Chapter sixteen
My heart stopped when the water sucked me under into cold darkness, then it started with a jolt as the realization that I might die slammed into me.
I flailed for the bank as the river yanked me under, ice and silt and green-black water filling my nose and mouth.
I grabbed a tangle of roots, but my grip failed me, and I was swept in a whirl farther down the river, scraping and banging into rocks hidden beneath the surface as I went.
Desperation drove me, and I kicked wildly as the water spun me, but it was useless.
When I surfaced again, gasping and choking, I managed to clutch at a branch, thick with clinging moss.
I wrapped my arms around it and hung there, half-submerged, hair plastered to my scalp and my gown billowing up around my waist. My arms burned.
The water tried to peel me free, and the mud beneath my boots oozed and sucked.
I would not last long. I screamed James’s name, hoping against hope that he would hear.
In the next instant, the branch nearly broke in two as another weight seized it beside me. Strong arms closed over mine, and then James’s face, cut and bruised and beautiful, shoved into view, inches from mine.
“Let go!” he bellowed, his mouth barely above the waterline, his hair slicked to his skull.
I did, and in one motion, he spun us both, taking the brunt of the current with his back as he angled me toward the bank.
His legs braced the river bottom, and his arms caged me in, his grip on my wrists bruising in its power.
Inch by inch, he hauled me up, my knees scraping rock, and I collapsed onto the mud and moss, coughing up river water and gasping for air in equal measure.
James dropped beside me, and we lay side by side, facing the sky, water streaming from every inch of us. I could not move. My lungs blazed, my limbs shook, and my heart thudded with a speed that made me certain it might burst.
After a long, dizzy minute, James rolled to his side, chest heaving, and propped himself up on his elbow.
His gaze swept over me, as if to check I still had all my limbs, and then he scowled so fiercely the lines in his brow rivaled any scar on his body.
“Are ye daft?” he yelled, and his voice broke, raw and ragged. “Ye could have died. Ye nearly did!”
I meant to answer him, to apologize or to explain, but what came out was a cackle of laughter, bright and sharp. The sound shocked me, and I clapped a hand to my mouth to stifle it.
James’s eyes blazed. “Is this a jest to ye? Ye find this funny?” He leaned over me, drops flying from his chin, his hands fisting at his sides.
“I watched ye vanish in the current. My heart stopped.” His voice pitched up at the last, and there was a note of pure terror in it that silenced me more than a slap would have.
“Do ye understand what that felt like?” he whispered, the anger draining from him in an instant, leaving him looking shaken and defenseless.
I stared up at him, not laughing anymore, my own ribs aching from the thumping of my heart. Water ran from my eyes, though whether it was river or tears I could not tell. “I did nae do it on purpose,” I whispered. “I slipped.”
He made a derisive sound, then said, “God’s blood!”
The walls around my heart he had been chipping at, cracked open. I reached out without thinking, cupped his cheek in my palm, and said, “I’m here.” My words were a whisper, because it was all I could manage. My heart was in my throat. “Ye saved me.”
He looked at me, eyes bright with a mixture of what looked to be anger and fear, and in that moment, I thought I might drown in the emotions rising in me.
I could not hold them back, no matter how much I wanted to, no matter how steep the price I would pay for letting them break the surface.
With my heart thundering, I rose on my forearms and pressed my lips to his.
He tasted of the river, cool and fresh. His hands instantly cupped my face, and his mouth claimed mine, fierce and hungry.
I gasped against him, and he deepened the kiss, his hands sliding from my face to tangle in my wet hair to pull me closer and crush me to him.
I clung to him, desperate to feel him, to know him as I had never known a man, and as I may never allow myself to know a man again.
With my blood coursing hot through my veins and my emotions a storm inside of me, I realized I had already decided to allow this.
I would choose temporary happiness over fear.
His tongue parted my lips, and I opened to him, our tongues swirling and touching as I gripped his shoulders, thrilled at the hard muscle that coiled beneath my fingertips.
Suddenly, he broke the kiss with a ragged breath, his forehead pressed to mine. “We should stop,” he said, his voice hoarse.
I pulled back, but it was hard to break contact. I had a burning desire to be touched by him, unlike anything I had ever known. “I do nae want to stop,” I said, having to force each word out past my pulse hammering in my throat.
The desire that lit his face made me tremble. “Ye’re certain?” he asked, his gaze searching mine.
I saw nothing there but tenderness and yearning, so I nodded, and I finally allowed my gaze to fall to where the length of him was exposed.
I’d seen naked men before, but as patients, never as a man before me, wanting me, and it was a sight to behold.
I allowed my gaze to travel up over the expanse of his narrow hips and waist, past the hard ridges that made his abdomen, and to his face.
His gaze was riveted on my face, and the intensity in it made my heart jolt, and my insides tighten.
Silently, he stood and then extended a hand toward me.
I took his fingers and let him help me up.
He turned me so that my back was to him.
I wasn’t certain what he was doing, but I trusted him in this.
In a breath, he moved my sodden hair over my shoulder, and then I felt a tug at the back of my neck before my bodice loosened.
A white-hot thrill shot through me at the knowledge that he was unlacing my gown.
Warm lips brushed my neck, making me hiss and arch back into him.
His hand slid across my abdomen, and his finger splayed out, so that his large palm rested flat against my belly.
Pressed as I was to the full length of his hard body, a deep ache blossomed between my thighs and spread to every part of my body like wildfire.
His lips found my neck as his hand slid up over my belly, between the valley of my breasts, to my right shoulder, where he slipped my gown off to expose my bare skin, and then did the same to my other shoulder.
My soaking gown fell at my feet, and I kicked it away as his lips worked some sort of bewitching magic at my neck.
He was stealing all my senses with each long tugging pull of my skin into his warm mouth.
More than that, those wicked lips and his wicked fingers, which were now back at my breasts, cupping both in each of his hands, had set my body to flame.
I was going to die, but it would be a blissfully happy death.
As his fingers flicked over my hard nipples, I arched against him, moaning.
He suckled my neck again, making gooseflesh sweep over my body as rapidly as his fingers were teasing my bud.
When his right hand released my breast, I protested loudly, but his lips came to my ear.
“Shh, now, ye wee wicked lass. Do ye think I’d ever abandon yer pleasure?
Trust me,” he said, and all I could do was lean my head back against his chest and close my eyes.
I was lost. I was lost to him, to his touch, to the emotions raging in me, and to the need I had suppressed for so long.
I inhaled a deep breath, my mind reeling as his hand crept low, and then my shift was raised, sliding against my leg, and my underclothing was tugged down, dropping around my ankles.
I kicked the wet material away, even as his fingers delved between my legs, parted my folds, and found the secret spot, which I had on occasion touched myself.
I jerked in response, but it was a reaction of pleasure.
James knew it, the devil. A deep, wicked chuckle rumbled from his chest as his fingers swirled around my left nipple, and his other fingers whispered across my engorged, throbbing secret spot.
I’d once heard a tale by the priest at my da’s stronghold about a garden where a woman had eaten of a forbidden fruit and caused the man to fall to sin.
I doubted very much in this moment that the priest had that tale correct.
It had to have been the man who had led the woman to the fruit.
Pressure was building inside of me the faster James’s fingers moved, and even if I had wanted to turn away from the sin he dangled before me, I could not have.
He had the string, and with each flick of his fingers, he was pulling me toward sweet downfall.
Something exploded within me then, sending heat scorching through my veins and making the most luxurious waves pulse through my body.
My insides tightened and released repeatedly, until I was whimpering with the sheer pleasure of it.
My legs trembled so badly, I doubted my ability to hold myself up, but there was no need.
James was suddenly turning me to face him and scooping me up.
I protested, I think, who’s to say for certain?
My head was spinning, but I meant to protest about his injury.
I must have, because as he gave me a wolfish smile, he said, “Of all things to possibly kill me, if this is the one, I can nae think of a better way to go.”