CHAPTER 18 #2
Finn drew her breast into his mouth and sucked, sending a stream of almost painful pleasure straight to her core, and she ceased to think about William or other times or anything else except the sensations sizzling through her body.
Just when she thought she could not take any more, he sought her mouth again.
She pulled him into a deep kiss and gave herself wholly to the all-consuming and fiery passion she longed for, body and soul. She was lost in endless kisses, their tongues entwining, thrusting, when she felt his hand between her legs.
“Ach, you’re hot and wet for me,” he groaned against her ear.
God in heaven, his fingers had magic in them. Her breathing grew quick and shallow, and her skin felt too tight. As the tension coiled inside her, she writhed, tossing her head from side to side.
“I want ye so much,” Finn said in a ragged voice, “I can’t go slowly this first time.”
“Please,” she gasped, not even knowing what she wanted from him.
Her breath hitched and her mind went blank when she felt his hard shaft pressing between her legs. Every muscle in her body tensed with anticipation.
But he halted with the tip just inside her.
“Are ye sure?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
She did not want to talk. Did not want to think. A wild desire thrummed through her veins, and she lifted her hips and pulled on his shoulders.
“Aye,” she said, and they both gasped with the rush of sensation as he slid inside her.
Then he leaned back, his weight on his elbows, and held her face between his hands. With his eyes locked on hers, he began moving inside her, excruciatingly slowly, thrusting deep and coming almost all the way out, then thrusting deep inside her again.
Intense and confusing emotions swirled and spun inside her. She felt as if the barriers that protected her were falling, exposing every secret and vulnerable part of her.
“Mo chridhe,” my heart, he said against her ear as he thrust faster and harder. “M' eudail, mo rùin.” My treasure, my love.
A need that was at once passion and more than passion gripped her, making her hold on to him with all her strength. She never wanted to let him go. Tension mixed with a painful longing grew and grew inside her until she thought she would burst into a thousand pieces.
She gasped as her body clenched in unexpected waves of pleasure. Finn surged against her, crying her name, and she fell over the edge with him like shooting stars through the night sky.
Tears spilled down her cheeks before she could stop them. The emotions inside her were just too big to contain. She had known making love with him would be different from what she knew before, but she had no notion it would be so wonderful and devasting at the same time.
“God have mercy, that was—” Finn started to say as he lifted his head. His eyes went wide, then his expression quickly changed to worry. “What’s wrong?”
“I shouldn’t have done this,” she said.
“I don’t understand, leannain.” He rolled off her and cupped her face with his hand. “Tell me.”
She shook her head, unable to speak, and curled up on the far edge of the bed, alone in her grief.
In the heat of passion, she had let herself forget the foolish risk she was taking.
It was not death she feared, though she had nearly died with her last miscarriage.
What she could not face was the excitement and hope and then the inevitable crushing disappointment of losing a child again. She simply could not bear it.
Not Finn’s child.
But her grief was not just over the risk of another failed pregnancy. She had never longed for a man before, never truly understood her sisters’ desire for their husbands. She had not known what she was missing. Now she did. Making love with Finn had made her want things she could not have.
She was shaken by the discovery that in the throes of passion she had no protection against Finn.
With her husband, she went through the motions, did what he said, and let him use her.
He touched her body, but that was all. She kept the core of herself safe.
She never let herself feel too much, never let him see more than she was willing to show him.
But when Finn was inside her and looking into her eyes, she had no defense, no last wall of protection. And that was what scared her most.
She could not let him that close again, let him spawn dreams and hopes, when he would eventually find a reason to abandon her.
Men always did. If it was not her inability to give him children, something else would come along that was more important to him than she was, and he would tell himself he had no choice.
She could not let that happen. If she did, Finn would cause her more pain than William or her brothers ever had. He would break her heart.
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Finn was stunned. He had never felt so much or felt so close to anyone as when he was inside her. He felt as if he was on the brink of having something wondrous, something beyond anything he knew or even hoped for—only to be pushed over a cliff and smashed on the rocks below.
One moment they were one in scalding passion, and the next she was weeping. The change happened so quickly that his heart still pounded from the explosion of his release, even while a sense of utter desolation settled over him like a dead weight.
When he tried to touch her, she scooted farther away.
“Maggie,” he said, “what did I do?”
“It wasn’t anything ye did,” she said in a voice he could barely hear.
If it was not what he did, then it could only be who he was.
Or rather, who he wasn’t. After losing herself to the throes of passion, she remembered he was not a nobleman with lands and castle to give her. He was only a landless warrior who must earn his keep by his skill with a sword. She was not his wife Maggie, and never could be.
He should have known better. He did know better. And yet he had fallen headlong in love with Lady Margaret Douglas.
The long-forgotten memory of the day his father sent him away to live with his uncle came to him. He was given no explanation. But even then, at eight years old, he did not need one. He knew they just did not want him. No one in his family even came out to bid him goodbye.