Highland Hearts 03 - Crimson Heart (22 page)

“Where should I touch ye?” Searc kissed the side of her mouth, softly and slow like he was tasting her.

Elena breathed quickly, her head spinning. “I…I don’t know.”

His hands on her cheeks, he pulled back. “Talk to me, Elena.” She blinked open to find him studying her eyes. His were dark, the blue like that of a midnight ocean. “Tell me where to touch ye.”

“My skin,” she breathed. He ran his hands from her face, to her shoulders, his palms covering them completely.

He slid his hands down her arms and back up. Elena’s breath caught. With a shiver, she wet her lips and noticed his gaze slipping to them.

He took her long arm, opening it and kissing the tender flesh inside her elbow. It tickled but sent another rush of sizzling heat through her. He kissed a hot trail up her arm and shoulder. “Ye are in control, lass. Would ye like me to kiss yer lovely neck?”

Elena felt flushed yet chilled with goose bumps at the same time. What was happening to her? She’d never felt this way before. “Yes,” she whispered.

Searc leaned further in to kiss the flesh. She shivered as the heat of his kiss mixed with the tickle of his stubbled jaw. He rained a hot trail down the side of her neck, slowly tasting her, inhaling against her skin.

His large hands stroked her back while his lips sought the hollow of her throat. Could he feel her wild heart beating there, fluttering against the new ache building in her?

Elena’s legs slid back and forth on top of the fur that now lay unfolded under her. Restless, they stroked along Searc’s large calves as he kneeled next to her on the bed. He laid her back and ran his hands down, brushing his thumbs against the sides of her full breasts. Puckered, they ached to be touched. His gaze lowered to see them and she felt her back arch. Watching him gaze at her did dizzying things to her stomach and her breath came shallow.

Searc moved over her, kissing her fully on the mouth again as his hands stroked her arms, brushing, teasing but not touching her breasts. She groaned and felt an impatient throbbing in her abdomen. In her kiss she tasted his restrained hunger, the intensity in which he held himself above her as if he waited for more words.

“There,” she whispered.

Elena rolled slightly to one side as his hand came down, making him catch her nipple. She pushed into his palm and he cupped her breast. She kissed him harder and moved against his legs, pressing her body upward.

“Elena.” His lips moved against hers mouth. “Let go. Don’t think. Just feel.”

God’s teeth!
She wanted to let go. She ached, wishing it to build even more inside her, but she might come apart if it did. If she let go, who would she be? Her whole life, she’d held tightly to one role or another, playing her parts to perfection. And yet Searc just wanted her to let go of all that, become herself. She wanted to, ached to. Searc’s strength and heat surrounded her. He protected her, respected her. Yet she wanted more.

“Touch all of me,” she begged and pulled on his bottom lip with her kiss.

She placed her palm on his chest and felt the deep thudding of his heart. Could he possibly be as affected as she? The thought gave her courage.

His large hand cupped her breast fully, taking its weight as he kissed her neck. “So soft, so beautiful,” he murmured and then something more in his wild Scot’s language. The sound of it trilled through her and the ache pulsed even more, breaking from her in a moan.

Searc’s fingers found her nipple, pinching gently, too gently. “More,” she whispered and he increased the pressure, finding the other breast as well. He knelt over her now, loving her with his hands, kissing his way down her throat onto the plane of her collarbone. Hot kisses and stroking drove every thought from her mind. Elena felt feverish as his mouth moved lower. Her fingers tangled through his dark hair. She reveled in the feel of sheer power under her fingertips and inhaled the smell of him—heat with an undercurrent of pine and leather.

As his mouth closed around her nipple she gasped at the shot of pure fire racing from the source down through her body. Elena arched off the fur, thrusting her chest upward toward him as he sucked and teased with his tongue and teeth. He loved the other breast, strumming, preparing it before moving his mouth to taste it too.

Elena’s toes curled in the coverlet as she bent her knees, her lower half scooting toward Searc’s heat. As she raised her bare leg to feel his hip, she realized his kilt was no longer around his waist. Her calf hooked up on him and rubbed down his hip to his bare thigh. He groaned against her and she repeated the stroke. He shifted, leaning over her on an elbow to look up at her.

He was marvelous. Dark hair and stormy blue eyes, strong jaw and perfect lips, lips that had just been teasing her flesh. Another ache pulsed below. He kissed the valley between her breasts, watching her face the whole time. She breathed. He waited.

“More,” she instructed. He nuzzled against her breasts, the prickle of his stubble against her sensitive skin shot off tingles of sensation. “Yes,” she breathed. “Lower.” She reveled in the power he’d given her to command him. She turned further into him to run her foot from his hip down his long, muscular leg again.

“Lower,” he repeated, his voice rough like a growl. He watched her face as he ran his hand down from her breast along the plane of her stomach and around to her hip. Elena nearly bucked off the fur as her ache grew wilder within her.

She gasped as he tongued heat along her hip bone inward.

“
Gràdh geal mo chridhe
.” The words rolled out from deep within Searc, sending a thrilling chill through Elena. His hand wound down from her naval, over the gentle roundness of her abdomen and lower still. She cried out as he touched her, closing her eyes and writhing over the fur. One mighty hand clasped her hip as the other tormented her, finally dipping down to press against her inner thighs, nudging them apart.

There he paused and she slammed her small fists into the fur. “More,” she nearly yelled.

“Aye, Elena. So much more.”

Her fingers curled into the fur as she opened her eyes, looking at him. Searc breathed heavy as if he ran. He knelt alongside her, his magnificent body bared and primed. Her eyes opened wider at the sight of him but he immediately stroked her body, making her forget her worry. Only the ache mattered, the ache where he must touch her or she would die without it. Such exquisite torture.

“Please.” She panted and ran her legs around his calves again, even going so far as to push her foot against his muscled backside to press him toward her.

He leaned forward then, hovering over her, his hand still stroking her body. “So soft,
cho maiseach ris a’ ghrèin
, lass.” His rough whispers by her ear dripped with intensity. She moaned his name as he moved back to love her mouth, his thumb rubbing over and over. He nipped the corner of her mouth softly as she groaned and pressed against his hand.

“Oh God, Searc.”

“Aye, Elena,” he moaned as he pushed his fingers inside. More Gaelic words followed as he worked her flesh and she thrashed. She felt his length against her and thought she should be frightened, but she was far from it. The ache had changed her, made her wanton. She wanted to be consumed, devoured, completely revealed by Searc. Elena raised her legs to entrap her Highland warrior’s hips, urging him forward, begging him with her body to claim her.

He moved on top, kissing her mouth wildly. She met each kiss with her own, sliding and tasting, exploring him as she raked his shoulders with her nails. She ran her hands down his bulging arms, marveling in the muscles as they flexed while he centered himself above her. His fingers left her and she nearly screamed, but then he pushed forward into her.

With a swift motion he plunged into her body, tearing quickly through her, giving her no time to worry over the act. She gasped and he stilled, holding himself on his elbows so that his biceps encased her head. She blinked her eyes open, realizing that she’d squeezed them shut.

“It will feel better,” he promised through gritted teeth. She nodded and he stared into her eyes as they breathed together. Elena felt the hard thudding of her heart and realized that the burn below was fading. Little by little.

“Kiss me,” she instructed softly and he leaned into her, gently at first, holding himself apart. But she wanted his heat again, his breath against her skin, his strength pressing her into the furs. She pulled him down to her, not caring that he could easily crush her with his weight. He remained buried within her, so brutally hard, pinning her to the furs. The thought sent a sizzle of heat coursing to that spot and she moved upward, feeling the fullness even more. Searc groaned and buried his face in her hair. She pressed upward again, reveling in the new sensation, the stretch, the carnal breaking, and felt Searc tremble. Elena stroked his wide back. She’d made this mighty warrior tremble. A small smile broke over her lips.

“Keep going.” She pushed upward again. The pain was ebbing, giving way to the other sensations that throbbed within her body with the beating of her heart. Searc lifted up and stared into her eyes. She smiled.

The half-sided grin crept back on his handsome face. “As ye command.”

He set a slow rhythm as he closed his eyes in obvious pleasure. He caught her breast with his palm. The heat flooded back through her as he loved it, palming and pinching. She moaned and he lowered his mouth back to her flushed skin. His body picking up a tempo that teased the hot ache over and over.

She gasped and cried out as he caught her nipple with his teeth at the same time he thrust back into her. She was nearly split apart from the full sensation. What little pain that had remained was washed away by the building force growing into a tempest of fire. It made her move against him, urging him forward into a rhythm. Between the fur at her back and his heat over her body, Elena writhed. The pressure climbed, squeezing higher and higher with each thrust, with each lick of Searc’s tongue, each nibble of his teeth, each hot, wet kiss along her inflamed skin. The surging of her own blood, her own need, was too much, growing and pulsing until she couldn’t hold herself together a second longer.

“Searc!” she screamed as the ache exploded. The wild, pulsing sensation washed through her. It caught her breath and she clung to Searc with all her strength. He answered her with a growl that seemed ripped from deep within his chest. He thrust harder into her open, willing body, filling her completely.

…

For long moments they just breathed. Elena took full inhales, enjoying the feel of him around her. He leaned in and kissed her lips gently. She smiled up at him and he rolled them to the side, wrapping one strong leg around her hips and pulling over her the fur that had been tossed to the side.

She traced the lush line of his bottom lip with one fingertip. “’Tis amazing what a mouth can do.” She punctuated the compliment with a small kiss.

Searc chuckled quietly and the sound filled Elena with contentment. “Agreed. Although I will show ye even more, lass.”

“Mmmm…” she sighed but raised her eyebrows in surprise. “More sounds good.”

He wrapped her up in his arms, pulling her to rest on his chest. He kissed the top of her hair. “I like discovering all about ye, Elena.” His voice had grown serious. “Trust makes the loving sweeter.”

Elena stilled, her ear pressed to the skin over his heart. Trust. He wanted to know exactly who she was. He’d stopped her before, wanting only to revel in their lovemaking, but now…now he wished for more. “I want to tell you, Searc. I will. It’s just…” She closed her eyes. “Thomas knew my secrets and ended up dying because of them.”

“It would take more than mere secrets to kill me, Elena.”

Her head rose and fell with his deep breathing. “You’ve held onto secrets too,” she whispered. “You know how hard it is to let them out into the world.”

They lay together, neither of them in a hurry to move apart. Searc stroked the side of her hair. She felt him breathe deeply once more. “Perhaps some of them should be let out.” He shifted slightly. “I didn’t give my people a chance to know about me, what ye said about hiding my power all this time.” His voice grew serious. “I thought I could keep it hidden, that by not telling them I was protecting them.”

Elena propped her chin on his chest. Searc rested his arms back over his head, one arm over his eyes. “What were you protecting them from?”

He glanced down at her. “From me.”

She shook her head, her hair scattered across his warm skin. “How could you think that?”

She watched his lips open several times as if to talk, but then he closed his mouth. Finally he exhaled long. “When I was a lad, maybe ten summers old, I came across a wretched old peddler in the woods on the edge of Munro territory. The old man was shouting, waving his arms and I sensed pain and fear, so I came closer.”

The words seemed stuck in Searc’s chest. Elena heard his regret and stroked her fingers lightly through the light hair sprinkling his chest as he continued. “The bastard was beating his horse. He’d walked the beast until it was lame and couldn’t go on, yet he beat him anyway.” Elena felt Searc’s muscles tense under her hand and cheek. “I…I reacted. I didn’t think, I just felt, the horse’s pain, the man’s fury. I ran to the peddler, grabbing him, shouting at him to stop. He tried to shake me off but I held tight. My fear turned to anger and my hands glowed against his arm. Before my eyes, the man wilted, sunk to the ground under my touch. I…I stood there, full of fury and sucked the life from him until he was only a pile of clothes on the forest floor.”

Tears burned behind Elena’s eyes and she closed them. “You were saving an innocent animal. You were a child, Searc.”

“I was a child with the dark magic of a demon.”