an eternity of time before speaking. So many wrong things to say and very few right ones crossed his mind.
‘Ciara, ’tis best if we do not. The last time …’ He thought about their last encounter alone in the night and how it ended up with her in his arms devouring her mouth with a kiss he could still remember and taste.
‘I have a last request for my closest friend before I set off to my marriage.’
Did she have to remind him that she would leave him forever? For a brief moment when he entered the cottage, he’d allowed himself to imagine that this was how he would find her on his return each night. Waiting for him. Waiting for his touch, his kiss, his body … his love.
The words brought him back to the reality that would be—she was not his. He swallowed several times, trying to clear his throat from the sudden emotion clogging it.
‘What is your request?’
‘James and I spoke about our marriage and it is clear he wants a calm, sensible relationship, built on polite conversations and companionable peace.’
Tavis could believe both that she could have spoken to the man about that and that young James would be a calm, dispassionate, courteous husband to Ciara. Not that that was the way he would have her to wife, but …
A sudden vision of them in bed, with him buried deep in her flesh, urging her with hands and body to explode in passion with him. Her hair spread around them as his hands pleasured her lovely, rose-tipped breasts. He was hard before he finished the thought.
‘If I must face a life of calm and sensible affection,’ she said, now walking towards him, ‘then I wish to know the passion and pleasure I will be missing with you.’
Bloody hell! Did she not know the temptation she was to him? How much of a struggle it had been to keep his hands to himself and to seek his own release when the need for her tempted him in the deep of the night, every night, since he’d given in and tasted her mouth?
‘Ciara, I beg you to leave now,’ he forced out from behind clenched teeth. ‘Before it is too late.’
‘It has been too late for some time, Tavis.’ She reached up and touched his cheek. ‘But I will leave if you can kiss me once and let me go.’ Her smile filled with wicked temptation.
Sweet Christ, but the lass knew how to challenge his resolve!
‘One true kiss, Tavis. I beg you,’ she whispered, the very word and the image sending blood pumping harder through his veins. ‘One true kiss and I will leave with that memory in my heart forever.’
Surely he had enough honour and strength to suffer through a kiss, only one kiss before he would send her away?
He nodded.
With his hands placed firmly at his sides, he would not touch her. If he did that, he was certain that he could control himself, but damn the lass, she had other plans. When he leaned his face down to touch her lips, she placed her fingers there and shook her head.
‘Nay. One kiss. I decide when.’
He was going to die and go to hell, of that he was now certain, but he had resisted her thus far and he would keep his control. He would … he must …
He might have had a chance if she had not reached for the belt holding his plaid in place. If she had not moved around him, stripping him of his weapons, his belt, the plaid and the shirt under it. He could have if she’d not brought over a bucket of steaming water and begun to wash him.
Oh, hell, he never stood a chance and she knew it from the unrepentant gleam in her eyes.
If she was startled to find him as he was, she did not mention it. Worse, her tongue slipped out and touched her lips as she washed him.
‘I have seen you before,’ she whispered as she stroked the warm, wet cloth over his back and lower. ‘At the stream in Dunalastair. You were naked there and I watched.’
Her words undid him and his resolve. He laughed at her admission.
‘You were wicked to do that.’ She laughed softly but did not stop her ministrations. ‘And even more wicked to do this.’
She finished his back and drifted around front again. The virgin that she was showed herself for a moment when she reached for him and then stopped. Tavis took her hand and the cloth and wrapped them around the length of him. The expression on her face and the way she opened her mouth, breathing through it quickly, just enhanced his response and his flesh surged in her grasp. He guided her lower and then tossed the cloth aside and splashed some water over his skin to rinse the soap away as she watched.
It was time to show her that one kiss would not be enough, never be enough, but she stopped him once more by moving away.
Her hands loosened the laces behind her with practised ease. She pulled the gown over her head, giving him a clear view of her naked body beneath the sheer chemise. The flames from the hearth revealed her exquisite curves and the dark triangle of hair hiding the place he longed most to touch … and stroke … and taste. Her nipples tightened—did she even notice?—as he watched her. And as she watched him.
Bold as he knew her to be and braver than he could ever hope to be, she walked to him now and offered herself to him. Oh, aye, he would pleasure her, but he would not cross the line to dishonour another man’s betrothed, idiot that the man was or not and idiot that he himself might be.
‘I will not take that which is not mine,’ he whispered. ‘But I will give you the pleasure you seek, the pleasure that can be between a man and a woman.’
‘The pleasure that can be between you and me, Tavis.’
Innocent and a seductress in every breath, she probably did not realise that pleasure did not mean he had to take her maidenhead. ‘That kiss, Ciara. ’tis time for your kiss.’
He thought her game was over, but she took off the chemise and placed her hands beneath her breasts, offering them to him. Arching her back to lift them higher, she whispered, ‘Kiss me here, Tavis.’
He stared, oh, aye, he did, for this was the vision from his dreams come to life. Her lithe body, her breasts that would fit perfectly in his hands as he kissed them—all of it was straight from his dreams.
He closed his eyes and prayed for the strength to keep his honourable pledge even as he leaned down to take the tip of one of her breasts in his mouth. She gasped and he knew she’d expected a polite kiss and not the hunger-filled taking he gave. When he felt her legs tremble, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to his bed.
He would show her the full measure of a kiss now. Kneeling next to her, he touched her with only his mouth. First he took the other nipple in his mouth and suckled it, rubbing and teasing the tip of it even harder. If he was, she would be, too. Her body arched beneath his mouth and she whispered his name over and over. Kissing and licking his way up her body, Tavis took her mouth next.
He smiled as she opened it for him, but he teased her lips, kissing them gently until she smiled. Then he possessed her there, his tongue tasting hers and then feeling the shards of pleasure shoot through him as she sucked his. Bold lass that she was, he felt her hands in his hair, pulling him closer, holding him, not letting him move away.
And
