Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(55)

She bit her lip, abashed at being caught. “I was desperate for any trick to slip into that mind of yours.”

“Sneaky little wench.”

“It didn’t work.” She leaned into him with a smile. “With you, I needed a different kind of magic.”

He laughed and then lowered his head. His lips captured hers, warm and full of promise. She fell into his kiss with new eagerness. Mind-sickness or no, the dolmens would expand any power she had left, at least to the point that she could identify his enemy.

He pulled away from her lips and held her face still as he gazed upon her for a long moment.

“Stay with me, Cairenn.”

Though she couldn’t read his thoughts, she understood that he wasn’t just asking her to stay for the night, or the next day, or the next week, or even the next year. No matter what happened tomorrow, he wanted her to stay with him through better or worse.

She brushed her lips against his in silent assent.

Then his fingers made short work of the laces of her tunic as she unknotted the rope belt around his waist. Their simple clothes puddled in heaps. She laughed as they stumbled over them on the way to the hay-stuffed pallet. She tumbled back onto the linens as he cushioned her head with one gentle hand. Rolling to her side, he cupped one breast before lowering his head to rub his bristly beard against her tightening nipple. She grasped his hair, gasping. Then he guided his thigh between her legs so that every tiny movement made her body tighten with delight.

She murmured, “Let me touch you, Lachlan,” as she reached down between them.

He stopped her hand with his own. “Lass—”

“I want to touch you like you touch me. I want to taste you—”

“The night is young,” he interrupted, raising his head so that the light from the tallow candle fell kindly on his face. “You’ll have your turn, I promise you that.”

His fingers ran soft across her skin, finding all the aching places. He kissed her throat, her jaw, and then captured her lips only to pull away and trail his mouth across the curve of her ear. With her eyes drifting closed with pleasure, her fingers followed every ridge of his muscles, every smooth plane of his warm skin, memorizing the shape of his body, which she would hold in her mind forever. Finally, she ran her fingers down his chest to where she could feel his heart pounding between them. Pressing her palm against the vibration, she imagined she held that precious heart in her hand.

When she could barely breathe for wanting him, she whispered his name. Seizing her hips, Lachlan rolled on his back, lifting her so that she straddled him. Startled and upended, she flattened her palms on his chest and looked at him in surprise.

“You wanted to have your way with me, lass.” He positioned her hips until she felt his hardness press between her thighs. “Now’s your chance.”

The hollow ache inside her intensified and she realized what she must do. Grinning at him, she began to sink down.

“Easy,” he said, stilling her. “I won’t have you hurting yourself—”

“I want you,” she interrupted, her breath in her throat, as she leaned down so her hair made a curtain around his face. “I want to feel you deep inside me.”

She teased him with a slow kiss. His rigid heat impaled her as she lowered herself to the root. His choked moan made her whole body tingle with pleasure.

“Ach, Cairenn,” he said through his teeth. “You’ll be the death of me.”

A laugh rippled in her throat. She squirmed around his shaft, loving the fullness of the sensation. Lachlan inhaled sharply and dug his fingers into her hips. Though her mind had already launched into that bright, white place that she shared with him whenever they merged their bodies, some small thinking part of her noted the thrill of being able to give her man pleasure. His hands flexed on her hips and he pressed his head back against the pallet as she moved in different, exciting ways.

“Cairenn,” he said between his teeth.

She laughed out loud and gave way to the will of his hands, finding a rhythm that rippled sensation through her. Her inner muscles tightened around him and, in a breathless moment, unfurled in a sudden, sweet madness.

Shuddering with pleasure, she no longer cared if she never read the thoughts of another living being—so long as she could spin forever like this through Lachlan’s sweeping mind.





CHAPTER TWENTY


Rain misted the road on the day of the council gathering. The constant drizzle made the ground soft, the air gray and dim, and the world noisy with the patter of raindrops falling off the leaves in the surrounding woods. The fog was so thick that even the horses sensed danger, for no one could see more than three-horse-lengths ahead on the grimy path that led to the council heights.

Lachlan clutched the hilt of his dagger as he scanned the woods from under the hem of the hood. Tradition demanded that no man bring a weapon to the sacred height, but that tradition didn’t apply to the three winding roads that led from each major sept to the hill that was the political center of their combined clan. These roads were bloody with tales of ambushes, of kidnappings, of murders, and so every man in the column rode or walked in tense anticipation of treachery.

Lachlan still did not know what he would do once Cairenn identified the man who’d ordered the murder of his father and himself. His cousin Angus expected Lachlan to sweep off his cloak, reveal himself, and call out his enemy, claiming he’d been told by the assassins who sank the knife into his back. That was the plan.