Chapter 23 #2
The skin there was sensitive, screaming at the touch of his rough palm. When his hand finally brushed against the soft, soaking wet linen between her thighs, she let out a broken, ragged sigh, her fingers locking into the wool of his plaid.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice dark and strained.
Chloe forced her heavy eyelids open. He had pulled back just enough for her to see his face, his blue eyes burning with a dark, predatory light beneath his heavy brow, his jaw locked tight as he watched her.
His fingers pressed against her folds, sliding through the slick, hot moisture she had gathered for him, and a sharp, breathless gasp tore from her throat at the deliberate, rhythmic friction of his touch.
“Edward, please,” she whispered, her hips moving blindly against his hand, begging for the weight of him, for the end of the distance that had kept them apart for three endless weeks.
He watched her face as he stroked her, his thumb finding the small, sensitive nub of her pleasure, grinding against it with a slow, merciless pressure that made her vision blur at the edges.
The world narrowed to the wet, rhythmic sound of his fingers against her skin, the heavy thud of his heart against her ribs, and the mounting, unbearable tension coiling tight in her lower belly.
She was completely undone, stripped of her composure, her body arching and shivering under his hands as he pushed her higher and higher toward a cliff edge she could not see.
Just as the coil was about to tighten to a dangerous, breaking point, Edward caught her lower lip between his teeth, silencing her breathless moan with another deep, bruising kiss. His fingers sank deep into her folds one last time before his movements slowed.
He did not take her there, not on the wet gravel of a sea-cliff, but the restraint it took him was visible in the violent, shuddering tremor that shook his massive frame. When they finally pulled apart, the separation felt like a physical tearing of flesh.
Both of them were visibly shaken, the space between them suddenly cold as the wind rushed back into the gap.
Chloe collapsed back against the basalt, breathless and utterly dazed, her head spinning. Her bodice hung open, her skin flushed dark and wet with his sweat and the salt-spray, her lips swollen and burning from the fury of his mouth. Her heart was hammering violently against her ribs.
She looked up at him through the tangled, wet strands of her hair.
Edward was leaning against the opposite boulder, his chest heaving as he fought for air, his knuckles white where he braced himself against the stone.
His eyes were wide, dark, and completely stripped of the Laird’s careful, iron-clad mask.
Chloe touched her fingers to her bruised lips, her breath coming in shallow, dazed puffs.
The storm still raged outside the split, the waves still slammed into the black stone with a thunderous boom, but as she looked at the man standing before her in the grey light, she felt a quiet, terrifying certainty settle deep into her bones.
Something had changed irrevocably between them.
The chill of the sea wind rushed into the gap between them, turning the sweat on his throat to ice.
Edward stood with his palms flat against the wet basalt, his head bowed as he forced the air back into his lungs. He reached out with numb fingers and began to pull the edges of her gaping bodice back together, his knuckles stiff as he avoided the sight of her flushed, bare skin.
“Fix yer laces,” he said, pressing the fabric into her hands rather than finishing the job himself. His voice had none of the gravelly heat of a moment ago, but his hands lingered a beat too long before letting go. “Before ye catch yer death out here.”
Chloe froze, her fingers stopping an inch from her collar. She looked up at him through her tangled hair, the dazed warmth in her eyes fracturing into something sharp and cold. Her lips, swollen from his mouth, parted in a small, hard line.
“Regret is a quick guest with ye, me Laird,” she whispered, her voice tight with a sudden, stinging pride.
She snatched her laces from his hands, her boots dragging on the gravel as she stepped back into the farthest corner of the split.
“Ye could have left me on the sand if the price of intimacy was to be this bitter.”
Edward did not look at her. He could not.
It was not regret that was choking him; it was pure, paralyzing terror.
He watched her fingers tremble over the wet cords of her dress, and the urge to tell her everything—to lay bare the raw, bloody floorboards of his sixteenth year—burned like lye in his chest. But if he told her the truth, the light in her eyes would turn to horror.
She would see that she was not trusting a stern man with a dark past; she was harboring a beast that had butchered his own blood in the dark and felt nothing but relief the next morning.
Yet, as he looked at the quiet hurt hardening on her face, he knew the wall was no longer enough. The silence would kill them just as surely as the truth.
“It is nae regret, Chloe,” he muttered, the words dragging out of him like iron chains. He stepped forward, his massive frame blocking the light from the opening until he was hovering over her again. “Look at me.”
She kept her chin down, her fingers working fiercely at a knot. “I am fixin’ me dress, as ordered.”
“Chloe.” He reached down, his large hand gently but firmly covering both of hers, arresting her movements. He forced her to look up, his blue eyes dark and hollow in the gray shadows of the stone. “I am a coward about many things, but nae one about what just happened between us.”
Chloe looked at him for a long time and went back to fixing her dress.
I will tell ye all about it when the time is right.