But he could barely think straight with her so hot and soft beneath him, and with the ache of his own need.
Her back against the grass, and her mouth still clinging to his, she helped him as best she might while he removed her bloomers. Her skirt was now bunched up around her waist, and he hastily thrust his kilt to one side. He could feel her heart beating an accelerated pace all through her body and into his.
He released her lips and reared above her to admire the picture she made spread there on the ground, hair and skirts all about her, to imprint it on his mind so he would never forget. He palmed one of her breasts and said, “Are you certain you want this, Jeannie? Do you want me to stop? I would do nought to violate Geordie’s memory.”
Her expression went blank. Aye, Finnan thought bitterly, and she barely remembered her husband. His anger flared, but it did not make him want her any less.
“Ask me, Jeannie,” he insisted in a whisper. “You must ask for it.”
On fire as she was, he expected her to implore. Instead she lifted her chin and said in a voice that quivered, “You are a wicked man, Finnan MacAllister—a wicked highlander.”
Aye, he was, and unrepentant.
“But I want you.” She added deliberately, “I want this.”
A wave of savage satisfaction tore through him, so tangled with need he could barely distinguish it. She had used Geordie and, aye, he would use her as she deserved.
He positioned his weight between her thighs, and she arched into him. She twined her arms about his neck even as he came down on her, her entire body a ready welcome. He slid into her as perfectly as if she had been made for him, and the shocking pleasure of it possessed him so completely he almost missed what else he felt—the slight resistance of a woman being plucked.
For the first time.
Astonishment gripped him, nearly as complete as his pleasure. But he could not gainsay it: Jeannie MacWherter had been a virgin when he entered her.
But how could that be? Aye, well, he knew Geordie had not had her, but such a scheming, calculating wanton must have made her way through a score of men.
Still he caught himself, held the impulse that bade him pound into her, and moved softly instead, giving her time to accept the length and heft of him. When she sighed and relaxed in his arms, when her legs reached up and clung to him, only then did he flex and begin to move inside her in a gentle rhythm that required all his will.
His mind still reeled from the surprise of it, but need rode him far too hard now to allow contemplation. Everything about her drew him to her like iron to a lodestone. He felt her wild response when the friction their bodies made reignited her, and her heat roared at him out of the darkness.
Consumed him.
Nay, not quite. He retained enough sanity to let him withdraw at the last instant and spill his seed on the ground. He wanted revenge, not a permanent tie to her.
That for you, Geordie. But he lied: what he had just done, he had done for himself. How deny it when he still held her, more than half naked, in his arms? And aye, she quivered against him, clearly flicked by the last echoes of those flames as by a whip.
And what to say to her now? That he had just used her, that she—and the act—meant nothing more to him than relieving himself? He wanted her to feel Geordie’s pain.
But nay, that meant taking her body was not enough. He must break her heart.
Chapter Twenty-One
Oh, what had she done? Jeannie asked herself the question, as might someone emerging from a mad dream. She had never considered herself a foolish or precipitous woman. Yet she had just welcomed Finnan MacAllister between her legs—a place where she had allowed no man.
And now her sanity returned slowly, in pieces. The sounds of the night came to her even as the pounding in her ears—her heartbeat—calmed. She heard the rustle of the branches overhead, the buzz of insects.
She would have bites in the most shocking places.
She could feel Finnan’s breath coming softly between those irresistible lips of his. What made them so irresistible? Was it their strength? Their warmth? Their wild flavor? He still lay on top of her, the graceful length of him a balm. One of his hands rested, in a gesture that hinted of possession, on her bare breast.
Did she want for him to own her?
Yes, oh, yes. But he did not, even though she had just given him the greatest prize a woman could purportedly bestow on a man. She still owned her own soul.
Or did she?
She could not deny the magic inherent in the night surrounding them, and in the act they had just committed. If magic could steal a woman’s soul, hers might now be at least partially in the hands of this particular man.
She should be shocked that she could consider such a thing, that she could be lying here, out of doors, completely open to him and with no wish to cover herself.
