Page 35 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)
He nearly told her then, his face pressed against the swell of her bodice, his eyes closed, and his hand against her back to keep her there, pinioned against him.
He almost confessed as he had not to Brendan or to any of those who’d treated him, burned and incoherent from exposure.
Only God knew, and He was not speaking, either to Hamish or to the world.
The secret was, unbearably, his and his alone.
He sat and abruptly pulled her to him, reaching up beneath her skirt. A instant later, an eternity, he freed his erection and buried himself in her. He closed his eyes as she sank down on him, as her soft, sweet lips pressed against his throat and she murmured something in his ear.
Only then did he realize that she wasn’t quite ready for him. “Forgive me,” he said roughly. “Forgive me.” He pulled out of her, gritting his teeth and summoning the will from some far off place where he’d stored it.
“Did I hurt you?” he whispered, placing soft kisses across the edge of her jaw. “Please, tell me if I hurt you.”
He was nearly desperate with desire. Now panic blurred it, the confusion of his mind transferring to his body.
His hand fumbled at her laces as he wondered when he’d lost sensation in his fingertips, or when they’d become so clumsy.
Once again he cursed the fact that his left arm was useless.
Suddenly, it enraged him that he couldn’t be articulate and whole, instead of suffused with guilt and teetering on the edge of frenzy.
He wanted, suddenly, to offer her Hamish MacRae as he’d been before India, whole and confident. He was not quite ready, for all his surface acceptance, to embrace the man he was. This man was too scarred, had too many sins, had too many regrets, and was beset by too many demons.
He unfastened her bodice, finally, wanting to touch her skin with a feverishness he had never before felt.
Even at his most frantic, he’d never felt this clawing need.
He’d always felt that with her he could find peace, a respite from the voices, faint but insistent, of his conscience.
Now, however, she was the source of his desperation.
“Forgive me.” He cupped a breast in his hand and kissed it gently. “Forgive me,” he murmured again, his lips on her collarbone, trailing a penitent’s path between her breasts.
She placed both her hands on either side of his face, kissed his lips, then his cheeks, his chin. “It’s all right, Hamish.” Soft words that didn’t free him from his regret.
He slowed himself, taking deep breaths and inhaling the scent of her.
Something that smelled of camphor and the laundry soap she’d used earlier.
Not provocative scents as much as ordinary ones.
She was the one who’d altered them, changing them until they swirled around her in a bouquet of heady smells.
He wanted her naked, but there was no time.
He cupped a breast and held it for his lips, his tongue teasing the tip of it before drawing it into his mouth and sucking.
Her hand caressed his cheek, a sensuous and artless invitation to continue.
Her other hand rested at the nape of his neck, her fingers trailing up and down softly.
She seemed so calm while he was delirious inside. Where was all his restraint now? Gone in the magic of Mary. He nuzzled at her other breast, all the while murmuring words that might have weakened him at another moment.
He must make her see that she was the last person in the world he would willingly harm. But he had, and he must make it up to her, even though she didn’t speak a word of condemnation. As he reached up to pull her head down for a spiraling kiss, he prayed that she was as lost in the moment as he.
His fingers dug beneath layers of fabric that separated them, found her and teased her with his thumb.
He wanted her now, yet all the finesse that he’d once possessed as a lover deserted him. He was an untried youth once again, his fingers trembling on a woman’s flesh. But he’d never before felt as he did it this moment.
He’d wept only a few times—as a boy. Impossibly, incredibly, horribly, Hamish felt as if he would weep now.
“Help me,” he said, breathing against her throat.
Suddenly, her fingers were on him, and he was almost inarticulate with need.
“No, please,” he said, and her fingers halted at the tip of his erection, yet he could feel fingers and thumb gently resting there as if to stroke him to bliss in the next second. He would erupt in her hands, the knife edge of pleasure so close now that it was not unlike pain.
She didn’t move, and he was infinitely grateful. As if she read his mind, or divined his chaotic thoughts, she rose up, pressing her bare breasts against his face as she guided him into her.
A sound escaped him, a muted hosanna of gratitude as his eyes closed. A spearing bliss surged through him as Mary moved again, and he wanted to be over her, thrusting into her with the power of two arms supporting him.
He would hold himself at the entrance to her soft, heated sheath, poised there just for a moment until her head flung from side to side and she pleaded with him to continue. Only then would he enter her again. The man of that vision had more control and finesse.
Desire had become a maelstrom, the sensation centered where she enveloped him and drew him in and then lifted herself before plunging down. He had begun as the seducer and was now the beguiled. She led the pace and he only followed, grateful and humbled.
She stiffened in his arms, and once again, he wanted to say a prayer to the Almighty who made such things possible.
Her release hadn’t been due to any of his skill this time.
It was a result of her wishes and his almost desperate wants.
Because this was such an enchanted moment, created from fervent prayers, he followed an instant later, feeling such pleasure that he drew her head down for another kiss.
She laid her head on his shoulder, sighing against his throat, and he closed his eyes in muted wonder and thankfulness.
Elspeth knelt at her window, elbows on the sill, watching as the night lengthened.
The moon was bright, casting bluish shadows on the buildings and the landscape.
Her second-floor room looked out over Inverness, with a view of the river bridge in the distance.
The water looked black and sparkling. The River Ness flowed out to the sea, where ships and sailors disappeared.
Not that far away was a town at the end of the promontory.
Cormech, it was called, where oceangoing vessels berthed and huge cargoes were offloaded.
She’d visited it once, years ago, with her parents and four of her six sisters in tow.
The reason slipped her mind now, but it must have been something for her father’s business, the only justification that could budge her father from Inverness.
She loved her home, never thinking that she might leave it. There were, after all, enough men in Inverness that she wouldn’t have to go shopping for a husband. Her father’s wealth guaranteed that she wouldn’t be ignored.
Until this month, there had been only a few men who interested her. Though none of them had made her heart beat loudly or the breath falter in her chest. Nor had she acted the fool with them as she so easily did with Captain MacRae. Brendan.
For the first time, she began to understand Mary’s craving for adventure. Yet she knew something that Mary had never discussed. It wasn’t a change of scenery she wanted as much as the company of one man.
Was that why Mary remained at a lonely castle?
She’d not told her parents what she suspected, nor did she and Brendan discuss it again, but she often thought of Mary and her shocking behavior. Yet now, on this moonlit night, with Inverness sleeping outside her bedroom window, Elspeth could understand her friend only too well.
Every day she woke to wonder if this was the day she’d no longer see Brendan. Every day, when he appeared on their doorstep, she felt her whole body sigh in relief. Every morning, she dreaded hearing him say that he’d be leaving. Not yet, but soon.
What would she do then? How would she bear it?
“Please don’t let him leave,” she said, addressing the moon. The moon was silent, as was the world around her.
Sighing, she stood and went back to her bed, knowing that when she slept it would be to dream of Brendan.