A Highlander for Christmas (40 page)

Her breath was puffy. “Jared, I want—”

“I know,” he said hoarsely, seeing almost before she did. His hands slid along her hips and eased lower, pushing past the wisp of lace to cup her heat. “Let me feel you, Maggie. Let me have your fire.”

There in the shadows and the silence Jared found the tangled curls that hid her slick heat. And in the same moment he parted her, driving her deeper into the pleasure that stretched before her.

So tight. So hot where she sheathed him He shattered her control, pulling her nerves tighter until she was caught tight with exquisite yearning.

Desire burned. Need sang.

In one more moment Jared knew he would be as lost as she was. And he wasn’t ready for that paradise yet. “Maggie, I—”

“
Yes
,” she said shakily.

His hands slid into her hair as he held her face still, plundering her mouth with a violence he had never expected in himself.

“More,” she rasped, digging at his shirt, her legs restless against him.

Jared knew a dark surge of triumph at her need. With every second of contact, his knowledge of her body grew in his mind, every response cast in exquisitely graphic detail.

She shoved blindly at his shirt.

Linen flew. Denim struck the floor.

Skin to skin at last.

Their hands met in a sigh of pleasure as moonlight gilded bodies that were almost too taut for bearing. Tongue to tongue, chest to chest, they lost themselves in each other.

She nuzzled his chest, tasted his warm skin and tested the rigid length of him. Bending, she goaded the hot muscle trapped within her hand until Jared felt his control shred. When her lips feathered over him, he tensed.

Her tongue was like silk as he gripped her face, pulling her away. “No more,” he said harshly. He brought her hands to his chest and sent them in a tangle to the bed. Soft damask whispered as he pulled her atop him.

She gave a broken sigh. “You really feel what I’m thinking?”

His grin was slow. “Every wicked thought.”

A flush stained her face and slid over her chest. “This could get tricky.” Her head tilted. “Unless I take the offensive.”

She arched slightly, then straddled his rigid heat.

This is what I want
, she thought.

And heard his soft curse.

I love you,
she thought, and felt him lift her and part her slowly, with infinite care.

“Yes,” she whispered. Against his neck, his chest, his mouth.

Worlds collided.

Universes merged, flared, re-formed.

Pleasure surged, tightening every muscle to something bordering pain. Jared let them both feel the pulsing heat, made them both wait until raw sensation overwhelmed all other awareness.

Then his hand slid between them. “You feel like roses,” he whispered, stroking her slowly. “Hot, sweet petals. Tonight I’ll find how you taste, Maggie.”

She closed her eyes. Blindly she rose, fingers trembling in his hair as desire bloomed. Jared felt the flare through his own body, felt her wild silver rush of pleasure as she fell into spirals of wonder.

He drove her up anew, catching her soft cries with his mouth, greedy for the touch and taste of her shocked response. He was the first to make her shudder this way, he saw. The first to make her feel such blinding sensation.

His eyes closed as her nails dug at his back. He felt her silken contractions, pulling, pulling. Her response claimed the last of his control.

With a muttered oath he pinned her hands to the white bed and took her the final way, driving her over the sheets with exquisite friction. He felt her burning, caught in dark waves of pleasure.

The past clung close, shadowed and silent like the great old house as they took and gave, fought and tumbled, learning all the secrets that lovers share. Her sigh echoed his soft groan as skin moved to sheathe heated skin.

When her eyes beckoned, hot and entreating, Jared opened his hands against hers and followed where she drew him, down where her soul waited, calling to his. She twisted, hot and giving beneath him, and her broken sounds of pleasure frayed the last ends of his control.

She locked her hands on his neck and pushed against him urgently. “This is what I want, Jared. Not diamonds. Not silver. You—me. Now.”

She let him touch all her secrets, all her churning pleasure.

All his careful plans and strategies vanished like dawn mist off the great loch below his old home. Only this night mattered. Only the radiance of Maggie’s passion and the heat that shivered between them.

When he felt the next shudder sweep through her, he gripped her hips and drove deep, until her sleek skin parted to hold him and she could take no more.

“Jared, I’m dying.”

The word held no sting, he found, while her body moved beneath him. For whatever time he had left, he would stir her joy and make the days ring with her laughter. “I am too, but I’ll die inside you.”

Hot and sweet, she held him.

Hot and sweet, her mind reached out, out, part of a link that had waited here at the abbey for their return. Gwynna or Maggie, she was the sun of his world. As a warrior he would protect her. As a man, he would honor her with his name.

And as a lover, he would answer joy with joy while the abbey held them in its restless magic.

She gave a broken sigh of pleasure as he pinned her to the bed and filled her again with his straining length. Too long denied, skin parted, claimed, clung. Then her legs tightened, and the pleasure of her silken response drove Jared beyond control.

She arched, surprise in her cry as he took her up again, and then once more while the white damask bedspread whispered and shifted beneath their stormy need.

Her name was on his
lips
when his hot seed spilled deep inside her and Jared found the blind pleasure that had so long eluded him.

And there beyond the mists of forgetting, she stood waiting. Somehow he had always known she would.

All I ever dreamed,
she thought.

And Jared heard, smiling even in the fury of his final pleasure just before they toppled together into a racing world of silver.

~ ~ ~

The bedspread lay twisted on the floor. The sheets were in a tangle somewhere near the pillows.

Maggie stretched, expectant and replete as moonlight lit her tousled hair. Her smile was radiance itself. “That was … devastating. In the very best way.”

“Not quite,” Jared said roughly. “That was just a opener.”

Her hand rose, nuzzling his jaw. “You’re kidding, right?”

He moved, hard again, meeting her heat with a need grown more fierce.

Her eyes widened. “Aren’t you?”

“There’s one other thing about MacNeill men. Something I didn’t tell you.” Movement, deep and sure. “We’re very quick in our recovery.”

“That’s not possible.” She gasped as desire rippled, built.

“I was thinking about this when you were driving me crazy with your hands, trying to free Max. I was wishing you were right here like this, trapped against the linen sheets.”

Maggie sighed.
So was I.

She heard his low curse in answer. Then pleasure hit her, hot and sweet, and her response slammed back to Jared.

“That was adequate,” he said, taking her with hard, sure strokes. “But this, my beautiful Maggie, will be spectacular.”

Her laughter broke into a gasp as joy spun up and passion claimed them yet again.

~ ~ ~

One by one the stars rose above the moat. One by one the white swans appeared, gliding over the restless water.

And the great, dreaming abbey watched, welcoming the old lovers home.

Jared drifted slowly, mountains before him and soft heather beneath his feet. Everywhere there was mist and cool wind, rich with the scent of peat fires. His body shifted, searching for something.

Warm arms.

Hair that filled his hands like silk. Stretching lazily, he reached out.

And met warm fingers. Pale dawn light on silken skin.

She was even more beautiful when she slept. Her skin glowed, and he saw the delicate tracery of blue veins where her hand lay outstretched beside him

A storm of emotions filled him, and greatest among them was love, something the Scotsman had been so sure he’d never find or deserve. He remembered the places she had taken him in the stillness of midnight. The feelings she had taught him as they’d tumbled over those crisp white sheets.

Every image had his body hardening. The desire snapped and growled through him like a wild beast. Somehow Jared caged it, savoring her stillness and the gentle colors of her mind beneath his fingers. She was dreaming of silver and hammered platinum. Bezel-set citrines and Siberian diamonds. He sensed the perfection of form before her, always beckoning, always eluding.

His hands cupped her wrist with infinite tenderness.

Never had he expected that loving someone could be so simple. All he had to do was breathe and the emotion was there, trapping him tight and filling him like sunlight in every cold corner and empty space. Never had he expected that sliding down into someone’s mind could be so painless—or so brutally addictive.

Almost without thinking he brought his palm up the creamy ridge of her inner thigh, then groaned as her pleasure flowed back to him, caught in waves of gold and pink. A voice whispered that it was dangerous to linger, to want so much and fall into another’s soul so completely.

If so, Jared would consider the price well paid.

Bending down, he skimmed her shoulder, then fit his mouth to hers. Unerring, his fingers moved to coax and tease the hollows that left her dry-mouthed and restless.

To hell with dangerous, he thought as he trapped her breathy sigh of waking just before it slid into a moan of dark pleasure. He would have her and hold her, enthrall and entice her. For as much time as he had left.

“Jared?” Her hands covered his neck. “You’re not wearing anything. You’re—”

He pulled her against him. “Convenient, isn’t it?”

“Is this going to be a habit with you?” Her smile was sleepy and entirely radiant as he fit his body to hers, already drawing her up into a wave of pleasure. “If it isn’t, I don’t want to know.”

~ ~ ~

Someone was breaking bricks on his head.

Or maybe it was on his chest.

With a low oath, Jared struggled up from sated sleep. There were aches in his arms, nail marks on his back, and the tiny print of Maggie’s teeth on one shoulder.

She didn’t stir as he smoothed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Maggie,” he whispered. “I’ve got to go.”

“Hmmmm.”

He traced her cheek, loath to wake her, loath to leave the sunlit joy of her.

“It’s morning.” He frowned at the bedside clock. “Actually, it’s almost afternoon.”

She twisted, dragging the pillow around her head. “More silver. Melted. Hot.” Her lips curved in sleepy oblivion. “Incredible lines and texture.”

Jared was pleased to sense that he had more than a little to do with the graphic dream she was having. Smiling, he smoothed the quilt. “I’ll bring you breakfast. Strawberries and chocolate. Fresh scones with cream. Maybe even some champagne from the abbey’s cellar.”

Her nose crinkled. She rolled to her side. “Not the jade. Diamonds. Hot and white. Two more facets to go.” With an irritable sigh, she dragged the pillow onto her chest. “Need more solder.”

Jared realized that it was all the soft, intimate farewell he would have from her.

~ ~ ~

Ten minutes later Jared stood in the doorway outside Marston’s kitchen, listening to Christmas music while amazing smells drifted from the old Aga oven. Funny, he had forgotten that Christmas was only a few weeks away.

But he’d been a little busy.

The butler slanted one quick glance up from the pastry dough he was kneading on a marble slab. “Good morning, Commander.” His eyes narrowed at Jared’s tartan attire. “Is there some special occasion that I’ve missed?”