CHAPTER SIX
MALCOLM brUSHED his mouth against hers.
Claire did not move. She had wanted to kiss this man for so long, and the featherlight caress of his lips sent such desire through her.
She had never been kissed by such a powerful man and she had never known such a gentle kiss, either.
Claire moaned softly, reaching for his huge shoulders.
Dear God, she wanted him to deepen the kiss.
He had a hand on each side of her, pressed into the bed, as he played her lips, slowly but insistently, kissing her again and again. The pressure steadily increased, his tongue beginning to flick at the seam of her lips. Claire could not stand it. She cried out.
He became still. Claire did not care. She clawed his shoulders, moaning shamelessly, thrusting her tongue at his lips, demanding more while urgently spreading her thighs.
For one more instant, he didn’t move, not even to return the kiss, while she frantically tried to thrust her tongue past his strong, closed mouth. Why was he doing this?
And then he caught her head in his powerful hands. Claire went still and he kissed her hard and openmouthed, instantly reversing their roles. His kiss was so demanding that she felt the wall against her head through the pillows.
And Claire kissed him back, shocked that so much pleasure could be gained from a kiss. And damn it, a kiss was not enough!
As he sucked on her mouth, his tongue locking fiercely with hers, Claire ran her hands over his hard chest, wanting the damn tunic to disappear.
She wanted to feel every inch of his hard, powerful body, but not through coarse linen.
She wanted to touch his skin, explore his muscles, taste every inch of him.
She found the slit at the neckline and slid her hand through, shoving aside the large cross he wore, gasping when she felt his bare, hot skin under her palm. This was so good….
He grunted. She tried to move her hand lower but it was impossible, the neckline wasn’t deep.
She jerked her hand out and then frantically stroked down his rib cage and hard, tight abdomen, over the tunic, toward his navel.
She cried out wildly when she felt the hot, huge, bulbous tip of his erection thrusting at her.
She was going to die if he did not take her with that hardness….
He jerked her hand away from his penis, his grip uncompromising, breaking the kiss as he did so. “Nay, lass,” he breathed hard, his eyes savagely bright.
“Damn you,” she wept, writhing in an urgency she could not bear.
She managed to gaze at him through her tears, panting hard.
Shocked, Claire realized he was standing firm to some dumb notion he had about not sleeping with her.
Furious, desperate, she wanted to strike him, but he held both of her wrists now and there was no possible way to do so.
“I need t’ leave ye,” he said harshly, and he released her.
Claire reared up, fists flying, pummeling his chest. “Like hell!”
He used his forearm to brush the blows aside the way he might an annoying fly. Then he placed his hand abruptly on her bare knee, pressing her leg into the bed.
Claire went still, her heart almost exploding with comprehension, anticipation, more insane fire licking between her thighs. “Yes,” she whispered.
His face hard and tight, his eyes glittering, he slid his hand up her leg and beneath her skirt, all the way to the wet cleft there.
She gasped, sinking back against the pillows, arching shamelessly for him. “Hurry,” she said hoarsely.
His eyes flared brighter, and Claire blinked back hot tears when his knuckles brushed her silk-clad, throbbing sex. He moved his long blunt fingers beneath her thong, and held it suspended from her flesh. His knuckles lay deep where she was the most sensitive and distended.
“Oh, God,” Claire gasped.
“Aye,” he said thickly, and he jerked her skirt up to her waist, his gaze riveted on her. “Ye wear a string. A string with lace an’ beads.”
Claire whispered, “Please.”
He edged his thumb slowly over one distended lip, then down the other one. Claire bucked as his thumb traced the swollen outline of her clitoris. She gave in and came, bursting into a thousand pieces, crying out in anguish, pleasure, ecstasy.
And then she felt his tongue probing her there.
The delicious and agonizing pressure renewed itself with stunning force, as his strong tongue tasted her, stroked her, circling her.
It had been so long—and never like this!
She broke apart again, weeping, moaning, flayed by his tongue, again and again, crying out in part pleasure, part pain.
He did not stop, testing her threshold, pressing into her again, causing an even greater, more violent orgasm.
Claire sobbed and his tongue finally stilled.
She panted and breathed and finally she floated back to the bed.
Claire lay back, incapable of any movement now. She wasn’t certain how long he had been performing oral sex on her, but she’d had so many orgasms she had lost count. Her body actually hurt now. And Malcolm hadn’t come.
What had just happened? How had she let this happen? And what about his pleasure? She was finally sane again. She no longer knew herself. Was this his idea of foreplay?
Was he going to try to mount her now, when she was finally sated, as she had never, not even once in her life, been sated by anyone?
She bit her lip, shocked when a surge of desire formed at the thought of his moving onto her, into her. But he was motionless. His cheek rested intimately on her thigh and she was now acutely aware of the huge tension in his stiff, rigid body.
“Malcolm.” She did not recognize her own voice.
She finally realized he was in the midst of some kind of internal battle.
He breathed hard, harshly. His hand moved over her sex, just once, a sweeping caress.
He left the bed, throwing the fur over her, and their gazes met.
Instantly she sat up, alarmed. His eyes blazed with lust. The hunger she saw there was frankly frightening. His face was hard and his huge erection stood up against the linen, making her mouth dry, her heart race all over again. Claire tore her gaze from his blazing eyes, beginning to tremble.
She died taking her pleasure from me.
Maybe that woman had died because he was so sexual and so strong.
It was a horrifying thought.
He turned and left.
Claire gasped, wide-eyed. Her every instinct was to run after him, but to do what? He did not need comfort—did he? He needed sex, but he had given, not asking for a thing in return. She leaned back into the pillows, stunned. Maybe it was time to rethink her opinion of him.
HE STOOD ABSOLUTELY STILLon the ramparts between the two towers, the whisper of an early-morning breeze flattening his leine against his bare thighs, his hand grasping the hilt of his sword.
Tension vibrated within. A glacial chill had cloaked Urquhart the moment he had passed through the gatehouse. Moray was waiting for him.
His stomach twisted into knots. There had been many warnings and he had ignored them all. He glanced up the allure and down it, but no one else was present. He looked below, first into the bailey at the peasants there, and then into the wide silver blue belly of Loch Ness.
A breeze shifted past him, whispering his name. “Calum.”
And the voice was not the wind, but Moray. The lord of darkness—his mortal enemy.
He trembled with his rage and hatred, and pushed open the wood door of the stone tower.
Darkness wafted onto the ramparts like an oncoming storm, dulling the light of the rising sun, and for one moment, he could not see.
Moray smiled at him.
His teeth were shockingly white. His skin was bronzed from centuries of sun, but he seemed all of thirty and five, if that.
He was dressed in the English-court manner, his hose scarlet, the black wool doublet trimmed in ermine, a red-and-black brat pinned over one shoulder by a ruby-and-gold brooch.
Moray was Defender of the Realm and King James’s favored counsel.
“I have been waiting for you, Malcolm,” Moray purred, speaking English. He was laughing as he spoke.
“Tha mi air mo sharachadh.” I am tired of this.
Moray seemed delighted, his smile widening. “Then what has taken you so long?” He lifted his sword and it rang as it slipped from its sheath.
Thought vanished. Sanity was gone. He drew his sword and thrust. “A Bhrogain!”
Moray easily met the blow, and when the two huge blades locked, he knew he faced the kind of strength and power he had never before imagined. He had never lost a battle, but in that single moment, he doubted his ability to defeat Moray.
Moray deflected every blow as if he were a child in napkins.
The battle became absurd. Moray played him while he had no strength left to wield his sword. He should have listened, he should have waited. His powers were too new, too unformed. And suddenly Moray thrust past his defenses and his blade sank deep into muscle and flesh, into bone.
He gasped as a terrible comprehension began, accompanying the blazing pain and heat.
Moray smiled, pushing the blade more completely into his body, through tendon and muscle, and he was completely skewered to the wall.
Moray withdrew, the blade dripping his blood.
He tried to fight the sudden and terrible wave of weakness, but it was impossible and he sank to the floor. The tower had become shockingly still. He choked on pain, fury, blood, realizing that Moray had vanished.
He closed his eyes tightly, but not against the burning pain in his chest. All he could think of were the sacred vows he had recently taken.
He had vowed upon the ancient and holy books at the sacred shrine, to defend God and mankind.
But evil had just left the tower and it would hunt the Innocent from one end of the realm to the other, in all times.
And in that stunning moment of clarity and comprehension, he knew he must live to protect Innocence as Brogan and his ancestors had.