his eyes never left her as he slid slowly into her, just far enough to make her mouth fall open in astonishment at the sheer size of him as she felt herself stretched beyond bearing.  The oil made it so much easier than it would have been, yet her tears still slipped out and trickled round towards her ears.

Callum froze.  "Sorry..."

"No need..
.
I'm not a virgin... just feels like I might as well be."

He dipped his head to kiss away her tears.  "You're no' alone in that.  I'm feeling a bit of a beginner here because it's you."

Her hands found his backside, as hard and defined as the rest of him, and urged him closer.  He moved fully inside her then, filling her to the limit and staying very still.  With his weight braced on his forearms, he was kissing her and then stroking her face and hair and gazing so intently at her that she was lost.  There was no going back from this.  Everything felt so right, as if all the deities had reached through time and made it so.

And then he began moving ever so gently, making her whole body sing in harmony with the stars.  The sensation of fullness was overpowering as he pleasured her with his immense manhood, rocking into her, giving her longer thrusts as she gradually grew used to an invasion of this size and came to crave it.  The cushion beneath the quilt held her high, and the angle let him reach even deeper.  Her hands were all over his back, feeling the muscles mirror his movements and tremble under her touch as she started to come.

He pinned her wrists above her and suckled her nipple, thrusting into her faster and harder.  At the far reaches of her mind was that Celtic room with its gods and goddesses and they were living people, happy for her and Callum and blessing this union.  Arionhod came to her, weaving her spell of cosmic fate and time and granting her rebirth.  Danu came to Callum, giving him the flow of life.

The helplessness came over her in waves, her orgasm so intense and so beautiful as she pulsed and clenched him and he kept driving into her, never letting it end.

"Freya..."

He was trying to pull away now and she urged him with her hips and her heart to stay in her.  Never had she risked anything like this.

"All of you, Callum... It has to be all of you..." 

He rose over her, blocking out everything with his huge frame as he took great ragged breaths, and thrusting hard and deep until he went rigid in her arms and filled her with his seed.

He held her so tightly then, taking her with him as he rolled onto his back.  His mouth stayed on hers, kissing her with every bit as much passion as he'd shown before, seeming to be in no rush to cast her aside now.

It took a long time for them both to come down from such a high, the rush of it still ringing all through her when he finally moved the cushion away and brought a sofa blanket to cover them.

She drifted contentedly to sleep on his chest to the sounds of the rain and sleet hitting the windows and the logs sparking in the fireplace and the steady thump of the heartbeat of Callum MacKrannan.

The bath was far too wee to take both of them as he would have liked, but the shower was a powerful modern affair that sluiced them well and the hot water supply seeming as endless as their need of each other.

With his back against the tiles to save Freya from any chill, he directed the spray onto her shoulders and her thighs into the crooks of his elbows and entered her tentatively, feeling her wince.

"Too soon?"

"Just a bit... serves me right for needing you again!  No, don't you dare stop..."

She clung onto his neck and he bounced her into another waterlogged oblivion, her bonnie hair splattering across his chest and her kisses sweeter than ever he'd known.

Only when the water turned lukewarm did they reluctantly part and dry each other – and came together in the bedroom again when she went looking for clean knickers, which were on less than a minute before they were off.  They let each other go only when his stomach gurgled yet again.

"I really need to feed you, Callum, don't I?"

"Or I could feed you.  Are you no' peckish yourself by now?"

"Very."  She had a nibble at his chest.

This time he carried her into the kitchen. "Get a quick snack for yourself out the box.  And stay there, else I'll never get my kilt back on."

He found the brochures for the local eateries and went back through to find the box emptied out and Freya holding a casserole dish in front of the open fridge.  The lass's long wet hair was still wrapped up in a pale blue towel that matched her eyes, and he thought he'd never seen a bonnier sight than the smile he got when she turned and saw him.

"Can we eat here, Callum?  Do you mind?  I can cook."

No doubt about that if Isla Harper's dinner was any measure, but he helped her anyway, just to be near her.  They worked in easy tandem, laughing about everything and telling each other stories from their lives.  Once the casserole was in the oven she went to dry her hair while he set the table by the window and opened some wine.

The skies had long since cleared and the stars were near outshining the new moon – and the Merry Dancers were putting on a wee show too, and stayed with them all through dinner.  The aurora borealis wasn't a novelty for either of them but he was glad of its appearance this night.

Now that Freya's physical needs were sated in all ways, she was working up to asking questions that he'd rather no' be answering for a while yet.  They'd come far since her base lust of last night.  She'd accepted his claiming her, but then she'd be thinking it was a temporary thing.  A while to go yet before she was his forever.

More of a worry was the guilt that might hit her now about her man in Dubai, and what she would do about that.  He filled their wineglasses and took her to sit by the fire, tossing another log on and snuggling her in between his legs.

She rested against his chest, staring at the flames.  Her first question, when it came, was simply put.

"What am I doing here with you?"

Far too soon to tell her much.  Freya must work this out for herself.

"I have to believe you were sent to me, as you said.  All else is your choice.  You tell me, lass."

She bit at her lip.  "The portrait has powers of its own.  I've felt them, but I don't know if they affect only me.  What does it do to you?  Truth, Callum..."

He took a deep breath and gave his answer some thought.  Sitting here at the fire in the intimate silence with their emotions still running so high, every word spoken mattered because it would be remembered.

"Seeing you for the first knocked me sideways, because I remembered the picture from my youth and here it was alive and standing in my Banqueting Hall.  Seeing the portrait again when you unwrapped it... a different sort of intense, I would say, for I'd remembered it right and it was definitely you.  I do no' feel its vibes as you do – but then it's no' my ancestor who painted it."

She shifted slightly and brought out another question.  "Your ancestors created that room with the carvings, though.  What's that place about?  Why would that affect me if the portrait doesn't affect you?"

"You were born with the Sight and grew up with the Celtic deities.  The carvings were the first thing you noticed."

"I could hardly miss them – they're pretty spectacular.  But you could have put that portrait in a laundry cupboard and you chose to take me into
that
room to see it.  Why?"

Here was his chance to tell her a bit of truth without spooking her.

"I told you my clan has four seers.  That's the room they use within the main castle, and they chose it for the viewing."

This time she turned her head to look at him when she said, "So they're involved in this too?  Not just you and the historian?"

"The historian is one of the four.  We call them the Elders."

"Right... and are you going to tell me who they are?" 

Too soon for that, but he must give her something here to gain more of her trust.  "You were right about Tara."

"I could point out every of them if I'd opened myself when I was at the castle."  She looked back to the fire and took a breath.  "Callum, I'm going to trust you with a secret of my own, and you know my career and credibility would go down the drain if it got out.  I heard voices in there.  A chanting singing sort of thing in a language I've never heard."

"Did you now... then I will tell you that the seers were in there the day previous doing much as you describe."  He left himself out of that and hoped she did no' notice.

"No, the sense I got was that these voices came from the distant past."