Chapter Ten #2
We lay like that for some time, just facing each other, with me touching his hair, smoothing it back from his face in a gentle, repetitive line.
“’Tis all right,” I said softly, and he watched my mouth as I spoke, and my eyes.
“You’re all right,” I said again, feeling somehow that he wanted to hear it. “I’ll watch over you.”
My fingers traced the line of his collarbone to the uneven surface of the scarred and sun-darkened skin of his chest. I touched the puckered knot of his most pronounced scar, the one that curved in a pale crescent at the front of his left shoulder.
It was long healed now but must have been a terrible injury.
“What happened to you?” I whispered.
He didn’t respond immediately. “My attention was diverted by the death of my own father,” came his low reply.
“It was Campbell himself who speared me. Our fathers took each other’s lives that day.
Campbell the younger is one of the most vicious men I’ve ever fought.
’Tis the only time I thought I might actually be taken in a fight.
But it was not to be. Knox saved my life, right before I saved his. ”
He spoke matter-of-factly, as though spearing, fighting and saving lives were something he did on a daily basis. Which I suppose it was. I knew him to be one of the most lethal warriors in all the Highlands. But there was sadness in his tone that was unmistakable.
“You miss your brothers.”
“Aye,” he said simply.
My careful exploration wandered lower, to the coiled muscles of his stomach. His hand reached to grab my wrist in a stronghold, drawing my hand away. “Stella,” he said. A low warning.
He released my hand, closing his eyes, as though the matter was now closed.
The night was lit with sound and sensation amid the enclosing darkness.
I could hear the soft crackle of the fire.
I could feel not just the heat of Kade’s body but his brimming restraint.
I let my fingers steal again toward him under the furs until my delicate touch again rested on the skin of his stomach.
He withdrew instantly, lying flat on his back, pulling his body farther from my reach so the coolness was starkly defined. “You know the rules, wife. We wait. We wait until you’re ready.” Then he lay back, again closing his eyes, yet his brow was still furrowed.
We wait.
I understood why, aye. He was using his self-inflicted rules to control himself, to allow me time to adjust. What I realized was that I had adjusted. I felt I was ready. I wanted to challenge his rules, to push his boundaries.
“I’m cold,” I whispered, not entirely untruthfully.
Kade opened one eye, reaching to fit the furs more snugly around my shoulders, but he did not touch me directly. Then he lay back once again. “Good night, lass. Go to sleep,” he said.
Silence, for a time.
“I can’t sleep,” I said.
“’Tis late,” he murmured dismissively.
Stillness wrapped around us, embellished by the rustle of the wind outside, the lonely call of a faraway night bird.
Emboldened by the heavy darkness and the lingering epiphany of my husband’s writing, I reached again, finding his fingers. I held them in silence and he allowed this, although his breathing caught, as though I’d charged something in him. As though there were only so many times he could refuse me.
I wanted to reassure him, that I no longer regarded him as I once had, as a threat, as yet another man who might use his might in punishing, overbearing ways. “I don’t feel afraid anymore, husband. Of you,” I whispered. “I wanted you to know that.”
His eyes opened and he regarded me silently. Then he said, “I told you I would work to earn your trust, and I will.”
Without intent or design, I smoothed one finger along his open palm, curling my fingers around his hand, pulling it closer.
He held his hand firmly in place, and his eyes remained closed. “Stella. Cease this,” came his low command. And I heard in his voice his own simmering challenge. How far will you go?
I did not cease. My leg twitched forward of its own accord, causing my thighs to part slightly wider and my shift to bunch just higher.
I couldn’t quite catch my breath, and my breasts rose and fell with my light gasps.
I waited for his arm to relax, and I cautiously pulled his hand closer until I could feel the heat of it against my thigh.
His head turned, and his open eyes blazed with blue-lit intensity. “Little wife,” he said softly, laughter and promise in equal measure coloring his words. “Be careful, or you will get as much as you ask for.”
Aye, my fevered body was asking. I knew I was playing with fire. But I was already burning.
Returning his challenge, I drew his large, warm hand higher along the fine upper skin of my thigh, so very close to where I wanted to feel his touch.
The anticipation was nearly overwhelming.
He might still refuse me, aye, but the mere nearness of his fingers to my dewy, intimate folds was almost too much to bear.
I was awed by the power he seemed to hold over me, and breathless at the heightened responses of my body to his.
Intent, his fingers touched me, and began their own stealthy caress, guided by desire to rest under my shift, between my legs.
I heard his low intake of breath. I could feel the light echo of his pulse beneath the skin of his wrist. The touch of his warrior’s fingers against me intensified the low, damp sweetness in my center.
All my senses gathered on that singular swelling place.
And then his fingers began to move, rubbing in slow, steady circles. With his other hand he pushed my shift higher, lifting it over the abundant swell of my breasts. He cupped the full, rounded weight, kneading gently, circling my nipple in an identical rhythm, pinching in luring, furtive pulls.
“You want to feel me, lass? Is this what you want? My hands on you?”
“Aye, I want to feel you. I want to feel...”
“Feel, then, wife,” he said, parting my secret swollen petals, sliding his fingers just inside me while simultaneously squeezing my nipple in a tighter clench of all of his fingers, pulling and elongating the hard peak.
“I’ve a mind to restrain you and tempt you with my denial...
or by other means. I can be quite creative when I put my mind to it. You’ll see.”
His mouth took mine, opening me to his unhurried demand. His desire was aggressive yet controlled, supple yet dominating. He was no longer a phantom but my fierce, tumultuous husband. My body was open to him in any way he chose to take me.
He drew back just slightly, deeply affected by my total compliance.
“I’d made up my mind to wait, lass. But it seems I don’t have it in me to deny you anything.
I’ll give you a taste of what this marriage bed has to offer, shall I?
” His fingers slid deeper into the slippery core of my body.
“Oh, God Almighty,” he whispered, “The feel of you... I can feel your innocence, right here. The barrier I’ve yet to break. ”
“Do it,” I whispered, wanting more than anything for him to take my innocence. To take me as his own. As his wife, in every sense.
His voice was agonized. “Nay, lass. I must be true to my word. I can’t have you believing me untrustworthy.” He spoke the words as though they pained him, yet there was steely resolve behind his meaning.
In this moment, I cared not about his word, nor his resolve.
All I could comprehend, in fact, was the rising sensation he drew from my body.
His skill in the matter of loving was unmistakable.
Kade tantalized me with his expertise. You are indeed an instrument to be played.
His fingers were barely inside me, prodding into the stretching tightness, exploring deftly to find a profound and excruciating sweet spot, as his thumb skated deliciously across the sensitive nub, swirling and teasing.
The sultry pleasure spiraled, glowing from within.
His left hand continued its playful torture, rolling my nipple in needy tugs.
His mouth found my other breast and he sucked me and bit me, devouring with his tongue and his teeth, delivering a harmonic rhythm of pleasure that spiked avidly, and quickly.
The rapture was sharp and bright, erupting in ecstatic bursts through my core, warming my breasts, spilling with an eager beauty that I could feel to the very tips of my fingers and toes.
I moaned, digging my fingernails into his skin.
“’Tis a good thing we have our own wing,” he said, chuckling softly.
He continued to suck languidly on my breasts, one, then the other.
The feeling of his mouth on me, softly pulling and demanding, as the echo of my release still pulsed, was indescribable.
My body felt molten and alive, more liquid than form and flesh.
“My wife is insatiable. Let me give you a wee bit more feeling,” he said against my skin, suckling more gently now.
He eased lower, kissing a line down my stomach, licking into my navel, which made me squirm and laugh.
I began to turn, to escape his wicked tongue.
But my husband held me down, arranging me as he wanted, spreading my legs farther and lying between them.
I struggled lightly against him, not to rid myself of him, but because the melted core of my body still throbbed with the lingering waves of my release.
I felt flighty, reckless, covetous. I wanted more.
I wanted him. To give and to take, to rub against him and consume him.
I writhed beneath him, gripping the hard muscles of his arms. He was so much stronger than me that I was entirely overpowered by him.
My desire for him to do anything to me, combined as it was with the knowledge that he could, and easily, was stunningly arousing. I was brimming with moisture and heat.
“Husband,” I murmured.
“Aye,” he answered.
“Do that again.”