Chapter 22 #2
He took her shoulders in his hands and laid her back. His eyes were hooded as he hovered over her, the set of his jaw and the coiled muscles of his shoulders speaking to some dark urge, primal and predatory. Magda thought he’d take her then, half on the bed, their feet still resting on the ground.
His hands went to her breasts and cupped them tentatively. With a growl in the back of his throat, he leaned in to flick his tongue over a nipple.
Her breath became shallow, and at the sound of her light sighs, James nibbled at her, then sucked Magda hard into his mouth, abrading her tender skin between lips and teeth.
He moved his attention to her other breast, kneading it in his hand, then ducked in to taste her, rolling her nipple on his tongue.
Magda threaded her fingers through his soft brown hair, pulling him more tightly to her, whimpering with her growing need. “Oh, James,” she gasped, and realized she’d chanted his name over and over.
“Please, James.”
He rolled to the bed, sweeping her up on her knees to straddle him. Magda eased back along his body until she found him, and rubbed slick against his hardness.
James stared at her, his black eyes intense, sharp with the force of his hunger. He rubbed his thumbs along her thighs, and the gesture flashed back to the moment Magda first passed through the portrait, when she’d landed astride him just that way.
A devilish smile lit his eyes, and she was overcome by a powerful feeling of love, and rightness, and completion.
“Please, James,” she whispered again.
“Aye.” His voice was ragged as he clutched her hips in his hands. “You’re mine. I’ll make you mine.” Never taking his eyes from hers, James gave her a slight lift. “For now.” He drove hard into her. “For always.”
Magda gasped with the shock of him, at the newness of him full and large inside her.
He wrapped his arms at her back and pulled her toward him, silencing her moans with his mouth. James thrust his tongue hungrily as he began to move inside her, slowly at first, his cock slicked with her want.
Magda came almost immediately, collapsing onto his chest and clamping her teeth down onto the hard flesh between his shoulder and neck.
James flipped Magda onto her back, one hand pinning both of hers over her head, while the other slowly teased her breast. “You’re not finished yet, lass,” he warned, his voice a sultry growl.
She wrapped her legs around his back in answer, writhing her hips to grind even closer. She rubbed against the base of him and already felt the gathering in her belly again, her muscles tightening like a cord strung tight through her center.
Magda tensed beneath him, digging her heels into his back.
“Aye, that’s it,” he said, voice hoarse.
James held himself deep in her, and Magda felt him pulse inside her as he held himself back.
“Let go of yourself,” he rasped. James nibbled along her ears and neck and shoulders, giving gentle thrusts as he breathed, “I’ll make you mine again and again and again. ”
He intensified, driving into her harder, and faster, and Magda felt the world slip away, and the edges of her vision faded to black, blood pounding just beneath the surface of her skin.
She arched into him with the force of her orgasm, and James crushed his mouth to hers, letting himself finally find release.
They lay there for some time, their breathing and heartbeats gradually slowing. Magda shivered as the sweat cooled quickly in the chill night air. James reached down and swept his tartan off the floor and flicked the heavy wool over them, pulling her more tightly to his side for warmth.
“I’ve decided to stay,” she said, breaking the silence.
James leaned in to nuzzle at her neck. “You’d best stay, hen,” he said as he gave a gentle, playful smack to her bottom.
Magda giggled and snuggled closer, nestling one leg between his as he lay on his back.
James beamed. “This is what I wanted, aye?” He traced the lines of her face in the dying candlelight. “An easy smile on your lovely face.”
Automatically, she began to deny the compliment, and he placed his finger over her mouth.
“Hush, hen. If I’ve a notion to call you the bonniest in all Scotland, then I shall.
” He studied her, his black eyes solemn in the darkness.
“And you are, Magda. The bonniest I’ve seen.
You came to me like a torch in the darkness, and I’ve not been the same man since. ”
Feeling the blush creep into her cheeks, she smiled and nipped his finger between her teeth.
“Ah, a wee fox, is it?” James pulled his finger from her mouth and traced her lower lip with his thumb. He leaned in to kiss her slowly.
“And this spill of satin, russet like leaves in autumn,” he said, raking his fingers through her hair. “I should have paid heed. Not a hen, but a fox, I see.” He grabbed her bottom and nipped at her neck, his husky laugh echoing low off the stone walls.
Magda giggled again, and sat up slightly to lean on her elbow, head in hand. Her face grew serious as she thought about what he’d said. A ready smile is the last phrase she’d have used to describe herself, and yet something had happened to her since meeting James.
Through the years, she’d adopted a reserved exterior, taking refuge in formalities and solitude.
But James hadn’t been fooled. He’d cajoled and teased with a nonchalant charm that masked his own true nature, thoughtful and noble, until he’d shattered her world.
She was, she thought with a quiet smile, rendered quite literally naked, and was surprised by the comfort she’d discovered in her own skin.
Magda felt loose and expansive, discovering that easy laugh he claimed to cherish.
Magda studied the man lying naked by her side, and the knowledge that he watched her do so sent a flash of heat licking up between her legs.
She slowly pushed down the plaid he’d used to cover them and traced her fingers over James’s stomach, the ridges of his belly like hard islands of muscle.
She drew her fingers lower still, to the line of hair below his navel.
He shivered as she moved lower, feathering light touches up and down his thighs and all around, grazing everything but his growing hardness. Emboldened by a new spring of confidence, Magda was taking great pleasure in teasing him.
James reached up to take her mouth with his, but she pushed him back down instead, tormenting him as she rubbed closer and closer, until she took him into her hand.
He gasped, and she answered with a devilish smile.
His skin was like silk under her fingertips, and the mere feel of him, and of his body’s aggressive response to her touch, lit in Magda an urgent need to feel James again in her, and over her.
“Take me in your mouth.” Her voice was breathy, greedy.
Reaching up to kiss her, James heard his own voice groan in response. Never, he believed, had a woman so embraced a man as Magda did now. Never had a woman so inflamed him. He felt at once humbled by such a great gift, and nearly blinded by the lust that pounded through his veins.
James steadied his breathing. He’d need to control himself lest he finish before he even got started. The tartan slipped to the floor as he slowly turned Magda on the bed and held her beneath him.
James marveled at her long pale body under his, and at her broad mouth smudged dark from his kisses, and he was devastated by his want for her. For a moment, it was as if he’d forgotten what to do. James merely stared, overwhelmed by the beauty in his hands.
“Please.”
James heard her plea in the dark, and he was nearly unmanned.
He kissed her lightly on her neck and down her chest, lingering to taste each breast, small and round in his palms. Then he kissed down her stomach, smooth and warmed amber by the flickering candlelight.
James moved lower, raking his fingers lightly through the thatch of hair between her legs as he kissed down her thigh.
Magda moaned, arching up to press against him.
He kneaded her, felt her damp with desire in his palm.
Magda whimpered her protest as James dragged his hand away and continued to trace tongue and lips down her leg.
Reaching her foot, he began to kiss up along her other leg, moving more urgently now, hungrily working back up between her thighs.
With an eager moan in his throat, James took her in his mouth, and Magda cried out, her breath coming in quick, shallow gasps.
She threaded her fingers in his hair and pulled him more tightly to her, and James felt ready to explode with want for this woman.
She was so open beneath him. So miraculously perfect.
Magda stiffened, held her breath for a moment, then bucked her hips up.
She shouted his name, and James felt his body surge harder in response.
His lips parted, hungry to taste all of her, and James crawled up the bed, covering her body with his own. Kissing her deeply, James took her again.
Her body still pulsed from her climax, and he held motionless inside her until once again her hips began to rock, urging him on. He felt himself close to the breaking point, and eager to prolong it, James effortlessly scooped Magda off the bed.
“Oh!” Her face betrayed a glimpse of surprise, and then renewed appetite, as James strode to sit in the chair at her door, not once pulling from her.
Magda rocked into him as he stroked his hands up her back, sucking at her mouth and breasts, his words of love and lust murmured over the creak of the wooden chair.
He felt her body tense again and he pulled her mouth to his for a frantic kiss. He drove into her one last time and then they froze, suspended in time, as the world fell away around them.