Highland Heiress - By Margaret Moore Page 0,68

belly and lower still.

As their lips and tongues moved in a sinuous dance, she reached up to glide her palm across the breadth of his shoulders, aware of the muscles beneath the hot flesh, the tense sinews and smooth skin.

He broke the kiss, licking the edge of her jaw, then the lobe of her ear. Like a dancer stretching, she arched her back as his hand crept up again to knead her breast. But he did more than touch and stroke. She gasped with surprise and arousal when he sucked her pebbled nipple into his mouth, then groaned with exquisitely tense agony as he circled the tip with his tongue. He continued to lick and tongue and tease until she squirmed beneath him, breathlessly, wordlessly, urging him on.

Needing him to go on, so fervently that she reached down to take him in her hand and guide him to her, raising her hips to meet him.

Now she had no thought of the future, or the past—only the present, here, with this man she loved. Now she thought not of morals or scandal, only trust and passion. She would have him, as he would have her, together as man and woman were meant to be.

When he entered her, she bit her lip against the brief, sharp pain as he shoved past the tender barrier of flesh.

He paused, hesitating, looking down at her with loving concern. “I should have waited until we were married,” he muttered, making as if to pull away.

She held him fast, for she had no regrets. Not now, not ever. No matter what happened. Not even if she never saw him again, although she would. He would come back to her. She was as sure of that as she was that the sun would rise, or the world would keep turning. He would be true and faithful because it simply wasn’t in him to be otherwise.

As she would be true and faithful to him.

“Too late,” she replied, smiling her encouragement and love. “Happily too late. I am yours forever, Gordon, whether I stay now, or go.”

He smiled, and the remorse left his features. “I should have known that once you resolved to do a thing, you do it, without fear or favor. Without conditions or regrets.” He kissed the tip of her nose, then each eyelid. “I pray God I never give you cause to regret this.”

“You won’t,” she assured him as she wrapped her arms about him. “You won’t.”

His gaze dropped to her body beneath him—the rosy peak of her nipples and her soft, round breasts; her slim waist and flaring hips. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured before he went back to pleasuring her breasts, first one, then the other and began to thrust with seemingly slow deliberation, as if to taunt her.

She met him thrust for thrust and when his speed increased, so did hers. Her lips parted as she uttered words and sounds, hardly aware of what she was saying, except that he must continue. He mustn’t stop. Not yet. Oh, sweet merciful heaven, not yet.

Touch her there. And there. Oh, yes. Don’t stop.

She grabbed his shoulders and half raised herself so that she could pleasure him as he pleasured her, sucking and licking his hardened nipples, letting the dark hairs tickle her nose, rejoicing as he groaned softly and pushed harder. Faster. Deeper. Each time better, stronger than the last.

It was like climbing to the highest levels of a warehouse, up and up, reaching for something just out of reach. Something wondrous, she was sure. Something like…

That!

She clenched her teeth to keep from crying out loud enough to wake the servants. She gripped his shoulders as if afraid of falling as her body pulsed. And then he shoved his mouth against her shoulder to stifle the roaring groan that rose from deep within his throat as he jerked and thrust and bucked, moving with her and in her.

Until he stopped.

Panting, he pulled back and she collapsed against the pillow, as out of breath and sweat-slicked as he. Sated and satisfied. Truly his, as he was truly hers.

He moved away a little and laid his head against her breasts as their breathing slowed. He sounded as if he’d run a footrace—and he was supposed to rest.

“I hope I haven’t hurt you,” she whispered. “I didn’t realize it would be quite so…so…like that.”

He raised himself on his elbow to look at her and spoke with grave sincerity. “I’ve never felt better in my life, and I’ve never