This Heart of Mine (76 page)

“I shall not tell him if you don’t, Francis,” she replied pertly, and he grinned at her again, winking conspiratorily.

The piper was now playing a livelier tune, and some of Lord Bothwell’s men were dancing while others had begun to dice, kneeling upon the floor by one of the fireplaces. Cat now joined them, to Alex’s surprise, but Francis only smiled.

“She’s a great favorite wi’ my men. They would die for her as would I,” he said.

“Somehow it will resolve itself happily for you both, I know it,” Velvet soothed him. Then she turned to Alex and said, “I am tired, my lord. Shall we retire now, or would you prefer to remain and dice for a bit?”

“I’ll stay for a while, sweetheart,” he replied, and she curtsied and left him.

Alex stayed only for a few minutes with his cousin drinking another cup of heady wine. Then the Border lord, claiming fatigue, took Cat off, and there was no excuse for him to remain. It would hardly do for the world to see him but newly reunited with his wife and avoiding their bed.

Dugald had waited for his master and quickly aided him to undress, being eager to gain his own bed and Pansy’s company. Alex chased his serving man off when he had disrobed and, having completed his ablutions, tiptoed into the bedchamber. A fire burned low in the large fireplace, and the room was toasty warm. Slipping quietly into the big bed in an attempt not to disturb her, Alex was very startled when Velvet, fragrant, warm, and quite naked, slipped into his arms with a purr.

He was stunned. “Ye’re not wearing a night rail,” he gasped.

“Nay, Alex, I’m not,” she teased him.

Instinctively his arms tightened about her. Jesu, he thought, her skin is so damned soft and smooth. “Velvet …” His voice was slightly strangled as he sought to keep himself under control.

“Yes, Alex?” Her tone was bland and innocent.

“What is it ye want of me, Velvet? For God’s sake, lass, I’m only human!”

“What do I want of you?” She began to laugh softly. “Dear God, Alex, I should think that would be obvious. I want you to make love to me. Here. Now. Tonight, my darling.”

She snuggled closer to him, pressing her round breasts against his furred chest, leaning over to nibble on his ear, and he groaned. She was driving him absolutely mad, and he suspected she knew it. What had happened to change her in these few short hours?

“You took my virginity in this castle almost three years ago, my darling. We began our marriage here. I want to begin it again in this place, Alex. Can you understand that?”

He hadn’t suspected this sentimental side of her, but he didn’t care any longer. All that mattered was that his beautiful wife, his wife from whom he had been parted for so long, was offering herself to him, and he wanted her. Pulling her hard against him, he found her mouth and kissed her with all the hunger that had been building up in him for the last two and a half years. He kissed her until she was breathless, and her mouth was bruised with his ardor. In defense she parted her
lips beneath his, and his tongue plunged almost violently into her mouth to love hers with a fierce abandon. Their tongues were like two burning silk banners that twined and intertwined over and over again.

Rolling her beneath him, he caught her face between his hands. “Look at me, Velvet!” She slowly opened her eyes and gazed directly at him. “I love ye, lass! Do ye understand that? I love ye!”

“I never stopped loving you, Alex,” she answered.

The unsaid words lay between them, however:
I
never stopped loving you, Alex, but I loved another also.
Still, she was trying, and in time he hoped he could erase the memory of Akbar from her heart and soul, if not her mind. “Ah, lass,” he murmured, caressing her cheek with the back of his fingers while his other hand smoothed her forehead. Then his mouth descended on hers again, kissing her tenderly this time, re-learning her sweet lips. He trailed a line of kisses down her neck, lingering in the hollow of her throat where he could feel the pulse leaping beneath his lips. His slender fingers slipped up to tangle in her soft hair, while the finger of his other hand turned her face to him.

Gently he nipped her little chin with his teeth, then kissed the corners of her mouth. Velvet pushed her tongue forward to lick at him, and, delighted, his own tongue gave battle. They teased and played thusly for some minutes, enjoying the game and learning to relax once more with each other. Finally he nuzzled one of her ears, running his tongue around it.

“Ye’re absolutely delicious, lass,” he murmured with hot breath in her ear. Then one of his hands captured a breast, and, turning himself, he sought the other breast with his mouth. While the first hand kneaded and fondled, his mouth began a most delightful torture of the second breast. He sucked softly at the nipple, but gradually he began to draw harder upon it, then he nibbled tenderly, sending little darts of desire through her.

She shifted beneath him almost skittishly. It had been so long since she had been loved. For a moment she felt disloyal, but to whom? To Akbar who she was bound to by an Eastern marriage and a child, or to Alex who was her only husband before the God of her own faith? It was too confusing a puzzle to struggle with, she thought. She must concentrate on the here and now, not on what had been.

Wiggling away from him, she said, “I want to love you, my darling.”

“Ye are loving me, Velvet,” was his reply, but she laughed.

“Nay, my lord.
You
are loving me.” She pushed him back against the down pillows. “Now, I shall love you!”

Before he realized what she was about, Velvet turned herself about, and, grasping the half-hard shaft of his manhood in one hand, she bent her head and took him in her mouth, while her other hand sweetly caressed the pouch of his sex. For a moment Alex was frozen in shock. He had never taught her such a thing! Where had she learned it? The next emotion to slam into him was a wave of raging jealousy.
Akbar!
She had learned this from him! She had taken him between her honeyed lips and driven him to madness as she was surely going to drive him.

“Jesu!” The word burst from his throat, and his anger dissolved as the enjoyment she was giving him mounted with each moment that passed. Her tongue licked his full length, teasing the ruby knob of him. His hand reached down to touch her head, to encourage her further, and she sucked strongly upon him while shafts of pleasure plunged into his brain and body like sharp knives, and his manhood hardened like marble.

When he could bear no more, for he was close to bursting with desire, he commanded her through gritted teeth, “Enough, lass! Tis time for turnabout.” Then pulling her up, he forced her back against the pillows, his head moving down between her legs. He had never before tasted of her, but he realized that if she knew how to use a man as she had just used him, then Akbar had also introduced her to similar delights. He found the little pearl of her womanhood, and, reaching out with his tongue, he began to love it tenderly and was pleased to hear a soft cry of rapture escape from between her lovely lips. “Does that please ye, lass?” he whispered, and she cried “Aye!” but no more. His tongue worked the silky, pink flesh until she was moaning with desire.

It was too sweet, she thought, as her passion began to build. The feathery touches of his tongue, his mouth, against that greatest secret of her sex was driving her farther than she had ever been driven before. She didn’t think she could bear much more of his loving, and yet she didn’t think she could bear it if he stopped. She would lose her sanity shortly, but she didn’t care. Briefly she remembered back to the beginning of their marriage. He had loved her sweetly and tenderly then, but never as he was loving her now. His own passion had such an incredible intensity that for a moment she feared it would incinerate them both.

Then he lifted his head and, with a soft laugh, pulled himself
up and over her. Taking his pulsing shaft in his hand, he positioned it and then plunged into her almost violently. With another cry Velvet wrapped her legs about his torso, her arms about his neck, and together they moved back and forth, dancing to love’s rhythm.

“I’ve waited so long, lass, to be inside of ye again,” he groaned in his passion.

“Oh, my darling,” she sobbed as all the memories of their togetherness flooded her soul, “love me well! You’re so big, my wild Highland lord. How you fill me! Don’t stop loving me, Alex! Don’t stop!”

He didn’t, and for several long, sweet minutes they lay locked in that most intimate of conjugal embraces. Then, unable to control themselves any longer, they attained paradise together as he exploded within her, his manhood bursting forth furiously to flood her with his creamy essence. “Ah, Velvet lass! Ah, sweet one!” He almost sobbed the words.

He had collapsed against her breasts, and she held him tenderly there as she floated down from her own heaven. Would it always be this intense with him, or was it but the excitement of their reunion? she wondered to herself. Her fingers slipped through his fine, dark hair, caressing him, loving him, and he felt her touch through his own daze.

Raising his head, he gazed at her, and Velvet suddenly felt warm and safe again. Smiling back, she gently teased him, “And just what are you looking so pleased about, my lord husband?”

“What kind of a woman have I taken to wife?” he wondered musingly.

“A passionate one,” she answered promptly, “and I shall not change, my darling.”

“Christ, no! My God, Velvet, I never suspected yer depths! Ye intoxicate me, my love, and knowing yer passion now, I shall become the most jealous of husbands.”

“I do not belong to you, Alex. I belong to myself, and you must remember that. I will never betray you, my love. I truly never have. But I will not be treated like a possession.”

“Nay, Velvet, I have learned this night that ye’re an equal. I may forget that from time to time, but ye will, I’ve not a doubt, remind me.”

“Indeed, my wild Highland lord, I will!”

He chuckled and, lying back, tossed an arm about her. “Ye did not jest when ye said ’twas time to start our family, did ye, Velvet, but ye’ve fair worn me out. I will need to rest now for a little bit.”

“Not yet,” she said and, slipping from his embrace, arose. Going to the fireplace, she lifted a small kettle from the grate. Pouring water from the kettle into a silver basin by the hearth, she returned to the bed with it and several soft cloths. “In India a bout of passion is followed, my lord husband, by a careful cleansing so that when Eros’s dart strikes again, the combatants are ready.” Dipping one of the cloths in the basin, she wrung it out and began to wash his manhood. When she was satisfied, she bent and kissed it, sending a surprising flash of heat through him. “Now,” she said softly, “you must do me,” and she handed him the second cloth.

Bathing her sex as she stood before him was, he found, one of the most sensually stimulating things he had ever done. He found himself working slowly, carefully, going back over already traveled territory until she laughed softly, saying, “You will but arouse me again, Alex, and that is not at all the purpose of this exercise. Kiss me now, and then let us rest.” Mesmerized, he obeyed her, kissing the puckered pink flesh, but unable to resist tweaking her once with his tongue, which caused her to shriek and jump away from him. Laughing, and content at having regained some measure of his self-esteem, he dropped the cloth and climbed back into their bed.

She slid into his arms, warm and sweet, and lay her head against his shoulder. Soon he heard her soft, even breathing and knew that she had fallen asleep. He, however, lay awake for some minutes. The girl he had married almost three years ago was so long gone that he could barely remember her. The woman who had replaced her was a delicious mystery that he suspected he would never quite solve, but in the ensuing years they had together he would enjoy seeking the pieces to the puzzle Velvet had become. Gradually Alex drifted into sleep himself.

Velvet awoke to kisses being lightly pressed over her torso. With a murmur of contentment, she stretched, saying, “Don’t stop, my darling. ’Tis too delicious!”

He chuckled. “Ye’ve turned into a magnificent wanton, my young wife. Dinna change!” Then he was kissing her lips, his tongue pushing into the fragrant cave of her mouth to re-explore. Challenging his invasion, she played a game of hide-and-seek with his tongue. His passion was slow to rouse this time, the edge having been taken off of it by their last love bout. Sitting up, the plump pillows behind his back, he placed her between his open legs and began to learn once more the curves and lines of her body.

The lushness of her delighted him. Her lovely round breasts
fit perfectly into his big hands; her waist curved in so deeply that he could span it with his two hands; her torso was long and smooth. Her hips flared beneath his seeking fingers, and she murmured again signifying her pleasure at his touch. She drew her legs up, allowing him to smooth his hands up her thighs, down her calves. Then he held her in a tight embrace against his chest. His lips pushed her thick auburn hair aside, finding the soft nape of her neck upon which he placed several warm kisses.

“Ye’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” he whispered against her ear.

She smiled in the firelight, but he could not see her. “Is your little mistress, Alanna Wythe, not fair, my lord?” she asked wickedly.

“Alanna hasn’t been my mistress in months, Velvet.”

“Yet she resides at
Dun Broc
, I am told.”

“I gave her the choice of returning to England or of remaining in my village of Broc Ailien with her daughter.”

“Her daughter?”
Velvet stiffened.

“She claims the child is mine, and in all probability it is,” he replied, dreading each word as he spoke it, but it was better that she know it now before they reached
Dun Broc.
Alanna was still enormously put out by her removal from the castle and would cause mischief given the chance.

“How old is the child?” demanded Velvet.

“A year or so,” he answered.

She almost laughed at the irony of it. She had been forced to relinquish her precious daughter because it was necessary that she resume her role as a good Christian wife. Her husband’s whore, however, was allowed to keep her bastard, and none thought the worse of her for it. Alanna Wythe might raise her daughter, but she, Velvet, the Countess of BrocCairn, must not even admit to Yasaman’s birth for fear of offending her husband and their peers. For a moment Velvet thought her heart would break all over again with the unfairness of it, but, taking a deep breath, she said, “I’d as lief the girl were back in England, Alex. Is there no way you can make her go?”