Chapter 19 #2
She gasped when he’d reached the end, then gave one final nudge and held her there.
Letting her feel him. His weight. The incredible sensation of him inside her …
filling her. Making her complete. With his eyes, he forced her to acknowledge the connection that bound them together.
Not just their bodies, but something far deeper.
Something elemental. Something that could not be put into words, but that she could see reflected in his piercing gaze.
Her heart welled up, overcome by an emotion she’d never thought to feel again. An emotion so intense it frightened her as all that she had to lose became clear.
Then he started to move, thrusting with long deep strokes. Strokes that reverberated through her body from head to toe, each staking a further claim. It was the most erotic, intimate moment of her life.
No other man could make her feel like this because no other man existed for her.
Duncan didn’t think anything could feel more incredible than Jeannie’s soft, pink mouth stretched around the head of his cock, her tongue stroking him, her mouth sucking him deeper and deeper into her throat.
But he was wrong.
Raw lust was nothing to the emotion that gripped his heart as he sank into her inch by incredible inch. Her eyes pulled him in. Deeper and deeper. To touch her soul.
She was so warm. So wet. So sweetly tight.
He’d forgotten how it felt to be inside her.
How her body felt under his. She was so tiny and soft he worried that he would crush her, but she pulled him down, seeking the connection of skin on skin.
Her breasts were crushed to his chest as he thrust high inside her, her nipples raking him.
He closed his eyes, sensation showering over him in a warm, tingling wave.
He thrust again, groaning. It felt too good. The pleasure too intense to contain. Her body clenched around him like a fist, pumping, milking.
She moaned and lifted her hips, meeting him, circling in a slow, delicious dance.
Blood pounded through him, concentrating at the sensitive head. Sensation coiled at the base of his spine in a hot pulsing fist. He was going to explode.
Sweat poured off his forehead as he fought to hold on. He thrust high and hard, forcing her …
She cried out, calling his name as her body racked with the spasm of her release. The sheer ecstasy on her face pushed him over the edge. He drove into her one more time and stiffened, then jerked with the force of his own release as pleasure crashed over him in a hard, earth-shattering wave.
He stayed inside her until the spasms ebbed and the last drop of pleasure had been wrung from him.
But even then he was reluctant to break the connection.
Only the knowledge that he was probably crushing her forced him to slide from the warm embrace of her body.
Rolling to the side, he gathered her up in his arms, cradling her against his shoulder. The night air cooled his heated skin.
They were silent for a while. After what had just happened it seemed fitting. Words would be lacking.
Her finger weaved absently through the thin triangle of hair below his neck, following the thin trail down to his stomach. He could tell she was thinking.
“Did you mean it?” she asked, gazing up at him.
He didn’t need to ask what she meant. “Aye.”
“What made you realize that it wasn’t me who took the map?”
He twirled a lock of silky red hair in his finger, letting it fall in a soft puddle on his chest. “It wasn’t any one thing.
I suppose I started to see beyond the ‘proof and listened to my gut. Your reaction had a lot to do with it. I realized how much my leaving had hurt you. You acted wronged, not guilty.” He felt a hard burning in his chest as the ramifications of what he’d done hit him.
“God, Jeannie, I’m sorry.” He heard her voice in his head begging him not to leave and tried to shut it out.
By all rights she should hate him. “I should have trusted you. I should have given you a chance to explain. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Why were you so quick to find me guilty?”
She wasn’t asking about the specific evidence against her, but the more difficult question of why he believed it.
He thought back, remembering. He’d been so young, barely a man, still making his way in the world and couldn’t quite believe he could be that fortunate to find someone like her.
“I’d seen you with your father, and knew how much you loved him, knew the loyalty you felt to your family.
You were young, beautiful, and could have had your pick of any man in the Highlands.
Part of me couldn’t believe you’d give that all up for a bastard with nothing to his name.
” He made a harsh sound. “Who didn’t even have a name. ”
She lay perfectly still. “I saw the man you were. I believed in you, Duncan, not in your birth. Did I ever give you reason to think it mattered to me? Did I ever make you feel like you were anything less than the most wonderful, amazing man I’d ever known?”
The anger in her voice took him aback. “Nay,” he admitted.
She relaxed, her body easing into his once again.
“Why believe me now?” she asked. “What’s changed?”
“Me. You. We aren’t the same people we were then. I guess I didn’t give either of us enough credit. I didn’t see what you did, that we make our own destiny not by our birth, but by our actions.”
Jeannie peered up at him, a strange look in her eyes. “Do you really believe that?”
He sensed there was something behind her question—something important. “Aye, I do.”
She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. She was quiet for a few minutes, lost in thought. Finally, she said, “What can we do?”
He cocked an eyebrow, a wry smile on his lips. “We?”
“I want to help.”
He’d been waiting a long time to hear those words. “Could you persuade your brother to allow you to go through your father’s papers?”
She shook her head. “It wouldn’t help. Little was left after the fire.”
His stomach sank. “Fire?”
She nodded. “After Glenlivet when the king marched north, seeking vengeance against those who’d fought against him, he razed many castles, including Freuchie.
The great hall and my father’s solar were destroyed.
When he died, I went through what remained.
There was nothing from around the time of the battle. ”
Duncan swore. The chance of finding any documentary proof had been slim, but now it appeared to be nonexistent. His only option appeared to be tracking down the men who might have been involved. But the idea of questioning his brother didn’t sit well.
“You’re thinking of Colin?” Jeannie said.
He gave her a look out of the corner of his eye. “Remind me to be careful what I think around you.” She grinned. “Aye, it’s difficult to conceive that Colin could have anything to do with this.”
“It’s hard staring at the sun all the time.”
He gave her a wry look. “I’m not perfect, Jeannie.”
“To a younger brother you might have seemed as such.” She bit her lip.
“Colin said something of the like once. I didn’t think much of it then, but jealousy can drive people to do horrible things.
I wonder though if there could be more to it.
” Resting her hand on his ribs, she propped her chin on the back of her hand.
“What do you know of your mother? You never talk about her.”
He stiffened. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he said flatly. He tried to ignore the wounded look in her eyes. But it felt as if he’d just failed some test. She’d wanted him to confide in her—to share feelings that didn’t exist for a woman he’d never known. Hell, he’d rather have his teeth pulled.
But he knew he was treading a treacherous path, this connection they’d established was tenuous.
So he took a deep breath, forced the tension from his body, and splayed himself open for her digging.
“She was a MacDonald. Nursemaid to the chief’s children.
She left me with my father when I was but a few months old.
I assume my birth caused her great shame and she was eager to be rid of me.
I’m afraid it wasn’t much better for my father.
The Campbells and MacDonalds were engaged in a bloody feud at the time. My grandfather hated me on sight.”
She pressed a kiss to his chest. Strangely, it helped. Perhaps because he knew she could understand. “Your father must have cared for her greatly to risk his clan’s wrath.”
He shrugged. “I never thought about it, but I suppose you’re right.”
“Did you ever try to find her?”
He kept a tight rein on his anger and managed to say calmly, “No.” He might have come to terms with his birth, but that didn’t mean he’d wanted anything to do with the woman who’d abandoned him.
He gave her a measured look. Did his parentage matter more to her than she’d let on? “Why are you asking me about this?”
She shrugged her naked shoulders. “Just curious.” Her nose scrunched. “I wondered if there was more to the story, that’s all. Your father never said anything more about her?”
“Nay—” He stopped and frowned.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” She got that look again and he sighed, resigned. “Something my father said right before he died.” He recalled his words: Mother … Find … MacDonald. “He seemed to want me to find my mother, but he was delirious with fever.”
He saw the excitement leap in her eyes. “What if he did know what he was saying? What if he wanted you—”
“Nay,” he said, cutting her off before she could get carried away.
For a moment he caught a glimpse of the spontaneous, exuberant girl who’d snuck out of the castle and joined him in a midnight swim.
“I have no interest in a reunion with my mother. If my father wanted me to make peace, I’m sorry to disappoint him. ”
“But what if your father wanted you to find something?”
“Like what?”
“What if your mother didn’t really leave you? Or what if there is something about your birth—”
“There is nothing,” he said in a voice that boded no argument. “Don’t look for a faerie tale, you’ll only be disappointed. I’m a bastard, Jeannie, and nothing is going to change that. I thought you accepted it.”
She pursed her sensuous mouth into a thin line. “I do. This is not about me, it’s about you. I’m trying to help you clear your name, and what if finding your mother can help?”
His jaw flexed. “It can’t.”
She mumbled something about stubborn oafs.
“What’s that?” he asked.
She threw him an annoyed look. “The isle of Islay is close. We could be there and back in a day or two.” She gazed up at him beseechingly. “What harm can it do?”
Plenty—to his peace of mind for one. Not to mention that half his cousin’s soldiers seemed to be looking for him. But she practically bubbled with excitement and he hated the idea of crushing her enthusiasm. And he was running out of options.
He gritted his teeth, every instinct resisting yet at the same time desperately wanting to please her. She didn’t know his father. He wouldn’t have lied to him. “I’ll think about it.”
She looked like she was about to argue, but then a slow smile curved her lips, a naughty gleam in her eye. She slid her hand down the length of his chest, drawing little circles with her soft fingertips low on his stomach. He hissed, his spent muscles jumping back to life.
“Perhaps I shall find a way to convince you?”
He grabbed her hand and wrapped it around him. He was already hard as she began to stroke him. Heat spread across his limbs. Each pull of her hand sent him deeper and deeper into the black vortex of pleasure.
He knew he would eventually grant her request, no matter how much he didn’t want to. He feared there was very little he would not do for her. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun in the meantime.
“You can try,” he groaned, then closed his eyes and let her.