Chapter Fourteen #2
As he moved in, pressing deeper, he paused and looked at her.
She met his gaze and saw the question there.
Holding her breath, she arched and lifted her hips, seating him deeply within her aching flesh.
Then, for a moment, she could not tell where he ended and she began.
Closing her eyes, she revelled in the feeling of joining with him.
It was all that she’d imagined and dreamt it would be.
‘Lilidh?’ Rob asked. She opened her eyes and met his beautiful blue gaze. ‘Are you well?’
‘I am.’ There had been only some tightness, but that eased with each moment he remained inside of her.
‘You should have told me.’
Did he regret this already, then? Tears began to burn in her eyes and in her throat. His mouth on hers was a surprise.
‘I would have had a care for you, my love.’ He kissed her lips and chin and then her neck. The touches inflamed her body once more and she felt him lengthen and thicken inside her.
She thought he would withdraw, but instead he began to move, slowly at first, drawing out a bit and then sliding back in.
Then he moved faster, pulling back and plunging until he could go no further.
Her flesh clung to his, creating an exhilarating tension there and all through her.
The same excitement he’d caused before, but this time so much more intense.
Her heart pounded and her blood boiled as he thrust over and over, bringing her to that edge once again.
Lilidh grabbed his hips and pressed against him, urging him to the same edge and then she felt all the tension and tightness inside of her release. She gasped as their bodies pulsed together.
It was some moments before she came back to herself after such an experience. She lay still, enjoying the closeness of him.
A few seconds or minutes passed before he moved. Slowly he withdrew from her, leaving her feeling empty in a place that she’d never known could be. Lilidh knew a reckoning was coming and she dreaded facing him, now that he knew of her deceit. His actions surprised her instead.
She watched as he silently left the bed and gathered some things together before returning.
A basin, some hot water from the pot on the hearth, cloths, a cup of wine.
He carried them back to the bed and, after pulling the bedcovers and torn shift from under her, he first handed her the wine.
Its sweet flavour eased the dryness in her throat as she sipped it.
Then dipped a cloth in the hot water and cleaned himself.
..of her virgin’s blood. The next cloth he offered to her and she accepted it, handing him the wine, and cleaned the signs of their joining—and her first—from between her legs.
Using the ruined shift as a drying cloth she finished as quickly as she could.
Her body felt heavy everywhere and when he climbed back next to her in the bed and pulled her to his side, she moulded to his body. Surrounded by his arms, warmed by his heat and the layers of blankets and eased by the wine, she found herself drifting into sleep.
* * *
Rob watched as her eyelids fluttered once and then twice before shutting altogether. Her body lay against him, skin to skin now, and she gave herself over to sleep much as she’d given herself to him.
Totally.
He was just as stunned now as when he’d felt the thin barrier inside her as he’d claimed her. He’d had no idea of how complete that claiming would be.
First. Her first. No one, no other man, had enjoyed her body since last they’d been together. He’d been saving that special joining until their marriage. He’d expected that, with her marriage to Iain, her virginity would have been taken by that man.
So, how was she yet untouched? Why had her husband not claimed his marital rights? He smoothed the hair from her face and studied the arch of her brow, the curve of her chin. He eased his arm out from under her and
drew the covers higher around her shoulders. Lilidh turned on to her other side and sighed in her sleep.
Rob climbed from the bed and found more wine. Filling a cup, he walked to one of the two windows in the chamber and stared out into the darkness.
Lilidh a virgin?
He swallowed deeply from the cup and considered how a thing would have been possible. Had Iain been ill during their marriage? Hell, Rob would have had to be dead before he would neglect her as his wife. Yet, clearly Iain had not.
If you did not want me before because of my leg, how can you want me now?
The question she’d asked him gave him pause now. Had her injury presented such an obstacle to her new husband that he did not bed her because of it?
Daft man, then. But had she told her parents of her marriage’s failure? Was that why she returned home? Did anyone know the truth?
But now he’d not only taken her virginity, he’d spilled his seed within her.
That changed everything...or did it? In the way in which this whole situation would play out over the coming weeks?
He just did not know. Did it make him want to claim her and keep her? He wanted to scream out the words now.
But could he? Chances were that the most likely outcome would be Lilidh’s return to her family and his alliance with the MacKenzies—hopefully without losing too many of his kin.
The worst? Well, his clan dead and decimated and his body hung in pieces on his wall as a warning to others not to cross the MacLerie.
She stirred in his bed, in his bed where he’d always dreamt of having her, so he finished the wine and went back to her. As he moved behind her and drew her close, his body reacted. Instead of waking, she just wiggled back against him, nestling beside him.
* * *
Rob had many questions to ask and things to think about, but when the dawn came, he was no closer to resolution than before. Lilidh slept through the knock on the door and never moved as he left. His questions would have to wait until this night.