Chapter Fifteen #2
He muttered her name between kisses like a litany, holding her up with apparent ease from just the one arm around her waist. This display of his strength made her feel dizzy with excitement. “God. I dinnae deserve ye.”
Well, she did not like that. It was her turn to grab his hair, and she did so with both fists, not bothering to be gentle. She yanked his face from hers, and she thought there was a gleam of approval in his gaze at her roughness.
“I decide what I deserve,” she told him, holding too tightly for him to look away. His blue eyes blazed. “And I decide what I will accept. And I want ye, Blake MacFarlane. So unless ye intend to deny me…”
It must have hurt him, the way he lunged from her grip. But he didn’t seem to mind it as he reclaimed her mouth anew.
They kissed for an age, but it wasn’t long enough. Blake’s arms never trembled as he held her, but Katrina found that she wanted more. Needed more.
Her body felt too hot within her clothes, and there was a coiling tension in her belly, one that urged her closer and closer to him. She was wrapped in him as tightly as she could be—and still it wasn’t enough.
She writhed against him, pressing closer in whatever way she could.
Blake released an incomprehensible snarl, then spun them, crossing the small room to the cot in the corner. He crouched, still holding her, and used one arm to throw back the dusty coverlet to reveal crisp, clean sheets beneath.
Only then did he lay her down, as gentle as though she was made of spun glass.
And, as much as it thrilled her when he displayed that brutal, powerful strength of his, there was something about this that touched her.
The reverence in which he looked at her. As though she were beautiful and precious, as though she was important, as though she mattered and wasn’t just a tool to make an advantageous marriage or to lure out an enemy.
He looked at her like he cared.
“Katrina,” he said, tone worshipful. “Ye cannae ken how lovely ye are.”
She wasn’t certain that she believed that—she knew she was not a grand beauty—but the way he said it made her want to believe it.
“Come here,” she said instead. “Blake, please.”
His head dropped back as though her request caused him pain. And then he fell upon her again.
His weight was a wonder, the way it pressed her down into the surprisingly soft bedding, all warm and firm and consuming.
She bent a knee, giving him space to press closer against her.
They groaned in unison as his hips canted against hers.
He was even warmer there, even with the layers of clothing between them.
“Blake,” she said again. “Please.”
He gave her a long, probing look to make certain that she meant it. She didn’t recant, didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as blink.
Before he kissed her again, he smiled a tiny sliver of a smile, and her heart stopped for an instant.
But then his lips touched hers.
Her hands came up to his shirt, tearing at the fabric, pulling it off his shoulders, shoving it down his arms. She was a healer to her core, so she couldn’t resist the few moments that she fluttered her touch over the bandage on his shoulder, but when she found it secure and dry even after a day of riding, she returned to the infinitely preferable task of mapping every inch of him with her touch.
He had scars, dozens of them crisscrossing over one another. Some thin, others raised and gnarled; some old, some new. They made a map of a life spent in battle, spent fighting and hurting and bleeding.
But that was all right. She knew how to heal wounds.
She started kissing at his shoulders, his arms, anywhere she could reach.
He busied himself with pushing her clothes off until he could return the gesture.
His caresses, however, trailed down to the sensitive peaks of her breasts; when he closed his mouth around one sensitive nipple, she forgot her quest to touch all of him in the onslaught of sensation that came with the wet heat of his kisses.
“Blake,” she groaned, because he was the entirety of the world to her for now.
“Katrina,” he whispered into her chest, then kissed lower and lower, to her stomach, to the edge of her breeches before he started to push them down. “My lass.”
The possessiveness in his voice made her startle, but not nearly as much as the feeling of his mouth coming down on her center.
The only thing that kept her from levitating off the bed at the pleasure of that touch was his hands, firm and solid on her legs, pinning her in place.
As with everything, Blake was not gentle in this, and the pleasure was practically inflicted upon her, an onslaught of wondrousness that brought tears to her eyes.
When he brought one of his hands between her legs and slipped two fingers inside her, the sensation blunt and inelegant and perfect, her entire world vanished beyond a blaze of blinding white as her pleasure erupted.
“Fuck, Katrina, leannan,” Blake gasped, as breathless as if it was his body being seized with waves of pleasure. “Look at ye. Look at ye.”
Katrina basked in the ebbing tide of her pleasure and in the sun-warm adoration in his gaze, but it did not compare to the feel of his body against hers.
And she was a healer. She knew the workings of bodies, even if she hadn’t experienced any of this for herself. She knew there was more. And she intended to have it.
“Come here,” she urged, intending it to sound like an invitation. It came out more like begging.