Chapter 19
How could she enjoy his kiss?
She shouldn’t. Yet she did. Even feeling his breath so soft against her skin made her quiver with pleasure. Isolde closed her eyes, surrendering. Reason spiraled away, perhaps to whirl out the window and speed off on the wind? Her cares and woes vanquished into the cold, mist-drenched night.
Was that even possible?
She didn’t know, but the longer the MacLean kissed her, the more she succumbed. A seductive languor settled over her, pooling in her lower belly. The sensation swept deeper, over and into her most intimate place. Branding her sensitive female need with an urgent, tingling ache.
Mercy…
She wanted more.
An endless supply of this yearning her body intuitively understood, and craved. He’d lit flames inside her. A fire that made her burn for more than soft, feather-light kisses that only teased her.
Whatever he’d unleashed, she needed all her strength not to press into him, her greedy womanhood demanding she seize all of him, everything her body knew he could give her.
Forget good sense. Let passion scorch her bones, leave her an uncaring but sated crisp of wickedness. His kiss put such madness in her head.
But why?
Was she wanton? Could it be? How astonishing that she didn’t care.
She only wanted.
And so she eased her hands from between them and grasped his powerful shoulders, reveling in the hard, solid feel of his warrior’s strength beneath the rough wool his borrowed plaid.
“Keep kissing me.” Did she say that?
She had. Embarrassment swept her, but only for a beat. Her need was too great, a soaring force she hadn’t known dwelled within her. She shivered, felt a sweet melting between her legs.
“Please. Don’t stop…”
“Vixen…” he breathed the word against the corner of her mouth when she tilted her head to the side, parting her lips so he could deepen the kiss.
“Beast…” She nipped his lower lip. “Just kiss me…”
He chuckled, but obliged, tightening his arms around her as he slanted his mouth over hers, plundering her lips with a long, deep kiss, its hunger slamming into her, exciting her. Making her forget who they were, why they stood here…
Ravenous and wild, blood stirred and hearts raced as they kissed, clutching each other so fiercely they’d surely have bruised ribs when the kisses ended.
And still she didn’t care.
Far from it, another little sigh rose in her throat, and he caught this one with his tongue. Truly skilled at kissing, he blended her gasp of pleasure with his own until both sighs were indistinguishable from the startling intimacy of their mingled breath.
Isolde clung to him, not even aware of the candlelit room around them, her looming bed or his chain.
She didn’t care about the cold night pressing against the window arch.
None of that existed, her ordinary world gone as if swept aside to leave only the two of them, and the unstoppable surge of their raw need.
“Lass…” He swept his hands up and down her back, caressing her. “What have you done to me?”
Deepening the kiss, he gripped her hips, splaying his fingers over her curves, holding her so close she felt the long, hard ridge of his arousal, the full-swollen might of his need.
A delicious haze claimed her, and she opened her mouth wider, accepting his passion with an increasing desire of her own. Leaning into him, she slipped her hands around his neck and twined her fingers in the silken thickness of his hair, losing herself in the sensations rippling through her.
As if he sensed her capitulation, he loosened his embrace and ended the kiss as he’d begun, brushing his mouth over hers, and then easing away.
He drew back to look at her. “Lady,” he said, and nothing else. But the softly spoken word held enough awe to stoke the fire he’d lit in her blood.
With great gentleness, he brushed his thumb over her lower lip. “Never compare me to skirt-lifting garrison men or rutting animals again,” he said, a spark of humor lighting his eyes.
This time his levity warmed her, melting her heart with the same mastery his kiss and embrace conquered her resistance.
“I will not,” she agreed, amazed she could speak.
“See that you dinnae.”
“And if I do?” She tipped back her head to meet his gaze, teasing him. “What if I forget?”
“Ah, well…” He glanced aside, drew a long breath. When he turned back to her, his dark eyes were again smoldering. “Then I shall have to employ even harder measures to convince you.”
“Harder measures?” She pretended not to know what he meant.
He nodded. “Aye, very hard.”
She smiled. “What if I compared you to a doddering graybeard?”
“Och, you dinnae want to do that.” He shook his head, then let his gaze slide over her. “No’ if you ken what’s good for you.”
“I believe you are showing me.” Her pulse still racing, she gave in to the urge to touch his bearded jaw, then his mouth. Her breath caught as he curved his lips into one of his slow, wicked smiles, right beneath her fingertips.
“Aye, well. Now you know how a knight kisses.” His low, silky words caused another shower of light shivers to ripple along her skin.
Locking his gaze on hers, he captured her wrist and dropped a kiss on her palm. “One to dream on,” he said, folding her fingers over the kiss.
She blinked, too shaken to speak.
He offered her his palm. “Will you give me one, too? A wee kiss to see me through the long, lonely hours in your dungeon.”
…in her dungeon.
The words doused the fire in her blood, reminding her of who they were, and why they stood in her bedchamber, the two of them still breathing hard from kissing.
Kisses that, she now realized, were nothing more than his expertly spun illusion of passion and desire.
He was famed as a lover, wasn’t he? Every Dunmuir kitchen wench knew the tales about him. ‘Well-lusted’ they called him, unable to resist any woman willing to air her skirts. He supposedly satisfied them so roundly they couldn’t walk for days. That, too, she’d heard the gossips say.
Now she believed them.
Her chin came up then, her temper rising as well. “You said one kiss,” she reminded him. “It’s been two.”
“I would have more,” he said, closing a hand over her shoulder. “And you, sweet minx, should have more. Many more, if you seek further knowledge.”
“I believe I have quite enough.” She slipped from his grasp, brushed at her skirts. “And you are shameless. An arrogant blackguard without a knightly bone in your body.”
He frowned. “Think you?”
“I do.”
“I dinnae believe you.” He crossed his arms. “You are an earthy lass, a born temptress. You might not have known it before, but you are a woman unafraid of your own passion, the fire in your blood, in your heart.”
“So you are now a poet as well as a rogue?”
“I am neither.”
“Many say otherwise.” She drew a long breath, awareness of her abandon burning her as hotly as her still-urgent desire.
Worried he might somehow sense that need, she turned aside, fixing her gaze on the fire. Unthinkable, should he guess her lips yet tingled, aching to be kissed again.
Kissed as knights kiss.
“Ohhhh.” Fury churned in her at how easily he’d fooled her.
“Ohhhh, you enjoyed my kiss, or ohhhh, you are angry?” He stepped up behind her, kissed the top of her head. “That makes three.”
She whirled to face him. “You are mad.”
“So some say.” He shrugged. “This night, I am mad for you, my lady,” he added, and his mouth twitched at the corners.
“Come the morrow, another maid would catch your favor.”
“Perhaps,” he admitted, irritating her even more. “I warned you my affections are fickle.”
“And I have told you I do not want them.”
“You have,” he admitted, watching her with his dark, all-seeing eyes. “So why does your body say otherwise?”
She flicked at a loose thread on her sleeve. “I do not know what you mean.”
“I say you do.”
“You can say what you wish.” She straightened her shoulders. “I accepted your kiss out of curiosity, no more. A preparatory lesson for what we-”
“Our mating?”
“If you must call it so, aye.” She made a sweeping gesture, not leaving out his chain. “To ready me for the purpose of all this.”
“And are you content to proceed?” He leaned toward her. “Shall I take you now? This night? Perhaps here, on your table rather than your bed?”
“Have a care with your slurs. You would not wish me to change my mind.” She refused to retreat. “If I did…”
He straightened, looking amused. “Your graybeards and your two oversized buffoons would hang me, what?”
She nodded. “With my blessings.”
“Ah, lass…” He shook his head, gave her a wicked smile. “You are fetching when riled.”
“I only spoke the truth.”
She also didn’t want to see his smile, so she looked at the table. Devorgilla’s flask was still there, right where he’d tossed it. Empty, innocent-looking, and as yet wholly ineffective.
She frowned.
So far, the crone’s anti-attraction potion hadn’t helped her at all. Not done her a whit of good in resisting the MacLean’s charms.
Blessedly, neither had the potion stilled his apparent ardor. She’d worried when he’d eaten the potion-laced frog leg.
After all, she needed him to desire her. She wouldn’t get a child off him if he didn’t.
That much she knew.
“I am quite smitten with you, Isolde of Dunmuir,” he said then, as if he’d read her thoughts.
“Affection is not asked of you.”
“Aye, that I know, lassie. You are after my seed.”
His brazen words hung in the air between them. And the gods help her, but they excited her.
Furious that they did, she kept her gaze on the flagon, vowing to have Devorgilla brew a more potent batch.
“A child,” she said after a moment. “Peace between our clans.”
He chuckled, damn him.
“That is another way to put it.” His chain rattled, as if he’d taken a few steps. “Spoken like a lady.”
“I am a lady.”
“Aye, and a most passionate one.”