Chapter 25 #2
“Why nae?” She tugged the laces free, let the bodice loosen, and pulled the fabric down over her shoulders until her shift was all that remained—thin linen, nearly translucent in the pale light from the narrow window.
The cool air hit her bare skin and her nipples tightened instantly, but it was the sound Ragnar made that sent an aching heat settle between her thighs.
His gaze dropped to her breasts, and she watched the last thread of his restraint snap like a bowstring cut clean through. His mouth found her before she was ready for it.
He pressed his lips to the swell of her left breast, just above her heart. Then his tongue traced a slow, devastating path downward. He took her nipple into his mouth, the hot, wet pull of it dragging a sound from her throat that echoed off the stone walls—something between a gasp and a plea.
“Och... Ragnar…”
His hand came up to cup her other breast, his thumb circling the stiffened peak with agonizing precision while his tongue worked in slow, deliberate strokes that made her hips roll against him involuntarily.
She felt him harden beneath her, the rigid length of him pressing against her through layers of wool and linen, and the friction sent sparks scattering through her like embers from a kicked fire.
Her fingers knotted in his hair and he answered by switching his mouth to her other breast, while his freed hand slid down her ribs, her stomach, gathering her skirts upward until his calloused palm met the bare skin of her thigh.
Isolda’s hands dropped to his tunic and pulled it over his head with more urgency than grace, needing to feel his skin against her.
She flattened her palms against his chest and pushed.
He went willingly, settling back against the heavy wooden chair, pulling her with him so that she straddled his lap fully, her thighs spread wide across his.
The position put her above him, looking down at him for once. The shift in power was intoxicating—the Stag of Uist, the most feared jarl in the Western Isles, gazing up at her with blue eyes gone molten with desire.
This man is mine.
She reached between them and unlaced his trews, feeling his arousal strain against the fabric, hearing the sharp intake of his breath when her fingers grazed his length through the linen.
“Isolda.” Her name sounded like it was costing him his sanity.
“Dinnae talk.”
She freed him. He stood thick and hard and hot between them, and the sound he made when she stroked him once was the most devastating thing she’d ever heard. His head dropped back against the chair, his neck straining, his fingers digging into her hips. “Lass, ye’re killin’ me...”
She positioned herself, felt the press of him against her entrance, slick with her own arousal. Their eyes locked. His hands trembled on her hips—not guiding, not controlling, just letting her choose the pace, letting her take what she wanted.
She sank down onto him slowly, gasping as he filled her.
The stretch was exquisite, deeper at that angle and it stole the breath from her lungs. Ragnar’s whole body went taut beneath her, a low groan rumbling from his chest that she felt vibrate through her thighs.
“Gods, Isolda...”
She braced her hands on his shoulders and began to move.
Instinct guided her—a rolling rhythm that she found by following the pulse of heat building low in her belly. Each rise drew a hiss through his teeth, each downward stroke pressed him deeper, and the angle of it sent pleasure radiating outward in waves that made her thighs shake.
Ragnar’s mouth found her breast again, sucking and teasing as she rode him. She arched into his mouth, her fingers gripping his neck, pulling him closer.
“That’s it,” he rasped against her skin. “Take what ye need, make me yers.”
Isolda moved faster—chasing the building wave with an abandon she hadn’t known she possessed. His hands gripped her hips, meeting her rhythm, lifting her and pulling her down with a controlled strength that made the friction between them unbearable and perfect and not nearly enough all at once.
“I’m close,” she gasped.
“I’ve got ye.”
Her body clenched around him so tightly that his hips jerked upward and his groan tore from him like something pulled from the marrow of his bones. She cried out his name and felt him follow her over the edge seconds later, his arms crushing her against his chest as his body shuddered beneath hers.
For a long time, there was nothing but the sound of ragged breathing and the distant murmur of the sea the narrow window.
Isolda’s forehead rested against his shoulder, her lips pressed to the damp skin.
She pulled back to look at him. His blue eyes soft in a way she’d never seen, and there was a bitemark on his shoulder.
He looked utterly, magnificently undone.
“Thank ye,” she said quietly. “Fer showin’ me this room. Fer trustin’ me with it.”
His thumb traced the line of her jaw. “There’s naethin’ I wouldnae trust ye wi’.”
Ye’re the family I never kent I needed. And I’ll fight fer ye the way ye’ve been fightin’ fer me.
She closed her eyes. Beyond the narrow window, the afternoon light was already beginning to fade, and somewhere below them, the keep carried on. But there, in that small, stone sanctuary everything was perfectly, impossibly still.
She kissed him once more—softer now, the urgency banked to glowing embers, and in the quiet of that hidden room, surrounded by the words he had fought to learn—Isolda MacGregor understood one thing with absolute certainty.
This is what it means tae belong.