She could feel his heart beating, deep heavy thuds like the pulse of the world. She had a sudden, terrifying thought: this man could become her world, if she let him. Maybe even if she did not.
She told him honestly, “It is not easy for me to trust.”
“Then,” he whispered, “only let me show you my devotion.”
His hands slid slowly up her arms in a tantalizing friction as he bent his head to hers. Still caught by what she saw in his eyes, Jeannie could not look away. His gaze held her fast as might a magical spell, even as his lips reached for hers.
He drew her up against him an instant before he claimed her mouth, so she felt all of him in a rush of pure, muscular heat. His lips seared hers, soft and persuasive yet hot as fire. Sensation speared through her from that point of contact and burned away any lingering hope of resistance.
Oh, and she had never imagined touching someone could feel like this. Darkness rushed at her on the wings of flame and pleasure as demoralizing as pain. She surrendered to it completely, as to sudden death.
His lips molded to hers, moved and wooed, coaxed her lips apart. He seemed to drink of her and then to pour himself into her like strong drink. His tongue slipped into her mouth, licked the insides of her lips, and stroked her tongue in an act of blatant intimacy that turned Jeannie’s knees to water.
No one had ever touched her so. She knew she should haul on the strings of her sanity—her propriety—and push him away. But all she could imagine was his tongue touching her everywhere while she lay open and welcoming beneath it, naked and shameless.
Wicked.
He made a soft sound in his throat—satisfaction or demand—and it completed her undoing. She opened her mouth further beneath his, pressed herself to him, lifted her arms and wound them about his neck. Smooth, warm muscle met her fingers, and a tumble of hair like silk. His heart beat still more quickly against her breast, and hers sped to match it. She wanted to be inside him; she wanted him inside her.
Yes, and he came armed for it; she could now feel him pressed insistently against her and could not mistake that particular weapon. It should shock her further, make her pull away from him and flee. Instead she felt a rush of victorious joy that she had aroused him.
His tongue stroked hers and took up a deep, suggestive rhythm. Jeannie had never lain with any man, no, but she understood instinctively just what that dance meant. Had she any doubt, he pressed himself against her in silent demand, and she fought the desire to part her legs and welcome him in.
She nearly sobbed in protest when he broke the kiss and withdrew his tongue from her mouth. “Jeannie,” he said raggedly. “Jeannie, Jeannie—”
She gasped and threaded her fingers through his hair. Determinedly, she reached for his mouth again—wet and hot,hers. This time she slid her tongue between his lips, coaxed his tongue to her bidding, and when he thrust it upon her, a mad idea burst to life in her mind: she could slide down his body, take him into her mouth just as she had that tongue.
Doubly wicked! But he made her feel wanton and abandoned, and all those things she had never expected to be.
His hands, that held her so fast against him, slid softly downward, caressing her body as they went. Pleasure, still more intense, pierced her to the marrow. Surely she would die if she did not have this man.
Again he broke the kiss, but it was only to slide that irresistible mouth of his across her cheek and shiver little kisses to the corner of her mouth.
She tried to recapture his lips with hers, needing it badly, and he gave a soft, low laugh that vibrated through her. By heaven, but she longed to hear that in her ear, in the dark.
“So beautiful,” he murmured. “Do you ken how beautiful you are?”
She little cared if that were true, so long as he believed it, so long as it made him want her. So this was how good women went astray…
“Please,” she begged, and captured his mouth again. He tasted like nothing she had ever known: honey, and the best whisky, and danger.
His hand moved once more, caressing its way up her body, and found her breast. Jeannie stopped breathing and the world stood still.
Surely she had been made to fill this man’s hands? To lie beneath him? To give and give, and give.
****
This will be entirely too easy, Finnan MacAllister thought in satisfaction. Already Jeannie MacWherter melted in his hands like frost in the sun.
The lying hoyden—how was he supposed to believe a woman who burned with such passion would have kept Geordie or any other man from her bed? Yet he had Geordie’s own word on that, his letters written out of an aching and sorrowful heart.
She will not love me, Finn, not in the way a woman loves a man or even as a wife accepts her husband. ’Tis proof, had I needed it, I am but a blight on this world.
Finnan had heeded the sadness those words expressed, but taken up completely with his struggle here in the glen had he neglected the deeper darkness in Geordie’s soul? Geordie had often expressed an almost childlike idealism, all too easily disappointed. He possessed little of the hard cynicism Finnan had learned to wear like armor, and that protected him yet.
It did protect him, he assured himself, even as he kissed Jeannie MacWherter again, his tongue mimicking the action his loins ached to complete. She proved a far too potent temptation.
And he could have her here and now on her own hearthstones, with Danny but an arm’s reach away, if he wished. The risk and danger of the prospect further enflamed him, the chance of the lad waking to see them moving together, him spearing the woman as she deserved.
