Favoring him with a tender smile, Laoghaire extended her left hand, silently beckoning him to place the ring upon her finger. As he did so, Galen immediately felt a weight lift from his shoulders, the heaviness replaced with an ebullient lightness that filled his entire chest cavity.
Laoghaire held her hand to the window as she appraised the purple stone. “We have come a far distance since the day I left this ring—”
Without warning, Galen grabbed hold of Laoghaire by the upper arms and pulled her to him, silencing her with his mouth. The kiss that followed was wild and deep and it caused a rush of hot blood to course through his veins. Wrapping an arm around Laoghaire’s backside, Galen molded her to his chest. At feeling the press of her soft breasts, he bit back a groan of pleasure, while he angled his head to more perfectly fit their two mouths together. He then used his tongue to sensuously tangle and entwine, to explore the warm, inviting depths of her mouth.
Laoghaire returned his ardor with an equal fervor. Threading her fingers through his hair, she clasped the back of his head, pulling him even closer to her.
Aching from the want of her, Galen slid a hand over the rounded contour of a plump breast and began to massage it. When Laoghaire leaned into him, he whisked his thumb back and forth over the hardened stub of her nipple.
Desperate for a more intimate contact, he stood up. After pulling Laoghaire to her feet, he walked her backwards several steps, pinning her to the nearest stone wall.
Overcome with desire, Galen thrust a hand between Laoghaire’s legs and cupped her sex. “I have dreamt of this for the last three nights,” he muttered against her lips.
“We have the turret all to ourselves.”
“Meaning what?” he prodded. Although her searing expression alluded to stolen pleasures, he wanted,needed, to hear her utter the words.
Laoghaire smiled seductively and said, “I would have ye make love to me, my strong and bonny warrior. Here. Now. In this place.”
His lady wife’s overture was like the sweetest minstrel’s tune, and Galen responded by pressing his fingers into the crevice of her woman’s mound. Holding his gaze, her blue eyes gleaming with an ardent fire, Laoghaire arched her hips in his direction. Galen shuddered, the force of his desire causing the blood to pulse in his neck, even as it lengthened and thickened his manroot.
Pushing his fingers deeper, Galen said, “You’re wet for me. I can feel it through your garments.”
Laoghaire moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Aye, I am ready for ye,” she murmured while she snaked her hand beneath his tunic. She then slid her palm over the muscles of his lower belly before she fondled his stiffened organ through his braies.
Christ God!
He gulped in a ragged breath, seized with a fierce yearning to take her, there, against the stone wall.
Just as Laoghaire had done a few moments ago, Galen arched his hips, pressing himself more fully into her hand. Then, suddenly needing more than a brazen caress, he grasped hold of her by the hips and together they sank to the floor.
Too lust-crazed to bother with undressing her, he simply hitched Laoghaire’s chemise and kirtle to her waist. That done, he shoved his tunic aside, untied his braies, and in one swift movement, thrust his cock as deeply into her as he could. Laoghaire—her legs wrapped around his haunches, her arms clinging to his shoulders and back—moaned aloud with pleasure.
Galen also moaned, the muffled exclamation coming from deep within his chest. To his ears, it was an almost primitive sound, one that was born of want and wildness. And something else. Some unfamiliar emotion that caused his heart to pound faster, harder. For a moment it occurred to him that his beautiful Highland bride exerted far too much power over him, but he quickly shoved the errant thought to the wayside and allowed himself to be consumed by the blistering heat of what was an almost unholy passion.
Bracing his palms against the floor, he levered his chest upward and began to plunge his hips, maintaining a fierce rhythm.
Suddenly he felt Laoghaire’s entire body tense, just before she arched upward on a gasp. When, in the next instant, her inner muscles gripped him tightly as she reached her climax, Galen’s seed spurted from his manroot in a great burst, the pleasure so intense that he shuddered in the aftermath.
Still gasping for air, Laoghaire buried her face against his shoulder. Galen cradled her in his arms while he smoothed a hand over her silky tresses and softly pressed his lips to her heated brow.
“I am completely undone, lady wife.”
Peering into his eyes, Laoghaire graced him with a warm, womanly smile. “As am I, lord husband.”
“God’s teeth! They can’t keep their hands off each other,” Dame Winifred muttered while she watched the earl and his redheaded trollop enter the keep, arm-in-arm.
Standing in the lower bailey, enraged by the disgusting display of connubial bliss, she was forced to acknowledge that all of her hopes, all of her plans for the future, had come to naught.
The Highland bitch has taken what rightfully belongs to my daughter!
As a result, Winifred now feared their future was bleak, indeed. She’d been given the position of châtelaine by the old earl when her sister, the previous countess, had taken to childbed. That made her present situation precarious, particularly since she had few allies at Castle Airlie. Melisande’s predicament was not much better. True, Angus felt a responsibility toward her because they’d once been betrothed. But how long the largesse would continue was anyone’s guess.
I suspect the Celtic creature, if given half a chance, will not hesitate to throw us to the wolves.
Had Angus not spurned Melisande’s overture, their future would have been secured. Why he did so was a complete mystery, to both her and her daughter. It was as if the Highland bitch had somehow cast a spell upon Angus, one from which he could not disentangle himself.
Granted, there was always a chance the cow would fail to conceive, forcing the earl to cast her aside for another.
