Chapter Twenty-two
“Elspeth. Sweet, sweet Elspeth.” His voice was shredded, wisps of grass blown and bent, as he rucked up her skirts. “Are you sure?”
She followed his gaze down the length of their bodies to the pale tangle of curls at the apex of her thighs. Her body seemed to shift within itself, changing into something new and different, uncharted ground in the small map of her life.
“Aye,” she said, more to herself, as well as him. She was sure of herself. And sure of him.
She wanted to say yes to new and different, yes to change. Yes to the new dance between their bodies—a dance that quickened with the possessive touch of his hands on the bared flesh of her upper thighs.
“Aye,” he echoed, lowering his forehead to rest against hers.
Between their bodies, she felt him touch and part her vulnerable flesh. But she didn’t feel vulnerable—she felt open and strong and proud when he touched her. Her muscles clenched in delight, her skin came alive with sensation, streaking across the surface. And she was arching up into his hand, like a blossom seeking the warmth of the sun, needing to be closer and closer still.
“Elspeth.”
His call came like a prayer to her ears, a plea that only she could hear, a boon only she could grant. “Aye,” she answered, assenting to whatever he might ask, wanting anything of this heavy delight drenching her in bliss.
He slid one long finger inside her, and a ripple of strong pleasure surged through her, radiating outward, growing stronger and stronger, until it was a wave of sensation that crashed through her, making her gasp for air.
“Sweet Elspeth,” he crooned against her ear as he worked his other hand beneath to cup her bottom.
She arched into the aching bliss as he took the tight, needy peak of her breast back between his lips, and she made another inarticulate sound of pleasure and want and abandon, giving herself over to the exquisite torture of pleasure.
His breath answered, harsh and strained at her ear. “Let me love you. Let me lie with you.”
His words elicited something so sharp and so strong and so near to hurt it was as if the need was clawing its way out of her soul. “Aye, Hamish. Love me. Lie with me. Please.”
His head swooped down and captured the nubbin of her straining nipple, teasing it with his teeth before sucking fiercely, as he loosened the fall of his breeks and positioned himself at the opening of her body.
She could hear and feel the rasp of his breath coming in audible pants, as if breathing had begun to pain him. As if the need within him was just as sharp and cutting. She planted her feet flat against the carpet of grass, pushing herself into his weight, bucking her hips against the strong probe of his rod beneath the covering of his breeches.
Now it was he who made an inarticulate, animal sound of pleasure as he worked himself free, shoving interfering clothing away so they could be flesh to flesh. Skin to naked skin. Heart to open heart. “Elspeth, I need—”
She needed, too. She wanted. She ached to be one with him.
She went at the loosened folds of his clothes, pushing the fine, rumpled linen of his shirt over his head, using her toes and feet to shuck his breeks from his sleek flanks so she could wrap her arms around his bare back and grasp the strong pillar of his neck.
And still she needed more. She needed the push of his body into hers. She needed the strength of his hands gripping her hips, pulling her tight to him as he bore down into her body, until he was inside her and around her, filling the emptiness within with his body and his love.
There was a tight moment of uncomfortable friction, but it dissolved, dissipating into something sweet and yearning. Something that built, piling up like a hayrick, loose and billowing. And then he began to move and the pleasure was shifting, raining down around her, falling apart and blowing away to leave the want open and exposed.
She felt as if she were being ridden on the wind, racing faster and faster toward some steeple over the next hill, and she couldn’t breathe for the pace. Couldn’t hear or speak or think. Couldn’t do anything but abandon herself to his driving rhythm, riding the pleasure higher and higher up the hill.
She could hear the gasps he drew from her as he rode faster still, giving way to abandonment with each increasingly mindless stroke of his body into hers.
“Please,” she heard, and had no idea whether it was he or she that spoke.
But he answered by grasping her bottom with both his hands, holding her hips, tilting them upward to meet his strokes.
She wrapped her legs around him, grasping him tight to her, straining to hold the reins.
He arched up on his knees, a growling howl of pleasure and need and anguished triumph
tunneling out of his chest. She felt it vibrate all the way through her, bringing her pleasure and pain and joy that she had to touch his face, had to make him open his eyes to see her. To see how much she loved him.
She reached out to stroke his face, and he turned into her caress, kissing and nipping at her fingers. He smiled down at her, his beautiful body moving above her, dancing just for her, until she could no longer meet the heat in his eyes, and closed her own against the tide of feeling that surged within, drenching and tumbling all at the same time.
He cried out, pulsing into her so strongly her climax broke over her like a wave of flame, taking her up and burning her to a glowing cinder spiraling away, upward into the sky.