Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(47)

“Not so easy, is it?”

The corner of his lips twitched, a soft, teasing smile that made her heart turn over. “If you can make me understand what that felt like, lass, maybe I can answer your question better.”

The skin on her cheeks all but sizzled. She had no reason to be squeamish about talking about such things. Hadn’t she mind-witnessed half the island of Inishmaan rutting in one place or another? Those fragmented, heated memories always seemed to float to the top of everyone’s thoughts. But she didn’t have the language to describe such a thing, and her tongue tangled when she tried to summon words. Since being with Lachlan, she’d realized that seeing the act through other people’s minds and experiencing it herself were two different things altogether.

So, for a moment, she let herself wallow in the memory of what they’d just done. She envisioned Lachlan looming over her, spreading her legs wide, lodging the tip of his shaft against the ache that had been building up inside her since he first kissed her on Inishmaan. The memory was as visceral as if he were right now tracing his tongue over her hip, instead of his fingers. Her cleft responded in eager anticipation, three hungry squeezes.

His thumb against her lower lip brought her attention back to the moment. He watched her face as he rolled the pad of that thumb across the length of her mouth.

“I felt an ache,” she said, when he finally dropped his thumb from her lip. “The feeling was deep inside me, where you…put yourself.”

“And?”

“I didn’t want you to stop moving. Had a herd of wild boar come crashing through these woods, I wouldn’t have torn myself away.”

She thought she saw desire flare in his eyes, but he made no move to kiss her. The silence stretched, an unspoken command to continue.

“I wanted to open myself wider, to take your…cock…more deeply inside me.” She ran her hand up his abdomen, over his chest, loving the velvet-hardness beneath her palm. “I wanted you to touch me everywhere. My breasts. My…” Her breath quickened and she felt another spasm between her legs. “I wanted to savor every stroke and at the same time I wanted you to stroke harder. I wanted to feel you, all the way to the root. I wanted you to tighten your grip on me because that spoke to how hungry you were to have me. I wanted you to stretch over me, cover me, breathe the same air, feel the same tightening. I wanted…”

She struggled for the right word. What, precisely, did she crave in those intense moments? Did she want to lose all power of control? Be taken? Possessed? Each word was right, in its own way, but none was perfect.

He said, his voice uneven, “You wanted to surrender.”

She breathed, “Yes.”

The word lingered in the air between them. It rang true, even though unease plucked at her. To give herself so freely was to open herself to a dangerous vulnerability. She felt like she had just opened the deep recesses of her own mind for Lachlan’s perusal.

Then all was a blur as he captured her lips. It was not a hungry kiss, but he made a meal of it anyway. He took her lower lip between his only to release it to capture the upper, and then captured them both with a kiss that left her panting, breathless, hungry for so much more than just kissing.

He pulled away long enough to press his forehead against hers, murmuring half to himself, “Of ten parts, a man enjoys only one.”

Her blood thrumming, she did not have the capacity to understand what he said, and hardly the wits to wonder.

“An old myth,” he explained. “Zeus argued with Hera about who enjoyed lovemaking more, men or women. They brought in the prophet Tiresias to judge.”

Her ears absorbed his words, though her foggy mind did not.

“Women won,” he continued. “Your sex enjoys lovemaking ten times more than mortal men. Until now, I would have disagreed.”

“But,” she stuttered, “you took pleasure, before—”

“Aye, I took physical pleasure. But after feeling you slip inside my mind, mo chridhe, I now understand the full pleasures of surrender.”





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


Half the morning they’d been walking, but as long as Lachlan stayed close, Cairenn felt she could wander through these woods forever without growing weary. Though they’d spoken little since they returned to the campsite last night, a kind of communion buzzed between them. She could hardly sense the minds of all the other men trudging the same path because of the warmth she felt whenever Lachlan happened to glance back at her. He would raise one brow and his eyes would twinkle and suddenly she felt as if she were wrapped softly in thrice-brushed linen.

Maybe that’s why she didn’t notice the troop of men on horses until Angus, at the head of the column, shot up a hand to order everyone to halt. Lachlan turned to her, his eyes sharp with expectancy. That look jolted her out of woolly daydreaming. She focused on the road below and then cast out the tentacles of her mind.

They had been walking on a crooked deer-path atop a low ridge, a safe distance from the main riverside thoroughfare, so they wouldn’t bump into other travelers. Now, she could hear the snorts of horses and the jangle of harnesses coming up on the road below. The mind-voices, however, seemed to come from a much greater distance. The discrepancy annoyed her. Were her wits so love-muddled that she couldn’t direct her own gift? What a foolish woman she’d be if that were so.