The Dark Highlander

Page 85

He continued the steady thrusting until she went limp beneath him, then he drew her hips up and back, raising her to her knees and drove into her, the heavy weight of his testicles slapping against her hot, aching skin. With each thrust she whimpered, unable to prevent the broken sounds spilling from her lips.
“Och, Christ, lass,” he hissed. Rolling her with him onto his side, he wrapped his arms around her so tightly she could scarcely breathe, and thrust. And thrust, his hips flexing powerfully behind her.
He breathed her name when he came and the broken note in his voice, coupled with his hand moving so intimately between her legs brought her to another swift climax. When she peaked again it was so intense that the edges of darkness folded gently around her.
When she roused from the dreamy half-doze, he was still inside her. And still hard.
He took her to the village of Balanoch much later, which was actually a bustling little city. They ate in the central square, far from the shops on the outer perimeter that housed the smellier, noisier trades such as the tanneries, the smiths, and the butchers. Chloe was famished and ate with gusto strips of salted beef and fresh-baked bread, cheese, some kind of fruit tart, and spiced wine that went straight to her head, making her just tipsy enough that she couldn’t keep her hands off him.
She saw things in the busy village that sealed beyond a shadow of a doubt—not that she’d really had any left—that she was in the past. The houses were wattle and daub, with tiny yards in which barefoot children played. The shops were constructed of stone with thatched roofs, their wide faces sporting shutters that opened horizontally, the bottom one displaying their wares. Beside the tanner’s vats, she’d watched young lads shaving skins with currier’s knives. At the blacksmith’s forge, she’d stared in fascination at a strangely compelling smith while he pounded a long length of red-hot steel, sparks flying.
She’d peered in the single window of the goldsmith’s abode and glimpsed books therein, at which point Dageus had threatened to toss her over his shoulder if she tarried overlong. When she’d started up the stairs, he’d backed her against the door and kissed her until she lost not only her breath, but all memory of where she’d been trying to go.
There were chandlers, weavers, potters, even an armorer and several kirks.
She couldn’t help herself, she gaped, and a dozen times or more Dageus had gently closed her mouth with a finger beneath her chin. She lost count of how many times she muttered something inane like Ohmigod, I’m really here!
They didn’t stay in Balanoch long, however, nowhere near long enough for Chloe to thoroughly explore; but frankly, she was more obsessed with exploring the big beautiful man who’d done things to her that made her feel as if she were coming apart at the seams.
They stopped several “leagues” as he called them, from the village, near a copse of oak trees, beside a tumbling stream that widened into a shimmering pool.
When he slid her from the stallion this time, his gaze was tender, his every touch a languid caress, as if wordlessly apologizing for his earlier roughness (which she hadn’t minded a bit!). And when he took her again it was in the sun-warmed pool, after he’d gently washed those parts of her he’d battered. He went slow this time, giving her dozens of hot, wet, lazy kisses, lavishing her breasts with tiny nibbles and caresses. Lying her back at the edge of the pool, slipping between her legs and hooking her calves over his shoulders so he could taste her as he’d told her earlier he would. Lapping sweetly until she was wild for him, then dragging her back into the pool and lifting her astride him. She clung to him, staring into his eyes while he filled her and became part of her again.
And just before she drifted off in his arms, beyond replete, exhausted and sore in places that had never been sore before, she knew that she’d gone and done what she’d been determined not to do: She’d fallen head over heels for the strange, dark Highlander.
The moon was silvering the heather when Dageus finally stirred from his doze. He was sprawled on the plaid with Chloe in his arms, the lush curves of her plump backside pressed to his front, their legs twined together. Had he been a weeping man, he might have wept then from simple pleasure.
She’d taken him as he was. All of him. He’d been wild with the darkness goading him, beyond kindness, his humanity slipping, and she’d brought him back to himself. He’d tried to make it up to her with tender loving, slower and gentler than he’d ever taken a woman.
However he’d taken her, she’d met him and matched him. He’d been right, Chloe was wanton, had a wildness of her own. She’d been ready to lose her innocence, eager to be awakened, to be taught, and he’d relished every moment of it. Relished knowing he was her first lover. Her last, too, he thought possessively. She was a daring wee lass, loving every part of sex just as he’d known she would.