Chapter Six #3
I let my fingers wander past the confines of his bandage to caress his chest once again with my bare hands, exploring with some fascination the roughness of him, the broadness of his shoulders, the intricate play of muscle and sinew beneath his bronzed skin.
Such a masculine creature he was, hard and angular and battle-scarred, so different from my own pale curves.
He continued to watch me with lazy interest as I carried out my investigation. I felt the long strands of his damp hair, which I smoothed back from his neck and his face.
“Your sisters are very kind,” I said.
“My sisters shouldn’t have kept you away from me for so long. If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had a need to at least attempt to charge into your chambers and carry you back to me.”
“You only need to call me and I’ll come to you, warrior.”
“Come to me now.”
I smiled. “I’m already here with you.”
“Come closer to me.”
I leaned up against the side of him that wasn’t injured.
I kissed his bristly cheek, reveling in the soft-rough texture against my lips.
I kissed along his jawline and up to the corner of his mouth.
He turned his face just slightly, so his lips barely brushed against mine.
We sat there like that for several moments, playing this lightest of kisses.
My fingers continued to trail over his skin.
“You kill me with your sweetness,” he whispered.
He licked my lips open, parting them, and his kisses grew in urgency, his tongue becoming more demanding, probing and expressive, as though tasting the nuanced flavors of an exotic fruit he wanted more of.
Catching his tongue, I gently sucked it into my mouth.
Wilkie made a deep, primal sound, then he pulled back, and his eyes were dark and lit with his fierceness.
My heart leaped in twin beats, in my chest and lower.
His voice was gravel-edged when he spoke. “In my dream, Roses, you offered your breasts to me.”
I fell silent. Did he want me to answer him? Did he want me to confirm that I, wholly captivated by him, had indeed committed this wonton, beautiful act, an act that provided me with an inspiration to stay with him, to heal him, to do anything he asked of me from that moment forward?
We remained, for a moment, locked in a connective deep gaze that brought the pulse of my heart to the surface of my skin.
“Reveal yourself to me,” he said. His voice was low, roughened with dark, masculine authority.
I paused. But I remembered the feeling of his mouth upon me, in the cave, as I held his head in my lap.
The gentle suction, the melting revelation of it.
I was so enticed by him, I could think of little else.
In my former life of struggle and servitude, of distinct lines between right and wrong that were drawn, then adjusted by the people who made them, I might have wondered at myself, at my own brazen allowances.
But here, with Wilkie, those lines felt far away and hollow, as if they belonged to someone else.
I wanted to please him. Watching his eyes, I slowly parted the top of my robe, opening the garment, revealing myself to him.
I felt his gaze upon my sensitive skin, and the tips, softened by the warmth of his body, peaked into aching buds.
“Your plush, golden beauty is more than I can bear, Roses,” he whispered.
My breasts felt full and heavy. I wanted him to touch me.
“Put them to my mouth so I can taste of your sweetness,” his husked voice commanded.
I hesitated only for a moment, and his eyes flashed in challenge.
I did as he asked, leaning to him, and he took my breasts in his roughcast hands.
He caressed them, very gently plumping them together, so my nipples were close to his mouth.
He breathed on me, kissing me, tracing around the peak with his tongue, one, then the other.
Drawing a nipple into his mouth, he licked softly from within the warm, wet embrace.
The pleasure was heavy and hot, liquid in its effect, swirling from the warm fire of his mouth into my body, to the low pit of my stomach, to the soft throbbing in my most secret places.
I heard myself moan with the pleasure of it.
“Aye, my Roses,” he said huskily. “Moan for me, and only me.”
My moans seemed to excite him. His mouth became more insistent, and one of his hands moved to the back of my upper thigh, gliding across the skin there and higher.
Immobilized by the mind-numbing effects of his grip, I was powerless to resist him.
He roughly pushed the hem of my robe up to my lower back.
His hand smoothed lower, holding behind my knee, which he adjusted outward just a little, so my knees were slightly apart.
Taking one of my nipples into his mouth, he drew strongly while he explored my skin with his still-wandering hand, traveling higher, between my legs, where his fingers touched gently, so very intimately, along every contour.
He felt me tense and responded by tightening his grip and tugging with his mouth in a dueling sustained rhythm so the rolling sensation built without pause.
I had no choice but to relax into the compounding pleasure.
He found the delicate folds of my entrance, lingering, using the moisture there to silkily caress me.
And then he centered his fingers on the nub just in front, rubbing softly with his hand, playing me while he sucked my swollen breasts.
I felt blinded, with only Wilkie’s fingers and his mouth as anchors to this world.
I gave myself over completely to his power, which drew pleasure out of my body the likes of which I had never imagined.
His fingers tugged, circled and dipped only barely into my entrance, teasing miraculous sensation that eased, then rose, then eased back and rose again, each time climbing higher.
And higher. The very height of the impending rise seemed impossible, and I squirmed against him, unsure if I could handle any more of this.
I didn’t know if I could survive the swell that was being promised.
But Wilkie held me in place, squeezing more tightly, tugging more strongly, increasing his pace.
The pulls of his mouth and his fingers worked together, until I was overcome.
The pleasure peaked, and held, searing my senses with such an ecstatic overload that I sobbed with it, saying Wilkie’s name to him.
Pleading. Digging my fingernails into his skin.
The peak fragmented, then, coiling into clenching bursts that gripped on a heartbreaking emptiness.
The waves rolled, so enchanting, so very sublime, that I went limp against him, basking in the lingering bloom of feeling.
I could say nothing. I could feel nothing except the softly clenching core of my body and the warmth of Wilkie’s chest as his arms wrapped me close to him.
We lay there for some time. I settled in and out of a drowsy, enchanted doze as our hands and our mouths continued to touch and to taste.
I felt fluid and slippery, and I thought of Wilkie’s own pleasure, of his own burn.
Could I do to him what he had done to me—twice?
I felt his hardness through the cloth of my robe, which he had pulled back over my legs to cover me.
I was inexperienced and shy, but I wanted to try.
I let my hand that rested on his stomach slide lower, to barely touch the leather of his trews.
But it was then that I heard the distant sound of people, down the hall, maybe, or on the staircase.
I pulled away from him, panicked at the thought of being found as we were.
I had no doubt Laird Mackenzie was well aware that I had, indeed, slept in Wilkie’s bed.
If he hadn’t ordered for me to be left in Wilkie’s fevered embrace, he had at least sanctioned the arrangement.
Still, if he discovered us here, as we were, it might cause him to second-guess his decision.
“I should go back to the antechamber,” I said.
“I’ll have you returned to me soon. For now, aye, it might be best if you take your leave. If my brother finds you half naked in my bed, and awake, he might react badly. He doesn’t take well to scandal.”
“Am I a scandal, warrior?”
“You are much more than a scandal, lass,” he said enigmatically, grasping my hand and pulling me back to him, kissing me deeply on the lips, so desiringly, I felt the burning pit inside me flare upward. I wanted more of him. Much, much more.
But the commotion was getting louder and closer.
I withdrew from Wilkie, glancing back at him as I took my leave. He looked bereft, his fierceness overlaid with a kind of longing. And I felt as lost as he looked, at the prospect of this small separation from him.
“I’ll seek you out as soon as I’m able to,” he said.
I nodded, savoring one last glance at him, the swarthy, muscular, brawny shape of his shoulders, his beautifully built chest, tapering down to his taut stomach, his hips, where his loosened trews were slung low.
He smiled at my lingering glance and continued to hold his hand out to me as I slipped from his grasp and ran to the door.
“’Til soon, angel,” he said.
I shut the antechamber door behind me just in time. I could hear the commotion burst into Wilkie’s room not seconds after.