Chapter 14 In Which Our Heroine Confirms Every Hypothesis （Three Times）
Chapter fourteen
In Which Our Heroine Confirms Every Hypothesis (Three Times)
The storm battered the windows like a jealous ex-lover.
Rain traced rivulets down the glass. Thunder rolled over the moors. And in the flickering firelight of the tower room, Wanton trembled from an anticipation so intense it bordered on clinical emergency.
Tavish stood before her, shirtless, soaked, and breathing like a man barely restrained. His chest heaved. His hair clung to his forehead. His kilt… sagged just slightly from gravity and temptation.
She cleared her throat. Adjusted her very-unhelpful waistband.
“Well,” she said brightly, “I suppose I should go now.”
Tavish arched a brow. “Go?”
She nodded, keeping her voice breezy. “Yes. My hypothesis was confirmed.”
He took one step closer.
She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “About the effects of Highland testosterone on mass dynamics and torque displacement. You know. Physics.”
He didn’t blink.
“Also…” she added, eyes drifting to his chest and regretting it instantly, “its impact on...heat transfer and gravitational pull.”
He took a step closer.
She dropped her notebook.
Not metaphorically. She literally let it fall. The leather-bound tome of footnotes, calculations, and suppressed desires hit the floor with a thud, scattering loose pages of “Field Observations” like scandalous confetti.
He moved in a seismic lunge, and gripped her waist, hauling her up, crushing her body to his with a sound—God help her—a growl. Their mouths collided.
Her gasp vanished into him, and when his tongue swept into her mouth, she wrapped her legs around his hips.
“Field Observation 31.1:” she gasped, breaking the kiss, “Tongues can cause fainting.”
“I’m just warmin’ ye up.”
She could feel him—thick, hot, and very much not hypothetical—pressing against her muddy kilt. Somewhere in her brain, a neuron popped like a firework and she forgot every unit of measurement she’d ever known.
Tavish's hands slid lower.
Rough palms. Warm fingers. Kilt-lifting intent.
He cupped her thighs—bare—and froze.
For one magnificent instant, the storm outside was a mild atmospheric suggestion compared to the thunderbolt that cracked across his features. Wanton felt, with dreadful clarity, that she had become the thesis statement of his entire lineage.
He pulled back just far enough to verify what his palms had already reported.
No drawers.
None.
Not even a token lace ruffle.
His eyes widened—hunger, shock, and the unmistakable flare of ancestral vindication.
“Lass,” he breathed, voice going low enough to fog the bone marrow, “are ye tellin’ me ye wore my clan’s kilt… wi’ nothin’ beneath it?”
Wanton’s spine snapped straight in scholarly defense.
“I—I refused to disgrace the culture,” she blurted. “It’s a heritage-based ventilation system. A… a freedom-of-thighs principle. Very traditional.”
She cleared her throat.
“And… other parts benefitted from increased mobility as well.”
Good heavens. Had she just confessed that? Out loud?
He stared at her. “Ventilation,” he repeated, as if the word were both poetry and sin.
“Yes!” Wanton insisted. “Kinetic liberation! Anatomical airflow! To wear drawers beneath a kilt is to betray—well—physics.”
His jaw dropped.
“Sweet saints,” he murmured, leaning closer, “ye’ve spent all week hidin’ behind armored bloomers like a fortress under siege… and now ye’re bare under my kilt?”
Her blush ignited like faulty gunpowder. “It was a practical adaptation,” she said crisply. “One must sometimes surrender unnecessary… layers… in pursuit of scientific truth.”
His grin deepened until she felt positively compromised. “So yer drawers gave up the fight before ye did.”
She gasped—mortified, aroused, and treacherously honest.
“Well… scientifically speaking… yes.”
Laughing still, he lifted her bodily, set her on the edge of the table, and shoved the kilt up to her waist with reverent aggression.
Wanton squeaked.
“Field Observation 31.4,” she breathed, “cold air and anticipation cause preemptive trembling—Oh, heavens.”
His mouth pressed against the inside of her thigh, and she nearly levitated off the table.
“Ye want heritage, lass?” he growled, voice vibrating against her skin.
“I’ll give ye Highland history ye’ll never forget.”
His tongue slid over her, and she shattered like a theory disproven by sheer pleasure.
The kilt stayed bunched around her waist. Her hair came down. Her dignity slipped out the door. For dear life, she gripped the edge of the table while he wrote his country history along the folds of her sex.
He studied her with every lick, every kiss, every groan swallowed into her flesh, as if memorizing her responses for future warfare.
And she gave them freely—gasps caught in her throat, moans muffled by her hand, hips tilting forward like a sail catching wind.
Pleasure coiled in her belly, tight and hot and ancient, until the world blurred around its center and she broke.
With a ragged breath, he pulled away from her and flipped her over the table. Her kilt was bunched at her waist, her thighs trembling, her skin flushed with heat and Highland humidity. “Good heavens,” she thought faintly. “I appear to be perpendicular to propriety.”
Field Observation 30.2: A Regency upbringing frowns upon the exposure of one’s posterior to the proverbial ceiling beams. Prolonged proximity to kilted stimuli appears to lower modesty thresholds by several alarming degrees.
The wood was cool beneath her flushed skin, her bare forearms braced beside scattered pages of notes now torn from their bindings like common petticoats. Somewhere in the periphery, the storm cracked against Glenravish tower—but it was nothing compared to the intensity behind her.
She lifted her head.
Tavish loomed behind her. His breath dragged through parted lips, chest rising hard, eyes black with purpose. With a feral sound, he palmed the small of her back, and flattened her hands over the table.
“Grip it, lass,” he rasped, his brogue thicker than sin, “just like ye did in the tug of war.”
She obeyed, wrapping her fingers around the edge of the table. Her legs shifted apart.
She remembered the rope in her hands. His chest at her back. The moment she realized the caber was not theoretical.
Slowly, he loosened his kilt. The plaid fell to the ground.
She looked back—over her shoulder, beneath her lashes—and caught a glimpse.
And what a glimpse it was.
His erection stood proud against his stomach, as if carved by rebellious Highland sculptors too horny for modesty. Heavy. Veined. And entirely unbothered by physics or decorum.
Wanton’s mouth opened—possibly to say something academic.
No sound came out.
Field Observation 36.0: Highland reproductive architecture confirms previously disputed data. Immediate fieldwork required.
His body pressed behind her, hard and thick and blisteringly ready.
"You will take this Highlander deep, won't ye?"
She nodded, biting her lip.
Tavish’s voice rumbled low against her ear. “That’s my good lass.”
She preened instinctively, spine arching, as though she’d just received top marks in an oral examination.
Then, mortified by her own enthusiasm, she blinked at the nearest candle flame.
Field Observation 31.1: Unexpected verbal commendation triggers disproportionate pleasure response. Further inquiry needed into why simple praise induces spinal fireworks.
Then—he entered her.
Her thoughts disbanded in shameful retreat.
His hands gripped her hips, anchoring her to the table as he eased deeper, thick and hot and utterly committed to academic annihilation. Her body drew him in like a vortex hungry for mass.
“Oh—God—Tavish—” she gasped, but whether it was a plea, a warning, or a hallelujah, she had no idea.
She braced against the table as her body reeled. The impact vibrated through her bones, through her spine, through history.
And still he moved deeper.
As if he had no intention of stopping until he hit the back wall of history and carved his initials there.
She gripped the edge of the table harder.
Wood creaked. Her thighs trembled. Her mouth fell open around a sound that might once have been a theory, but had now degraded into raw, feral punctuation.
When his hips met her backside with the blunt finality of a signature scrawled in wet ink—she whimpered.
“This is what the Big Bang must’ve felt like except… wetter.”
He grunted, hips rocking.
Then he thrust again.
The rhythm picked up—relentless, pounding, primal.
Her thighs quaked.
“Table friction reduces brain function—oh!—and increases—volume—oh my God—of vocal output—TAVISH.”
“Field Observation… 37? No. No numbers. There are no numbers anymore.”
Behind her, Tavish groaned. A long, low, Highland groan that sounded like the end of restraint and the beginning of folklore.
“Ye feel like bloody fire,” he rasped, breath rough against her shoulder.
“That’s combustion,” she managed, delirious. “Pure combustion. Oh Lord, I’ve become my own experiment.”
And then he pulled back and drove back in.
The table shuddered. So did she.
Field Observation 38.0: Repeat impact results in…
She didn’t finish.
She couldn’t.
He was moving now.
And she was already gone.
She went rigid, her toes curling, mouth open in a silent cry as pleasure flooded every system, short-circuiting her entire nervous architecture.
She collapsed over the table, trembling and stunned, her forehead damp against the wood, breath hiccupping in uneven gasps.
Every limb pulsed with aftershocks. Her thighs quivered. Her arms ached. Her mind—blessedly blank.
“Field Observation 31.9: There is no recovery protocol for this kind of impact.”
Tavish stilled behind her, hands still at her hips, his length twitching inside her. “That was the warm-up, lass.”
Before she could form a sentence—or locate her soul—he withdrew.
She gasped, body fluttering from the loss.
Then he slid his hands beneath her thighs, and lifted her, effortlessly, cradling her against his chest.
“W-what are you doing?” she rasped.
“Ye deserve better than a table.”
Her head lolled against his shoulder. “I liked the table.”
He grinned. “Then ye’ll love the bed.”
He crossed the room and lowered her into the fur-strewn mattress. The fire cast gold over his skin—over broad shoulders, slicked muscles, and one very upright threat to reason.
He hovered over her, eyes burning.
“I’m going to take my time now.”
She swallowed. “Define time.”
“Till ye forget yer name. Or remember mine like it’s the only word left.”
Then he kissed her—not like before. Slower. Fuller. More consuming than air.
His weight settled over her. Skin to skin. Warm thighs cradling her hips. The length of him—still achingly hard—pressed against her belly, demanding a second hypothesis.
He kissed down her throat, across her chest, taking her breast into his mouth, tongue circling, sucking until she cried out and arched.
Wanton’s voice cracked. “F-field Observation 32.0—sustained contact increases—oh God—nerve receptivity and… regret for ever learning words.”
“Tavish… if you don’t—”
“I will,” he promised. “But this time, slow. This time, ye feel every inch.”
He pushed inside her again. Her head fell back, a low moan escaping her throat.
He moved slowly, hips rolling with unbearable control. He kissed her throat, her lips, her temple, moving deeper, pulling back, and filling her again.
She wrapped around him, legs cradling his hips, mouth open on breathless gasps, hands roaming his back, his shoulders, his hair.
“I—can’t—take—much—more—of—this,” she panted.
“Ye will,” he whispered, thrusting deeper. “And ye’ll beg for more.”
She did.
Softly, then louder.
And when she shattered for the third time, he let go—burying himself deep, coming with a groan so guttural it echoed in her chest.
He stayed inside her as their breath slowed, forehead resting against hers.
She blinked up at him, dazed and utterly destroyed.
“You’re… very efficient.”
He laughed, kissed her again. “I’m not done, lass.”
“Field Observation 33.0,” she mumbled, eyes drifting shut.
“Multiple orgasms may cause hallucinations involving kilted gods.”
“I’m real,” he murmured, pulling the blankets around them.
“And I’m keepin’ ye.”
She didn’t protest.
Her body had already signed the consent form.