Chapter 3 #4
I just need to flirt with him enough to make it clear that I like him.
“I know it’s too soon, but when two people are attracted like this it’s really easy, you know. We want what we want, and I never like waiting for what I want.” When he said nothing in response Esme pursed her lips. “Do you like what you see, Chief? Do you want what you see, I mean?”
“Aye,” Darro said, and brought up one big hand as if to touch her face. Just before he did he snatched it back as if the contact would burn him. He cleared his throat before he said, “Give yourself more time before you choose a lover, my lady. Here you may take your pick, I promise you.”
What he said made sense, of course, but it didn’t fit with how he was behaving.
Was he afraid of her? Did she disgust him?
She couldn’t tell. She only knew he was having some kind of strong physical reaction to her that was like a phobia of some sort.
In fact, now she could see that in his eyes—aversion and fear.
Had she scared him by being so pushy? Although she really wanted to kiss him Esme understood that might be too much for a man from the twelfth century.
She actually knew very little about how men and women behaved in his time, and compared to medieval women she probably might seem cheeky, maybe even outrageous.
No matter how much I hate waiting, he’s worth it.
“Okay.” She turned her face to surreptitiously brush her lips against his palm before she stepped back. “Do you want to–”
The rest of what she wanted to ask him never made it into sound, for Darro snatched her up off her feet and carried her to the nearest wall.
There he pressed her against the cold stone while staring intently into her eyes, looking like a completely different man now.
The ferocity in his expression should have scared her, but instead it made her go instantly, completely wet.
This was what he had been hiding from her behind that fear.
Maybe he was afraid of himself, not her.
There you are, Chief. I can see you now.
She hung there, parting her lips for him, hoping he would kiss her until she saw how he was looking at her.
The chieftain was giving her all of his attention, as if no one and nothing else existed for him—far beyond the response she’d expected.
In fact no one had ever looked at her that way, and it rendered Esme almost helpless, for she didn’t know how to cope with such intensity.
This was completely outside her experience, and now she was questioning why he’d be like this with her, a girl he’d only just met.
Maybe it’s…no. He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t know me.
He leaned in, dragging in a deep breath, as if he wanted to fill his lungs with her smell.
Was she sweating too much? That was his fault.
Why didn’t he kiss her? Did she need to give him permission?
His scent had grown stronger and darker, too, as if a deep and lovely forest had begun to burn.
As her head filled with anxious, endless questions his hands shifted down to cup her buttocks without any hesitation at all.
Darro pressed her hips to his, making her aware of just how much he wanted her.
This was no shy man. He knew women, how to use his hands on them, and what he could do to make them crazy for him.
He wouldn’t settle for some sweet, gentle lovemaking, either, Esme suspected.
If I go to bed with him, he’ll own me.
Her astonishment plummeted down into a swirling abyss of dark, liquid heat that began pouring through her, making her sweat now.
That made perfect sense, for he was her warrior, the man of her dreams, and she had been waiting all her life to find him.
This is what she had always wanted and never found in her world.
He’d been waiting here for her all this time, trapped in a different world.
That scared her a little, too. But her panties clung to her body now, so soaked with her arousal she might have already had an orgasm.
She also suspected that if he kept rubbing that lovely long erection against her she would climax.
Why is it him? It can’t be the painting.
As they stared at each other Esme had a sense of knowing him, somehow, which made the memories of every other man she’d been with fade away.
She had never accepted her grandparents’ superstitions that everyone belonged to ancient enormous tribes, and would only be happy if they fell in love with someone from a huge extended family.
It seemed to her almost racist. Yet with the way she reacted to Darro, now she wondered if she had been wrong all this time.
How else could he reduce her to this shivering, helpless pile of longing?
Is he the one? Were we meant to find each other?
Slowly her hands found a path up to his shoulders, along the sides of his strong neck and into his thick, fine hair.
The heat of him melded with her own warmth, making them both break out in a fine sheen of sweat.
Touching him made her insides twist, and desire spread from her breasts down into her belly as if she were burning from the inside out.
Looking at his face made her throat tight, and her lips throbbed and tingled as if they’d already kissed.
His calm, almost placid eyes seemed to be black now, and filled with some reckless, savage emotion.
He wanted her, that she knew. Was he deciding whether or not to have her?
No conversation, no foreplay, just pure primitive need.
Yes. He wants me like crazy. Just like I’ve always imagined the warrior in the painting would.
That realization decided everything for her.
Shamelessly she wrapped her legs around him, rubbing herself against the long column of his erection, which throbbed through his trousers against her as if it had a heart of his own.
Her warrior was everything she had imagined and more, and he wanted her just as much.
If she couldn’t have him she’d shave her head and become a nun, for no man would ever make her shiver and shake like he did.
If he doesn’t kiss me soon I’m going to have an orgasm right here on the wall anyway. Maybe I should kiss him first.
Darro moved in as if he really would kiss her now, but turned his head at the last moment and pressed his brow against the wall.
His chest heaved and all the muscles of his big body coiled into hard bunches as he held her pinned that way.
Suddenly she understood just how hard he was trying to control himself.
That made her shiver with excitement even more than the warmth of his breath rushing past her ear.
“You want more, Chief?” she asked, stroking the back of his neck tenderly. “Because we need to be naked and in a bed for that. Let’s go to your room, okay?”
Darro shifted against her, and the bulge of his confined cock pressed against her throbbing little clit, making her burst with a sudden, shaking orgasm.
Esme gasped and tightened her legs around him as she rode the waves of sweet, hot delight, whimpering as his hands tightened on her bottom and moved her against his erection as if trying to make it last even longer for her.
“No one ever did that to me,” she whispered as she finally came down, trembling and sweating. “I want to do that for you.”
He drew back, and terrible fear showed in his eyes before he avoided her gaze. “Forgive me, lass.”
“Why are you sorry?” What he had done to her had been the hottest thing she’d ever experienced in her young life.
The moment he kissed her she’d probably orgasm again.
Maybe she should kiss him first. Would that shock him, or was that what he wanted?
“You don’t like this? You want me to do something? Just tell me.”
“You’re wondrous kind.” Carefully he lowered her back on her feet and then took his hands away as if she’d become instantly, scalding hot. “I didnae mean to force myself on you.”
Esme wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.
“Didn’t you notice me not fighting you off, Chieftain?” And now he was stepping back from her and turning as if he meant to run away. She reached out and grabbed his arm to stop him. “Oh, no. Don’t you dare. You can’t go like that. I need to take care of you now.”
“I must go and report to the laird, lass.” He sounded tormented now, and reached to tug her hand off.
“If you do I’m sleeping out here tonight.” As he stared at her Esme tried to look helpless. “Don’t you know how gigantic your castle is? I’ll never find my way back to that guest room.” There, now he would have to go back with her, and it would be nothing to lure him inside–
Darro let out a whistle, and a guard came out of the castle and trotted to them.
“Escort Mistress Martinez to the guest room,” the chieftain said, and then walked off without another word to her.
The guard bowed to her and gestured toward the way he had come. “This way, Mistress.”
As they walked back to the stronghold Esme spent a few moments stomping down her temper, which had flared to a ferocious, scalding degree.
Every other thought in her head began with How could he.
..? or Why didn’t he...? Darro had gone into that tower that Ava said she couldn’t enter without one of the clan escorting her, but not why.
“What is that place over there?” she asked the guard, pointing to the tower’s front entry.
“’Tis the garrison hall, Mistress.” He grimaced. “Females maynae enter unless they intend to spend the night.”
She nodded, a little mollified. “I could sleep there, sure.”
His pained expression deepened. “Females must sleep with their McKeran lover, who must first escort them inside.” He nodded at a tall older woman who had just come out of the kitchens with two big clansmen. “The laird, he’s given permission for our ladies to take two or more, if ’tis their wish.”
Esme’s jaw dropped. “You let women have harems here?”
“I dinnae ken harem, but females ever choose their lover. Or lovers, as happens now.” The guard saw her expression and winced.
“Our vassals may marry each other for a cycle, but we McKeran must await a lady’s invitation before we take her as our lover.
We dinnae marry, as ’twould be unfair to the mortal men here. ”
None of the McKeran had an inferiority complex, it seemed.
Still, she had been very willing to become Darro’s lover, and everything they’d done tonight had been more than an invitation.
She’d practically shouted Have sex with me!
at the top of her lungs. So why hadn’t he taken her up on her invitation to find a bed?
“What’s your name, amigo?” she asked.
He bowed. “Sawney McKeran, Mistress.”
“Thank you for explaining, Sawney.” She took hold of his hand and shook it. “Would you mind showing me around the outside grounds? And can I interview you while we walk?”