Highland Song (8 page)

Lainie didn’t question the mounting need that overshadowed everything else. She tightened her arms around Slade’s neck in an attempt to get even closer to him, seeking more. More of what she wasn’t sure, she just knew she didn’t want this to end.

Unexpectedly the ground pushed up hard behind her. She was on her back again, and Slade’s big body covered her heating her from the inside out.

Lainie didn’t protest. She was too caught up in the pleasure of the moment to realize the liberties she was giving him and where this might lead. She ran her fingers through his hair, enjoying the thickness, texture and warmth of it.

Slade moved and arched against her, silently telling her he liked the feel of her nails against his scalp, his neck,
the
bunched muscles of his back. He liked the taste of her too, sweetness and a heat that grew greater the more he tested it.

"I like your kisses hot and deep," he whispered close to her ear. The whisper sent heated waves of pleasure pulsing through her.

Slade continued his exploration of Lainie’s mouth while his weight settled between her thighs, separating them until he could press the ache of his arousal into the softness that was heaven sent to receive him.

She arched against him, pressing herself even closer. He wanted to groan at the primitive savagery of his response. But he didn’t want her to retreat. This was almost the kiss she had promised.

He had never meant to get this aroused. He had only meant to tease her into admitting who and what she was. He had not bargained for losing control. He hadn't lost control since he was an untried boy.

But it was too late. She would understand exactly how much he needed her when she felt that hard ridge of flesh pressing against her. And she would understand exactly how to use it against him to get whatever she wanted. He could play her game though. While playing her game, he meant to find out how far she would go before she tried to stop him.

Slade’s hips moved again, pressing more intimately against Lainie’s yielding body. A sweet fire blossomed in the pit of her stomach, making her moan. Intuitively, her arms stretched around him, pulling him closer. He rewarded her with a sensual movement of his hips, his body withdrawing and returning to hers in the same ancient and primal dance of his tongue moving within her mouth.

Long fingers slid from Lainie’s shoulders to the fastening of her shirt. He pulled the shirttails from her breeches and stroked from her waist to her ribs then back again, not stopping until one breast filled his hand. His thumb moved, discovered the velvet hardness of her nipple, and tested it with a sensuous, twisting pressure.

Lainie gasped. Her body arched toward Slade, begging for more of the same.

With a rough deep sound of conquest, Slade did what Lainie silently begged for, he increased the caress, capturing her nipple and rolling it between his fingers, inhaling the cries that rippled from her lips into his mouth. When he reached his limit and could resist her no longer, he tore his lips from her and traced a path of heat down her neck and across her collarbone then downward to her breast, seeking the small bud that ripened to fullness at his caress.

The mercuric heat seeping through the thin shirt to the naked flesh beneath it shocked Lainie back to her senses. Stunned, tentative about what just happened between them, she fought for control, only to have that meager power ripped from her when his mouth tugged on her nipple and fire ragged through her body.

His nimble fingers moved to the laces holding the shirt together and they came undone, threatening to bare her in an intimacy she had only known once before.

"Slade," Lainie gasped, meaning to say no, but unable to get the single word uttered. The pleasure so intense she wondered when it would turn to the pain she remembered.

Slade’s mouth covered hers and his tongue thrust deeply into her mouth, making it impossible for her to speak. The hungry contact sent her world spinning away from her, leaving only Slade’s heat and strength as an anchor to hold onto.

Before he looked at her again, she was clinging to him, her need to protest overshadowed beneath the heady pleasure he gave her.

In one smooth movement of his arm, Slade ripped Lainie’s shirt from top to bottom, revealing the creamy curves and tight coral tips of her breasts. His breath rushed out with low sound of desire. Her skin glistened where his mouth had just been, and each rapid breath she inhaled made her breasts shimmer invitingly. She had seemed so slender, so like a young girl, that he hadn’t expected her to be so much a woman.

Without understanding what drove him, Slade bent down to kiss Lainie once more.

"Slade, I have to tel--"

Lainie made a small sound that was part fear and part fire.

 
"Hush. There is nothing to tell, Lainie. I know everything I need to know," he said as he ignored her attempt to speak. Slowly his hands slid beneath her back. Then his arms tightened around her, and she was arched like a bow in that instant before he opened his lips and began to suckle and tease the nipples he had aroused.

A low moan tore from Lainie. She shivered as lightening tore through her body and she arched more deeply into Slade’s hungry mouth.

"What are you doing to me," she asked brokenly.

"Only what your body is begging for. Nothing more."

His only answer was to turn his head and bathe the other nipple in the same fiery heat of his lips and tongue.

For Lainie the sensation of pleasure was even more violent. Another cry tore from her as her body arched to meet the demands of the man who held her with such fierce care.

Then Lainie felt Slade’s hand between her legs.

Panic and violent fear overwhelmed everything he had created, driving out pleasure, quenching the inferno he had so painstakingly built with the icy knowledge that Slade wasn’t going to stop short of raping her.

"No," the cry tore from her lips in fierce intensity as she tried to twist away from the man she lay beneath. "No, stop. You can’t do this to me. I’ve paid the price you asked. I kissed you the way you wanted me to kiss you. Didn’t I? Please, please stop, Slade. Please. I beg
ye
." Her fists hit his back as she pleaded with him.

Confused, her words sinking in, Slade slowly and very reluctantly lifted his head. The enduring sensual release of Lainie’s nipple form his mouth caused a wave of helpless response through her.

He inhaled a long deep breath, closing his eyes to rid himself of the tension her words caused and to stop the involuntary groan rising in his throat. The hand he had pressed between her legs was surrounded with the kind of inferno he had never elicited so quickly from another woman. He did not want to stop. He had never before felt anything with this intensity.

He moved his fingers, memorizing Lainie’s passionate and honest fire, bringing a moan that wasn’t fear from her lips. The sound was pure pleasure.

"Tell me why I should stop, little fox." Slade asked with a low husky voice never taking his gaze from her eyes. "You don’t really want me to stop. I know your kind. You want me to take you just as much as I hunger for you. But you're still playing a game with me. You don't need to do that."

His fingers flexed again, and again she cried out in pleasure. She had not realized his hand had crept inside the loose breeches she wore. There was no barrier to dull the sensation of his hand curved possessively and intimately around her.

"I’m playing no game with
ye
. Ye dinna ken anything about me, Slade. Please stop."

Lainie grabbed Slade’s wrist, trying to drag it from between her legs. She couldn’t. He was bigger and stronger than she was, he had taught her that. Just like Bertram he could take whatever he wanted.

"You promised me ye would stop if I gave you what ye wanted--an honest kiss," Lainie said her voice edged with fear. "Wasn’t that an honest kiss?" she asked.

He watched her and for a long moment did not answer her.

"Ye know it was." She told him.

"Aye," he said hesitating.

The pain and desperation in Lainie’s voice could not be denied. Nor could the sudden stiffness of her body and her nails digging into his wrist be denied as she tried to pull his hand away from her.

Yet at the same time, he was hard pressed to retreat from the inferno surrounding him, seducing him. She was a seductress. If she told him no now when they both wanted each other so damn much, she must have ice in her veins.

"If you were honest, I’d be deep inside you right now and we’d both be burning up. Sweet Jesu, Lainie we would be so damn hot. And you’d enjoy every second of it."

"Is rape the only honesty ye ken?"
 
Lainie demanded. "Seducing a woman into sex, taking what ye want without a thought to the woman's pain?"

"I wasn’t taking anything you weren’t willing to give."

"I’m not willing. Are ye going to force me, Englishman?"

Slade inhaled a long slow breath, and fought for the control he always prided himself on having. He called himself every kind of fool he could think of for wanting the little treasonous spy he been sent to bring to trial. He had never thought that another little tease would ever get the better of him.

'"I don't force women," he told her through clenched teeth.

"Then get off me."

He remembered another time and a girl who was called Anna--Lady Anna. The sexual knots she had tied him in still haunted him. He’d wanted to give her the world and all she wanted was a fling before she married the richest man--the Earl--her daddy could find for her. She’d teased him with promises before she ever let him touch her. Each time the passion grew hot and intense she would fasten her bodice with calm fingers, smile at him and leave.