Page 14 of A Virgin for the Vicious Highlander (Falling for Highland Villains #4)
CHAPTER 14
Cecilia gripped the paper to stop her hand from shaking, steeling her resolve. If she did not do this now, if she did not speak now, then perhaps she never would. Perhaps she would have the opportunity taken from her by the vows she would have no choice but to make, spending the rest of her days behind convent walls.
“Yer week here was me end of the bargain,” Murdoch said stiffly, his gaze stony.
She shook her head. “And me terms have changed. If I return to the convent, I willnae have any other option but to take me vows, but…” She could not breathe, her nerves wrapping around her lungs and squeezing them tight.
“But?” he prompted dismissively.
“For the information I’ve just given ye, I want to… try somethin’. I dinnae want to leave parts of me life—parts of what it means to be alive—shrouded in mystery. So, aye, I want to try somethin’, and that’ll be yer end of the bargain. It’s at the top of me list.”
He leaned forward, steepling his hands beneath his chin as he stared at her. “I ken I’ll regret askin’, but what list?”
She held out the unfolded piece of paper, not showing him the side she had written her fantasies on. He would have to take her word for it that what she was about to request was at the top of the list.
“I wrote down everythin’ that I want to experience before… well, before I cannae anymore,” she murmured, unable to even speak the words ‘before I become a real nun’ aloud. It was too final, too awful, but perhaps it was what was always supposed to happen.
I was tempted by a devil, and the price is perpetual repentance… but not without a wee bit of sin first. Otherwise, what’s the point of repentin’?
She let that thought bolster her as she waited for Murdoch’s reply.
His brow creased in suspicion, but, after a moment, he shrugged. “What’s the first thing on yer list?”
She gulped, mustering all of her courage to speak two simple words. “A kiss.”
For a tense moment, he did nothing and said nothing, sitting in his chair with his usual blank expression. His eyes gleamed behind his half-mask, giving nothing away as to whether she would be scolded, dismissed, or satisfied.
The minutes ticked by, the air thickening in the too-warm room like fabric pulled too tight and threatening to tear. She could not bear the heavy silence a second longer.
“Did ye hear me?” she asked quietly. “Or is this where ye pretend to ignore me again so that ye dinnae?—”
He shot up from his chair without a word and strode around the desk, wrapping his powerful arms around her waist and pushing her back. She had no choice but to walk backward, half stumbling in the shadow of his towering figure. The bulk of him urged her to keep moving until she had nowhere left to go, her shoulders bumping against the wall.
His hands came up on either side of her head, bracing against the stone as her back pressed against the cool surface. He bent his head, raking his teeth across his lower lip as if she had displeased him, his eyes creased in something akin to pain.
“Why must ye tempt me so?” he growled, his hand moving to cradle the back of her head, his fingers sliding into her hair. “Do ye want to damn me?”
She peered up at him, panting hard at his closeness and the rasp in his words, spoken not in anger but desire. Her heart thundered in her chest, her stomach tightening as her hands came up and settled on his chest, lightly grasping the thin fabric of his léine.
“I just… want to be kissed,” she murmured.
He kissed her then, his mouth catching hers, his hand gripping the nape of her neck as he gave in to temptation. It was hard and fierce, stealing what breath she had left in her lungs.
For a moment, she did not know what to do, but as his mouth moved again in a guiding graze, she followed his lead. She gripped his shirt tighter and kissed him in return, her instincts taking over. She kissed him with all the fear she had been holding on to about having to return to the convent, she kissed him with all the force of the fantasies that had swirled through her mind, and she kissed him as if it was the first and last time that she would experience it.
He pressed her against the wall, and her hands smoothed over the firm planes of his chest and his shoulders before looping around his neck. She melted into him, her lips still following his lead—slowing and quickening at his silent instruction, ravenous in one moment and leisurely in the next.
This is what I might have missed if I hadnae been brave…
Her eyes widened as his tongue darted into her mouth, gliding against her own. It was the strangest sensation, though not at all unpleasant. Curious, she did the same to him, exploring his mouth, shivering as tingles raced down her neck to her chest.
Running her hands through his hair, she kissed him harder, gasping against his lips as his other hand began to explore the parts of her that no one was supposed to touch.
His rough palm skimmed over the swell of her breasts, kneading the soft flesh as his hips rocked against hers. She could barely catch her breath as she felt that mysterious hardness straining against his belted plaid. Her hand longed to slip beneath the material and discover what it was that had her so curious, but she had not yet reached that item on her list.
Suddenly, his lips left hers, grazing her jaw and down the curve of her neck. Then, his tongue ran up the column of her throat before his lips followed the trail back down. He kissed the exposed skin above her neckline, pulling the fabric down and the hem of her stays with it.
He buried his face in the supple flesh, drawing her nipple into his mouth. Her back arched off the wall as he sucked, a cry escaping her throat as she clung to him, overwhelmed as mild pain and intense pleasure mingled, shivering down her belly to the apex of her thighs. There, desire pooled, her entire being flushing with a feverish heat.
As his mouth teased her, his hand slid down the front of her dress, somehow following that crackling line of pleasure. At her hip, he grabbed flesh and bone, as he had done in the hunting cabin, and pushed her harder against the wall, trailing kisses back up to her neck.
And as he kissed her starved lips once more, his hand slipped between her thighs. The thickness of the fabric was so frustrating to Cecilia’s senses that she thought she might scream at the injustice of not knowing how it felt to be touched by him properly where that powder keg of pleasure pulsed and sparked, ready to be ignited.
The friction of his touch and the fabric of her gown made her breath catch in her throat as a hint of the potential bliss burst into life, sending a shiver of delight up to her abdomen. He moved his hand to the rhythm of his kisses, rough and sensual all at once, driving her to the brink of a delicious sort of madness. The kind that could make her throw all caution to the wind, denying her the ability to ever take her vows.
But all of a sudden, and all too soon, his kisses and his touch slowed to a stop, and he pulled back slightly, whispering against her lips, “Ye should leave.”
“Ye mean… yer study or…” she murmured, too dazed to string a full sentence together.
He stepped away from her. “Ye should go back to where ye came from. I’ll have the carriage take ye.”
She stared at him for a long while as her passionate gasps turned into a slow, hot hiss of anger. He had done it again—toying with her. And worse, she had allowed him to.
Still holding his gaze, she fixed the neckline of her dress and smoothed down her rumpled skirts, hoping he could feel every bit of the fury that radiated from her.
“I see,” she bit out. “Well, thank ye for yer time, M’Laird . I hope yer pursuit of Laird MacDunn keeps ye warm at night.”
She turned and made for the door, wrenching it open and heading out, making sure to slam it as hard as she could as she walked out into the hallway. The bang echoed down the long corridor, masking the sound of her last hope shattering.
It was done. She was going home, never to leave that convent again. And she had been foolish to think that crossing “experiences” off her list would make that any easier.