been so hard. He feared he would hurt her, but there was no help for it. Mairi of Shiels lay beneath him, open and welcoming. Only God Himself had the power to stop this coupling.
Mairi did not feel the coolness of the air or the pebbles rubbing against her skin as her shift was lifted over her head and thrown aside. She did not hear the squirrels chattering and scolding one another in the trunk of the great black oak that sheltered them. She did not see the single whaup circling overhead or hear the shrillness of its lonely cry. She felt only a firm mouth on her lips and a man’s hands on her skin. She heard only the wild singing of her blood that promised her this first long-dreamed-of taste of passion.
Again and again Edward moved against her with all the skill of a man familiar with the secrets of a woman’s body. He stirred the dormant embers of her need into leaping flames of desire. Her skin ached and her nerves throbbed against the insistent coaxing of his hands and mouth. When he parted her thighs with his leg, she was more than ready.
He moved over her, breathing heavily. The turgid length of his sex probed at her. Mairi looked up through her lashes. His eyes were open, their blue-green color more brilliant than the sky that framed his head. He stared down at her with a look of such yearning hunger that she could not bear it. Reaching up, she touched his face.
With a harsh cry, he surged into her, forgetting his resolve to go slowly, to exercise control, to bring her the greatest pleasure she had ever known. The cords on the side of his neck swelled. He buried his face against her throat. Taking in deep gulping breaths, he willed his raging heart to slow its beat.
Mairi concentrated on the sensations she was feeling. It was not an unpleasant feeling exactly, just different. She felt stretched and full. Edward was a large man, and she was slender. The sharp end of a pebble stabbed into her hip. Experimentally, she shifted her hips. He stiffened.
“Don’t move lass,” he muttered hoarsely, “or it will be over before ’tis even begun.”
“Edward, I—” She gasped as his mouth closed over the sensitive peak of her breast.
The tiny sound was his undoing. His entire body tensed, and then, with an inarticulate moan, he thrust deeply over and over until she caught his rhythm and the tension she felt when his seeking fingers first touched her rose again. Before she could reach her own crescendo, an incredible warmth spread through her belly and she felt him slump, full weight, on top of her.
Mairi frowned. He was heavy, and she was cold. The exquisite sensations she’d felt in the beginning had disappeared, leaving a burning ache between her legs. She twisted her hips and felt him slip out of her.
“I’m sorry lass,” he murmured, “but I couldn’t wait.” He lifted his head and grinned sheepishly. “Say you’ll forgive me.”
She said the first thing that came into her mind. “Is more supposed to happen?”
His expression didn’t change, but his eyes darkened, the pupils blotting out the color. “If you’ll give me another chance, I’ll show you,” he said at last.
Holding his gaze with her own, Mairi nodded. When his mouth slowly descended to find the pulse point in her neck, she closed her eyes, and when his hands moved down her body, she held her breath, but when he finally entered her and the slow, sensuous mating dance began once again, her blood warmed and her hands clenched, and when at last the dizzying whirl of passion reached its peak, she exploded in a vision of light and heat and fire. Mairi dug her nails into his back and buried her face against his chest, inhaling his smell, tasting his skin, crying out his name in one endless, heart-stopping cry of need.
Later, much later, she lay still, her eyes closed, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. Never in her life had she felt so vulnerable, so exposed. Never would she have believed her body could respond in such a way. At that moment, she would have given all she had on earth and much of what heaven held in store to know what the man who held her so tightly against his chest was thinking. As if in answer to her silent prayer, he spoke.
“I love you, Mairi Maxwell of Shiels. Believe what