Chapter 16
“Do you know what the best thing about this place is?” Kayden asked, Mya's jacket entirely unbuttoned and his mouth on her neck.
“Hhm?” Mya gasped. “Wh-What is it?”
“That no one is going to come out here and find us, which means that I can take my time with you.”
As though to prove his point, he tugged her up into a sitting position. She helped him pull the jacket off, and they tossed it aside. He threw his own coat to join it. Kayden leaned in again to kiss her, his fingers already on the buttons of her blouse.
“You're sure?” she asked. “No one?”
“Quite sure,” Kayden said.
Mya wasn't entirely certain what kind of proof he had for the claim he was making, but she decided that she was just going to give in and go with it.
If someone stumbled upon them, someone did.
She wasn't sure that she would even care in a few more minutes if the entire population of Inverness came trooping up the rise and watched them.
“Up,” Kayden said. “Come on.”
He drew her to her feet, and Mya reached for his clothing as he finished stripping her out of the thankfully simple riding skirt. The corset, of course, would still take a little doing.
Mya tugged at the collar of his shirt, and Kayden let his arms drop for a moment so she could slide it off of him. His undershirt and her petticoat followed.
Pants, corset, chemise, bloomers... Eventually everything was laid aside on an unoccupied corner of the blanket and they were both bare in the warm sunlight.
Kayden lowered Mya back, following her down, and she looked up into dark eyes gone even darker with want.
He leaned toward her, and his lips brushed hers.
When he drew back, Mya tried to follow, reaching for him, but Kayden shook his head. “No,” he said, voice gone deeper, rougher at its edges. “Stay. For me?”
Mya nodded, sinking back to the blanket. If Kayden wished her to stay, she would stay.
At the edges of her vision, she saw him reach for something, dragging it across to his side. Mya's eyes narrowed. She was sure she knew exactly what that was going to be.
True to her expectations, Kayden held out a fork with a bite of tart on it. “Here,” he said. “Eat.”
“Did you get me naked just so you could feed me chocolate?” Mya asked, laughing. She leaned up and took the bite anyway. It was really good, melting over her tongue with just a hint of sharp salt to cut the sweetness.
“No,” Kayden said. He grinned down at her, and she felt his finger stroke a line along the valley between her breasts. “I got you naked so that I can lick chocolate off your body.”
Before she had time to reply, he had dipped his head down and followed the line his finger drew with the tip of his tongue. Mya moaned.
“I did not think it was possible for this to get more delicious,” Kayden said when he had raised his head again. “But I believe I just found the secret.”
His fingers dipped into the tart again, and then he was rubbing them over her nipples, already peaked tight from anticipation and that touch, drawing curling lines across her breasts. Mya bit her lip, her fingers sliding into his hair.
Kayden lowered his mouth to her chest.
Her hand constricted in his hair as soon as his lips met her skin, her back arching, and his name fell from her lips.
The sensations he created had Mya teetering between wanting this sweet torture to end and never wanting it to stop.
His sinfully wicked tongue lapped up the chocolate and each time it passed over her nipple her other hand tightened in the blanket beneath them.
By the time he had licked the last of the chocolate away, Mya’s grip was so tight she was sure that the wool would rip beneath her fingers.
“Oh, heavens, Kayden.” Her voice was thick with want. “Please, darling.”
“I do not think I am quite finished yet,” Kayden said.
He dragged a line of chocolate down the center of her body to just above the place she wanted him most, and then followed it slowly, so slowly, with his tongue.
Mya swore at him, writhing under the hands that held her hips in place, but he would not let her go, would not move faster than the tortuously slow slide that was driving her mad with need.
“Kayden,” she said again. “Kayden. Kayden.”
His eyes lifted to her face, and he must have been satisfied at what he found there, because he moved faster, suddenly, teeth scraping gently against her skin between flicks of his tongue.
Mya sobbed his name.
He didn’t bother with the chocolate after that, just buried his face between her thighs and licked her until she was bucking against his hands, body undulating and both hands fisted in the blanket. She was close. She was so close, and he knew it. Must have known it.
Kayden pulled away. Mya forced her hazy eyes open and found him sitting back on his knees between her legs, looking down at her.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Don’t stop, Kayden. Please. Please. I need—”
He caught her around the hips and flipped her abruptly over onto her hands and knees, dragging her back against him and filling her with his length in one smooth thrust.
Mya cried out at the unexpected pleasure, rocking into the stretch of it.
“You’re so beautiful,” Kayden was saying, leaning down over her to drop kisses along her spine. “I can’t get enough of you, Mya. Don’t know how I ever lived without you before this.”
Mya shuddered with pleasure and desire, arching back to meet his thrusts.
Neither of them were going to last very long.
She was already on the edge. Kayden’s teeth closed over the nape of her neck, biting down just hard enough to sting, and that was it.
Pleasure shocked through her, dancing along her spine, and Mya dropped forward onto her forearms as her elbows gave out.
Kayden didn’t stop. He just kept going, moving in her, his rhythm hard and fast. Mya groaned, nails catching in the wool of the blanket when her fingers curled and let his hands on her hips move her to match his pace.
“Fuck. Mya.” His voice had gone tight.
She was already rising on a new tide of pleasure, carried toward the peak of it. His hands tightened on her hips. His hips moved faster against hers. He groaned his release against her neck. In nearly the same instant, Mya followed him over the edge with a gasp.
Both of them panted, Kayden with his forehead resting between her shoulder blades, and Mya with her cheek turned against her forearm. Kayden slid carefully back and gathered her into his arms, laying them both down on the blanket with her back to his chest and his arm around her waist.
“What do you think?” he asked, and she could feel the rumble of the words in his body pressed against her own.
“I think you have far too strong a fondness for chocolate tart,” Mya answered, snuggling contentedly deeper into his embrace.
Kayden laughed.
***
When they at last dragged themselves up from the blanket, the day had moved well into the afternoon, and the remains of the chocolate tart had completely melted. Kayden stood looking at it ruefully as Mya started the process of getting the layers of her clothes back on.
“Next time,” he said. “We’re not letting any of the chocolate tart go to waste.” He stepped around her back to help her tighten up her corset. “And we’re also going swimming.”
“Who says you get to decide everything that we do?” Mya asked, trying not to sway too much into the tug of his hands on the stays.
There was a moment of silence behind her. “If you do not like it, Mya, we can do something else. I did not mean to make you feel as though I am always telling you what to do, or demanding that we do something you would rather not.”
Mya turned and lifted her hand to his cheek, stroking the line of his jaw where it was a little rough with stubble. “I don’t feel that way. I was only teasing you, dearest.”
Kayden smiled. “Well, good then. I am not sure if we could continue this relationship if you did not like chocolate tart.”
Mya just laughed, shaking her head as she gathered up the rest of her things and settled her riding hat back on the mess her hair had become. “Thankfully, you will never have to find out. I am just as fond of chocolate tart as the next person.”
“On second thought,” Kayden said thoughtfully, “maybe I should find someone who doesn’t like it. Then I don’t have to worry about them stealing it from me.”
“You have far too much stake in chocolate tarts. Especially ones that aren’t even in existence yet. Hypothetical chocolate tarts.”
“Chocolate tarts are important.”
“Get dressed and get on your horse,” Mya answered, shaking her head.
Looking entirely too amused with himself, Kayden did as she said, and they rode back down toward Inverness in companionable silence. Mya’s thoughts were moving ahead, toward the next time they would be together. Kayden seemed to be still mourning the loss of half a chocolate tart.
They were nearly back to the firth that cut between them and Inverness when they came down a little gully and onto the flat top of a rise that looked down at the water and the city beyond.
There was a house there. It was ancient, the walls crumbled down to their foundations and the roof long since gone.
Mya could see a little patch of what had, perhaps, been a garden long ago, though it had since gone wild. She slowed her horse.
“Mya?” Kayden looked up, a question in his expression. “What are we doing here?”
“I’m not sure,” Mya said, pulling her mount to a halt entirely and sliding from the mare’s back.
There was something about the place that…
called to her. It felt like something she had done before, standing on that particular rise and looking down at the city.
When she turned toward the hills rising behind the ruins of the house, she half-expected to see a stag standing there, his head lifted high and his pale coat turned gold with the afternoon sunlight.
But there was nothing.
“Mya, I am not sure this isn’t someone’s property.”
“If it is,” Mya pointed out, gesturing to the overgrown clearing and tumbledown house, “it isn’t a property they care for very much.”
She turned away from him and made her way through the grass until she was standing in front of the broken, moss-covered foundation.
There was nothing to see, of course. No utensils or furniture left behind, the old house gone.
Mya blinked back tears that were suddenly welling in her eyes, not sure why they had started.
In a moment, Kayden was beside her, one strong arm around her shoulders and drawing her back away from the building.
“Mya? Darling? Talk to me. What is wrong?”
Mya shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted softly.
“I just felt… I feel like there’s something here that I remember, but I don’t know how I could when it’s so obviously been falling down for years.
Or decades. Or centuries. Who knows?” She turned to lay her head against his shoulder, shutting out the world beyond him.
“It’s just a little sad. To see a place that probably held a family be reduced to rubble.
People must have been happy here, once, and now they’re not. ”
Kayden held her closer. “This place served its purpose,” he said, gently. “It has done what it is meant to do. That it is crumbling, that doesn’t mean that memories of what it was go away. They’re still here, beloved. They will always be here.”
“That’s beautiful,” Mya said, sniffing a little. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome, my dear.”
Together, they got back on their horses and rode on toward Inverness, leaving the ramshackle remains of the little house to nature and taking their memories with them.