Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
She had been to his chamber before.
That was the thing she kept returning to as she stood in the hallway outside. She’d been here before; she knew what was behind this door, and it hadn’t been like this.
It had been urgent and half-decided and threaded through with the particular tension of two people who had not yet said the things they needed to say.
This was different.
She knocked anyway, even though she suspected it wasn’t necessary because he was the one who had asked her to come, and she was pretty sure he heard her footsteps on the stone.
But it felt right, to knock, to wait, to be let in. To arrive rather than to simply appear.
“Aye,” he said.
She went in.
The fire was built high, throwing amber light across the room.
He was standing by the window, his back to the glass and his arms crossed over his chest, watching her the way he always did. Steadily, with the particular attention of a man who had decided something mattered and was no longer trying to hide it.
She closed the door behind her.
“Ye knocked,” he said.
“I always knock.”
“Nae always.” His mouth moved slightly. “There was the incident with the account books.”
“That was an emergency.”
“It wasnae.”
“It felt like one.” She looked at him across the room.
The fire was between them, its light flickering across the planes of his face.
She was painfully aware of the space separating them.
Not as distance, but as something that was already being closed—possibly since the first moment she stood before him with Esther’s hand in hers, looked at him, and thought,
Oh, this one is going to be trouble.
He crossed toward her.
He moved with the unhurried, deliberate quality she had observed over months and had come to understand meant he had already decided something, rather than being in the middle of deciding. He had made his decision. He was simply arriving.
He stopped close enough that she could feel the warmth of him.
“Ava,” he said.
“Aye?”
“Stop thinkin’.”
“I’m nae thinkin’.”
He kissed her.
His hand came up to her face, the unbruised side, careful of the healing cheek, and tilted her chin, and she stopped thinking exactly the way he’d told her to.
She kissed him back with her hands, finding his chest, the warmth of him through his shirt, the solid fact of him.
He made a low sound in his throat that she felt more than heard, and walked her backward until her shoulders were pressed against the wall. She found she did not mind this at all.
“The engagement,” she said, against his mouth.
“Aye.”
“Now that we’re getting’ married, maybe we should slow down until after... ”
“Ava.”
“I’m just sayin’ that strictly speakin’, we shouldnae be doin’ this.”
“I ken what ye’re doin’.” He pulled back two inches to look at her. His eyes were dark and entirely serious. “Ye’re findin’ reasons. Ye’ve been findin’ reasons since ye arrived.”
She looked up at him. “Force of habit.”
“Aye.” His thumb moved across her cheekbone. “Ye can stop now.”
She considered this.
She considered the twelve reasons she had assembled over the last ten minutes walking down this corridor. All of them technically valid, all of them in service of the old, familiar argument that kept her safe at a distance from things she wanted too much.
She looked at them, lined up and neat.
She let them go.
“All right,” she said.
He kissed her again. This time, there was no underlying argument from either of them, and she felt the difference immediately. The absence of holding back. The particular quality of a man who has been managing himself for months and has now, quietly and completely, let go.
His hands moved to her laces.
She had thought, once or twice in the abstract, that a man like Noah would be impatient. That the control he wore all day would mean the absence of it became something forceful.
She had been wrong about this. He was not impatient. He was thorough. He undid her with the same deliberate attention he gave everything, and she had to remind herself to keep breathing.
“Ye’re doin’ it again,” he said.
“What?”
“Thinkin’.”
“I’m nae.” She stopped. He looked at her. “Okay, aye. I’m thinkin’ a little.”
“About what?”
She was not going to tell him. She looked at his hands instead, at the laces now loose, at the firelight across his forearms. “About nothin’ important.”
“Ava.”
“About how ye’re very...” She stopped again. “Deliberate.”
He looked at her for a moment with an expression that was, she decided, somewhere between amused and entirely not amused. “Would ye prefer somethin’ else?”
“Nay.” The word came out faster than she intended. “Nay. I was observin’. It wasnae a complaint.”
“Good.” He drew the lace free. “Because I’ve been thinkin’ about this all mornin’, and I’ve no intention of rushin’ it.”
Noah chuckled, low and dark, before his mouth crashed down on hers. His lips claimed hers with a hunger that stole her breath, his tongue plunging inside, tasting her like a man starved.
Ava moaned into him, her fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer as his hands gripped her waist, hauling her against the unmistakable hardness of his manhood.
She could feel the ridge of it through the layers of fabric, thick and demanding, and her hips rolled instinctively, seeking friction.
“Ava. What ye do to me,” he groaned against her lips, his hands sliding down to cup her butt, lifting her effortlessly. Ava wrapped her legs around his waist, the skirt of her gown riding up to her thighs as he pressed her back against the wall.
The cold stone pressed into her skin, but his heat burned hotter. His mouth traced down her throat, teeth grazing the delicate flesh just below her ear, and she gasped, her head falling back as his beard scraped against her collarbone.
“Noah.”
“Aye, lass?” His voice was a rough murmur against her skin, his breath hot as his lips found the swell of her breast above the neckline of her gown. “Tell me what ye want.”
She should have lied. Should have played coy. But the truth tore from her in a breathless whimper. “Ye. Just ye.”
He tugged at her lace, and her gown loosened, and he slid it from her shoulders with unhurried hands. The air in the room was warm from the fire, but she felt its exposure.
The particular vulnerability of being looked at by someone who looked at her the way Noah looked at her. Like she was worth the attention. Like he intended to be thorough about this, too.
Her heavy breasts, the tight buds of her nipples, the flush spreading down her torso.
“Christ,” he muttered, his thumb brushing over one taut peak. “Ye’re perfect.”
“Noah,” she said.
“Aye.”
“Stop lookin’ at me like that.”
“Like what?”
She could not explain what. Instead, she looked at the fireplace. He took her chin in his fingers and turned her face back to him.
“Daenae,” he said. Quietly. “Daenae look away.”
She looked at him. He looked back.
Something shifted, settled, the way things settled when they stopped needing to be managed.
He kissed her throat, the line of her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder.
Ava’s breath stuttered as he pinched her nipple, rolling it between his fingers before his mouth closed around the other.
The wet heat of his tongue, the scrape of his teeth, it was too much and not enough.
Her fingers clenched in his hair, holding him to her as he suckled, his free hand sliding up her thigh, bunching the fabric of her skirt higher. When his fingers found the damp heat between her legs, she jerked, a broken sound escaping her.
“So wet for me already, just how I like ye,” he murmured against her skin, his fingers teasing her slit through the thin linen of her undergarments. “Drippin’.”
Ava’s face burned, but she couldn’t deny it.
She was aching, her folds throbbing with every slow circle of his fingers. “Noah, please.”
“Please, what?” His voice was a dark purr, his fingers finally hooking into the waistband of her undergarments, tugging them down just enough to bare her to his touch.
The first brush of his calloused fingers against her slick folds made her tremble. “Ye want me inside ye?”
“Aye,” she gasped, her hips lifting into his touch.
He groaned, his mouth crashing back onto hers as his fingers slid through her folds, gathering her wetness before pressing two thick digits inside her.
Ava cried out, her nails digging into his shoulders as he curled his fingers, finding that spot deep within that made her see stars. His thumb pressed against her clit, rubbing in slow, deliberate circles.
“That’s it,” he growled, his lips trailing down to her breast again, his tongue flicking over her nipple. “Take what ye need from me, Ava.”
She was past shame, past thought.
Her hips moved in frantic little rolls, her breath coming in ragged gasps as the pleasure coiled tighter, her muscles clenching around his fingers. “I’m close.”
“Nae yet,” he ordered, his fingers stilling just as the climax threatened to crash over her.
Ava whimpered in protest, her body trembling with denied release.
Noah chuckled darkly, his breath hot against her ear. “Nae until I’m inside ye.”
Before she could protest, he easily lifted her, one arm under her, much like how he moved Esther’s books off chairs to claim the seat, and then carried her to the bed.
She had a brief, vivid thought that she was going to have to revise several of her early assessments of this man. Then she stopped thinking entirely because his hands were at her waist, and his mouth was at her throat, and thinking had become essentially impossible.
She pulled at his shirt, and he let her take it, and she had a moment. Looking up at him in the firelight, the breadth of his shoulders.
The furs were soft beneath her back as he lay her down, his eyes never leaving hers as he stripped off his léine, revealing the broad expanse of his chest. Muscles carved from years of battle and labor, a smattering of dark hair trailing down to the waistband of his kilt.