The Highlander (38 page)

Their tongues tangled, and he tasted desperation on her as she gripped at the solid muscles of his back with a fervency he'd not felt from her even last night.

Her need heightened his, and a rush of desire directed every last drop of blood into his cock. He pressed her against him tightly, rolling his hips to show her what her beauty did to him.

He captured one of her wrists and brought her fingers to his mouth. Gently gripping the tip of her soft satin gloves with his teeth, he pulled each sheath from her fingers until it slid from her hand completely.

With his other hand, he undid his trousers as he distracted her by sliding two of her fingers in his mouth. Her lips parted, glimmering with the leavings of his kiss. Her eyes became stormy and hooded and he watched her relish the memories of how his tongue had slid through the folds of her sex the very same way it now slid in between her fingers.

Leaving her fingers good and wet, he drew them from his mouth. “Touch me, lass,” he murmured, lowering both of their hands to where he'd freed himself from his trousers.

He wanted her to know him, to feel what she did to him. To consider his manhood not as a weapon he could use against her, but as an extension of his desire. She could hold him, wield him, drive their pleasure, and use his body to sate her own needs.

They both gasped when her hand closed around him, though his was the sharper inhale. Her lithe fingers encircled his turgid shaft, testing the girth. Her eyes flicked up to his in surprise, but quickly darted away as she used her moist fingers to explore the hot skin.

Liam shuddered as she slid her fingers to the round tip, treading the ridge before sliding all the way to the root. He groaned and shook, lowering his head to her throat, wishing her damned gown weren't high-necked. That they were naked and alone.

But their only bare skin was his cock and her hand, her soft, curious, magical hand that not only held his sex in her delicate grip, but his heart, his black soul.

His salvation.

Lifting up on her toes, she pressed a soft kiss to his panting lips, and when he would have captured her mouth, she pulled away and shocked him by dropping to her knees.

*   *   *

Mena's hand remained gently locked around his cock as her skirts flared around her, creating a puddle of dark silk and muslin. She wanted this. Wanted to give him the pleasure that he'd so lovingly shown her. Wanted to use her mouth to convey the things she could not yet bring herself to say.

She needed to reclaim this act as one between lovers, not as a memory of domination and humiliation.

“Please,” she whispered, arching her neck to look up at him. “Don't pull my hair.”

“Mena,” he groaned, his massive chest sawing beneath his gray vest with wolfish panting breaths. “Ye doona have to—och, Christ,” he bit out as she closed her lips over his thick shaft.

Every muscle in his body shuddered and locked in a splendid, animalistic movement. He tossed his head back, baring his thick neck and blindly reached down for her.

Stopping himself just in time, he groped behind him, gripping the molding on the train wall, his fingers turning white with strain.

A victorious thrill shocked Mena as she drew him deeper into the warm cavern of her mouth. Even through the haze of his passion, he'd heeded her request, and she'd reward him for it.

She kept her hand around the base of him, gripping what her mouth could not fit. Slowly, she ran her tongue around the engorged ridge of the blunt head, reveling in the coarse sound he made. He fascinated and tantalized her, such unyielding hardness covered in pure silk.

The rhythm of his furiously pumping heart beat rampantly in the flesh contained by her mouth. She felt giddy, powerful, and astounded by her own body's wet and throbbing response to her bold action.

He tasted sumptuous and salty and completely masculine. Her mouth watered and she used the rampant moisture to ease his cock as deep as she could take him before drawing him out again.

The responding catches and clenches in his abdomen were visible even beneath his shirt and waistcoat.

Her tongue made an expedition of him, finding the curious veins beneath his thin, smooth skin. Stroking him rhythmically with her hand, she allowed her mouth more leeway, pressing kisses to the weeping tip and teasing him with little licks and nibbles using only her lips.

He growled down at her, baring his teeth in wordless demand. Some of the molding gave way beneath his hands, splintering beneath the pressure of his grip.

Foreign guttural words escaped him, though whether blessings or curses, she couldn't begin to speculate.

With a mischievous smile, she pulled away just a little, enjoying the mindless thrust of his hips as he followed. The pleading tilt of his brow. The unbidden sound of protest.

She gave him what he wanted, taking him so deep her jaw ached with the effort of it. Covering her teeth with her lips, she used her hand and mouth to simulate what their bodies had done. Her tongue glided on the underside of his shaft, finding the large, tender vein there and exerting extra pressure.

Now she knew his words to be ferocious blasphemies, as he growled them harshly to the ceiling. When her hand dipped into his trousers, discovering the nest of dark hair and palming the pendulous weight of his potency, his language dissolved into little more than grunts and her name on helpless catches of breath.

Though she knew he fought it, his hips bucked forward, driving himself farther into her mouth. She opened her throat to accept him, held her breath when he reached too deep. He ravished her mouth with desperate thrusts, pulsing, throbbing, growing larger until her fingers could no longer contain him.

Mena prepared to receive his release, to let his seed slide down her throat in glorious pulses and lap like a kitten at what she could not initially take. But she suddenly found herself seized by the arms and hauled to her feet.

His mouth crushed hers in a predatory kiss filled with a paradoxical, worshipful sentiment. He gathered her skirts in desperate, bunching handfuls and she found herself falling, though he caught her before she landed and gently pressed her into the edge of the seat.

Features taut and eyes burning with abysmal flames, he swept her undergarments down and roughly pushed her knees upward and apart, exposing her utterly.

He filled the space between her legs with his wide, hard body, and before she could catch her breath there was a blunt, heavy pressure against the wet cove of her secret flesh. He slid inside her with a long, lithe thrust and, though Mena felt a twinge of soreness from their night of passion, she accepted the massive intrusion with a purr of welcome.

Her flesh felt swollen and soft around his hardness. Eyes glazed with dark need, he withdrew, repositioned, and took her again, this time penetrating so deep that she felt a strange and heady sensation thrill against her spine.

Lids shuttered low with passion, he pleasured her in grinding, circular motions rather than long thrusts. It was as though he couldn't bear to withdraw, to leave her warmth for even a moment.

Feeling just as needy, just as desperate for closeness, Mena reached for his hard shoulders, wanting to pull him against her. But he resisted, pressing a gentle palm to her chest until she relaxed against the cushion of the bench.

Mena might have been wounded had he not instantly brought his thumb to her mouth and dipped it inside with a wicked sound. Drawing it against her tongue, he gathered some of the moisture there and then left her to apply it to the bud nestled in the auburn curls between her split legs.

Mena jerked as he slid the rough skin turned slick against the aching cluster of sensation. She bit down hard on her lip to keep from screaming as he circled it in time to the strong and sinuous movements of his hips.

She was stretched as wide as her legs allowed, helplessly pinned beneath his big, undulating body. She could not press back against him, or meet his rhythm. Her only option was to receive him and submit to his hedonistic onslaught.

He drove her pleasure with his teasing, torturing thumb as he surged inside of her, watching her with alert and restless eyes. He learned what pleased her and lingered there, until she clamped her own hand over her mouth and her thighs began to clench around him as the whispers of pulsating release began to threaten to overwhelm her.

His fingers left her sex, digging into the flesh of her thighs and pressing them wider as he angled deep, deeper, until a flood of bliss clenched her feminine muscles around him. Her climax found her in great, cresting waves, each one more powerful than the last until she writhed and squirmed to try to escape their unexpected intensity.

His dark sound of triumph was lost in the rush of sound through her ears, as though the universe had finally opened to her, and she could hear whatever curious song the cosmos sang as the earth hurled its way through the darkness.

The spasms of her body pulled the release Liam had been trying to hold back. He caught a raw sound in his throat, and buried his face in the front of her dress, bearing down on the fabric with his teeth. He sank into her with a few final and powerful thrusts, his large body racked with great, violent shudders.

They didn't move for a few countless moments after, neither of them certain their body truly still belonged to them.

With an incredible sigh, Liam dropped his forehead on her shoulder and allowed himself to go lax, though he propped most of his weight with his elbows on either side of her.

Mena stroked the stubble of his two-day beard and cradled him with her body, wrapping her legs around his waist as though she could hold him inside forever. He didn't seem to mind in the least, nuzzling her breast with his jaw through her layers of clothing. A sheen of mist blurred her vision as she realized that this was the kind of closeness she'd craved her entire life. True intimacy. Mutual regard. Give and take, instead of her merely giving until she was utterly empty. A shell of a woman.

“After this is over, I'm going to marry ye,” he announced softly, pressing a kiss to her jaw.

Mena said nothing as she pressed his head tenderly to her, resting her cheek against his forehead as a tear ran into her hair.

 

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
ONE

The Euston Rail Station in Camden was considered the gateway rail line from London to the north of the empire. The grand structure consisted of four platforms, a stately great hall, and a Doric propylaeum built after the style of the Acropolis at the entrance complete with resplendent statuary. The borough of Camden perched very close to Regent's Park, almost equidistant to the Strand in the southeast, and Mayfair to the southwest.

Stiff from a horrible night's sleep on the train, Mena stepped down onto the arrival platform and was instantly jostled by a press of humanity in the form of late-afternoon London travelers. A burst of loud steam engulfed her, startling her so much that she hopped backward, her heel stomping down on the foot of whoever was unfortunate enough to have disembarked behind her.

“Oh, Jani,” she exclaimed, turning to help him limp to a less crowded spot on the platform. “Forgive me. Are you very badly hurt?”

“No, no, Miss Mena,” he kindly assured her through clenched teeth and eyes pinched with pain. “I am only sorry to have been in your path.”

“Dear Jani, don't you even think of apologizing, it is
entirely
my fault.” She patted the soft violet silk of his shoulder as he tested his weight on the offended foot. Mena was sorry for anyone in her path, nay, her vicinity. She was a bundle of emotion and fear and elation all at once. Her mind could barely process the filigree signs pointing toward the portico, let alone navigate the crowded station.

“I will be fine, Miss Mena,” he soothed, straightening. “I feel that I am not myself today.”

“Does London make you nervous?” Mena asked.

“Not as nervous as it seems to make you,” Jani observed.

Mena would have denied it, but a hand violently seized her arm and she whirled around with a startled gasp.

“Look at all the shops out on the portico!” Rhianna squealed, nearly shaking Mena in her exuberance. “And can ye believe how grand those hotels are? How close are we to Hyde Park? Should we find a paperboy so that we can see what events are happening and decide what we want to do before we get to Grandmama's? I've heard they sell papers on every corner here. Why does it smell like food in the middle of the station, do they have vendors?”

Coming up behind her, Liam playfully clamped his gloved hand over his daughter's mouth. “Breathe,
nighean,
” he commanded gently, his dark eyes gleaming with mischief. “We'll have time to see what there is to see.”

“Can I take yer carpetbag, Miss Lockhart?” Andrew asked, nudging his sister who still vibrated with excitement, taking in the grandeur of the station as if frustrated that she couldn't look everywhere at once.

“Yes, you
may.
” Mena gently hinted a correction of his grammar, handing it to him. “What a lovely offer.”

“I think Miss Lockhart is in danger of turning ye into a gentleman, my son.” Liam offered Andrew a proud smile, one that the youth returned.

“One of us has to be,” Andrew ribbed back.

Liam's warm sound of amusement could almost be called a laugh, and drew the admiring gazes of the few women who weren't already staring up at him with frank appreciation.

“You're our only hope for a gentleman in the Mackenzie family, Andrew, dear.” Mena relaxed into the jovial moment, thoroughly enjoying the familial teasing. She appreciated it almost as much as she did the tranquil, heavy-lidded expression Ravencroft wore, and the secret pleasure it brought her to know that she was the one responsible for it.

“Aye, lad,” Liam concurred. “Miss Lockhart called me a ferocious barbarian.” His eyebrows lifted in ridiculous mockery of an innocent expression, something his sinister features could never hope to attain. “Can ye imagine?”