Page 27 of Rekindled (The MacTavish Heirs #5)

In which there is celibacy and safe words.

Catriona…

“Have ye had many women? While ye were away on the frozen tundra?”

Where the hell did that come from, ye eejit?

“Where the hell did that come from?” Lucas frowns down at me as he puts me back on my feet.

At least he dinnae tack on ‘eejit’ like I did.

“I… well…” I do a little swivel, moving over to the big bank of windows in his bedroom.

The cottage is built on a bit of a hill and the stretch of sand on each side seems vast, just a few lights dotting the shore from other homes.

“They did it to wind me up, mostly, but Michael and Duncan were always giving me shite about ye not having enough time off to accommodate all the lasses interested in ye.”

“If you’re looking to put me in the mood, you’re going the wrong way, wife. ”

Oh… wife. That does give me a tingle, though not enough to distract me from my foolish line of thought. “I knew your schedule practically as well as I did my own back then,” I stumble on. “I dinnae know when you’d have time.”

“I did not,” he says sharply, precisely. He’s leaning against a carved wooden dresser, pristinely clean and bare, like the rest of the bedroom, watching me pace back and forth like a nervous gerbil. “Ye perhaps remember that I was at your beck and call nearly every moment of the day and night?”

“Was I that bad?” Now, I feel horrible. We all grew up with bodyguards, but I always tried to be considerate.

Well.

Until I snuck out that night for a date with… what was his name? Smashed-Nose Guy in a last-ditch effort to try to finally get Lucas to show some kind of emotion. It was childish, I know.

“Other than that one night,” I say defensively, “I tried to avoid making your job harder. Are ye saying I was a spoiled thing?”

“If we’re speaking in a moment of complete transparency, that would be your cousins, Edin and Eilidh.

” He’s still serious, but that sexy little rise in the corner of his mouth is back.

“The security team had to rotate twenty-seven bodyguards between them in less than six months until their mother threatened to bring them back to Canada.”

“Aye,” I agree absently. “They’re terrible.”

“As for me, when I was assigned to a certain lass with dark glorious hair tumbling down her back, sharp jade green eyes and an equally sharp wit, there was no time for anything else. You’d just survived that bomb blast and saved your wee cousins.

Ye were healing and so stiff about it, hating that anyone would think ye weren’t strong enough, not thrawn. ”

Oh, my heart.

“Why couldn’t we have talked like this sooner?

” I ask, running my hands through my hair.

“I’d never thought of anyone on my security team that way.

For four endless fecking years, I waited for ye to notice how much I wanted ye.

I saw how you’d look at me, how you’d step away whenever there was the slightest possibility we could be closer.

I dinnae date, I’d not even flirt with a bloke while you were standing there in your gorgeous suit and stern expression.

Ye had to know. I’ve never been accused of being subtle. ”

“Ye think I was any better?” His brows draw together over eyes dark like a thunderstorm.

“Ye were my duty, my responsibility. Then, one night. I have one night with ye, everything I wanted, perfection.” He draws in a breath and I can feel the heat flare off him.

“Then, I was sent to three more years of celibacy in Siberia. As if I could look at another woman. So no, lass. There was no one else.”

“Is it wrong that knowing this makes me so happy?”

In seconds, Lucas seizes me, hoisting me up with an arm under my arse and bites my shoulder with a rather delightful growl. “It means that you’re dealing with a man who’s pent-up. Denied, and ye are gonna make it up to me. Slow…”

His fingers tighten on my arse and he lifts me slowly, torturously, feeling his thickness against my stomach as I wrap my legs around him.

“And fast.” He drops me a few inches, grinding my center hard against him, the heat and hardness of him burning through his clothes and mine. “Oh, I’m going to take it out of ye in so many ways.” He slaps my arse, the sound sharp and bright as I stiffen against him.

“Do ye know, my wife, that when I slap your arse when I’m inside ye that your tender cunt clamps down on my cock? Tight, like a fist.” He groans, rubbing me up and down against his stonner.

“Ach, I love your dirty talk,” I moan blissfully.

He sets me down, holding my elbow when my shaking legs give me a bit of a wobble.

“Dinnae move. ”

Lucas circles, silent like a panther, looking over every inch of me.

“Lift your arms.” He slides my tank top off with exquisite care, running the tips of his calloused fingers over my breasts.

I suck in a harsh breath, wanting him to touch my nipples, twist on them, pull them like he did when he chased me in the forest. Now though, he’s all things delicate and precise and it’s making me daft with want.

“Take off your bra.”

Stepping back, he watches me reach behind, undoing the bit of lace and silk and dropping it to the floor. “Now the jeans.”

Why are my fingers shaking? They’re clumsy and it takes me a moment to undo the metal button and slide them down my thighs.

“Leave the knickers on.”

My fingers curl back from the elastic waistband, and push my jeans to the floor.

“I thought of ye so many times like this,” he muses, circling me again. “Pale skin in the moonlight, thighs shifting, rubbing together just a bit.”

My thighs are rubbing together and I freeze, a little embarrassed to be so obvious. His hands slide around my waist, gently squeezing me and travel upward, holding my breasts, thumbs brushing my nipples.

“Sensitive. I wonder if I could make ye come, just by playing with these?” His fingers go from a brush to a pinch, sharply pulling my nipples up.

I go on my toes with a gasp. Lucas bends to kiss each one, like an apology as he pulls my knickers down, freeing them from my ankles and tucking them in his pocket.

“You’re still dressed,” I say, “it’s a theme with ye, aye? Clothed in your good suits while I’m in the bare scud.”

“Balance of power,” he whispers in my ear, soft and diabolical. “It ebbs and flows. In your lab, you’re the genius, creating concoctions so brilliant they could make civilization rise, or fall. But here in our bedroom, you’re just a wet little lass wanting to get fecked.”

It takes a moment to remember to breathe.

Like a magic trick, he opens his hand and two silver objects are resting on his palm. Tiny, a swirl of a design that looks like a curled cat.

Dangling.

From clips.

“Do ye trust me?” His tongue is running down my throat as I nod mindlessly, still staring at the nipple clamps.

Aye, I know what they are. Even though Kenna once teased me that I was such a square she was surprised I wasn’t shaped like one. I nod again.

“Give me words.”

“Aye. I mean, aye, I do.”

Lucas drops gracefully to his knees, sucking one nipple and then the other until they’re diamond hard, painfully needy as he holds my gaze.

Holding up one clip, he puts it gently on my nipple as I suck in a breath.

Not bad, a pinch. Then, the other. It stings.

When he flicks them, however, it’s like a lightning bolt shot from my breasts between my legs, a wet, throbbing feeling, insistent like a drumbeat.

“Beautiful.” He rises and walks behind me, putting his arms around me and flicking my breasts again, the weighted cat charms swinging, tugging on my excruciatingly sensitive nipples. “Put your hands behind your back.”

There’s a rasp of lace and I know he’s using my own knickers against me, binding my wrists.

His chin rests on my shoulder, and he takes my jaw, pushing lightly to make me look at what he’s seeing, the silver gleam of the clamps.

“Ye can always halt this,” he bites my earlobe.

“Say ‘marmalade,’ and everything stops.”

I suck in a breath, trying not to laugh. I hate marmalade, he knows this. Definitely no mistaking that safe word .

“Understand?”

“Aye,” I remember to speak, though even those three letters cost me some effort.

One huge hand circles my throat and the other cups my pussy as he slides two fingers inside me, hooking them hard against that painfully sensitive spot and grinds the heel of his hand against my clitoris.

His fingers piston in and out and oh, god, I’m shocked to feel an orgasm already barreling through me.

The painful bite of the clamps isn’t holding it back at all.

“You’ll come when I say.” His fingers move faster and I’m squeezing my thighs mindlessly trying to keep them inside me. “And when ye do, I take off the clamps.” It’s an explosion of sensation. So much of everything crashing together. “Three... Two…”

Rising on tiptoe again, I try to get away from it.

Or I want it harder oh, feck I dinnae know anything but when he says, “One,” I come, moaning and shaking and the feel of numb to bright, sparking pain in my nipples sends me back into the storm again.

More bliss and pain and he scoops me up, curling around me on the bed, whispering what a good girl I am, so sweet, so strong and beautiful.

***

Thrawn - Scottish slang for a tough or strong person.

In the bare scud - Scottish slang for naked.