Claimed by the Highlander (15 page)

“Aye, but I can’t seem to do anything about it.”

He looked into her eyes. “I’ll only take you when you’re willing, lass, so give me a chance to make it so. Can you relax for me?”

She nodded.

“I’ll not rush you,” he whispered, as he touched his lips to hers and swept his tongue inside, while the heat from his body was surprisingly comforting and made her sigh in unexpected content.

He bent his head and kissed her cheek, and sure enough, his reassurances began to calm her nerves. His palm slid up her rib cage, and his thumb settled on the pebbled tip of her breast. He flicked it back and forth, while he kissed her collarbone with parted lips and a probing tongue, sending tiny waves of eroticism shimmying down her spine. Her legs parted, and he settled himself more comfortably between her thighs.

She trembled at the desire racing through her body, while her hips began to pulse. He laid kisses across her shoulder and down to her breasts, where he licked and suckled tirelessly for such a duration that the minutes began to blur into one exquisite path of rapture, leading her somewhere unfamiliar and thrilling in its promise of adventure.

A flaming heat began deep inside her. She cupped his head in her hands and let out a tiny moan.

He paused and gazed down at her. She felt suddenly lost in a feverish delirium and wondered if she’d had too much wine during the celebrations, but no … that was not the case. This delirium was something else. It was erotic and emotional, and she suspected she was in fact going to enjoy herself more than she ever imagined she could.

He held her in his gaze as he slid his hand between her thighs and began to stroke her. The memory of what he did to her five nights ago still burned in the fires of her imagination, and the intensity of his expression filled her with courage and daring, and a genuine desire to please him.

She reached down and wrapped her hand around his manhood, and was amazed by his size and stiffness. “Show me how to touch you.”

“You’re doing fine, lass. You need no instruction.”

With growing passion, she stroked him, measuring her success by the intensity of his responses—the catch of his breath in his throat, the movement of his hips, and the passion in his kiss.

Keen to explore, she squeezed down lower, but he lightly seized her wrist. “Not so aggressive with that part of me, lass. It requires a softer touch.”

“Did I hurt you?” She was mortified.

“I’ve survived worse.”

He lowered his mouth to hers again, and they each resumed their explorations. Angus rubbed and stroked her until she was drowning in wetness, then at last he shifted and positioned the swollen tip of his erection against her tender maidenhead.

“You’re ready for me. Can you feel it?”

She nodded and braced herself, for he would now claim her as his wife. She would belong to him. No other man would ever receive what she was about to give him.

He pushed forward, hard up against the delicate barrier of her virginity, and paused. “Am I hurting you?”

“A little,” she replied, “but don’t stop.”

He thrust forward again, more deeply this time, and the pain was significant, for he was incredibly large.

“Are we almost there?” she asked, clutching at his shoulders, biting her lower lip.

“Aye.”

He gave one final thrust, all the way in, deep to the hilt, easing himself into the confines of her virginity, until it existed no more.

Her body stiffened at the painful invasion, and yet she wanted it.

Angus gave her a moment to grow accustomed to the feel of his body inside of hers. He lay very still. “Are you all right?”

A bewitching fever was overtaking her senses. She didn’t feel like herself. Whatever pain she was experiencing seemed trivial compared to the raw need to drive her hips forward. Erotic sensation flooded through her body, and his initial penetration soon became a series of them, creating a rhythm of rapture that left her breathless. She clung to his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his hips, matching each of his deep, smooth, pounding thrusts, measure for measure, delighting in the pain that still lingered with the friction.

His body grew damp with perspiration. She cried out and tossed her head back on the pillows. She was slick with moisture as he worked deftly in and out of her.

She was his now, it was done, and she knew that when he finally spilled his seed into her womb, their union would be sealed forever.

Her mother had been right. This was indeed something to enjoy.

She dug her fingernails into his buttocks, and pulled him all the way in, as deep as he would go.

*   *   *

Angus held still for a moment, acutely aware of the shocking notion that Gwendolen had finally surrendered to him. She had not resisted this most intimate invasion, but instead had placed her body, her life, and her future in his hands, which was an astounding occurrence—for no woman, and certainly no virgin, had ever given herself over to him like this before.

Another part of him, however—the darker, more cynical side—tensed at her unguarded abandon, for he had never desired passion or intimacy with any woman, much less a wife. Sexual release, yes. Power, definitely. But passion? It was not something he had wanted when he shouted from the rooftops that he would claim a MacEwen daughter as his bride.

But this was not the time for soul-searching, he knew. All that mattered now was his hunger for her body. Slowly, he began to resume their coupling. He drove in and out of her with a primal, reckless need, and it wasn’t long before he felt the hot rush of an oncoming orgasm and was compelled to move faster and faster—until it became some kind of wild sexual frenzy.

It had been years since he’d experienced such a buildup of pleasure, and he had to work hard to rein it in and stall his orgasm, but in the end, it was no use. He felt as if he were making love for the first time—but he supposed he’d never been with a virgin before.

He couldn’t think, couldn’t even stop to consider Gwendolen’s pleasure. He climaxed in a compulsive rage and exploded into her with a groan of blazing heat. He bucked and pushed, and she dug her fingernails into his back. It was rough, wild, and extreme—and it took some time to get his breath back before he collapsed onto her soft body with an immense sigh of satisfaction.

“That’s not what I expected,” she said, still clinging to him.

“Nor I.”

In fact, he felt a sudden impulse to get up off the bed and exit the room. He resisted the urge, however, and rolled off her to stare up at the canopy overhead.

“Did I please you?” she asked—in that sweet, innocent voice that made him realize how very different they were.

“You were fine,” he replied without meeting her eyes.

She paused. “I’ll do better next time. I promise. I was nervous, that’s all.”

He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her. “You did nothing wrong.”

It was a lie. She had held him too close, enthralled him too quickly, and he was reacting to it now with a sudden rush of uneasiness.

He rose from the bed and crossed to the fire. For a tense moment, he stood naked before it, staring into the red-hot lure of the flames. He reached for the iron poker and pushed the logs around. Sparks exploded and snapped and escaped up into the chimney.

He set the poker back on its hook and went to pick up his shirt, which he had tossed on the chair earlier. He pulled it on over his head while Gwendolen watched. She was sitting up now, hugging the covers to her chest.

“Are you going somewhere?”

He picked up his tartan and wrapped it around his waist. “Aye. Down to the hall for some ale.”

“But why? Don’t you want to stay in bed? You can have me again if you like. You could teach me how to do all the things that please you.”

He tensed in response to her provocative proposition, and had some trouble with his tartan. He couldn’t seem to locate the brooch in all the folds, and was beginning to reconsider his decision to leave, for he was keenly aware of her naked form on the bed, and her enticing suggestions were still reverberating in his brain. Would it be so wrong to stay and teach her a few things?

“How long will you be gone?” she asked.

He found the brooch and turned his back on her. “I don’t know, but don’t wait up. You can return to your own chamber if you’d be more comfortable there.”

He didn’t let himself look at her, but he didn’t have to. She was hurt by his wish to leave. It was their wedding night after all.

“I would prefer to stay here,” she informed him, with less innocence and more of that proud defiance he had witnessed on the day of the invasion.

“I may be a while.” He sat down on the chair and pulled on a boot. “And I’ll likely be drunk.”

She sat up on her knees, still covering herself with the sheet. She crawled across the bed toward him. “Is that supposed to cool the fires of my lust?”

He glanced up at her in shock, and couldn’t help but laugh. “Honest to God, woman! I don’t know what to make of you!”

“How so?”

He pulled on the second boot and stood up. “Sometimes I wonder if there’s a sharp-toothed tiger under all that virtue and purity. Who the blazes did I marry?”

She frowned at him. “Perhaps you’d understand me better if you didn’t feel the need to leave every time we make love.”

He strode forward and raised an eyebrow at her. “
Every
time? We’ve only done it once, lass.”

“You know what I mean. The other time … when you came to my bed … You didn’t stay very long.”

He felt suddenly as if the walls were closing in around him, so he started for the door. “I’ll not explain myself to you. I am laird here. I’ll do what I want, and leave a room when I please.”

He yanked the door open.

“Even if you leave your wife unsatisfied?”

He halted abruptly in the doorway, seething with a mixture of fury and arousal, which had not abated since the moment she’d offered to let him have her again.

He turned and reentered the room. She stared at him with wide eyes—terrified, probably, that she had crossed a line, which she most definitely had.

He kicked the door shut behind him and strode back to the bed—for he had something important to prove to her: Angus the Lion never left any woman unsatisfied. Especially not his wife.

*   *   *

Gwendolen sat frozen in shock as her husband approached, for she was baffled by the stormy nature of her emotions. One minute she was overcome with desire and enraptured with her new husband. The next minute, she was shouting insults at him across the room and bracing herself for his sexual retaliation.

She had not intended to rouse his anger, but he couldn’t just leave her like that. This was their wedding night, and he had just put an end to her life as a virgin.

He advanced to the side of the bed and pointed at the mattress in front of him. “Right here.”

She moved to the place where he indicated.

“Now lie back.”

She did as he commanded, and he wrapped his arms around her thighs and dragged her to the edge of the bed. He placed his hands on her knees and looked down at her. Her legs stretched wide, opening for him.

Feet still on the floor, he leaned over her and laid hot, openmouthed kisses on her breasts. His callused hands stroked up and down her sides, over her hips and down to her calves, then he used his mouth to blaze a trail of kisses down her flat, quivering belly. He probed her navel with his tongue.

She grew weak with yearning and the excitement of the unknown, as he kissed her hips and made her squirm with delight.

“How’s this, lass?” he asked in a low, seductive voice. “Is this what you want from me?”

She could do nothing but nod earnestly as he knelt on the floor and brushed his lips across her inner thighs. A soft gasp escaped her when his mouth and tongue plunged into the sensitive core of her womanhood.

She’d thought she’d experienced everything earlier when he claimed her virginity and poured his seed into her, but this was something new and unimaginable. She had not known how intimate the marriage act could be—or how satisfying. He was driving her to the brink of madness.

She bucked and writhed on the bed as he pleasured her, and soon she was plunging down that raging, foamy river of sensation. When it finally came, the orgasm was excessive to the point of excruciating. She clutched the bedcoverings in both fists and cried out, while he continued to thrust his tongue into her, until her arms fell open and she was faint with exhaustion.

Angus rose to his feet and rested his fisted knuckles on the bed on either side of her.

Her eyes fluttered open. She felt groggy. Drunk. And very happy.

“Are you satisfied now?” he asked.

She could barely think through the sexual fog that was clouding her brain, but somehow she managed to nod her head.

“Good. Now maybe I can have some peace and quiet.”

He stalked to the door, but halted before he opened it.
“Bluidy hell,”
he whispered.