Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(64)

Aulay moved his hands over her shoulders and down her sides, untying the knot in the tails of the shirt she wore, then lifting it over her head. He picked her up off the table, put her on her feet and unlaced her trews. They fell and pooled at her ankles, and she stepped out of them.

She was stunning, a vision of feminine beauty with heavy breasts, a curve of waist into hips, and long slender legs. Aulay’s blood was rushing in his veins, and he quickly removed his clothes as she unbraided her hair and let that glorious curtain fall around her shoulders.

He gathered her up, kissed the hollow of her throat, then groped for his greatcoat and threw it onto his bunk before laying her down on top of it. “Diah help me, Lottie, but you’ve bewitched me, that you have,” he said, and kissed her lips. “I am your servant.” He kissed her cheeks, her mouth, her neck, and moved down, to her breasts.

She slid her fingers into his hair, arching into him. “I donna want a servant—I want a lover.”

He’d thought he couldn’t be more aroused, but she sent him higher. He wanted to explore her, every muscle, every patch of soft skin. He wanted to absorb the feel of her body into his so that he’d never forget it. He would fill her with his desire, would show her what it meant to love in a life worth living, to know what it felt to be loved. He did love her. In these moments with her, he knew that he loved her.

A deep sigh of pleasure escaped her; she dug her fingers into his shoulders as he moved his attention to her breasts. She arched her back into him, her legs moving against his, pressing against his erection. He slid his hand down her body, over the flare of her hip and her leg, and then between them.

Lottie’s breath quickened, warm against his cheek. Aulay moved from the primal place that resided in every man and pushed her thighs apart with his knee, then pressed against her. She caught his face in her hands before he entered her, staring into his eyes, searching for...what? He was beyond control, lost in the ecstasy of her, impatient to carry on.

Lottie smiled. She kissed him, raking her fingers through his hair.

“Aye, what?” he whispered a wee bit desperately.

“You, Aulay. You’re what.”

He sank into those words. He moved his hand down her body, skimming her breast, her abdomen, and caught hold of her hip as he slid his body into hers and began to move.

This was not like their frenzied coupling of the other night, when they’d been driven by a lust born from heartbreak. This was greater than that—this was a coming together in a more primal sense, a man and a woman performing an ancient dance of being one. She had possessed him, and he possessed her, his strokes urgent, his desire swelling and taking ravenous shape.

Lottie gasped with her release; Aulay lost himself in his own. He sought his breath, clinging to the sensations of their coming together for as long as could. But at last he did prop himself on his arms and gaze down at her, pulling a thick strand of hair from her face.

Her eyes were closed, her expression one of utter happiness, free of pain and worry. She had never been more alluring to him.

“Tha thu breagha,” he murmured. You are beautiful.

She smiled, opened her eyes and touched her fingers to his chin, then kissed his jaw before pushing her face into his neck and shoulder and turning into him.

Aye, it was worth it, Lottie.

At least to him, it had been worth every moment.





CHAPTER TWENTY

LOTTIE WOKE UP with a start.

She was still wrapped in the warmth of Aulay’s arms—a safe harbor.

She carefully untangled herself, kissed his bare chest, and slipped off the bunk. Aulay didn’t move—he was sleeping so soundly that she wondered how long he’d gone without sleep. She dressed quietly and quit the cabin. It was the middle of the night—there was no one on deck that she could see but a pair of Mackenzie men, one of them minding the wheel, one of them with a spyglass held to his eye. She wondered what he could possibly see in the light of a moon.

She snuck into the forward cabin and stepped over Mathais. Drustan had taken one bunk and she crawled onto the other. In mere moments, she had drifted into blissful sleep.

The sun had risen when she woke again. Lottie stretched, happy as a new bride. She felt sated. She felt loved. Not in the way gentlemen generally professed their affection for her while looking at her with a bit of a leer in their eyes. But loved, deep and wide, body and soul. She’d never felt so desired like this. As if he desired all of her, and not just her looks. Aye, those moments with Aulay had been worth every moment of her life thus far.

“Why are you smiling, then?”

“What? Pardon?” Lottie sat up with a start. She hadn’t noticed Mathais was awake and dressed. He’d pulled his blond hair into a queue in the manner Aulay wore his gold locks at times.

“You were smiling in your sleep,” he said, staring at her curiously. “Were you dreaming of Fader?”

No. For the first time in days, not for one blessed moment. “Aye, I suppose I was,” she lied. “Do you remember the summer he bred those pups to hunt the rabbits?” She smiled with the fond memory of the puppies romping around their small salon. Unfortunately, her father had brought home pups that were useless for hunting rabbits, but better suited to sitting in ladies’ laps.

Mathais stared at her as if she were speaking Danish. He bounced a leg impatiently. “We’ve no time for talk of dogs, Lottie,” he chastised her, and began to pace, full of nerves. “A ship is near us. Sailed all night to reach us, that’s what Gilroy says.”