chapter
7
HIS MOUTH DESCENDED, plundered, tasted her desire for him, which he amply returned. His hands swept down her sides to cup her buttocks, pulling her harder against his erection, his chest abrading her nipples.
Then those large, beautiful hands slid between their bodies, his thumbs sweeping across her turgid peaks, sending honeyed bliss spiking through Rachel. She moaned into his mouth, the sound wanton and wicked.
He pulled back and stared down at her, conflict and confusion battling in his eyes, even as his gaze continued to devour her, bringing heat to all her most sensitive spots. She didn’t want it to end. Why did he stop?
Perhaps, she thought painfully, because he was being the sensible one, realizing that theirs was a temporary relationship and that the scales of life and time might very well tip at any moment, righting those things that were out of kilter.
Or perhaps his reticence to take what she willingly offered had nothing to do with the fact that some twisted fate had set them worlds apart, but something far more cruel.
A wife. Children.
A life that did not include her.
Was he thinking about another woman when he kissed her? Yearning to hold another body close?
She wanted to ask him, but wondered if she really desired to hear the answer. Perhaps it was better not to know.
“What’s the matter, lass?” he quietly asked.
Did he not see what was in her eyes? Could he possibly not know how she felt?
“Tell me,” he gently commanded, cupping her cheek, raising her eyes to his. “We keep no secrets between us.”
No secrets. No lies. Not when time was so very precious. “I . . . I want to know . . . if you have a wife.”
He regarded her for a long moment, and with each second that ticked past, her heart began to crumble, piece by devastated piece. She could not blame him for loving another woman.
No matter what she thought, true love did not translate through time, through barriers that no human could breach; their souls had not been searching through eternity to find each other. Such thoughts belonged to other realms. Not theirs.
Rachel turned away from him, not wanting him to see what his silence had wrought, the pain so clear on her face.
He came up behind her, sliding his hands around her waist, his pelvis nestling against her bottom, and in an instant, her despair ebbed, her loneliness waned, replaced by a merging of something earthy, a connection unable to be explained. It simply . . . was.
She wanted to hold him close, feel his heart beating in tempo to hers, rub like a cat over the sweet hardness pressing against her, feel him tense, hear him groan with desire. For her. Only for her.
Never had a man made her feel so wild, so wicked, yearning with the need to release all her inhibitions and revel in her sexuality.
His hands fisted in her hair, gently tugging her head back to rest against his chest as he whispered in her ear, “There is no other woman, lass. Only you.”
Relief and a sweet ache poured through her veins. This was madness. They were worlds apart, centuries apart, and yet not apart at all.
His fingers splayed across her stomach, his lips tracing her jawline. “God, lady . . . ye make me forget myself. ’Tis as if all the years of honing my skills on the battlefield and learning the necessity of control were for naught. With a winsome smile, a sultry glance, ye bring me tae my knees. I yield tae ye, lady. Ye are a force far greater than I.”
His words sent a delicious thrill through her. To think she made this beautiful pagan wild with desire for her was bone-melting, divine. Pure heaven.
Rachel tipped back her head and closed her eyes, simply wanting to feel the warm press of Duncan’s hands on her body, imprint his every touch in her mind.
She turned her head up for his kiss, his tongue thrusting into her mouth in a rhythm she longed for him to do with his body. She throbbed, heat pooling at the juncture of her thighs.
“I want tae touch ye,” he whispered against her lips, asking her permission instead of simply taking what he wanted.
“Please . . .” she begged, curling into him as his hand cupped her breast, her body dissolving under his sensual demand.
She gave in to her need and rubbed her bottom across his erection, reveling in the soft groans her actions elicited.
“Ye are indeed a witch tae have enticed me so. Heaven help me, lass, ye make me want . . .” He stopped abruptly, his hands stilling.
Rachel could feel his withdrawal, and she very nearly cried out her despair. “What?” she begged. “What do I make you want?”
When he didn’t answer, she turned in his arms, looking into those haunting eyes, knowing she could lose herself in them, in him.
“What, Duncan . . . please tell me.”
“Ye make me want tae forget that my life is not here,” he said, his words laced with anguish, lancing her heart.
“But you’re here with me now. We could—”
He pressed a finger to her lips, stopping her from saying something that she could not, should not. He smoothed a tendril of hair from her face, his fingers lingering, a bittersweet smile on his face.
“Ye know as well as I that I must find a way tae get back tae where I belong. There are people who depend on me, who even now may be struggling with my disappearance.” He paused, and then made a startling confession, “I have a son.”
His admission stilled everything inside her. “But you said—”
“I have no wife,” he reassured her. “But I cannot deny that I’ve had mistresses.” His words wounded when they should not, when they had not been meant as weapons.
Rachel tried to pull away from him, not wanting to hear whatever was coming next. Though he held her to him without force, his grip was unrelenting. He would not let her run away.
“Nay, lass,” he rumbled in a voice meant to soothe. “Listen tae me.”
Rachel shook her head. “I don’t want to hear that you loved another woman.”
He took hold of her chin and forced her head up. “I did not love another woman. There has been no one who has captured my heart, and yet I fear . . .” He stopped, his gaze roaming her face as if to memorize what he saw.
“What do you fear?” she whispered.
His smile was almost grim as he looked into her eyes once more. “I fear, sweet witch, that I could very well lose my heart tae ye. Truth . . . but I think I already have. ’Tis as if my heart, and all I am, has always belonged tae ye.”
Rachel’s heart soared, and she felt as if her entire life had been building toward this very moment, as if she had simply been biding time until the emptiness inside her was filled by the only thing missing.
This man.
She had felt a connection with him from the start, and though she had not known him, her soul had recognized him, seen what her eyes had not.
“I feel the same way.”
“Ye do?”
“I do.” She smiled gently and said, “Now, tell me about your son.”
He looked uncertain about where to begin. “I have only known the lad these past six months. I knew naught of his existence for fourteen years, and then his mother died of the pox and he sought me out. He is a fine boy.” His words rang with pride. “Strapping. Fierce. A warrior at heart. And the next MacGregor laird.”
How Rachel wished that his child had been part of her, that fate hadn’t played a terrible joke and set them lifetimes apart, only allowing them this one fleeting glimpse of how they could have been together.
A frown settled on his brow. “I worry, though, that he shall take up arms against the Gordons if I do not return.”
The thought shocked Rachel. “But he’s only a boy! Certainly he can’t go into battle.”
“Aye, he can. Already he trains with my men-at-arms. He says he will take up the MacGregor cause against the king and help rally the clans for the Young Pretender. I have bid him tae stay at Glengarren and see tae my people while I am gone on the Stuart crusade. This does not sit well with him. But he will do as his laird commands, unless . . .” He stopped.
Rachel knew what he did not say. His son would fight in his stead should he not return. She did not want to think about the bloody battles a child might be forced to engage in to defend the MacGregor land and honor.
“Do not fret, lass,” he said then, tugging her back into his arms, a place she longed to be. “Things will work out as they should.”
She wanted to believe him, desperately. She longed to wake up and discover that Duncan was not a warrior from another century, but of hers. That what they shared was real, and strong, and indomitable. And that no force—not time, not duty, not even death—could separate them.
“Ye have not asked me why I was here in the library when ye came down,” he said then, diverting the wild flight of her thoughts with the lazy sensuality etched on his handsome face.
“You said you couldn’t sleep.”
“But you have not queried me as tae why I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why?” she breathed.
“I was lonely for ye.”
His admission weakened her knees and sent a thrill spiraling through her.
“I thought ’twas best for me tae stay down here . . . or else risk knocking upon your bedroom door and beseeching ye tae heal the wound within me, tae allow me to find succor within the sweetness of your lips.”
He had felt as she had, known that longing, that aching despair that sought only one relief: merging—of hearts, of bodies. Minds and souls.
“Duncan . . .” she murmured, sliding her hands up his chest, her fingers twining in his hair. She lifted on her toes to drop kisses along his jaw. “Love me . . .”
His hands tightened at her waist, and when she looked into his eyes, they burned with desire held barely in check. One kiss. One touch. And she prayed she would break his control.
She brought his head down and fused her mouth to his, heard his low groan and knew she had won, knew she stood victorious against this larger-than-life Highlander, and the defeat was all she could have ever hoped for.
His hands slipped beneath her pajama top, and the feel of his large, hot fingers against her flesh was almost more than she could stand. She moaned into his mouth as his fingers flicked across her sensitive nipples.
“I must taste these,” he said in a husky rasp, as his lips trailed a hot path down her throat. “They have haunted my dreams and taunted my waking hours.”
With deft, expert fingers, he made quick work of the buttons and pushed the pajama top off her shoulders. He looked at her, a flush rising to her skin under that heated regard.
“Ye are beautiful, lady.”
His words humbled her, made the feelings she had for him redouble—let her know, without a doubt, that what was about to happen between the two of them was right.
He dropped to his knees before her, his posture almost reverent as he pressed his mouth to her stomach, feathering kisses across her skin, not missing a spot, being more than thorough . . . and driving her mad as he slowly worked his way up to the underside of her breasts, first one, then the other.
“Bend over, sweet.”
Rachel willingly obliged, her breasts dangling like ripe fruit in front of his mouth.
Her womb contracted as his mouth closed around her nipple, suckling her, gently tugging, drawing the peak farther into his mouth as his hand worked on her other breast, rolling the aching peak between thumb and forefinger. She had to place her hands on his shoulders to remain upright.
“Now,” he said, glancing up at her through a fringe of thick, black lashes, “I must taste the very heart of ye.”
Then he tugged down her pajama bottoms.
Like a willing puppet, she let him do as he pleased, barely cognizant as his large hands gripped her thighs and spread her legs, his thumbs opening her folds . . . the tip of his warm tongue sliding into the cleft to flick the engorged pulse point.
Everything inside Rachel dissolved in an onslaught of divine, exquisite, erotic pleasure. And when his hands slid up her sides to cup her breasts and resume his sensual ministrations, she knew she had truly found heaven.
She tossed her head back as he brought her to an explosive climax, the first she had ever experienced, the convulsions going on and on, sheathing his finger when he slipped it inside her, a groan breaking from his lips, bringing her gaze down to his bowed head.
She combed her fingers through his silky, dark hair. He looked up, taking hold of her arms, easing her slowly to her knees before him.
No words passed between them as he coiled an arm around her waist and took her down to the carpet in front of the fireplace. No words were needed. What they had to say was in their eyes, was communicated with their hands, their mouths.
He spread her legs and slid his hard length into her wet and waiting heat, her body tightening around him, accepting him, sighing into him.
He stroked in and out of her in a slow, steady rhythm, keeping himself poised above her, making her watch what he was doing to her, the muscles in his arms standing out as he strained to hold back, to draw out her pleasure until another orgasm, deeper and more intense than the first, pulled everything from her, culminating in a sweet flood where their bodies merged.
Then he took her hands in his, lifting them above her head, his lips coming down hard on hers, his tongue driving into her mouth as his shaft drove into her body, pumping away, harder and faster, sweat beading on their flesh as she moaned his name.
His endurance was unending, and he kept up the divine torture until she convulsed around him one more time. Then, and only then, did he pour his love into her, her name a rumbling exultation on his lips.
He rolled to his side, drawing her back against his chest, his body spooning along hers as he wrapped his arms tightly around her. Together they watched the fire flicker and dance, the flames ebbing with the night.
And as her eyes slowly drifted shut, her body enfolded within his protective embrace, Rachel knew, no matter what happened, whatever tomorrow brought, she would never be the same again.
Love had forever changed her.