Chapter 22 #2
“Never,” William disagreed. “I know you love me. I will never, ever let ye go.”
With that, he took my wrist and removed my hand, then laid his lips on mine.
I’d known, all through our climb up into the mountains, that we were heading for a spectacular summit. I also knew he’d catch me from falling from this brave height.
I could fly from this. I’d already started.
Our tender kiss rapidly descended into indecency, and he tore his mouth from mine, standing, holding me in his arms. “Bed?”
I gave a single urgent nod then kissed him again, harder. Faster.
He stumbled into the shack and up the open wooden steps that led to a small platform in the roof space.
A comfortable bed awaited us, and we fell into the blankets, not letting each other go.
Gripping and tumbling with our efforts to free ourselves of our clothes, enjoying the kerfuffle.
Then, for a while, we just kissed, embracing naked, charging ourselves on the feel of each other and getting slowly more and more turned on.
Then, bare, he nestled between my legs, a grin on his face.
I held my breath, waiting on that incredible feeling. The one where he slid home and stretched me. Filled me. Made me his.
Instead, William kissed my cheek. “I’m in love with ye, Taylor Vandenberg. Every last bit of ye. I have been for the longest time. I built a home with you in mind.” He took my hand and laid it over his heart. It thundered. “But you were always in here, too.”
This man… “I love you,” I uttered, no speech ready because I’d already told him far more than I’d shared with any other person. But that was okay. He didn’t need it.
There was more than enough time in the world for me to let William McRae know just how wonderful he was.
A beautiful self-satisfied grin stole over his face, and he rolled his hips, pushing inside. “How many kids do ye want?”
A laugh burst out of me, interrupting my moan of pleasure. “Shut up.” I giggled, pushing myself onto him, manhandling his thick biceps.
“Four? Five?”
“William!”
He moved faster. “Six? Christ, woman. We’ll be run off our feet.”
“Stop talking and just… Oh!”
His hand joined in the action and made fast circles over my clit. William watched my face intently, choosing his angle to maximum effect. His devilish expression mixed with signs of his own raw hunger, his powerful rhythm giving away his need.
“Over six and I’ll have to build an extension on the crofthouse,” he ground out.
Nearing the edge, I reached out blindly and pressed my hand to his mouth to stop his words. “Can you go back to being alpha? Boss me around.”
He opened his lips and took my fingers between his teeth. He sucked on them, and I gasped. Then he rose and, in a flash, I was flipped over, ass in the air.
“Ye want alpha? Done. Hand to your clit. Now.”
Facedown on the quilt, I snapped to obey, poised and waiting for him to fill and stretch me again. “Come on!” I begged, empty but so turned on, my fingers moving fast.
“I’m enjoying the show. Ye look so fucking gorgeous.”
I glanced back to see him stroke himself, his other hand to his balls. That sight…
“Please!”
Just as I needed to slow or come alone, William grabbed my hips and thrust inside me in a single, punishing move.
“God!” I yelled. My orgasm hit with a roar.
Eyes screwed shut, I clawed onto the quilt for dear life, my nerves shattered and my muscles pulsing around his rock-hard dick.
On and on, my orgasm struck, elongated with my Scot’s clever moves.
When I dropped down, boneless and spent, William gave a satisfied chuckle, withdrew a few inches, then pounded into me.
In a minute, he was growling out his pleasure, his fingers digging in like I was his world.
This, I needed. Being this close to him overrode my fears. He centred me.
As he collapsed down onto me, hugging me, I wrapped my arms around his, trying to provide the same for him.
“I’ve got no idea how to do any of this, but I’ll learn,” I whispered. “I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve never lived in one place long enough to know how to do that.”
He kissed my cheek, his eyes hazy and his expression blissed out. “How are ye with rain?”
I blinked, trying to work out the subject change.
“It rains in the Highlands a lot. Ye get used to it but you’ve only visited Ella for a few days at a time. Just giving ye prior warning.”
I snorted a laugh. “How long will I be there on my next visit?”
“Permanently.”
Now, I reared up, pushing him off me. “What?”
“You heard.” No humour in his face now. Nothing but the solid strength I’d come to love in him.
“Are you asking me to, to move…?” My mouth stopped, and my sentence failed.
He didn’t know it, but his offer filled a gap, no, a rip inside me.
No one had ever done that. Neither of my parents had ever made a home for me.
Never asked. I had a room in Dad’s house, but it was generically decorated, and I’d slept in hotels more than I had there.
When I visited Mom, I slept in whatever spare room she had going.
She moved too often for me to carve out a space.
“Don’t freak out.” He eyed me with humour, sprawling his long form beside me on the bed.
“I’m not freaking out!” I squeaked.
“I undersold it when we talked about it before. I really did picture you living with me. Every decision I made about the place, I asked myself what would Taylor like? Before this job, I finalised the interior design—the layout of the walls, what room went where. And in all that, do you know whose influence I sought?”
“Mine?” I whispered, excited.
“Yours. Even though, at that point, I had next to no hope of you ever setting foot in the place. Still, it didn’t stop my heart leading me.” He took a lock of my hair, kissed it, and set it on the pillow. “Aye, move in with me. When you’re ready. Help me finish the place. Make it ours.”
I just stared.
“Ye look like I’ve offered ye a prison sentence.” He rose on his elbow, his brow furrowed in the most adorable expression.
“Doesn’t this terrify you?” I finally found my voice.
“Utterly. But in the best possible way.”
“Best possible way,” I muttered. Then I tightened my grip on him like a monkey.
He whispered in my ear, “I always figured when I fell in love, it would be the works. On-the-spot happiness. My whole future wrapped up in one sweet lass.”
“I’m not sweet.”
“Aye, ye are.”
The mire I was wading through resolved to a clearer path.
It was my own mind resisting the image he painted.
My own beliefs that I’d already decided were no good.
“Fuck. Yes. Yes, I want all of it. The fricking works. Marriage, babies, a house on a rainy mountainside with a warm fire and my friends nearby. I want a job. I want to come home to find you waiting. I want to learn how to cook—”
“Wait, you can’t cook?”
“Nope.”
“Deal’s off.”
I kissed him, hard. “But most of all, you. I’ve wanted you since I first met you.”
“Now you have me. Completely.” There was nothing in his expression but the honest truth.
It hurt to see. No, it hurt to feel. But I believed him.
“I need to see my dad. I need to tell him I’m upturning all his plans and still try to persuade him not to carry out his threats. This isn’t going to be easy.”
William rolled off the bed and took a moment to tidy us up from our new post-coital messiness.
He gave me his t-shirt and pulled on his boxers then switched on a lamp, dusk having stolen the light, and sat cross-legged on the bed.
“In recent years, I’ve spent a lot of time with James, getting to know him as my own friend rather than just my brother’s. ”
I winced at the name, the memories still raw of debasing myself in the offer of marriage to that man.
William continued, his expression kind. “He told me how he nearly lost his home and his family’s inheritance after he fell in love. He had to choose between being sure he would inherit and not, and being with Beth or not.”
“That can’t have been easy.”
“He chose Beth, and whatever the outcome had been, they would’ve had each other. I’m not saying that a house and money compares with your aunt’s life, but you’ve chosen me, and I don’t take that lightly. Whatever there is to come, we’ll face it together, and it will be good.”
“My worst fear is Charity suffering then dying alone and in pain.” I gripped the soft blanket and gave voice to my nightmare. “I can’t know what Dad will do.”
William pushed his fists into the bed at his sides. “The man was trying to blackmail you. His own daughter. I doubt he ever had good intentions.”
“You don’t think he’d have lived up to his promise? But I meant to hold him to it. Sign the papers. Give over a fund.”
“Do you trust him?”
“He’s a politician, so no, not for a second.” Reality struck me. Had Dad been lying? Would he have gotten me into a political marriage then forced me to stay there? Always held Charity’s care over my head? “God, maybe you’re right.”
“It’s our problem now. You don’t have to worry about this alone.”
Scared over what my father might do, I knelt and crawled the couple of feet to sit with the man I loved. He welcomed me with open arms and an open heart.
“I won’t hurt you,” I swore to him. “Even if this all goes to hell, and I only make bigger problems for myself, I’ll protect you from it. I want a life with you, but—”
“But nothing. That’s it. You want a life with me, and I want a life with you. So that’s what we’ll have.”
That was the last words either of us said for a while.
Our newfound love put a bubble around us, leaving us safe in our mountaintop perch.
But it couldn’t stay that way. William didn’t know what my father was capable of.
Neither did I, but I suspected trouble would be coming our way.
I just had to work out how to make the best for the two people I loved most.