Chapter Ten #3
I was curious about the rise of him, under the covers.
I remembered the beauty of his body, a brief flash of recollection, that first time I had seen him emerging from the loch.
I eased my body to the side, and I dared to drag my fingers lower, across his bandage, and lower still, to the bulging swell.
Over the furs, I rubbed my palm on the mounded surface, feeling his heat through the thick layer of his covering.
He let me touch him in this way. I could see that he liked my careful caresses. I fingered his length through the bulk of the covers, fascinated by the hardness of him.
After several minutes, and as I became more adept at reading his reactions, Wilkie let out an uneven sigh. His blue eyes were fiery with his burn. “My Roses. Your touch is a miracle. So soft, yet so very potent. I can’t get enough of it, lass.”
Shyly, I reached for the edge of the blanket. I pulled the covers down, to reveal him to me.
I gasped. The size of him was astonishing. The change in him! The image as I remembered him, at the loch, did not at all match the discovery I found here.
“Warrior,” I whispered. The sight of him both fascinated and alarmed me. My education on these matters was decidedly limited, but I knew the very basics, and I wondered at the mechanics of it, of us.
“Touch me, lass. Don’t be frightened by me.”
I did as he wanted, touching him, tentatively at first, running my fingertips over him, marveling at the silkiness and the heat.
He was hot to the touch. I let one hand explore lower, to the soft, looser skin below, as my other hand gripped his shaft more tightly, rubbing along the length of him to the tip, where a slick of wetness had gathered.
Shamelessly, I wanted to touch my mouth to him, to taste him.
He groaned deeply as I swirled my finger across the broad end.
As though reading my thoughts, he murmured his request in a dark voice, rasped from his passion, “Put your soft mouth on me, Roses.”
Leaning over him, I gripped his engorged shaft with both hands and lifted it away from his stomach.
I touched my tongue to him, tasting salt, lightly licking at his essence.
I placed my lips around him, taking more, struggling to fit my mouth around his thickness.
I took as much of him as I could, squeezing my hands gently around the base, working him slowly, getting a feel for his response.
My long hair fell to brush across his skin.
“Ah, God,” Wilkie growled, and I’d never heard him use our Lord’s name in vain before, but he repeated it more than once.
I was too inexperienced to know how to please him.
His body was tensed and arched, his fists grabbing handfuls of the furs at his sides, as though he was laid out on a torture rack.
It took me some time to find a rhythm. I sucked on him as tenderly as I could, drawing him farther and farther into my mouth, using my tongue to stroke him.
Wilkie let out an agonized groan, and I was mildly startled when his shaft jerked and hot liquid jetted into my throat, flooding my mouth with his milky seed.
It was difficult to accommodate all of it.
Wanting to keep him and soothe him and drink him into my body, I swallowed more than once and suckled gently on his softening shaft until I had taken all of his essence.
Wilkie lay still as I continued to tenderly kiss his body, loving the feel of him and enjoying a small sense of jubilation, that I had been able to please him in this way.
I liked learning him and learning how I could pleasure him best. I could sense that he was floating now, as I had floated after he’d kissed my intimate places.
“Come to me, lass,” he said huskily, and I climbed up and lay into the crook of his arm as he held me against him. “Your touch is the most profound thing on this earth. I have never felt anything like you.”
“Nor I, you.”
“Never leave me,” he said, watching my eyes, searching for compliance.
“Nay, warrior. I’ll stay with you and soothe you, each day and each night. Close your eyes.”
He did. I reached to touch his hair and kiss his face. I smoothed my fingers in feather touches across his skin and his hair, as my mother used to do to me when I was a child, to calm me when I couldn’t sleep, to make me feel drowsy and loved with her gentle attention and her nearness.
His breathing became deeper and relaxed, and even then, I continued to savor the feel of him and the taste of him.
“I love you, warrior,” I whispered to him in his sleep, kissing his lips once more. I settled in against his warmth, laying as close to him as I could be in the fire-lit darkness, considering my fate and his.
But I could not sleep.
I rose, wrapping a fur around myself like a cape.
I went to sit on the stone-bound window seat of Wilkie’s chambers, which had been draped with cushions and furs.
Outside the window, the stars hung low in the clear night, and the harvest moon glowed yellow, casting a golden glow to the orchards and fields below.
Sometime later, I heard Wilkie stir and reach for me, patting the space where I had been. He sat up.
Seeing me at the window, he came to me, wrapping a fur around his waist. Then he sat with me, holding me against his chest. Together, we watched the night.
“What are you thinking of, lass?”
After a moment, I told him. “I have a memory, or perhaps it’s only a hazy dream, of my very earliest life. It comes to me now and then.”
“Tell it to me,” he said quietly.
“There’s a fair-haired woman. She’s very young. She’s crying. There are shiny tears in her green eyes. And she’s walking away.”
The silence that followed was soft and comforting and contemplative.
Wilkie’s deep, velvet voice had all the effect of a tonic, a cure, a remedy to every sadness. “It makes sense that whoever gave birth to you would have had fair hair and green eyes, love. I’m sure she was very beautiful, like you, although ’tis difficult to imagine anyone matching your loveliness.”
“Why do you think she would give me away?” I asked, knowing already that it was a question that would likely never find an answer.
“I imagine she must have been in danger of one sort or another,” he said. “’Tis the only explanation. Or not able to feed you, or care for you.”
I wished I could learn the truth.
“Tell me of your parents that raised you,” Wilkie said.
“They loved me as their own. My father’s name was Oliver. He had strong hands and a tireless work ethic. His whistling tunes run through many of my memories, though they became less and less frequent as his dislike for Laird Ogilvie began to take hold and grow.”
He was stroking my hair. “Why was that?”
“I think maybe he saw the future, just like I did.”
“Laird Ogilvie’s pursuit of you, you mean?” he asked.
“Aye, and my mother, too. She was so very kind, so very in love. Her face lit up whenever my father walked into our cabin. It was tiny but lovingly cared for, always neat and clean. It was a treasured childhood, mine. Until its decline.”
Except for that one long-reaching moment, involving a wizened old woman and a never-forgotten warning.
But I didn’t speak of that now.
I thought of the one possession of my parents’, now lost to me: my mother’s pin. I wished I could retrieve it.
“Retrieve what?”
I hadn’t realized I’d voiced my wish aloud.
A fleeting thread of alarm quirked through me now as I wondered if I’d spoken the previous recollection aloud, as well.
But then: I thought not. That was a secret too guarded, too buried.
“A pin,” I said, “given to my mother by my father on their wedding day. ’Tis all I have left of them.
I had it by the small pool at the cave. I think I may have left it there.
One day I’ll have to go back, to see if I can find it. ”
“I’ll have it retrieved for you,” he said, his fingers weaving themselves through my hair. “It will not be you who ventures to the pool, lass. Not for a while. ’Tis too dangerous. You know that.”