She lifted her gaze to Gregor. “Would ye accompany me outdoors, MacLeod?”
“Aye,” he replied without thinking.
It was insanity to be alone with her in the dark, still night. Yet like a moth to a flame, he could not deny the force of desire pulling him to her.
Tessa cast her sister one more searching glance, but then Cormack pulled her into the next dance, and they went spinning off together.
Gregor extended a stiff arm toward her. She took it, letting him lead her through the crowd and toward the keep’s double doors, which had been cracked to let the cool night air into the increasingly warm great hall.
When they stepped out into the darkness, they strode wordlessly toward the path leading down the bluff to the kyle. Gregor knew he was about to lose the battle he’d been fighting with himself.
Yet he could not seem to care.
Chapter Sixteen
Birdie knew the exact spot along the kyle’s rocky strand where no one would see them.
A patch of turf that overhung from the bluff above created a blind spot for the guards on the battlements. Only someone on a boat in the kyle directly in front of them would notice, but the waters were still and empty this night.
The air held a sharp, salty nip to it, yet Birdie’s skin prickled with heat beneath her gown. Something was about to happen. She couldn’t be sure what, but from the way Gregor radiated the same coiled, taut energy behind her, he felt it too.
She came to a halt beneath the overhang, turning to him. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words never formed, for he crushed her to him and claimed her mouth in a kiss.
The air rushed from her lungs at the ferocity of the kiss. He had restrained himself before, she understood now. Mayhap he still held something back, afraid of hurting her, but his intensity didn’t frighten her. Instead, it fanned to life the flame within her that she’d fought so hard to keep banked.
He backed her against the earthen face of the bluff, never breaking their kiss. His hands slipped around her, cushioning her impact. She was barely aware of the hardness at her back, so consumed was she with the living, molten-hot mountain of a man before her.
When his tongue dipped into her mouth, she groaned at the velvet invasion. No longer shy, she met his strokes with her own, tangling and caressing in an erotic interplay.
He cupped the back of her head, his fingers fisting in her loose hair. That sent pricks of sensation racing from her scalp across her skin. Beneath her gown, her nipples pulled tight, and a low thrum began between her legs.
Gripping her hair more firmly, he pulled her head back, breaking their kiss and exposing her neck to his lips. He feasted on the vulnerable skin there, dragging his lips and even his teeth across places she’d never considered sensitive before.
When he found her ear in the unbound waves of her hair, he nipped her there, drawing an astonished gasp. And when the warmth of his tongue flicked her lobe, she nearly melted into a puddle. How much more sensation could he build within her? She already felt nigh bursting with it.
He lifted a knuckle to her shoulder, grazing it along the neckline of her gown. He skimmed lower, until the knuckle reached the corner of the square neckline. She lurched under his touch. Heaven help her, he was only an inch from her throbbing, taut nipple.
Mindlessly, she arched into his touch, seeking the contact she so desperately needed, but he did not oblige her. Instead, he slid his knuckle over, continuing to slowly, tauntingly trace the line of the gown.
“This dress is verra fine,” he murmured. Though the words were tame, his tone betrayed him, for his voice came out like the crunch of gravel beneath a boot.
“Thank ye,” she managed on a wobbling breath.
When he reached the other corner of the neckline, what little composure she clung to disintegrated again. She strained into him, her nipple aching for his attentions, but again he denied her.
“Why did ye choose this one for tonight?” he demanded, lingering just beyond the pearled peak of her breast.
“It makes me feel bonny,” she admitted, unable to hold aught back with her wits so scrambled by desire. “Nay, more than that. Like a woman, no’ just a dutiful Laird’s daughter.”
“And ye wore it for him,” Gregor ground out. “For Cormack Gunn.”
“Nay,” she replied, panting shamelessly at