Page 24 of Highland Fire

Though she was quaking like a jelly inside, something in the somber way he was looking at her allayed Caitlin’s fears.

She was still trying to find answers to his original question.

She, too, thought she had known everything there was to know about relations between the sexes.

No one had thought to tell her that logic counted for nothing when the very air between two people vibrated with some indefinable current.

“I feel…” She didn’t know what she was feeling, she only knew that she liked his strong arms around her, liked his hands moving over her back, pressing her closer. “I feel…”

“I know,” he said, and he brushed his smiling lips against the curve of her cheek. “Don’t you think I’m afraid too?”

First kisses were special, and Rand was almost sure that this was Caitlin’s first real kiss. It wasn’t going to be chaste, but it wasn’t going to be so carnal that she would be afraid to follow his lead when he wanted more than kisses from her. So he told himself.

She kissed him without a hint of awareness that she was female to his male.

Something in Rand’s psyche took offense at this.

Did she think he was a gelding? Had he made so little impression on her that she thought herself immune to him?

It hardly seemed fair that while he spent his days and nights in a state of semiarousal, she should remain as cool as an iceberg.

The devil she would! When this was over, she would know that as a specimen of virility, he was worthy of her utmost respect.

Caitlin wasn’t completely lost to reason. Some remnant of feminine instinct warned her of impending doom. When he released her lips, she forced the words out. “If I give my d-dog the command, she will t-tear your throat out.”

His hands held her face as he unhurriedly kissed her eyes, her nose, a small wisp of hair he discovered on her forehead. “Then give the command,” he said, and moved in closer.

Her hair brushed the back of his fingers, that satin-soft ebony braid he ached to unbind and bury his face in.

She didn’t wear perfume, or none that he could discern.

Instead she smelled of freshly laundered clothes dried in the open air, and her own scent, something dark and delectably female.

As his senses became more acute, more aware of all the subtleties that made her different from any woman he had ever known, the seducer became the seduced.

Cupping her head with both hands, delicately, with all the skill he could command, which was considerable, he changed the texture of his kisses.

Lips brushed and molded softly, broke apart, came together and clung.

His fingers spread out against her jaw, applying a gentle pressure, separating her lips to the first tentative invasion of his tongue.

The little betraying hiatus in her breathing sent his blood thundering through his veins.

Her hands were clutching his shoulders as though her head were spinning. Tearing her lips away, she said, “I think I’m going to faint.”

“Good,” he said, before he took her lips again.

Since she wasn’t making any objections, he saw no reason for continuing with the subtlety.

He kissed her the way he wanted to, angling her head back, taking her mouth voraciously, nipping at her bottom lip, aggressively thrusting his tongue between her teeth.

She moaned and melted against him, circling his waist with both arms. With increasing abandon, passion feeding on passion, he edged her closer to surrender.

The more she yielded, the more he wanted from her.

He couldn’t get close enough. His tongue drove into her mouth and began a wildly erotic rhythm that left them both gasping and greedy for more.

When his control snapped, he was beyond caring.

Lost to reason, lost to his own code of honor, he began to tear at her clothes.

Need such as he had never known hardened his body to the exploding point.

She could have stopped him with a word. She was clinging to him helplessly, as though he were the one solid anchor in the storm that raged around them.

Her breasts were bare to him now. He didn’t spare more than a moment to admire their lush contours. His mouth fastened ravenously on one taut dark crest and his hand slid to her bottom, lifting her in a crushing embrace against his hard groin.

Raw pleasure streaked through Caitlin, and she cried softly against his neck. It was too much. Using both hands, she brought his head up for her kiss.

They had both reckoned without the hound.

Alternately snuffling and whimpering, Bocain suddenly threw back her head and let out a warning howl, then slowly rose on her haunches.

Rand was the first to come to himself. On the second earsplitting howl, he forced himself to release Caitlin’s lips.

Fighting for breath, chests heaving, they stared at each other.

They were both shocked, but his eyes registered something more, something between awe and delight.

He could take her so easily. Everything was in his favor.

The cottage was isolated. There was a bed in the next room.

Her deerhound wasn’t much of an obstacle, or he would be a dead man by now.

And the girl herself was willing. It would be so easy to press his advantage to the conclusion for which his whole body was fervently straining.

Only one thing stopped him—the conviction that when it was over he would never be allowed to come within a country mile of Miss Caitlin Randal.

He saw her eyes darken with comprehension the moment before she jerked away.

Capturing her by the shoulders, he held her immobile.

“Don’t move! Don’t fight me! Don’t you see, it’s the worst thing you could do?

Just”—he let out a breathy laugh and grinned crookedly—“just give me a moment to find my balance. Then I shall let you go.”

Don’t move? He wasn’t to know it, but her legs were buckling under her.

If he hadn’t been holding her up she would have collapsed like a rag doll at his feet.

Tears of mortification stung the backs of her eyes.

How had he managed to rob her of the will to resist him?

Hadn’t she warned her cousin about men like this?

He was too good-looking, too charming, too confident—and much too calm for her taste.

His kisses, which left her feeling as though she had barely survived a hurricane, had made no appreciable difference to him.

Even his neckcloth hadn’t a wrinkle out of place.

Suddenly conscious of her own disarranged clothing, Caitlin gasped and began to fumble with the buttons on the bodice of her gown. He waited until she lifted her head.

Correctly reading her half-shamed, half-angry expression, holding her chin up with thumb and forefinger, he said gently, “I don’t know how you do it, but you make me act in ways that are contrary to my own principles. I think I have the same effect on you.”

Running his fingers across her hot cheeks, he then smoothed them into the tendrils of baby fine hair at her nape. Softly he said, “Now tell me what you feel.”

Caitlin was not unmoved by that warmly intimate look.

She felt the strongest urge to walk into his arms again, not for the breathless rapture he could give her, but for the security of having those powerful masculine arms wrapped around her.

Trembling with a confusion of tumultuous emotions that were both unfamiliar and contradictory, she cried out, “I don’t know what I feel, but I know this, I don’t want to feel this way. ”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! No! I don’t know! You are deliberately confusing me! Why don’t you tell me what you are feeling.”

His eyes searched hers for a long interval, then flared.

Shaking his head, smiling, he set her at arm’s length and began to draw on his gauntlets.

“There are going to be some changes around here,” he said.

“I think it’s more proper if you remove in the interim to your grandfather’s house, don’t you?

If that doesn’t suit, at the very least, I shall expect a chaperone in residence as soon as it may be arranged.

” He held up a hand to silence her protests.

“Your hound is dismally inappropriate as a chaperone, as I have just proved. Frankly, Kate, I think your grandfather is grossly at fault here, allowing you all the liberties you enjoy. I am not cut from the same cloth as he, as you’ll soon learn.

You are not to receive Daroch again, is that understood?

I don’t care how innocent or how long standing that connection may be.

And what goes for Daroch goes doubly for every male who is not related to you by ties of blood, including myself— especially myself. ”

Patting her cheek in an avuncular manner, he went on conversationally as he moved to the door.

“Now where was I? Oh yes. I shall expect you to accept all invitations to dos and parties in the neighborhood. How will you learn to go on in society if you continue to make yourself a recluse? If your wardrobe is inadequate, as I suppose it must be, you have two choices. You may either appeal to your grandfather or I shall personally see to it. I think that about covers everything for the present. Are there any questions?”

His eyes were gleaming with laughter.

Her bosom was heaving. Passionately, she cried out, “I have no interest in learning how to go on in society. Furthermore, you have no right to tell me what to do.”

“Ah, but you see, you just gave me that right, Kate, as well as a few others that I don’t suppose have occurred to you yet. All in good time.”

When she stared up at him in mute confusion, he swiftly kissed her. “As for what I am feeling,” he said, “I feel like Adam in the Garden of Eden, having just been introduced to the woman who was created from one of his own ribs.”