Chapter 23
Caught up in the moment, Owen kissed Heather with every ounce of his desire, ravishing her mouth with a hunger that he had been keeping at bay. His body, his touch, his kiss, was starved for her, and now he would see that they were both utterly satisfied.
She kissed him back in kind, letting her tongue explore his, as her hands traced a tingling path down his chest, to the waistband of his breeches.
Fervently, he wished he had changed into his belted plaid, so he could freely unleash himself, but all of that would come in time.
He did not have to rush, just because they had pledged themselves to one another.
She’s nae goin’ to change her mind, ye dobber. Take it slowly. With that in his mind, he kissed his way along her jaw and down her neck, pausing to taste the mountain air and woodsmoke that lingered upon her throat. Nothing had ever tasted so divine.
“Ye taste like home,” he told her, murmuring against her neck as she arced back in his arms.
“Well, my love, you feel like home,” she replied, gasping as his hand smoothed up her waist and found her breast. He rubbed her supple skin with firm desire, feeling the fires of passion raging in his loins. Already, his manhood throbbed with longing: his flesh hot and eager and primed.
She may nae want to— He had to remind himself of that, for though they would be man and wife one day soon, with any luck, they were not yet married. Perhaps, she would wish to delay until then. He could not be disappointed if such a thing came to pass.
Grasping her skirts and feeling the friction of the rough wool against his palms, he lifted the garment up over her head and tossed it to the floor. Flimsy drawers and restrictive stays stood between him and her bare figure in all its glory.
“Ye’re beautiful,” he murmured, catching her mouth and kissing her hard, while his fingertips unlaced her pesky stays.
She panted in reply: her eyes closed in a stirring kind of bliss. He had not even begun yet, so he could only imagine the delicious sounds and sights that would fill the chamber by the time the sun rose over this part of the country.
As soon as she was free of her stays, his mouth sought her pert nipple, though he took his time to kiss all across her skin, leaving no part untouched with his lips and tongue.
He explored her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her throat, the indents of her chest, and the full swell of her remarkable breasts, before he let his lips close over her pink and ripe nipple.
“Oh, goodness… Mmm… Yes, Owen!” she called out, bucking her hips against him as he sucked upon her.
A master of the pleasure arts, he was not satisfied by merely tasting her nipple and bringing those wondrous gasps and moans from her throat. As such, as he sucked and relished in her cries of bliss, his free hand traced down her stomach until he came to the ribbon of her drawers.
With one tug, he had them loose. They cascaded down her creamy thighs with a whisper of things to come and pooled at her feet.
She stepped out of them without realizing: her hands running through his hair as she swayed to the rhythm of his pleasurable attentions.
This was liberation, and no one could convince him otherwise, for in his arms, under the influence of his touch, she was as wild and free as a vixen in the woods.
“I want you to show me everything,” she gasped, just as his fingertips found her secret pearl.
“I will, love,” he murmured in reply, stroking intense circles that made her tremble in his embrace. “We’ve got all our lives, love, but it begins tonight.”
She nodded deliriously. “Yes, my love. Tonight. Show me.”
Spurred on by her request, he settled his thumb upon her bud and rubbed in slow, sensual strums. Meanwhile, his fingers slipped easily through the petals of her sex, coming to pause at the welcoming heat of her hidden depths.
Hoping to bombard her with bliss, he sucked hard upon her nipple at the very moment he slid his forefingers inside her. Her body seized as an almighty cry of ecstasy filled the air, and her fingertips tugged on his hair as if to show him some sense of what she was feeling.
“Yes, my love,” she moaned, as he stilled his fingers for a moment.
She was relatively new to this, after all, and he did not want to cause her any pain.
Of course, if she urged him to couple with her, there would be some momentary pain, but he intended to pleasure her so intently that she forgot all about it.
After a moment or two, he withdrew his fingers in a slow, teasing fashion, before halting once more at the gateway to her delights.
Dipped a little way in, he waited until he felt her claw at his back, urging him on, before he sank his fingers back into her, curving them around to add delicious pressure to the inner realm of her.
Not once did his thumb stop circling, for that was the key to a woman’s bliss.
They were not coarse and simple as men were; they were intricate and remarkable creatures, that required a true musician of the female form in order to bring them to conclusion after conclusion, until they could endure no more.
“Oh, my love… Owen… oh goodness, Owen!” She sought his mouth, kissing him ferociously as he tended to her intricacies.
In her lips, he felt every tremor of her delight, catching every gasp and moan of her bliss.
Her breaths were shallow, every sharp sound making his abdomen tighten and his manhood throb.
It was a very curious kind of madness—the madness of lovemaking, for if she told him that she did not wish to lie with him, he would have to go and submerge himself in the loch outside.
Increasing the pressure of his strumming, using her body and her cries to guide him, he heard the shift in her breathing, long before her muscles responded to the crashing wave of a blissful conclusion. Something was building within her, and he would chase it to the end.
“Does that please ye?” he purred against her mouth, encircling her waist with his free hand, for she had turned almost limp, like she could not hold herself up against the weight of so much pleasure.
Her eyes closed and her mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Her body spoke for her as she turned rigid in his embrace: her fingertips raking at his back, as her neck arced away from him.
The shiver of her ecstasy began in her legs, where her knees threatened to buckle, and thrummed up into her thighs.
He felt her tighten around his fingers, before the tremor branched upward into her stomach.
As it reached her chest, she drew in a sharp intake of breath, and, as she expelled it, the cry that had lodged in her throat came rippling out.
“Owen! Yes, Owen!” she all but screamed, her entire body relaxing in a rush, as the wave crashed down and became a tide, coursing through her veins and sparking in her blood.
He withdrew his fingers and held her close, waiting until her pleasure had ebbed enough for her to regain some of her faculties. She did, a short while later, as her arms looped sluggishly around his neck, and she pushed herself deeper into his embrace.
“That was… astonishing,” she told him, smiling as if drunk.
He smiled back. “We are nae done yet, love. I have much more to show ye.”
To punctuate the point, he hoisted her up into his arms and carried her over to the bed, where further wonders awaited them both.
In all the years of her life, Heather had never known bliss like it.
Even their previous, carnal encounter had not matched the sheer force of that last conclusion.
Perhaps, at last, she had finally learned how to free herself from everything she had learned in her younger years.
That act, in turn, had rewarded her with an overwhelming sensation of pleasure, so remarkable it should have been magic.
I do not have to be a polite, mute young lady who blushes at the mention of being alone with a gentleman.
That shame does not exist here, and so it can no longer exist within me.
Indeed, she wondered how anyone could feel shame, when there was delirious pleasure to be had.
Particularly, in the arms of someone beloved. Someone who would be her husband.
Gently, Owen lay her down upon the bed, where his lips wasted no time in exploring the length and breadth of her naked body. There was no speck of her skin left without attention, and it was not long before her breath was caught in her throat once more, and her limbs shivered with anticipation.
“Will it be this way when we are wed?” she asked, tailing off into a moan as his tongue flicked against her pert nipple.
He peered up, smiling. “It’ll be like this and so much more, love. From dusk to dawn, I can explore ye at me leisure.” He feigned disappointment. “This time, I only have an hour ‘til dawn. It isnae nearly enough time to do all I’d like to.”
“Are you a ghoul? Can you not lay with me in the daylight?” she teased, gasping as ran his tongue up her throat.
He chuckled against her skin. “I can, love, and I will, but there’ll be duties for me to attend to in the mornin’. I would steal at least a moment of sleep before then.”
“Well, we best make the most of now, then.” Brazenly, she sat up and rocked him onto his knees. Seizing hold of his shirt, she tugged it free of his breeches and lifted it over his head, revealing the defined, bronzed contours of his sculpted body.
Next, she unfastened the buttons of his breeches, and stifled a laugh as he hopped off the bed to remove them entirely.
It cheered her, in many ways, to discover that the act of coupling was not a solemn and serious affair.
To find that she could laugh and smile, and they could tease one another, was almost as intoxicating as the tremors he elicited within her.
“It isnae always graceful,” he told her with a wink, before climbing back up onto the bed.