The Pleasure Master (32 page)

“'Tis not yer death ye go to, lass.” His soft chuckle teased her.

She exhaled on a relieved sigh. This was her Ian.
Hers?
When had she started thinking in terms of possessive pronouns?

Kathy felt Ian's sudden start of surprise.

“Ye have a wee crown here.” He traced with his finger the small tattoo hidden high on the inside of her thigh, and Kathy knew she'd always be able to close her eyes and remember this moment, trace the tattoo with her fingers and remember the feel of him doing the same.

“It's a tiara. I got it because I always wanted to be someone's princess. It's a tattoo, and it'll never wash off. I guess this is the closest I'll ever get to the princess thing.”

“Ye'll always be my princess, lass.” Easing down on his side, he lay propped up on his elbow, his gaze touching her. Everywhere. She felt each touch of his eyes like a dot branded into her flesh, and she didn't doubt when he was finished he'd connect the dots in a searing pattern she'd carry to eternity and beyond.

“This night I'll give ye all the joy ye've ne'er had, the joy that even a princess could not command.” He leaned over her, his hair trailing a dark cloud of promise across her bare stomach.

She gasped, then exhaled sharply as he touched each nipple with the tip of his tongue.

“All those who came before, who passed on the secrets of pleasure, are with us tonight.” His breath drifted hot between her breasts, and she clutched the silk with clenched hands to keep from pulling his mouth to her nipples.

“No offense, but I'd rather it just be me, you, and the bed tonight.” It seemed even spiraling sexual excitement couldn't shut down her smart mouth.

His sudden laugh surprised her. “Aye, ye're right.” His voice softened. “This night is for your joy only.”

He slowly traced the shape of her lips with his finger, then followed the same path with his tongue, and Kathy opened her lips—impatient for him, greedy in a way she'd never imagined she'd be.

When he took her mouth, it was a true taking, a foretaste of what was to come. His lips moved over hers, hot, demanding. His tongue tangled with hers, his taste forever after a part of her memory, one she knew would always knot her stomach with need, hunger.

She clutched his hair in her fists, holding his mouth to hers, holding his
realness
so that no demented time demon could snatch him away.

He slid his leg across hers, his arousal hard against her thigh, proof that he was no longer the detached dispenser of pleasure.

Lifting his head, he gazed down at her with eyes that shone molten silver in the candlelight. With his long hair tangled, untamed around his face and shoulders, his lips still damp from her mouth, he
was elemental male—powerful, dangerous.

But she was equal to him. The fire, the burning need for one man that had inspired a nameless woman from the past to create this bed, these paintings, was now
her
need. She recognized it in the spasms that clenched her thighs, the wet readiness she already felt.

She gazed at him and licked her lips. Lips that felt swollen from his kiss, that still tasted of him. She memorized the way his chest looked and stored it away for cold winter nights in her future—the light sheen of sweat that delineated every taut muscle, the dark shadow of his nipples, the path of dampened hair that was her own personal Yellow Brick Road.

He smiled at her, and his teeth flashed white in the dimness. “I havena invited my great grandfather to join us, but ye may enjoy all the knowledge he brought back wi' him.” He paused to nip her earlobe, then trail his tongue the length of her neck. “He was the first, and he would expect me to honor him tonight.”

The truth.
She had no idea where the thought came from, she just
knew.
“No.”

She sensed his stillness, his surprise. “What?”

“Your great grandfather
wasn't
the first. The woman was the first.
The Pleasure Mistress.
She taught your great grandfather everything. This bed is a
woman's
bed, and she'd want a woman to give the man she lo- . . . cared for pleasure on it.” Did she only imagine the light shimmer of laughter that echoed in the night?

The stillness surrounding Ian was a living, breathing thing. “I dinna understand.”

In her need to make him understand, she slid her hand down his stomach, felt him lift his hip away from her leg in an instinctive move to free his erection to her touch, then heard his sharp gasp as she ran her fingernail the length of his arousal.

“I want to pleasure
you,
Ian. I never wanted to do that with any man before. Heaven knows, all I wanted my husband to do was get it over with. And he did. Quickly.”

“Ye want to pleasure
me?
”

She heard the disbelief in his voice.

“Yes.” She wrapped her fingers around his flesh and squeezed gently, felt his shudder. “I want to taste every inch of your body.” Her voice was husky with her need.

She glanced up to see the flash of shock in his gaze, then the glow of something that turned her warm and liquid. Everywhere.

“No one has
e'er
cared about my pleasure.”

His voice held a wonder that brought unwelcome tears to her eyes. Determinedly, she blinked them away.

“I'm glad I'm the first.” Her unshed tears softened her voice. “Lie back and enjoy it, Ian.” She chuckled. “God, I sound like my ex.”

His lips curved in a half smile, but there was nothing halfway about the heat of his gaze. “I'll lie back, and I dinna doubt I'll enjoy what ye do, but ye canna keep me from taking part.” His half smile
widened into a wicked grin. “I've waited too long for this moment, Kathy.”

“Hmm.” She watched as he relaxed back against the headboard, his hands braced behind his head. His relaxed attitude didn't fool her. If she looked past the anticipatory gleam in his eyes, she'd find the soul of a hunter.

Kneeling, she gazed down the sleek, smooth-muscled length of him and couldn't conceive of a time before him or after him.

She longed to start with his hair, rake her fingers through the silken mass, lose her hair stylist's heart to the seduction of the dark strands sliding across her skin. But she'd save that for last. Okay, almost last.

Closing her eyes, she skimmed her hands over his legs, his thighs. Pausing, she tightened her fingers on his upper thighs, felt the muscles bunch, and memorized the feel. Many years later, she would close her eyes and recall the texture of him. Not just skin and muscle, but the hot surge of his blood, the hard pounding of his heart. She would know him from the inside out.

Opening her eyes, she bypassed her eventual destination. Barely. Lowering her head, she trailed hot kisses across his abdomen, then slid the tip of her tongue into his navel. His stomach clenched and she heard his sharp exhalation.

“Ye dinna have much shyness about ye, lass.” He didn't sound displeased by the observation.

“Umm. Not when you're such a delicious man.” She tried to collect her scattered thoughts. “You
make me feel free, Ian. I can do what I want. I don't have to live up to someone else's expectations.”

All gone. She didn't have one more logical thought left.

Moving upward, she traced the breadth of his chest, circled each nipple with her finger, gloried in his faint groan. She put her mouth on his nipples in turn, slid her tongue across each one, memorized the hard puckering of his flesh against her tongue.

She knew he'd abandoned his hands-behind-his-head position when she felt his fingers slide through her hair, tighten, then urge her upward.

Always obliging, Kathy slid her tongue along the side of his neck, pausing to enjoy the hot pulse that carried his life-force.

His lips touched her ear, his teeth nibbled at her lobe. The sensation took some of her breath away. Enough to keep her from pointing out that he was breaking her unspoken rule of noninterference.

“Mayhap ye didna notice, but ye're going in the wrong direction. Since yer eyes were closed, ye may have missed it in the dark.”

His voice held a husky, breathless quality that matched her own.

“I'm taking the scenic tour. I'll save the Highland's legend for last. When it's time, I'll pull over and read the historical marker.”

His laughter sounded pained. “Ye speak in riddles, but I would know what yer historical marker says.”

She eased down beside him, and whispered in his ear. “It says that in the year 1542 . . .” Deliberately,
she walked two fingers down his chest, his stomach, then paused. “On this very spot . . .” Her fingers scaled his erection, stood proud atop the summit. “The universe tilted, and the stars fell.”

He jerked, his groan obviously a testament to her storytelling ability. Unfortunately, his arched hips tumbled her from her exalted perch. Okay, so she'd just find another place of interest.

Gently, she cupped him, wanting to do something more, something she'd never wanted to do with her husband. Sliding down until her head was even with his hips, she leaned over him.

“And the world was never the same again.” Still cupping him in her palm, she kissed the flesh she cradled, touched her lips to him and trailed an abstract pattern with the tip of her tongue.

He shuddered but said nothing, his breath now harsh rasping gasps, and she felt in his silence the coming explosion.

With every sense alive to the wonder of this moment, she tasted his arousal. Her tongue skimmed the length of his hot, smooth flesh. His scent filled her, the primitive scent of aroused male. Her pounding heart played a counterpoint to her body's hunger, the clenching emptiness that demanded filling.

She had to have more of him. Parting her lips, she took him into her mouth, enveloped him in moist heat and urgent need. Slid her lips up and down over his flesh in an instinctive motion as old as man and woman.
Feel it, Ian. Feel all I want from you, all I can never have.

“God's teeth, woman.” His strangled growl broke her concentration.

She lifted her head away from him to glance at his face. His dark roiling gaze told her he felt it all too well.

With seemingly no effort, he pulled her beneath him and knelt towering above her. “'Tis no use, Kathy. Ye've ruined me for all other women. 'Twas my pride that I could pleasure a woman longer than any other man wi' out taking my own satisfaction.” He leaned over her and touched his lips to her forehead.

She almost groaned her despair.
No. Touch me everywhere. Now.

“But I find that I canna do that wi' ye.”

And when he touched her, it was with fire and light. His mouth took hers with heat and a savage possession while his hands skimmed her, leaving a trail of raw want over every inch of her bare flesh.

He kissed a searing path to her breasts, and she lifted them in anticipation. When his lips closed over her nipple, she moaned and raked her fingers through his hair, then dug her nails into his taut shoulder muscles and held on. His tongue and teeth teased each nipple, and at that point she ceased to think, stopped cataloging the things he did to her body, only
felt.

She writhed against his mouth, against his hands, which she recognized only as ribbons of sizzling pleasure that touched her in places she'd never thought would bring pleasure. Spreading her legs, she arched her hips while breathing wordless entreaties
for something more, when she knew
more
would shatter her into a million shards of razor-sharp, screaming . . . She didn't know, couldn't complete the thought.

The scrape of his body against her skin as he moved lower was the pleasure-pain of anticipation against bare nerve endings. And when he cupped her buttocks in his hands and lifted her to meet his mouth, she wrapped her legs around him and held her breath against his first touch.

He put his mouth on her.

She cried out. She couldn't help it. It was a cry of fulfilled fantasies even though Ian would deny the fantasy. It was his tongue probing and sliding across the nub that was so sensitive she felt the spasms beginning, spasms that would gather speed and send her careening helplessly into a free-fall with no sky, no earth.

Not yet.
She fought the pressure, the need to let go, even as his tongue entered her, gliding in and out with a rhythm mimicked by the clenching of her body.
Empty. Still so empty.
An emptiness of the heart, the soul. And only
he
could fill the void. With his body, with his
love.

At some point she realized his mouth was gone, replaced by his hard flesh, and she murmured soundless words of pleading, her body opening to him—wet, wanting.

“Take me home wi' ye, Kathy, in the only way ye can. In yer memory. As ye leap from yer machine and fall through the sky, yer heart pounding wi' the wonder of it, remember this moment. 'Tis all I ask.”

The pressure increased as he slid into her, his words stored away to take out later and analyze. But now . . .

Now, she could wait no longer. Grasping his buttocks, she wrapped her legs more tightly around him and urged him deeper.

With a final thrust he buried himself in her and she cried out her satisfaction. When his motion began, the strong rising and plunging rhythm, she finally let go, felt the size of him filling her, stretching her,
completing
her.

They climbed the mountain together, his heartbeat, his harsh breaths her own. And when they reached the summit, she ceased to breathe, and in the silence felt the shifting of all she'd ever known, ever believed, to make room for the one truth: She loved Ian Ross as she'd never love another man.

The avalanche was an explosion of white light and careening motion, catapulting them down the other side, gathering speed and intensity. Kathy heard cries she knew were hers joined by Ian's shout of triumph, but she felt outside herself, hoarding these moments, trying to stretch them, make them last forever.