“Sweet, so very sweet,” he mumbled as he cupped her full breasts in his hands and lathed the tips with his tongue. “Say my name, lass. I want to hear ye say my name.”
“Alexander.” She groaned with a mixture of plea and pleasure as he continued to torment the hardened crests of her breasts. “Ah, it aches.”
“Aye, and I ken what for, Ailis.” He covered the hard nub he had been idly torturing and began to suckle gently.
A soft, purely sensual sound escaped her as sensation flooded through her. She arched her body, seeking to touch her hips to his. When Alexander shifted his body and the hard proof of his own arousal was pressed against her, Ailis trembled. She wrapped her legs around him as she fretfully fought to pull him closer. Her cry was more of relief than shock when he edged his hand between their bodies to caress the heated center of her need, easing her wanting even as he deepened it.
When Alexander stood up to shed the last of his clothes, Ailis made no attempt to flee. The prison his touch and kisses had placed her in was made all the stronger by the sight of his lean, hard body. Despite that, she shivered a little at the sight of his fully erect manhood. A touch of fear seeped through her passion. She greedily accepted him back into her arms, for the return of his warmth swiftly began to soothe her fears and press her back into unthinking desire. It was certainly far more pleasurable than fighting with him or worrying about some future sense of shame.
“Ah, now that feels lovely,” he murmured as he savored the way their forms and textures blended.
He moved his hands over her slim body as he devoured her mouth with his. The way she moved her hips, searching out his in a clear sign of her honest hunger, intoxicated him. Finally his body told him that the time had come to fully possess her. He kept his gaze fixed upon her desire-flushed face, watching for signs of tension or fear as he prepared to end her girlhood. Either feeling could dim the blaze, something he was eager to avoid. So, too, did he recall his promise to Barra not to hurt the lass. If he could pleasure Ailis, he would certainly be honoring that promise.
Slowly, gritting his teeth with the effort needed to restrain himself, Alexander eased himself into her body. She clenched her fingers, her nails digging into his hips, and she pressed her lips together tightly to muffle a cry as he breached her innocence. For a moment he was still, hoping to allow the pain she tried to hide to fade, but also to savor the feel of her and the strange exultation he felt over the knowledge that no other man had found that haven. He realized it was a first for him, although a few women had attempted to trick him into believing he had taken their virginity. Even as he hesitated, however, he stroked her with his hands, unable to resist touching her and wanting to rekindle the fire her pain had briefly doused. He needed that fire he had briefly tasted in her to return in full.
“The pain will ease soon, lass,” he said in a soft, gentle voice as he stroked her thigh.
“It didna hurt,” Ailis lied even as she felt the sensation of being torn asunder begin to fade.
Alexander smiled faintly. “Aye? Then why did ye turn ghostly white and nearly bite your tongue clean through?”
“ ‘Twas from revulsion.” She gasped as he cupped her breast in his hand and teased the crest until she shook with need.
A low husky chuckle was all the response she got from him. She decided that his rich seductive voice had to be a sin. It could not be right for a man’s voice to be so much like an intimate caress. She also thought that he was far too arrogant, but she was too caught up in her returning passion to really care.
She cried out with a desire she could not hide when he drew the hard tip of her breast deep into his mouth and began to suckle, drawing on it with a slow greed that devastated any vestiges of resistance she had tried to cling to. At the same time he began to move. Ailis needed little urging to wrap her legs around his taut hips and to parry his every thrust. She clutched at him, all thought save for what was happening to her body fleeing her mind. Some lingering sense warned her that she was being watched, and she quickly opened her eyes to catch him staring at her. She wondered how such blue eyes could look so hot.
“Ah, Alexander, it aches so.” Ailis clenched her body around his, trying to draw him deeper inside of her. “Canna ye cease? I will go mad.” She gasped as that ache suddenly changed and a wild, blinding feeling swept through her body.
Alexander cupped her face in his hands, watching in fascination as her desire peaked and hurled her past all thought and reason. The tremors that shook her, inside and out, grabbed hold of him as well and dragged his release from him. He collapsed on top of her, shaking from the strength of that release, her name a hoarse cry upon his lips. The echo of his name, called out in her passion-thick voice, still delighted him. It had been all he could have hoped for and more.
Ailis stared up at the ceiling. She felt torn between horror and wretched self-disgust. It was one thing to be ravished by one’s enemy, but quite another to squirm with vocal delight while it was happening. She cared little about her lost innocence, for there was no man she truly loved and for whom it should have been saved. In truth, she was glad that Donald MacCordy would not have the pleasure of tearing it from her. However, the warmth with which she had responded to Alexander MacDubh troubled her deeply.
She could not honestly say that Alexander had forced that passion from her with his widely reputed seductive skills, for it had come far too easily. In fact, she did not want to believe that she was so foolish as to succumb to some artful seduction. Nor could she convince herself that it was the wine’s fault. Confused and distraught by what had just happened, Ailis began to think that her uncle Colin MacFarlane was right in his oft-repeated belief that her mother’s Spanish blood made her a whore by nature. At the moment that seemed the only possible explanation for how she had welcomed the touch of a stranger, of an enemy, of a man she had been taught to hate.
As he rose from her arms, Alexander watched Ailis with a keen wariness. Her silent staring up at nothing began to worry him. He looked down at the bed and winced. He had never possessed a virgin before, but he did know that they were apt to bleed. Blood upon himself or upon the linen had always been the ploy used by women who had tried to deceive him. However, he knew this to be real and, to his uknowledgeable eyes, he thought there was more blood than there ought to be, especially for a lass of such a delicate build.
Suddenly Ailis became acutely aware of the fact that she was being looked at and that she no longer had any covering on her body. She sat up with a gasp, intending to grab the covers and hide her nakedness. Even as she got ahold of them, she looked where Alexander was staring. She gave a soft cry of shock, certain that she had lost too much blood. Even reminding herself that she could easily be overreacting to the sight of her own blood could not ease her agitation.
“Ye have killed me,” she accused Alexander, then she groaned and fell back onto the bed with the covers still clutched tightly to her chest. “I kenned it, but then ye made me think that I was wrong. Now I ken that yehavesplit me in twain just as I had suspected.” Her voice raised slowly to a dramatic wail as she added, “Ye might as well have run me through with your sword. I am finished. I will bleed my life away in my enemy’s bed.”
Her dramatics eased Alexander’s concern, although he knew he would be hard-pressed to explain why. If naught else, he mused with a smile, if she were truly bleeding to death, she would not have the strength to carry on so. He did not even try to hide his grin as he rose from the bed, moved to wash himself off, then returned to the bed with a damp cloth in his hand.
Ailis screeched in shocked surprise when he yanked the covers off her. She tried to grab them back only to find herself firmly pinned to the bed with one strong hand planted firmly on her chest. A groan of embarrassment escaped her as he washed away the last traces of her shattered innocence. The man had no respect whatsoever for a woman’s modesty, she decided. She refused to admit that she felt much better when he was done. She glared at him as she repossessed the covers, sprawled on her stomach, and hid her face in the pillow. Despite all her efforts not to do it, she burst into tears.
Alexander sighed, snuffed all the candles except for the one near the bed, and slipped beneath the covers. He watched her for a moment as she wept and told himself that it should not matter to him if some MacFarlane wench drowned in her own tears. When his bitter anger toward her clan and toward women failed to encompass her completely and he still felt disturbed by her crying, he scowled and gave her a brief rough shake.
“Cease your wailing, lass,” he snapped. “Tears willna bring back what ye have lost this night.”
She slapped his hand away from her shoulder and replied in a shaky voice, “I weep not for that, ye great fool, but for myself. My uncle was right.”
The latter was said with such a wealth of despair that Alexander felt compelled to ask, “Right about what?”
“My Spanish blood.” Her tone of voice implied that she had just contracted the plague, but she was unable to soften that.
“Ah,” he murmured and now understood the source of her somewhat unusual coloring. “What about it?”
Little by little the tone of his voice penetrated Ailis’s misery. His voice held an air of mild condescending interest that stirred her anger, pushing aside her self-pity. It was entirely his fault after all, she thought furiously. No one else amongst the overardent men she had fought off in her life had so exposed this wantonness in her. If Alexander MacDubh had not turned his pretty and lustful eyes her way, she could have continued on in blissful ignorance of her own failing. Still clutching the linen sheet to her breasts, she sat up to glare at him, seeing him as the true cause of all her misery and trouble. She ignored the small voice of rationality in her head which whispered that she was being unreasonable. At the moment she simply did not care.
