Page 21 of The Highlander’s Enchanted Healer (Spellbound Hearts #2)

My vow to take no pleasure for myself pounded through my head as I followed in the wake of Aria’s departure.

I reached the great hall door a few breaths after she fled through them and entered the torch-lit passageway just in time to see her exiting through the main stronghold doors that led to the inner courtyard.

I frowned. The lass had to be running to have covered that distance so quickly.

And I was sure she was fleeing because that clot-heid Torran had grabbed her arse.

Rage heated my blood once more, and I considered turning back around, going into the great hall, and finding Torran to give him a much-deserved strike in the face, but I wanted to ensure Aria was all right.

I would seek the foolish man out later and punish him for his unacceptable behavior.

As I strode through the stronghold doors and into the inner courtyard, I searched the moonlit night for Aria, finding her heading out the inner courtyard gates. Where was she going?

I increased my pace, crossing the courtyard quickly and swinging open the iron gate that led to the stairs to the loch and beach below.

She was halfway down the stairs, and I opened my mouth to call to her but thought better of it.

I did not want to frighten her and possibly make her miss a step and go tumbling down the stairs to the sharp rocks below.

By the time I took the last step to the beach, she was already at the water’s edge.

This time, as I was about to call to her, her gown dropped in a puddle at her feet, and I could do little more than stand there dumbstruck by her beauty in the moonlight.

She wore underclothing that was so fine in its make that its sheerness was like a second skin, and I could clearly see the generous curve of her arse.

She was perfection, and this was just the back of her.

The burning need to touch her strummed through me, making me hard and hot all over.

It was clear I was very close to losing my grip on my control. When she reached up, and I realized her intention was to slide her underclothing off her body, I found my voice. “Aria!”

She whirled toward me, and I was struck mute by the sight of her.

High breasts and hard peaks and wild tumbling hair that fell below her waist. She was a vision of sin, of pleasure, of things I wanted but could not yet take.

I would not move a muscle. I would not take a single step toward her, because if I did—

“I want ye,” she blurted to my utter shock. “May the gods help me. I want ye. I want ye to kiss me, to touch me, to—”

There was not a vow on Earth that could have held me back.

Her words unlocked needs in me that I had kept under tight control and a raging desire I had not known I possessed.

She would be my undoing, but the unraveling would be the sweetest bliss.

I closed the distance with a sprint and drew her into my arms. I delved my hands into her silken hair as my lips found her soft, pliable ones.

My vow was in my head, but as her tongue touched the crease of my lips and she let out her own moan of need, I released the vow from my head and abandoned myself to the moment. Just one kiss. Harmless.

Our tongues touched, twined, tangled and explored.

Her mouth was warm, her taste honeyed, her lips giving as much as I wanted to take.

Husky moans of pleasure escaped her while her hands found my shoulder, trailed down my arms, and then slid across my abdomen to dip right above my cock.

I could not hold a thought but to kiss her, touch her, learn her every curve.

I broke away from her mouth to claim her long, slender neck as my hands found her full breasts.

Her peaks were hard and straining against the fine linen of her underclothing, and when I rubbed my fingers over her buds, she released a gasp of delight that shredded the last small vestige of restraint I had.

I slipped one shoulder of her underclothing down, then somehow thought to catch her gaze to ensure she wanted what I did—to become one for this moment.

Our gazes clashed and held. “If ye want me to stop—”

“Nay, nay. I do nae. I—” She bit down on her lip as if she was trying to get herself to stop talking.

“Ye’re certain?”

She started to nod, then blurted, “Aye,” as if she did not have control over what she said or did.

I understood that completely, as desire had me in her iron grip as well.

In one swift motion, I pulled the straps of her underclothing over the smooth skin of her shoulders and let the only barrier between the two of us drop to the sand.

“By the Gods,” I whispered, transfixed by her, “ye are the most beautiful creature I’ve ever beheld. I want to touch every part of ye.”

“By the gods, I want that, too,” she said, gasping.

My need for her was an ache that exploded.

I cupped her breasts, lowering my head to her right nipple even as my hand found her left.

I took her in my mouth with pulls and sucks as I used my fingers to bring her other nipple pleasure.

Each stroke of my tongue that elicited a cry of pleasure from her made me more frenzied for her, and it seemed to do the same to her.

Her fingers were tangled in my hair, pushing me toward her as she arched her back to bring us closer.

I lowered her to the beach, her tresses spreading out behind her head.

Her pale skin glistened in the moonlight, and I ran my fingers over her beautiful breasts, down her taut belly, and to her thighs, which were slightly parted.

When I touched her there, Aria shivered and let out a little mewling sound that drove my desire even higher.

I parted her knees, and she drew in a long breath, making her breasts rise, and then I found my way to her secret spot.

There was nothing I wanted more than to bring her pleasure and watch her face as she took it in.

I parted her at her core, looking up at her, but her lashes were lowered and I could not read her expression, and she had her bottom lip between her teeth.

When my fingers found her pleasure point, she bucked and cried out, making me so hard that I ached, and when I began to run my fingers ever so gently across the nub, her eyes fluttered completely shut as she moved her head back and forth, digging her fingers into the sand to find, I knew, something to hold on to.

Did she feel she would splinter from the inside out?

I hoped so. That was the ultimate pleasure, and I wanted only to give it to her.

My blood pounded in my ears and coursed through my veins, and my own need grew in pace with her thrashing and moaning.

The faster I moved my fingers over her flesh, the louder she moaned and the harder she thrashed.

She was close. I could hear it in her voice and see it upon her flushed skin.

I brought my mouth to her nipple once more as I worked my fingers to take her to the finish.

She thrust her hips hard into my fingers as her eyes flew open, shining, and found mine.

“I need, I need, I—Ah!” she screamed, a shudder running through her, and then her hips lowered even as her hands were reaching for me.

She grasped my shoulders and begun to pull me toward her.

I was eager, more so than I’d ever been.

And it wasn’t just desire. It was more. I didn’t just want to have her.

I wanted to know her mind, her heart, and her body.

“Take me,” she whispered, her plea a hot ragged fan of breath on my neck.

I did not have to be told twice. I came between her thighs as I slipped my hands under her bottom and entered her in a fast motion of desperate want.

She cried out as I registered that I’d met a barrier, and shock ripped through me.

She had never been with a man. I stilled, uncertain what to do, and then she clenched around me, and when my eyes met hers, she nodded.

I pushed forward all the way into her warmth, and then I stilled once more, barely able to hold on to my thoughts save one repeating in my head.

Claim her.

I clenched my teeth as a sweat broke out across my forehead and my heart raced ahead in anticipation of what was to come, but by the gods, I would give her time to get used to me. I counted, needing to get to ten. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

“I need ye,” she said, the three words ragged.

I drove all the way in then and slowly slid out.

And then I repeated it, sensing she liked it as much as I did.

And when she was thrashing her head once more, digging her nails into my shoulders, and the pressure in my own body was so great I thought I could die, I moved faster.

The friction of my body inside her was nearly achingly unbearable.

Just nearly. The faster I moved, the greater the pleasure became, until I was the one shuddering, the one bellowing, the one surrendering to the desire overcoming me, nearly drowning me.

When the last shudder left my body and my blood ebbed, I looked down at her as she stared up at me with her hand over her mouth, as if she were preventing herself from speaking, and that is when I remembered my vow.

Guilt did not simply wash over me. It felt as if it hit me in the gut and knocked me off Aria.

I rolled beside her, the cool night air washing over me to chase away the last remnants of desire.

What had I done? God’s blood. I had broken my vow.

I shoved a hand through my hair, sat up, and met her gaze once more, forcing control in the tempest threatening to consume me.

“Aria, I—” What to say? “I should nae have—” She turned her head ever so slowly to look at me, almost, as if she had just realized I was still here.

I frowned at that. Had I hurt her? Not brought her pleasure? “What I’m trying to say is—”

“Ye did nae mean to break yer vow.”

“I did nae mean for this, for us—”

She turned her head away from me. Silence stretched, the only sound the lapping of water against rocks.

My mind raced with what to do, what to say.

Should I ask her to wait for me? For my vow to be fulfilled?

I squeezed my eyes shut. I had never wanted to ask a woman to wait for me.

It had always been only about pleasure. This was different.

“When Alba is healed, and my parents avenged, I can think upon a future, but until then, I can nae. And I can nae allow myself to touch ye again. Do ye understand? Can ye forgive me for this? I—”

“Ye did nae attack me, Ross. I wanted ye, and I foolishly allowed that want to overrule all else. Ye can go now.”

I frowned. Not at being dismissed—I understood she might be hurt.

It was her words that confused me. But I did not have a right to ask for an explanation right then.

I had to proceed as I had long planned. I could not claim happiness for myself when I was the cause of happiness being stripped from my sister.

I could not build a life for myself with this woman beside me, no matter how tempting, when my selfish actions were the reason my parents no longer lived.

So I did the only thing left to do. I forced myself to rise and dress and put back up the wall that Aria had somehow torn down.