Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ruaridh’s mouth travelled lower over her bare skin.
Slowly, he unfastened her gown with the grave concentration of a man disarming a trap, though there had been nothing grave in the way his fingers lingered over each ribbon and tie.
Her stays followed, then her shift, then every last defense between her body and the firelit air.
He knelt between her parted knees, broad shoulders dark against the glow of the hearth, with one hand smoothing slowly along the inside of her thigh. His touch was reverent and infuriatingly patient, as if he had all the night in which to undo her.
“Ruaridh,” she whispered, though she was no longer certain whether it was a protest or a plea.
His eyes lifted to hers. The sight of him there stole the rest of her breath. Heat lived in the dark of his gaze. Her breath vanished on a sharp cry when his mouth found her most intimate flesh.
Pleasure struck through her with such sudden force that her back arched from the bed. One hand flew to the linen beneath her, the other to his hair. She did not mean to clutch him there. She did it all the same.
Ruaridh lifted his head only enough to look at her, his mouth glistening and his expression wickedly calm. Then, he lowered his head again and Isobel lost the ability to answer.
His tongue moved over her with slow, devastating care, learning every place that made her breath catch, every touch that turned her bones soft and her thoughts to sparks.
He did not hurry, did not take as if pleasure were something to be seized from her.
He gave, patiently at first, then with growing hunger as her body answered him.
His tongue toyed with her with devilish torment, and the first time she cried out, he made a low sound against her that seemed almost like triumph.
“Ruaridh,” she gasped.
He slid one arm beneath her hips, drawing her closer to his mouth, and the shameless intimacy of it should have mortified her. Perhaps it did. But the mortification burned into desire so swiftly that she could not tell one from the other.
He kissed her there as if she were precious, as if she were beloved, as if every part of her that had once been neglected, bartered, or judged had become worthy of worship beneath his hands. The thought undid her nearly as much as the pleasure.
Her fingers tightened in his hair. “Please.”
He answered with his mouth. The rhythm changed.
His tongue stroked her more firmly now, then softer, then with a wicked precision that made her hips lift helplessly.
Her body, traitorous and honest, sought more of him.
He gave it. His hand pressed over her stomach, holding her steady when she began to tremble.
“That’s it,” he murmured against her. “Dinnae hide from me.”
He returned to her, and the pleasure gathered too quickly for pride to withstand.
It rose from the center of her, hot and brilliant, spreading outward until even her fingertips seemed alive with it.
He heard her moan, felt her move against his mouth, held her through it as if her surrender were something sacred.
When release took her, it left her shaking. He stayed with her, gentling the last sharp pulses into warmth, pressing kisses to the tender inside of her thigh, her hip, the soft skin below her navel. Isobel lay beneath him dazed and breathless, with one hand still threaded through his hair.
When he finally rose over her, his face was stripped of all composure. She reached for him. His breath caught as her fingers found the fastening of his breeches.
“Isobel.”
Everything she couldn’t say was evident in her eyes. He shed the last of his clothes with far less patience than he had shown with hers. In the firelight, he looked carved of strength and shadow, the broad planes of his chest marked by old scars she learned with her lips.
Isobel’s throat went dry. He bent over her, bracing one hand beside her head, and kissed her with the taste of herself still upon his mouth. It should have shocked her. Instead, it made her ache.
“Tell me,” he said softly.
There was no command in it, only the same question he always asked her in one form or another: Dae ye choose this? Dae ye choose me?
She wrapped her legs about him. “Aye.”
She felt the tip of his manhood press against her, as he entered her slowly. The stretch of him stole her breath. After an initial discomfort, her body welcomed him, still tender from what he had done to her, so ready that the first full joining made them both shudder.
Ruaridh bowed his head against her throat.
“God, Isobel.”
She held him close, one hand moving over his shoulder, feeling the strength that trembled there.
At first, he was careful, each stroke slow and deep enough to make her clutch at his back.
He watched her face as though every flutter of her lashes, every parting of her lips, gave him some necessary truth.
But desire soon sharpened. The careful rhythm broke into something hungrier, still tender but no longer restrained.
Isobel met him without shame. She seemed to revel in his loss of control.
She seemed to love the sound that escaped him when her nails dragged over his shoulders, the way his hand slid beneath her hip to bring her closer, the way his mouth found hers again as if kissing her were the only thing keeping him tethered.
The pleasure began to build again. He felt it. His pace changed, becoming harder, more urgent, his voice rough at her ear.
“Come with me, mo chridhe.”
She broke at the words. Her body tightened around him, pleasure sweeping through her in wave after wave until she could do nothing but cling to him and say his name. Ruaridh followed her with a deep, helpless groan, his body going rigid above hers.
At the last moment, he withdrew. Isobel felt the loss at once, intimate and startling, but then he was over her still, with one hand braced beside her, and the other closing around his manhood as his release spilled hot across her skin.
He shuddered with it, in a breath that was ragged and unguarded.
For a long moment afterward, neither of them moved. The fire cracked softly. Ruaridh lifted his head first. His gaze moved over her flushed face, her loosened hair and the evidence of him upon her body, and his expression softened into something so tender that it nearly hurt.
Then he bent and kissed her, slow and sweet, as if there were no fear beyond the walls and no past that had ever tried to keep them apart… only this and only them.
The Great Hall had been made ready for company, and in Isobel’s chamber, where Sorcha stood behind her with a gown of deep blue wool and silk gathered over one arm, time seemed to have drawn itself into a knot.
“Lift yer arms, me lady,” Sorcha said, with the grave authority of one who had conducted ladies into gowns under conditions of greater difficulty than war.
Isobel obeyed, though her fingers were not quite steady.
The fabric settled over her with a whisper.
It was finer than she had expected to wear that evening.
Her heart was presently behaving in a manner most unbecoming.
Sorcha moved about her with deft hands, tugging here, smoothing there, fastening tapes with a competence so soothing that Isobel might have borne it better had she possessed a quieter conscience.
“Ye are frowning at yerself as if the mirror has insulted ye,” Sorcha observed.
“It has revealed too much.”
“A mirror cannae reveal what isnae there.”
“That is precisely its cruelty.”
Sorcha made a soft sound of amusement and began to lace the gown.
“Sorcha,” she said very quietly, “I must tell ye something.”
The laces remained loose beneath Sorcha’s fingers. “Aye?”
Isobel looked down at her hands. They were clasped before her, the right thumb moving once over the left in a restless little stroke she did not remember commanding.
“I… have spent the night with him.”
For one astonished instant, there was no answer. Then, Sorcha made a sound so openly delighted and so nearly triumphant, that Isobel whipped round in alarm.
“Sorcha!”
“I said naething!”
“Ye made a sound.”
“A very discreet one.”
“It was nae discreet. It was indecently pleased.”
Sorcha pressed both hands to her cheeks, though she made no attempt to hide the brightness in her eyes.
“Well, am I tae look mournful over it? Heaven preserve us, me lady, I have watched the two of ye circle one another like two proud hawks determined tae pretend neither wished tae land first. I am allowed a little satisfaction.”
Isobel felt heat rise from her throat to her face. “It is nae a matter fer satisfaction.”
“Nay?” Sorcha’s smile softened but did not disappear. “Dae ye regret it?”
Isobel turned back toward the looking glass, for it was easier to meet her own reflection than Sorcha’s gentle delight. The woman in the glass looked composed enough, if one did not know where to look.
“Nay,” she admitted. “I dinnae.”
Sorcha came nearer, her smile now quieter. “Then why dae ye look as if ye have confessed tae burning the chapel?”
Because it had been easier when she hated him. The thought came so clearly that Isobel nearly said it aloud. Hatred had been a kind of shelter. But tenderness had entered without permission, like light beneath a locked door, and had shown her all the places where anger had not protected her at all.
“I was frightened of the marriage once,” she continued, smoothing a hand down the front of her gown though there was no crease to mend. “Of being his wife in name, in body, in every manner the world recognizes.”
Sorcha listened without interruption.
“But that isnae what frightens me most now.”
The fire snapped softly in the grate. A gust of wind pressed rain against the window, a delicate, silver ticking upon glass.
Isobel swallowed. “It is what I feel for him.”
There. It was said, not plainly enough to be the worst of it, but near enough that her heart seemed to recoil from the sound.
Sorcha’s expression changed at once. “Oh, Isobel.”