Page 12 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

“So bonny. Fok, woman, ye’re bloody gorgeous, or will ye deny me the right to tell ye such for the rest of our lives—”

She inched further down his shaft. He might die.

Hell, to slam into this heat and find heaven would be unlike anything he’d ever felt— He couldn’t.

He’d hurt her. He never wanted to hurt his songbird who sang to his heart and summoned his past and promised his future.

Never wanted to break her trust, knowing how she’d once suffered.

Hated that he was already dishonest on this account.

He suckled harder to vanquish the thought, a starved man given a feast.

Ye have yer whole life with her to savor

. He was sweating. Pulse pounding like hooves into battle.

God, so bloody tight he was going to spill before the deed was done, and could she not put him out of that misery right now?

So granite hard, he whinged with pain as she settled further upon him, that mew of hers, so high and sweet, her brow contorted as she gripped his shoulders and beard painfully—and he couldn’t help it any longer.

Needed to be within her and cinched his arms around her waist, punching up the final inch.

She cried out. His eyes fell shut.

“Heaven,” he growled, as she draped her arms around him and he buried his face into her neck to nip that tiny freckle.

It cascaded through him, shot across his skin to be so tangled around, and rooted within, her.

His

boon. To honor and protect for the rest of his days. This was madness, and yet, he was really marrying this highborn woman who wanted freedom from the trappings of privilege that brought trouble to her doorstep.

That humility alone made him determined to, one day, provide them. He’d known from the moment he’d heard his mother’s song on her lips, that this woman was meant to reunite him with a past lost to him, that she was deserving of such a prize.

And then she began to move. Squirm with a need her body wanted but wasn’t sure how to sate. He palmed her rear, sifting through her skirts, and lifted her an inch. Eased her back down as a cry mewed from her lips and she clenched his neck.

“Easy, sweeting,” he encouraged, guiding her again, and again, as her hips finally began to override her nerves, and God he was about to die from the sensation. “That’s the way of it, songbird, Christ, so perfect…”

Her eyes shut, her head tilted back, thrusting her bosom toward him like an offering to partake.

He palmed a breast, skin smooth as sweet cream and peaks of soft rose pink, like Eve in the garden.

And as she rocked upon him and he held onto her and damned himself to sit still, to let her do what she would as her pleasure mounted, his eyes caught on the cradle remnant.

His throat thickened. He wanted to give his songbird that brood.

Wanted to plant his seed and see it blossom and watch his woman rocking and singing to…

a lass, like her, as she combed his daughter’s hair, or a lad, nestled against her breast while they gathered fruits in the orchard they would grow, just as his mother had done for him.

Wished his parents could have known her and she, them.

Grew determined to regain his legacy to pass down.

He began thrusting within her, meeting her gentle unions, feeling himself tighten for release that he wasn’t going to be able to control as his thumb sifted beneath her skirts and teased that secret part of her.

Her nails scored into his skin in response.

He relished the pain. Relished how her face tightened and her lips parted and her frustrated whine for something she couldn’t quite reach grew erratic.

He thrust harder, determined to satisfy what he knew she needed, wanting to show her how he’d always please her.

As if water breaking through a dam, heat exploded. Her head dropped back, her pleated brow smoothing, opening her neck to him. He cinched her down upon him. Growled a curse as he wrung every aftershock from her body and coaxed final twinges of her pleasure.

Then his resolve crumbled.

Alex scooped her up, her body languid. Pushed onto his knees, still seated within her, and dragged free his tunic and sheaths.

She clung to him, belly to belly, arms gripped around his back.

The trees swayed and bent on the wind, as if a knowing was shivering through them, when he felt her fingers roving more thoughtfully over his back. Over olden welts normally obscured by his sheath bands, questions on each fingertip.

Always be honest with me…

His throat bobbed as her request hung over him, demanding an answer.

I swear it on our clan oath! I will see ye vindicated…

Stalwart words, declared long ago by a terrified boy staring down death, whispered through him.

He ripped free of her hold and slung his tunic out on the grassy floor, laying her upon it before hoisting up her hips and legs, draping them around his rear, and pounding home.

His head tipped up to take in the heavens as he clung to her thighs and drove hard and fast. Her body welcomed his every thrust as memories of those olden lashings wisped through his mind like guilt. Looking her in the eyes was harder than he’d thought when he was already lying to her.

And as she toyed with his beard and touched his chest and explored his tattoo, he released his seed on a gruff shudder, hunger to regain his lost birthright and finally see Seamus Grant held to account for what he’d once done to an innocent laird and a frightened lad warring for dominance within him.

Hard and to the hilt, twitching with each jolt of carnal joining.

Would he ever quell this lust for vengeance as he’d promised her he’d do?

Slowly, his galloping heart gentled and thumping veins eased, as he braced his weight on either side of her head and finally opened his eyes when he realized she was humming again, twining his beard, tracing the shapes of his tattoo curiously, and then her chestnut gaze lifted to his, a reverent light and soft smile he didn’t deserve gazing up at him.

Her hair was masterfully disheveled. Her floral crown knocked aside. Her lips glistening rouge from his devouring as the bare breasts he planned on worshipping ever after lay before him, surrounded by grass and trees and tiny wildflowers. His wood nymph.

…

Peigi cupped his cheek as he trailed a thumb over her forehead and settled his weight upon her, twisting his ring around her finger contemplatively as she watched light dance upon his skin through the wavering boughs.

Her eyes fluttered closed, so sated. He pressed a kiss softly to each eye.

Then to her lips as he eased to the side, pulling free of their union, rolling her with him.

His warmth dampened her thighs as a bell far in the distance echoed over the glen. His hand fell away from the ring as she nestled against his chest, smushing her lips out of shape.

Goodness. His muscles, up close. His body, like a god’s, wind-battered and scarred, and that black band around his arm… What designs were tattooed into it? Scythes? Lyres? Herbs, perchance?

And yet, he seemed quiet. She glanced up his chest to see him looking away, jaw tight, as if staring at nothing.

“Ye seem lost in thought,” she said, her brow furrowing. Was he having…regrets?

He glanced down, as if his heavy thoughts hadn’t existed, and smiled, leaving her remark hanging on the breeze.

“Now can I spout sonnets about the morning dew on yer beautiful lips?” he whispered, and she smiled with relief as his teasing tone returned. “Or am I doomed to lie and call ye an old crone forever?”

“Ah, will ye always tease me so?” She touched his tattoo again. “Ye call me songbird and crone, but what am I to call ye? Rogue? Or worse,

lawyer

?”

He snorted and twisted the ring around her finger again, studying it.