Chapter Eighteen
Sophie…
“Your to-do list, butterfly…”
My back barely hits the bed before he's over me, his pupils flared, his eyes narrowed. The Michael I know is gone. This is the beautiful face of a predator.
He runs his nose very softly along the side of my neck and his shoulders relax slightly and I let out a cautious sigh. Now, we're somewhere in between Michael the protector and the predator.
“Number one: raise your arms,” he murmurs, placing a kiss along my jawline, tasting my skin with his tongue.
I obey, he pulls my T-shirt off. His rough fingertips are running down the skin between my breasts and he unfastens the clasp of my bra there in seconds.
Reverently, he lays each side of the fabric back, exposing me.
My hands flutter up like frightened birds for just a moment before he catches them with one hand, holding them over my head.
"No, butterfly. You're too beautiful to hide," he says, before closing his mouth over one nipple, circling it with his tongue, and then the other.
My hands jerk when he very lightly nips my skin, but his fingers tighten, holding me where I am.
"Do you know where my mobile is?" he says, his gaze returning to mine.
"N- no?" I stutter.
He grins, it's sudden and beautiful, that spark of mischief he’s showing. "Downstairs. The ringer is off. I dinnae care what happens right now. Half of Scotland can fall into the sea and I dinnae give a shite. I've waited for so-.” He stops for a moment, composing himself. “I need to be inside ye."
This is not how I envisioned my first time with him at all.
Whenever I’d imagined being with a man, it was always with him.
It would be at night, I’d be wearing fancy lingerie, not a simple cotton bra and undies.
There would be candles flickering, and maybe a fire.
Music. Something sultry, like Norah Jones.
The moment is nothing like that. The house is silent, except for our breath and his pleased grunts as his tongue circles my belly button.
The rare Edinburgh sun shining through the windows makes his bedroom so bright, and I'm a little shy that he can see everything so clearly.
The scar I got on my hip from falling off my bicycle when I was eleven.
The burn on my elbow from my rage baking spree last week.
His fingers leave my wrists to gently pull down my jeans and place a soft kiss over my undies before he pulls a squeal from me, sucking on my clitoris through the cotton. “Number two on your to-do list,” he says, “lift your hips, my sweet lass.”
I do, and the last barrier between me and him is gone, and the tip of his tongue is tracing along the slick line of my flesh, not greedy and sloppy like last night.
With a firm precision, stroking along me, giving a pleased growl as he feels me grow wetter for him.
His tongue is shockingly hot, and when it spears up inside me, I come again, his nose pressed against my clitoris, his five o’ clock shadow scraping along the thin skin of my thighs.
A sweet, pleasurable assault in a way I've never felt before and one I cannot resist, one I can't defend against. One that I don't want to.
“So good,” he says, kissing his way back up. “So good for me, sweet lass.” His mouth is on mine again and I can feel his chin wet from me, rubbing against my skin and the taste of myself in my mouth.
“Let me,” I burst out. "Let me taste you now."
His forehead drops to my shoulder for a moment. “Not this time,” he says. “Not our first time or I'll be disappointing ye, coming like a 14-year-old boy. I need to be inside ye now."
The heat radiating from his huge body warms me as I slide my hands under his shirt, smoothing over the skin of his back. My fingertips feel the occasional scar as I try to pull his t-shirt off.
“Number three on your to-do list,” he says, “give me your mouth.” The feel of his lips and tongue, I suspect, are to distract me as he yanks down his sweatpants, just enough to pull himself out, tapping the head of his cock against my clitoris, grinning as I jump.
“And number four on your list…” He nips my lower lip lightly. “Open for me, spread your legs wide.”
He helps me by nudging his hips between my thighs, pushing them apart and sliding one of my knees over his elbow, opening me. There’s a crinkle of torn foil and he shifts his hips, deftly rolling on a condom before I feel him at my entrance, hot and hard, silky and wet.
It's a lot.
It's a lot to experience all at once and everything else fades at the feel of him sliding inside me slowly, hips sinuous and smooth, a bit at a time until he stops.
Then with a sharp thrust, he pushes all to the top of me.
I gasp, shocked, pained, the stretch stings and burns much more than I expected.
The inexorable width of him stays wedged inside me as he stills his hips, looking down at me.
“Did I hurt you?” he asks, concerned. My mouth moves soundlessly, little goldfish-like gasps.
I'm not sure what to say. He gives me a slightly rakish grin.
“I'll go slow until you're ready,” he says.
My tendons strain in my thighs from spreading wide, the heat radiating inside me rolling from a painful burn into a more pleasurable warmth, feeling softer.
He must feel it too, as his hips start moving again, silence broken by ragged gasps until he whispers in my ear.
“Your snug cunt is gripping me tight,” he rasps.
“Like a fist wrapped in velvet. So perfect, ye are.”
My brain manages to bring itself back together from whatever far reaches of the universe where it had scattered, enough to feel something hard.
Something even harder than his stiff flesh, rubbing against my walls, against my G spot that he’d found with his fingers and higher up still.
When he pulls out to just the tip of him notched inside me, I look down and see a quick glimpse of silver.
“Are you? Is that? Is that a piercing?" I wheeze.
“Aye,” he chuckles. "It's for you, butterfly. All yours. And you are all mine."
Time seems to slow down. My focus narrows to the point between us where we meet, the hairy base of his cock, rubbing hard against my clit, that insane piercing, stroking against nerve endings inside me like sparks.
When he thrusts hard up inside me it’s like a lightning strike.
My fingers dig into the skin of his back as he chuckles, sliding his arm under my other knee and tilting my ass off the bed so he can push deeper and harder.
“Number four on your list, my organized girl, my proper lass,” he says, dark and diabolical and Michael the predator is back. “Ye come for me now. I want your wee moans and that gasp ye gave me last night when ye came on my fingers.”
The pain is back along with the heat and the pleasure and it turns into a whirlpool, a sensation that pulls me under. I cry out. Hoarse, wordless, wanting to say his name, wanting to tell him I've loved him forever, but all I manage is, “This. Yes, this. You."
He gives an answering groan. “My little butterfly. My sweet Sophie.”
One last vicious thrust, and I can feel his heat swell inside me as he comes.
He's careful not to crush me, catching himself with his forearms. I can feel the wet cotton of his t-shirt, stretched over his chest, pressing against me as he heaves for air.
I'm irrationally proud that I could make him feel this way.
That I could make the urbane Michael MacTavish become this primitive thing.
Awareness returns, cool, and a little unpleasant, as he carefully pulls out of me, holding onto the condom before disposing of it quickly and pulling his sweats back up.
Like last night, he's completely dressed and unruffled while I'm bare and wet, feeling a little exposed until he pulls back the covers and settles me between the sheets with a kiss.
He goes into the bathroom briefly before returning with a damp cloth and I try to reach out for it, a little embarrassed.
“Oh, I can…" I start.
“Be still,” he interrupts me gently. “Be my good girl.” Pulling back the sheet, he frowns as he looks down at me. I glance too, groaning silently.
I was a virgin, but I didn't really expect to bleed like a delicate maiden in a Victorian novel. There’s a long smear of red, bright and accusatory against his snowy white sheets.
"This was your first time." He says it like a statement, not a question.
I want to cover my face with my hands and cringe, but I force myself to look at him. “Yes."
Michael’s calloused fingertips are against my cheek, gentle. “I wish I’d known,” he says, looking troubled. “I was too rough for your first time.”
“There really wasn’t any time to add the conversation to the top of our to-do list,” I sass him a little. I’m feeling warm and sore, glowing a bit under all this undivided attention. “You went right to step one.”
After disposing of the cloth, he slides into bed with me, running a long sweep of his hand over my waist and hip. “Cheeky minx, ye must be feeling better. Getting all gallus on me.” He doesn’t sound entirely displeased by it.
We lie there together, struck by the rare luxury of the moment. Michael’s phone isn’t ringing. There’s not a line of people waiting for his attention. He’s here, with me, one hand sliding softly up and down my back.
“Michael?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I see it again?”
Bursting into uproarious laughter, he tilts my chin up. “Are ye speaking of the piercing, then?”
My face flames red as I nod. He moves back enough to pull his sweatpants down, wrapping his long fingers around his shaft, which is already hardening a bit, an action I note with some alarm.
It’s not like I haven’t seen a dick before, I have wifi, thank you very much and Maisie insisted we watch a couple of truly terrible porn flicks one night.
Out in the wild, so to speak? This is my first and it’s bigger even than the porn guy’s was. The silver glint of the piercing on the head of Michael’s cock is wildly exotic.
“Did it hurt a lot? When you got it done?” I touch the metal very gently with one finger, like it might bite me if I get too close.
"Aye," he says honestly. "It stung like a bitch.” A dark, vulpine smile stretches across his stupidly handsome face. “Though it was certainly worth it.”
I am suddenly and unreasonably jealous of the other woman who got to appreciate my husband's piercing, even though I know that makes no sense.
It doesn't matter, the possessive part of me whispers. It's all mine now.
With a groan, Michael pushes his semi-hard shaft back into his sweat pants. “Sleep with me a moment, aye?”
Those faint lines of exhaustion around his eyes and mouth are sharper, and I nod. “Of course. Let me just put something on.”
He sits up long enough to take off his t-shirt.
“Arms up.” The warm cotton slides across my skin, smelling sharp; pine and a faint bite of citrus, with something smoky underneath like gunpowder.
It’s a smell I remember from my very first days helping Mom at the mansion, where I’d sneakily put Michael’s pillowcase to my nose to breathe his scent into my lungs.
Leaning on his elbow, he pulls the shirt down, taking some extra time to make sure it’s smooth over my breasts, the pervert. “Tell me, butterfly. Why have ye never been with a man before now?” He doesn’t sound displeased about it, merely curious.
Should I tell him the truth? That though I never entertained any real hope that we would end up together, I waited? That there was never another man who could make me forget him?
“I was always busy,” I deflect. “School, and work. There’s not been enough time or no one who really…”
“No one who was worth your time?” he finishes. “That I believe. Men like that eejit Maisie tried to set ye up with? A waste, that was.” His thumb strokes my chin before he leans in for a kiss. “I’ll be your first and your last.”
Oh, he’s got the devil’s grin right now.
“And there’s so much to show ye in between the two.”
Pulling me back against his chest, Michael’s hand slips under the shirt to rest against my stomach and I feel his chest rise and fall behind me, slowing into sleep.
I carefully trace my fingers along his arm slung over me, the thick swell of his bicep, his veiny forearm and long, elegant fingers. I guess you can tell the size of a man's dick from his hands, I think wryly.
There's a beautifully detailed tattoo across his forearm, a spray of Scottish thistle, the blooms in vivid purple. From this angle, I can see the snarling snout of a wolf's head that ends on his shoulder. It's the tattoo I’d seen all those years ago, as I cringed, dripping wet from the koi pond, the one that had peeked over the collar of his shirt. I recognize it now; the wolf, fangs bared and dripping menace, it’s part of the crest of the MacTavish coat of arms. It feels so intimate, finally knowing what that tattoo is, what it means, now that he’s peeled off his shirt and bared himself- at least a little - to me.
My center is sore, and I can feel some bites and bruises on my skin now that I’d not noticed when he gave them to me. Instead of sleeping, I count each one of them with a pleased little grin and stay very still, guarding my husband’s sleep.
***
Gallus - Scottish slang for sassy or impertinent.