Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“I also put that much clothing on my wife because I dinna’ trust myself without it.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Is it?”
“You’re na’ a very nice man, Langston Monteith.”
“When did you ever think otherwise?”
“While I’ve been sick? You tended me, and…you—you—?”
“The word is lusted, love,” he said softly.
“You lusted for me?”
He nodded.
“Nae,” she replied.
“I have the utmost regard for you and that amazing body of yours, Lisle Monteith. I love you. I lust for you. Jealousy hit me right between the eyes when I saw you in that ballgown the other night, with Barton. I admit it. Freely. You ken? I lust for you. I probably will always lust for you. ’Tis a bane I dinna’ ask for, let me assure you, but I doona’ fight it.
I canna’. ’Tis against human creation. Pay up. ” He put his hand out.
“Why? I dinna’ ask anything.”
“You’ve been asking and receiving and na’ making a hint of a payment on the whole. That is most against protocol. Most.”
“’Tis your own fault, again. You’ve been the one answering and giving and na’ making any of it a condition,” she answered with a lift to her chin.
He was grinning then. “Very good,” he said.
“Why would you stop six ships in the midst of the North Sea, when you should be in France, or wherever we’re going, and there’s nae time to do all of that and return to Monteith Castle a-fore Butcher Willie arrives, since you doona’ think I ken that much about this trip?”
He whistled softly, and Lisle felt the flare of pleasure all the way from her toes, over her shoulders, and centered right where she didn’t need it, at her nipples, making them taut against the fabric and itch where it touched. She watched Langston look there, and then he gulped.
“Your query has too many parts,” he answered finally.
“Truly? What are they?”
“That, in itself, is another query. Pay up.”
“What is it you wish?”
“You have a chemise beneath that.”
“You just said I did.”
“Hand over the nightgown then.”
“Will I get an answer to all my questions?”
“Why did I order the ships to stop? Where are we really going, and is it to France? Why dinna’ I think you would know about this trip coinciding with Cumberland’s visit? Does it coincide with Cumberland’s visit? Aye. All of that.”
“You’re too easy, my love,” Lisle answered.
His eyes flew wide, opening them to their warm ale color, and he was definitely flushing all over that massive chest, and then up into his cheeks. Lisle watched it, and felt like giggling. Then she just did it.
He cleared his throat. “How so?” he finally asked.
“You gave me an answer and I dinna’ even have to pay.”
“What answer was that?”
“The one about the parts of my query. You just listed them. I wonder what else I can get you to confess to, if I just let a little bit of this slide right here.” Lisle tipped an arm, and assisted the nightgown to move a bit down to her elbow.
She was wearing a chemise all right, but it hadn’t a strap to hold up the thing, and it wasn’t doing its job very well.
She looked down at herself and then over at Langston. He hadn’t moved.
“You chose this?” she asked.
He tipped his head, and then smiled. “It was the first thing I grabbed.”
“Right.”
“You saying I lie?”
“I’m saying you rarely tell the truth, and this one’s even more full of holes than your usual.”
He was grinning again. Lisle wet her lips with her tongue. “If I give you this bit of cotton and lace…am I going to get the truth?”
“There’s usually more than one bit of truth to everything.”
“What?”
“I’m saying there are several layers to every bit of truth, and if you part with that nightgown, I’ll give you one of the layers. One of the lower ones.”
“Truth is truth. Anyone who says different is a liar.”
“As I’ve already claimed that title, you’ve na’ much else to your argument, madame. Hand over the nightgown.”
He had his hand out again. Lisle unfolded her legs and put her toes against his side, and squirmed beneath the material he was requesting.
“Explain this truth thing, Monteith.”
“Will I get the nightgown if I do?”
“That depends on what you say.”
He licked his lips. “Start undressing. I’ll start talking. Stop if you feel it merits it. I’ll do the same.”
Lisle brought her legs back underneath her and rose to her knees.
“There are many reasons people do things. Many reasons they call the truth. Take this thing between us. I wed with you because it was like a blizzom hit me right square between the eyes. It was also because the MacHughs would na’ take my gold, and they needed it to keep them from starving.
They had something I wanted. ’Tis something I would give anything for.
You. They think it was for the gold. So do you.
All of it is truth. All of it. Which one is the real truth? ”
Lisle lifted the nightgown over her head and handed it to him. He had his eyes on the cleavage her bone-enhanced chemise was holding in place. She couldn’t believe he’d taken the time to strap her into it when she was ill.
“You put me in this chemise on purpose, Langston.”
“There’s another truth thing. It truly was the first thing I grabbed, and it was something I would have looked for if I knew you had it. It was my pleasure to strap you into the thing. It still is. Damn you, woman.”
“You are a very strange man, Langston Monteith.”
“And you are a viciously desirable woman. What do you want for the drawers?”
He shook after asking it and Lisle watched him do it. Her own body was doing antics that weren’t far behind, and every breath was pushing her further to the edge of her chemise cups. She watched him look there and close his eyes while another shudder ran him, and then open his eyes back on her.
Lisle had never felt such a feeling. She went back on her haunches, stretched out with her legs, and toyed along the buried side of him with her toes. “Doona’ you think we should wait for eight?”
“What the hell for?” he asked.
“You probably ordered sup, and other things.”
He looked away, sucked in several breaths, and let them out, and that was fascinating to watch. The man was more than handsome, and he knew it. He looked back to her.
“Eight o’clock better hurry along then, or it will be damned, like the rest of this.”
“What does that mean?”
“Give me the drawers to find out.”
“I’d rather puzzle it out myself.”
“I ordered a bath. I ordered food. Roast, duckling, salmon. Vegetables…I forget which. Damn you, Lisle Monteith!”
He was shouting it across at her. She reached for the pantaloon tie.
He was heaving great breaths as she lay back, using her arms to wriggle out of the drawers, and careful not to disturb the thigh-high stockings he’d put on her.
And then she was pulling her legs back beneath her, keeping the chemise about her upper thighs, so there was only a gap of a finger-length or so between the two materials, and handing him the drawers.
He plucked them from her and tossed them to the side, where they landed somewhere on the floor beyond the bed.
Then he was moving, coming at her, and the covers were showing their traitorous side as they gave up any hint of clinging to him and hiding him.
There wasn’t anything she could do about it, except lie back down and take the brunt of his weight with her hands on his chest, her elbows bent and her belly feeling every bit of every breath, while all that was male about him was searching, pushing, straining against where she was denying.
Lisle’s arms flexed with the weight, and held him precariously as he bent his head and brushed a kiss down her nose, and from there onto her lips.
“We have…to speak about…your negotiating skills, my lord.” Lisle turned her head to pant the words to the mountain of covers he’d shoved to the side of them.
His answer was garbled, since he had her chin in his mouth and was sucking on it, and that had her bucking and heaving and doing everything but opening for him, while he slid along her…to her knees. Back. To her knees…. back.
“Open for me, love,” he whispered when he got his lips to her neck and was doing things on her skin that were sending rushes of sensation to every part that she was denying him.
“What…will I get…if I do?” she asked.
A growl answered her and then he was peeling the cups of her chemise down to reach her, punish her, suckle her, and Lisle was spiraling into a world that didn’t resemble anything like the red and black calabash room they were in, for it had too much light.
Her arms were shaking with holding him aloft, and then he wasn’t helping her with it at all, as one hand moved to lift her for his delectation, bringing her to a point of ecstasy, and then passing it.
Lisle cried it aloud, and then he chuckled, cooling flesh that he’d just moistened and heated, and making her buck at him in earnest, to unlatch him.
All that gained her was more of his mouth, and more of his weight, as he gave up helping her hold him aloft and reached down to hold all of her in position for him.
Lisle watched him, and then he looked up, met her eyes, and the flash of something that hit her looked like it hit him at exactly the same time as he shuddered, eyes half-lidded and locked with hers.
“I ordered the ships to anchor for this,” he said, although his voice trembled, and then he looked down at her and licked her.
Lisle screamed again.
“And for this.”
He licked the other peak, and her cry was turning into a keening note of passion, pain, and joy.
Then, he was lifting his upper body away from her, taking the heat and sensation and all that was glorious away from her; denying her.
She was after him, straddling him as he lay back, opening for him, encasing him, and then she was swimming, filling her lungs with air in order to make it to the next space when breath would be allowed her.
Oceans were cresting on a waveless sea, and she heard them, gloried in them.
Langston had her waist and was manipulating her up…
down. Up…down. Over and over, until she was crying again with it, ignoring the tears that streamed everywhere, blotting where the chemise bodice was still pushed down, sliding over her flesh, and dropping onto him, where she was wetting both of them.
Breathing deepened, filling the cabin with the drumbeat of sound, the cadence of life, the thunder of passion and desire and hunger, and pure, unadulterated lust. Then Langston was crying with her, his voice blending with hers, in a groan of time-defying length and depth.
Lisle clung to him, held onto him, as he arched against her, shuddered, and emptied himself into her.
There was the flow of the ocean in her ears, although it sounded more like a friendly Scot’s burn than the torrent of sea that made her belly recoil in an agony of ache.
Lisle slid down onto him, slowly, suspending herself in time as she did so, making it an ooze of movement rather than the freefall of disjointed flesh she felt like she was.
Langston’s chest was heaving, he was covered in a fine sheen of sweat, and there were definite tracings of tears leading from both eyes down into the black hair behind his ears.
He was watching the ceiling above them, and he wasn’t seeing any of it.
She could tell. Lisle forced her neck to support her head to turn it from where it lay, so she could regard him.
“Langston?” she whispered, reaching with a hand to follow a tear path from his eye.
Her action made him twitch, and brought him back from wherever he’d been. It wasn’t an easy journey, if the confused look in his eyes was any indication. He licked his lips. Lisle shifted, lifting herself a bit higher so she could look fully at him.
“Aye?” he asked, finally.
“What are you willing to give me for the stockings?”
Her answer was a whoosh of air that was probably meant to be a chuckle, but fell woefully short. She giggled for him, lay back down atop his chest, snuggled into him, and slept. Neither of them heard the knock he’d scheduled for eight.