The Highlander (36 page)

His dark noise was full of masculine victory as he continued his seductive assault on her lips, caressing down the soft curve of her hip, then slid lower, gathering the folds of her skirts in his hand, tugging them up her leg.

Mena's fingers blindly gripped the stone behind her as frantically as she grasped for her sanity.

Then he dropped to his knees.

“What are you doing?” she gasped, reaching for him, meaning to pull him back against her.

“Doona touch me, lass,” he commanded, sliding his hands up beneath her dress, his calluses rasping against the silk of her stockings with a delightfully wicked sensation. “I'll not be able to stop myself from taking ye.”

Her brows drew together in bemused consternation. “But I told you that you could take me.” She was almost panting now, as though she'd run a great length.

“Aye.” He chuckled, his clever fingers stopping to toy with a garter, effectively rendering her witless. “I give before I take, lass. It'll always be thus.”

“But I don't unders—” The rest of her breath left her on a rush as his hand found its way inside of her drawers and sifted through her damp curls. Pleasure spiraled through her as his hand found the flesh that had been causing her such aching distress. Her breath became nothing but broken gasps as he rent her intimate garments and delved within the swollen folds, his fingers becoming instantly slippery with the abundant wetness he found there. Any thoughts of embarrassment disintegrated into the stunning pleasure he expertly coaxed from her with the slightest of movements.

His head dipped below the mists and disappeared. Her skirts lifted. His hair grazed the tender skin of her thighs for a shocking moment before he made a fluid, magical movement that buckled her knees and eased her thighs apart.

Then he was there between them, settling her thighs against his shoulders.

In all her life as a married woman, she'd never experienced the brutish, straining satisfaction she'd glimpsed on her husband's face as he attained his climax on her. And though she'd been forced to submit to any indignity he could devise, he'd never even considered
her
pleasure.

Touched, scandalized, apprehensive, and unbearably aroused, Mena opened her mouth to protest when his wicked, sinuous lips nudged against her closed body, and then licked it open, delving into her sex.

His moan vibrated against her, driving little tendrils of bliss through her core before letting them escape to her limbs. His tongue was at once lewd and unutterably sweet as it glided against the swollen nub that throbbed with torturous need.

Incredible agony slammed into her as he parted her folds with his fingers and suckled the aperture. He breathed only in moans as he tasted her, and the hedonistic pleasure conveyed in the sounds brought her to the edge of madness.

“I can't,” she cried, feeling her knees melt.

His lips left her with a wet, wicked sound. “Ye will,” he breathed against her most intimate flesh.

“I'm going to fall,” she warned weakly, her hips undulating toward his mouth with mortifying wantonness.

“Fall apart in my arms, lass,” he soothed, his hands caressing around to fill his palms with the flesh of her backside, making a cradle of her hips. “I'll not let ye go.”

Then he burrowed his mouth inside her slick folds once again.

Mena shivered with carnal bliss, then tensed with the building, aching pulses as each glide of his swirling tongue elicited sensations she'd not known herself capable of. A cataclysm of pleasure seized her with such force, she truly did feel as though it unmade her.

Distantly, she heard the low, lurid sounds that ripped their way out of her as she shuddered and pulsed with unparalleled, unfathomable bliss. Tension rushed from her, released with slick pulses of rolling, cresting delight. She whimpered and arched, strained and bucked, and still he pressed against her with that gentle, hot tongue, ever the conqueror, until she pleaded with him for mercy.

He finally relented, his wicked mouth reluctantly leaving her. But as he again rose from the mist, his sinister features were anything but merciful. Dark eyes glittered at her from a face etched with animalistic hunger.

Mena was too boneless to be afraid. Too drugged with pleasure to either anticipate or hesitate until the moonlight briefly reflected off the storm that had gathered in his onyx eyes.

This
was the Demon Highlander, and he was about to take not only her body, but her soul. The force of his passion seemed to reach her a moment before his lips did. He backed her fully against the stone, devouring her with lips that tasted of sweet musk and intimacy.

Her gown was suddenly above her waist, and he pushed his kilt aside before seizing her thighs and splitting them around his lean hips, supporting her with his shocking strength. The smooth head of his cock caressed the still-pulsating flesh of her sex, becoming instantly wet with the evidence of her release.

He was large. So devastatingly thick that a flash of fear speared her just as he slid into her with a swift, desperate stroke. There was pressure, there was even pain, but as soon as she would have cringed away, he withdrew. As though understanding her dilemma, he feathered kisses over her clenched eyelids, crooning low words to her in that indescribably beautiful language of his before plunging forward again. Even though he moved even deeper, she felt her body open to accept him, enclosing him in warm, slippery flesh.

Pressure morphed into pleasure, radiating from where their bodies joined in such a way that she felt awash in a pool of wet desire, held together only by the warm, hard masculine flesh around her.

And inside her.

“Can ye take more of me?” he panted.

Mena's eyes flew open. How could there possibly be more? He withdrew yet again, gazing down at her with dilated eyes as he surged forward. He touched a place inside her she'd not known existed, and Mena tossed her head from one side to the other, letting out a high cry of ecstasy.

“Yes,” he whispered fervently. “I knew ye would take all of me, Mena.” He drove forward again. And again. Thrusting with controlled urgency, the storm gathering into gale, and then a hurricane. Lifting her incredibly higher, he angled his cock so that it slid along that place deep inside her, the one that made her scream and clamp around him, bearing down on his hard length as it penetrated her again and again.

Using the rock to press back against him, Mena found herself straining to meet his thrusts, setting a rhythm. She anticipated each slippery invasion with eager delight and mourned his every withdrawal. It was as though a bond weaved between them within the Samhain mist, pledging themselves to this night, to this act, to the pleasure they found in each other's bodies and the ease they gave to the other's wounded soul.

When another climax blinded her with pure bliss, she locked her legs around his pistoning hips, pulling him impossibly deeper. Shivering pleasure assaulted her in wave after unrelenting wave.

He roared her name to the sky as her pulsing body gripped and stroked at the swelling length of him. Hot spurts of his release spilled inside her. His great body locked with spasms as he crushed her to him and joined her in that place where right and wrong no longer mattered. Where consequences didn't exist. Where tomorrow was an opportunity instead of a liability.

They stayed in that place for a long time after the storm of pleasure had passed. She locked in the strength of his arms, and he cradled within the softness of her body.

“I find, lass, that I doona want to let ye go,” he confessed.

Mena's fingers tenderly searched the stark angles and planes of his beloved features. What a man this was. A rare, brilliant, incredible man, and, as of this moment, he belonged to her.

The wondrousness of it was unfathomable.

At her touch, he rolled his hips forward once again, and Mena's eyes peeled wide as she realized that he was still hard, still reaching that quivering swath of pure, burning sensation deep within her.

He'd … finished. She'd been certain of it.

His teeth flashed a brilliant white in his swarthy face as he shrugged. “It's a Mackenzie trait,” he said blithely by way of explanation, before he began to move in slow, but insistent thrusts. “Once I'm done here, we'll probably only make it back to the keep before I'm ready to take ye again.”

“Oh, my,” was all she could say as teasing heat and pleasure stole all her capacity for speech as he began his tireless climb toward bliss once again.

 

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

The last time Mena had peered through the black mesh of this veil, she had been traversing the Bealach na Bà Pass toward Ravencroft. It had felt much like it did now, more a funereal veil than anything glamorous or stylish. Something behind which to hide her shame, her face, and her very self. Though she'd taken off the hat, a veil of secrecy had remained for her entire tenure at Ravencroft Keep. For the slightest, happiest time, even Mena had forgotten who she truly was.

The Lady Philomena St. Vincent, Viscountess Benchley.

Purported madwoman, and a ward of Belle Glen Asylum. Fugitive from the crown, her noble husband, and certain insanity. A woman she'd come to despise over the course of her enchanted autumn in Wester Ross. A weak-willed, soft-spoken ninny. A victim of violence. A perpetrator of silence. Ephemeral, unwanted, and thoroughly unhappy.

Mena Lockhart, on the other hand, had become more natural to her in the first five days than the viscountess had been in five years. As the spinster governess, she'd faced down multiple fears. She'd laughed, danced, scolded, healed, and imparted of her hard-won wisdom.

She'd even stood her ground in a quarrel with the Demon Highlander, and not only emerged the victor of their skirmish, but won his wounded heart.

Though, in doing so, she'd lost her own.

Her reflection in the train window showed no traces of the softness and contentment she'd cautiously begun to allow herself to feel whilst hiding in the Highlands. Her full lips drew into a line of prim restraint, her eyes became pinched and dull, her skin wan and pale rather than porcelain tinged with pink.

She'd retreated to a tiny, unoccupied box in a sparsely populated railcar to gather her thoughts. To brood, was more like it.

How in God's name had she ever allowed herself to board a train back to London? Was she truly mad? Why had she not portended some rank and incurable illness, forcing everyone to leave her behind?

Partly, she admitted to herself, because she'd been pleasured into witless oblivion more times than a human being could possibly be expected to endure and still hold a thought in her head. The hour had struck half past two in the morning before Liam and she had stumbled into her room, and even then they hadn't slept for some time. He'd thrown the drapes open wide and peeled her dress from her body with curious and infinite languor. He'd taken special care with her stockings, fingering the ribbons and garters and caressing them down her long, sturdy legs.

His rough fingers were infinitely gentle as he discovered every inch of her skin with patient and arousing caresses in the moonlight. They'd talked of amusing things while he undressed her. And insignificant things while she washed the runes and mist from his bare skin.

Then they said nothing at all when he pulled her above him and split her legs over his lean, sinuous hips. They'd communicated only in gasps and sighs as she'd ridden him with sensual rolls of her body. He'd palmed her breasts in his warm hands and said wicked things in his people's native tongue while she pleasured herself upon his sleek and magnificent body. Then, when he could stand it no more, he'd dug his strong fingers into the flesh of her hips and driven upward until he'd bowed with such shocking pleasure, Mena had thought his back would break.

In the darkness, he'd held her close against his slowing heartbeat, and spoke of serious things, of his brothers and the fear her capture had caused him. Of his intentions to bring Hamish to London and have him face the military tribunal that was doubtless waiting for him. He'd told her stories of Collin Talmage, the Duke of Trenwyth. As Liam had been gaining glory on the battlefield, Trenwyth had been a secret agent, spilling blood in the dark. After Hamish's presumed death, it turned out Trenwyth had made Liam aware of several war crimes he'd previously been ignorant of. His status as the Demon Highlander had shielded his brother from facing justice.

But justice awaited Hamish now, and it promised to be swift and merciless.

“How strange,” Mena had commented, while stroking her hands through the soft and sparse hair on Liam's chest, enjoying the feel of his masculine skin. “That a duke like Trenwyth would be in such service to the crown. If I remember correctly, he's something like seventeenth in line, practically a royal.”

“Trenwyth is no royal dandy. He's one of the most dangerous men I've ever met, with a self-destructive streak twice as long as my own.”

“Oh, my.” Mena yawned.

“He was born a second or third son, though, and didn't take on the mantle of duke until he'd already been in Her Majesty's service for quite some time. I imagine Trenwyth spends little time in the field now, though, as he lost his hand on a cover mission to Afghanistan.”

“Poor soul,” Mena murmured. “Did Hamish have anything to do with it?”

“I imagine Thorne and I are about to find out.”

Though Liam was the Marquess of Ravencroft, Laird of the clan Mackenzie, and a retired lieutenant colonel, Gavin St. James, the Earl of Thorne, acted as local magistrate, and so they were both to transport Hamish as their prisoner in the morning.

Exhausted beyond physical comprehension, Mena must have fallen asleep before the part where Liam had mentioned he intended for his children, and thereby, Mena, to accompany him on the journey.

It wasn't until an ecstatic Rhianna had accosted her in her bed, where she'd awoken alone with pillars of late-morning sun slanting in through her open windows, that she'd found out the panic-inducing news.