The Lover (25 page)

“Lie back,” he commanded with a roughened voice. His lips tasting the flare of her pulse at her throat, he pushed up her skirts to her waist.

He was going to take her, Sabrina thought tensely, without even removing her clothes.

But he made no move to cover her with his body. Instead he reached down to stroke the satiny flesh between her thighs. Sabrina gasped as his maddeningly slow fingers made her body flow hot and wanton.

“Please…Niall…”

“Oh, I shall please you, sweetheart, I promise. I want to do every wicked, delightfully lustful thing we can think of.”

Shifting his body to a lower position between her legs, he bent his head. Shock swept through her as she felt his unshaven jaw scraping her bare inner thighs. When she jerked her hips in response, he held them in a gentle grip. “No, lie still. Let me taste your honey….”

She lay there breathless, rigid, as he resumed his masterful attentions. Following the path of his fingers, he found the dewy, throbbing center of her, savored her secret softness with his tongue. He smiled in satisfaction at the slick wetness he found there. Her taut body was hot and explosive with need. One thrust and she’d be twisting beneath him, breathless and ready. But he wanted to show her another side of her passionate nature, one where she cast off all shyness and restraint.

Ignoring her shocked gasp of protest, he held her open to him, his thumbs on either side of her cleft. “You’re like a flower, Sabrina…delicate, so impossibly sweet….”

Her entire body clenched with anticipation as his caressing lips found her again in a tantalizing act of primitive possession. He kissed her lovingly, as if sipping nectar, suckling gently.

She whimpered at the shameful pleasure and clutched at him, her fingers tightening reflexively in his thick hair. Yet he continued his tender, wicked assault, teasing, exploring the yielding, warm folds of her flesh, finding the aching bud of her femininity…Her heart beat wildly, her body pulsed with desire. Then she felt the silken probe of his tongue parting her…setting off a firestorm of exquisite sensation.

“Oh, God…no…” she pleaded, yet trembling with need.

“Yes,”
her husband insisted. “I want your pulse wild and fast, your breath coming sweet and hot. I want you blind with passion from my tongue, my hands, my heat.”

There was no escaping the tender torment, yet she no longer wanted to escape. Each slow, drugging stroke was heaven. He went on suckling her, lapping, drinking from her essence, the erotic assault long and lingering and deliberately drawn out, tantalizing her beyond endurance. When another probing kiss invaded her, he forced a shuddering moan from deep within her throat.

“That’s it, love,” he urged hoarsely. “Let me hear every sweet gasp. Let me feel every wild leap of your pulse….”

She writhed, her hips straining under the delicate lash of his tongue, the tender plundering of his relentless mouth. A sob built inside her, catching in her throat. Quaking from the unbearable pleasure, Sabrina thrashed her head from side to side, fighting the dark magic he commanded.

“I can’t bear it….”

“Aye, you can….”

His triumphant mouth dredged another keening moan from Sabrina as stabbing pleasure flooded her. Madness, she cried silently, mind and body aflame. She arched up to him shamelessly, shaking with silken tremors.

“Better,” he breathed. “Tremble for me, sweeting. Moan for me. Give me your passion….”

A blinding wave of pleasure broke over her, cresting again and again. Racked by shuddering, Sabrina dissolved into throbbing, impassioned need.

In the breathless aftermath, she lay dazed and quivering with sensual exhaustion, yet Niall wasn’t done with her yet. Stretching his sleek, heavy body over hers, he gently suckled her turgid nipples, intensifying the slow-ebbing pleasure.

It was a long moment before he raised his head. His face was hard, taut, like a man pressed beyond his limits, his voice rough and rasping as he questioned provokingly, “Are you still disappointed, lass?”

No, Sabrina, thought. It had been wicked and wonderful…raw pleasure and aching delight. And yet…Niall had given nothing of himself, his heart or emotions. “It was…adequate, I think,” she murmured hoarsely.

He laughed darkly in triumph, mistaking her hesitation for another lie. Bending, he whispered, “Kiss me, sweeting,” and took her mouth in an act of sweet possession.

He kissed her as a lover should, tender yet impossibly demanding. He made her forget the ache in her heart by rekindling the ache in her body. As he positioned himself between her thighs, she was agonizingly aware of how hot and hard and huge he was against her swollen sex. His mouth still captivating hers, he fitted his hardness to her softness and pressed home, his thrust slow and careful, as if he remembered how new she still was to such lush carnality.

Sabrina gave a gasp of pleasure as blessedly he filled her. She wanted this man. Nothing else existed beyond the thunder of her heart, the wild hammering in her blood, his magical caresses, his hard body…

Instinctively she hugged his sinewed thighs with her own, opening for him, welcoming him with wildness and warmth. Through a haze of desire she heard his harsh whisper in her ear, telling her how hot and tight it felt to be buried deep within her. And as his rhythm increased to urgent need, she could feel the explosive tension build anew. She strained to hold the sleek shaft inside her, but he withdrew to plunge again, stoking the scorching flames ever higher, till she could no longer bear the blinding desire.

As her convulsive shudders began, Niall was gripped by the same fiery talons of sensation, caught in the same fierce tempest. When her climax burst upon her, his restraint shattered. Seizing a rasping breath, he lost control as she did, unprepared for the raw, searing pleasure that ripped through him. With a harsh groan he stiffened, then arched fiercely, surging wildly as he met his own sensual madness. His body shuddered into hers, drenching her with his warmth. His teeth clenched, he shut his eyes as the throbbing, peaking splendor washed over him in heated waves.

Chest heaving, he collapsed upon Sabrina, barely remembering to shield her from the force of his weight.

His breath was a soft mist on her flushed cheeks as they lay entwined afterward, suffused with warmth and desire. His palm drifted over her bare shoulder, lazily stroking her skin.

“I would hardly call that a disappointment,” he murmured with a soft laugh.

Totally pliant, Sabrina exhaled in a sigh. It amazed her that she could find the strength to whisper a hoarse reply. “I confess astonishment…I should think it would take a great deal to arouse a jaded man’s lusts.”

“
Especially
a jaded man’s lusts. But you succeeded admirably.”

She made a soft, noncommittal sound.

“Have you any notion how such a wanton response inflames a man?” When she gave no answer, Niall’s dark lashes lifted languorously, so that he could see her. “When you let yourself surrender to passion, you become quite a woman.”

“It was…wicked.”

“Perhaps, but I prefer the brazen tiger in my bed to the prim and proper mouse.”

So did she. She vastly preferred the reckless, foolish, even sinful lass she was with him to the plain, passive spinster. In his arms she was a woman, desired and desiring.

Grasping her chin in his fingers, Niall turned her face up to his. “You look like a lass who’s just been pleasured—thoroughly, passionately. You look beautiful.”

When she closed her eyes in denial, his fingers tightened on her shoulder. Why did it matter so that she believe him? he wondered. He had never felt it imperative to prove himself to any woman. But then, he had rarely experienced the wild hunger that had seized him a moment ago, or the shattering satisfaction afterward. Sabrina was different from the countless lovers who had come before her, but it was not merely the novelty or her innocence that had captivated him. It was the honesty of her response. The intensity of her desire, wild and unbridled. Her defenselessness just now.

Niall felt an odd jolt in the region of his heart when her searching glance swept his face, uncertain and vulnerable.

He pressed his lips tenderly to her forehead. “It will take time, sweeting, but you will learn to accept your wanting. To accept
my
wanting.” His finger forced her chin up. “I want you, lovely Sabrina. I want to see your bonny hair fanning across my pillow. I want to see your face flushed and damp from loving me, your eyes hazed with desire I’ve just sated. I mean to have you, in every way a man can have a woman.”

Desperate to hide the deep ache his gentleness aroused, she buried her face in Niall’s shoulder so he couldn’t see the turmoil of emotion that was tearing her apart inside. She wanted to weep at the powerful and strange feelings coursing through her…tender feelings she would never tell him about.

It would be too easy to love him, she thought wildly. Too easy to expose herself to savage hurt.

And yet the possibility existed that it might already be too late.

    Chapter    
Ten

Sabrina awoke alone later that same morning, with a vague recollection of Niall kissing her sweetly at dawn, saying regretfully that the press of duty called him away. For a moment she lay there in the vast bed, unmoving, lush memories heating her senses as she relived certain indescribable moments of the night just passed.

She had never before imagined the act of mating could be so…incredible. Yesterday she wouldn’t have believed such shattering pleasure was even possible, or that she could have responded to a man’s touch with such wanton abandon.

Burying her face in the pillow, she breathed in Niall’s musky male scent. Before last night she would have called herself a lady, but the demanding intensity of his passion had stripped away every shred of reserve or shyness, destroyed any lingering will to resist.

Without conscious thought, Sabrina reached up to touch her breast with her palm, remembering Niall’s strong, long-fingered hands caressing the sensitive bud. She nearly whimpered at the fire that shivered through her.

Her eyes shut as vivid images assaulted her…Niall loving her, his bare, powerfully muscled body moving against hers…his expression feverish, his face dark and strained with arousal….

His sensuality had astonished her. She had been prepared for a dispassionate, even painful, bedding, yet he had treated her with infinite consideration, indeed, as if she were a desirable woman. For a few brief moments, he had made her feel special, cherished, sought after…

Rising from the bed, she drew open the window curtains, and caught her breath at the scene that greeted her. Below, the mist-shrouded castle glowed golden in the early morn, while the emerald hills shimmered in the translucent light.

At the scene of enchantment, a feeling of optimism swept her. This was her home, and she would make the best of it. A new life awaited her now, one as Niall McLaren’s wife and mistress of his clan. It was a long moment before Sabrina could make herself turn away to begin the mundane tasks of washing and dressing.

She had nearly completed her toilet when a scratch on the door interrupted her thoughts. When she bid entrance, a young woman stepped gingerly into the room. It was the chambermaid, Jean, the same lass Sabrina had discovered with a naked Niall in the herbal just over a se’nnight ago.

Jean kept her eyes downcast as she dipped a curtsy. “Beg pardon, milady…but Master Cameron’s come to bid ye farewell.”

Sabrina brightened at the thought of her stepfather. “Thank you. Would you tell him I will be there directly?”

“Ah…milady…Perhaps ye should know…that day ye came to call…there was naught between the laird an’ me. I was to minister to his wounds, ’twas all.”

“His wounds?”

“Aye. He was injured mending the dam—a nasty gash on his hip and bruises on his side.”

Sabrina felt herself frowning as she recalled the scabbed flesh on Niall’s body.

“He never bedded me, nor even kissed me,” Jean insisted. “Never, I swear it. Not that I would ha’ minded kissing him, or ought else…but the laird doesna diddle the servants. Never. Ye can ask anyone. We’re as safe here as newborn bairns in a kirk. But as ye’re the mistress here now, I wouldna wish to start on the wrong foot, with ye thinking…well, I didn’t, that’s all.”

Her confession sounded entirely sincere, not at all like an anxious attempt to placate a jealous mistress.

Relieved that Niall had not been seducing the maids, Sabrina managed a smile. “You have eased my mind, Jean. I too hope we may begin with a fresh slate. If you will forget the incident, I surely will.”

Jean bobbed a curtsy and fled the room, leaving Sabrina to her restless thoughts. She was comforted to think she needn’t fear her husband’s betrayal in her own home at least, but vexed that the confession had to come from a stranger. Niall could have simply explained to her about his wounds and set her mind at ease, but he had purposely let her believe the worst.

Her stepfather awaited her with Rab in the great hall. The dog, who had been banished from the wedding festivities, barked with excitement and fawned around Sabrina’s legs joyously.

When she eventually straightened from embracing her pet, it was to find Charles Cameron studying her intently. Her cheeks flushed with warmth as she hugged him as well.