Page 39

CHAPTER 39

Twenty minutes later, Gordon’s lips were on hers again, in the peace and sanctuary of the sheltering woods beside the loch. A light breeze rippled the surface, making it glitter exquisitely, but Anna preferred the brutal beauty of her betrothed: his strong arms around her, his rough palms exploring her body, his mouth moving with hers in a slow ebb and flow, their tongues gliding together.

Bursting with the heat of her passion, Anna let her own hands wander, smoothing over the hard muscle of his chest, tugging her closer by the collar of his shirt, pressing herself against him. Her fingertips slid into his hair, caressing the nape of his neck, enjoying the friction of his shaven jaw against her soft palm, relishing the closeness of him. This was freedom. He was her freedom.

And as their kiss deepened, the air crackled around them, something shifting in the atmosphere. Spurred on by the feeling, Anna grasped Gordon’s shirt and began to ease it from his belt, wanting more than anything to feel his warm skin beneath her touch.

“What ye do to me…” Gordon growled, lifting her leg, guiding it around his hips.

He pressed her back against the tree behind her, her breath catching as she felt the hardness of him between her thighs, held back only by the fabric of his kilt.

Half-mad with desire, she hurried to remove his shirt, sparking a delirious, delicious frenzy between them. His hands pulled and ripped and grasped, freeing her from the confines of the plain gown she’d worn, tossing the garments to the ground, while she fought with the buckle of his belt and the fastening of his kilt, desperate to feel him, desperate to experience what she should have done over a week ago.

As she stood there in the shade of the tree, stripped bare of everything, Gordon took a step back. A smile lifted his lips as his gaze roved over her body, admiring her.

“I wish I kenned how to draw,” he purred.

“I wish I had me paper and charcoal in hand,” she replied, admiring him in return.

Naturally, her eyes fell upon the part of him that she had felt but never seen, her breath hitching at the size of that hard flesh. She didn’t know exactly what would happen next, but she had a confident idea; a burst of nerves rippled through her, her heart racing.

He wouldnae hurt me, she told herself, taking a breath. I trust him.

As if he could sense her nervous anticipation, he closed the gap between them, gathering her into his arms as his mouth grazed hers in a tender, searing touch.

A soft gasp escaped her as he hoisted her up, her legs wrapping around his waist as he carried her to where her dress and his kilt had been tossed. Using the garments as a makeshift blanket, he lay her down upon it, the moss beneath making a comfortable bed for their impromptu wedding night.

Slowly, taking his time, he kissed her lips, then drew his kisses along her jaw and down her throat, his callused palm skimming the curve of her waist, smoothing over the swell of her breast. She felt him smiling against her skin as he kissed across her chest and paused at her pert, pink nipple, teasing her with the faint flick of his tongue.

She bucked at the delicious shock of it, her back arching as his mouth finally closed over her nipple, sucking gently.

A moan of dismay shivered out of her as he resumed his tender, grazing kisses, moving lower, mapping the soft flesh of her stomach, the ridge of her hips, and further still…

The first stroke of his tongue was an explosion, shuddering through her, a thousand bolts of lightning striking at once. Her hands grasped the makeshift blanket, her hips lifting to meet his tongue as he tasted her again and again, slow and teasing and torturous in the best possible way, building up her anticipation like a bonfire, waiting for the flame of her climax.

And as he eased his fingers inside her, giving her a glimpse of what was to come, it wasn’t long before she was crying out his name.

“Oh… Oh, Gordon!” she gasped, his talented touch and gifted tongue sending her hurtling toward her conclusion, as if he alone possessed the key to her ecstasy, and knew just when to turn it. “Oh… Oh, me love… oh!”

Her whole body seized as that rushing tide of euphoria caught her in its current, filling her up with bliss, her eyes squeezed shut and her head swimming with the delirium of so much pleasure, all at once. It was all she could do to catch her breath, her moans drifting out into the forest, skimming across the loch, making the wavelets glitter and dance.

As his tongue slowed and he gently withdrew his fingers, the intensity began to ebb, leaving behind little pools of pulsing bliss, her body relaxing back into the makeshift blanket and the soft, mossy mattress beneath.

She smiled with satisfaction as he began to kiss his way back up to her mouth, her hands running along his back and his broad shoulders as he moved upward.

He kissed her gently, brushing a stray lock of hair out of her face.

“We can return to the castle, if ye want?” he said, pulling back for a moment.

That hard flesh rested against her, hot and tempting and unknown. It seemed to strain, as if protesting Gordon’s suggestion.

He cleared his throat. “I daenae want ye to think that I just?—”

She interrupted him with a kiss, trailing a chain of them along his jaw, bringing his head closer as she whispered, “I’m nae thinkin’ of anythin’ other than how much I need ye. So, daenae even suggest leavin’ this place. Nae yet.”

“As ye wish,” he purred, kissing her fiercely as he tilted his hips back.

Anna gripped his powerful arms as she felt the pressure of him, the weight and width of that hard flesh against the entrance to her sex. Nerves tried to rise up, but as he kissed her again, they were swept aside by the excited part of her anxiety: the anticipation of what she had dreamed about since long before they were separated.

“Oh…” she gasped as that pressure became something altogether more potent, his manhood slowly easing into the heat of her, with a care that made her love for him rush afresh in her veins.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, his voice husky.

There was a slight stinging, but there was nothing in this world that could have compelled her to stop, when she could already feel the thrum of pleasure vibrating beneath that minor pain.

“Nay,” she urged, her voice catching as he sank deeper, inch by glorious inch, filling her up in a way that made her feel… complete for the first time in her life. As if she’d always known there was something missing, and he’d finally shown her what it was.

He stilled for a moment, buried to the hilt in the depths of her. As he did, she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, stealing a searing kiss from his lips, feeling the rumble of his moan in her own chest. A sound that made her desire blaze, her skin tingling from top to toe, her need for him rising up and up until she thought she’d explode if he didn’t move inside her.

Perhaps hearing her plea in the ragged saw of her breaths, Gordon drew his hips back as slowly as he pushed them forward, sending her nerves into a feverish frenzy with the slick friction of it, as though an entirely new array of pleasure points had just been awakened.

“I’ve longed for this,” he rasped, pulling back until she thought he might deny her the pleasure of feeling him inside her.

“As have I,” she moaned, clinging to him, her cry filling the air as he eased back inside her, giving her what she wanted.

Two more teasingly slow strokes later, and there was no pain at all, her tingling, awakened nerves overwhelming everything else, sending pulses of electric pleasure through her.

She writhed and bucked, kissing every part of him that her lips could reach, exploring his muscular body with her hands, her fingertips, her fingernails, relishing in his deep moans and sharp hisses of bliss as he sank into her again and again.

“I hope ye realize that I’ll never get enough of ye,” he growled, sliding his hand between them, his fingertips resting on her swollen bud.

“I daenae want ye to,” she replied, raking her fingernails across his back as he began to circle that sensitive center of her bliss, moving in time with the measured thrust of his hips, creating a collision of ecstasy so fierce, so intense, that she worried it might shatter her to pieces. What was more, she wouldn’t have cared if it did.

He kissed her hard on the mouth, his teeth grazing her lower lip, as she felt her body begin to shoot toward the peak of her climax once more, soaring higher and higher into the untold heights of ecstasy. Kissing him back in kind, the sounds of his own pleasure stoked hers, their bodies entirely entwined, moving together as one on the forest floor, chasing the same bliss side-by-side.

And when he dipped his head to draw her nipple into his mouth, sucking harder than before, she roared past the pinnacle of her previous ecstasies, flung wholeheartedly toward the heavens themselves.

The world she knew disappeared and, in its place, a realm of absolute bliss where only the two of them existed, and she was a being of a pure light, radiating as pleasure pummeled through her limbs, her nerves, her veins, every inch of her.

Stay in the light… The fortune teller had told her as much, and now she wondered if that old woman hadn’t been a charlatan after all. Gordon was her light, helping her to shine brighter than she ever had before.

“Oh, me love!” she screamed in ecstasy, arching up off the ground, tilting her hips to meet his every thrust, shaking and shivering with each circle of his fingertips and pull of his mouth, the wave of her bliss rushing onward and onward, around and around her body as if it might never ebb.

Nor did she want it to.

But eventually, her pleasure had no choice, fading slowly into a pulsing, sparking sense of utter satisfaction. Gordon withdrew his touch and pressed a kiss to her lips, sliding his arms beneath her, cradling her as he began to quicken his pace.

The delicious friction fired her up again, and even in her hazy daze, her senses attuned to him. She listened to his ragged breaths and thunderous moans, letting her body respond in kind, moving with him, meeting his every thrust, sliding her hands down his back until she grasped his buttocks, urging him deeper.

He plunged into her, kissing her hard, satisfying himself with tantalizing abandon. She couldn’t get enough, her cries of bliss joining the throaty growls of his as she encouraged him toward his own conclusion.

“Anna…” he whispered. “Och, love…”

He thrust into her twice more, then stilled as if they had only just begun again, his gray eye bright with passion as he gazed down at her. A smile formed on his lips, and she felt the joy of it as he kissed her again, her arms wrapping around him, holding him as close as she could.

He collapsed onto her, lazily kissing her neck and burying his face in her shoulder, breathing hard with the exertion.

“I should have done that in the cove,” he murmured, chuckling in the back of his throat as he rolled onto his side, bringing her with him.

Anna draped her leg over his, wanting to feel him inside her for as long as she could, relishing in the sensation of being joined to him. “When we return, perhaps,” she teased.

He hugged her tighter. “Speakin’ of which, I’m nae goin’ to put that drawin’ in a gallery.” He paused, kissing her hair. “I’m goin’ to hang it in our bedchamber instead.”

“ Our bedchamber?” she said, pulling back to look at him, gently stroking his cheek, her thumb caressing the edges of his scars.

He smiled. “Ye’re marryin’ me. Tomorrow.” He kissed her. “Nay, today even, before any wee weasel thinks they can bid for what’s already mine.”

She laughed, lightly touching his lips. “As if I was ever anyone else’s.” She beamed up at him. “But ye’re nae puttin’ that drawin’ in our bedchamber.”

“We’ll see,” he replied, grinning. “I love ye, lass.”

“As I love ye,” she urged, her heart so full it seemed impossible that she could be so happy.

Then again, she’d known she could do the impossible when she’d gotten Gordon to laugh. It wasn’t so strange that she’d done it again, managing, against all the odds, to make her all of her wishes come true. He was everything she could have hoped for—love and freedom, wrapped up in the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

And he’s all mine…

Indeed, now that she thought about it, it seemed that she had won her own auction. And she meant to cherish her prize for the rest of her days.

“We should return before someone comes lookin’ for ye,” Gordon murmured into her hair.

“Nae yet,” she whispered back, closing her eyes. “Nae yet.”