He shook his head at her as though she was something wondrous.
“I need ye—all of ye.”
Two sets of hands made quick work of the ties at her skirt and the front of her arisaid. Ciaran sucked in an appreciative breath with each new inch of skin that was exposed, and by the time her breasts were exposed to the cool air, he looked practically lightheaded. She felt her nipples peak in the chill, then remain stiff from the thrill of his touch when he cupped her with warm, rough hands.
“They’re small,” she murmured when a beat of self-consciousness overtook her. She’d always known that her slender form appealed to some men, but that the buxom maids tended to attract rather more attention.
“They’re perfect,” he corrected her, sounding almost angry about it. “Ye are perfect.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, exactly, but his kiss spared her the burden of having to decide.
She tugged his shirt over his head, desperate to feel more of his skin against hers, then moaned into his mouth in delight when the smattering of hair on his chest—the same burnished bronze as what stood on his head—scraped lightly against the sensitive flesh he’d exposed in disrobing her.
“How can anything feel better than this?” she murmured, feeling almost drunk with sensation, when they briefly came up for air.
Ciaran gave her a wicked grin that she felt all the way down to her toes.
“Ye cannae challenge a man like that, lass,” he said. “Nae without expecting consequences.”
His words were menacing, but the purr in his voice held promise. He took mere moments to make good on that promise, as his hands began pulling up her skirts as his mouth started kissing downward, over her breasts, down the middle of her stomach, and below her navel.
She had just jolted with shock at realizing his destination when he leaned back on his heels, shot her a smile that was all sin and lust, and then pressed his mouth directly to the center of her.
Eilidh cried out so loudly that one of the horses in a nearby stall whinnied in alarm. But there was no pain, no danger—just bliss in the form of glorious wet strokes against her most intimate flesh, each caress of his lips and tongue driving herhigher and higher. A tight wrench of something yanked firmly low in her belly, making her gasp and clutch frantically at anything she could grasp; one hand ended up clenched in the folds of the saddle blanket, the other in the soft strands of Ciaran’s hair.
“Aye, lass,” he murmured against her, his lips pressing against one particular spot that practically made her float up off the blanket. “Show me where ye need me.”
“Ciaran,” she sobbed. She didn’t knowwhatshe needed except this—more of this. Something was happening inside her, and she needed to know more of it. She needed tofeelhim. “Please.”
He ghosted a laugh, and she felt the breath caress her thigh. He sounded nearly as needy as she felt, however.
“Let me show ye, then,mo chridhe,”he muttered, and she didn’t know what excited her the most—the endearment, the way he returned his mouth to its previous activity, or that he reached a hand between them and slipped a finger inside her, the pressure and stretch and intimacy of it making her see stars. It went on until she could scarcely breathe from the intensity of it.
His fingers and mouth stilled as she came down from her crisis, and he leaned back on his heels, looking at her like she had hung the moon.
She reached for him, and he came, his mouth crashing back to hers. Their tongues dueled briefly, but Ciaran was no more apt to lose this battle than he had been earlier in the training yard. Not that Eilidh wanted to win; for once, she longed for nothing more than to yield to him, to take whatever he was willing to give her.
When her blood began burning hot again, just from the way his hands roamed along her sides as he kissed her, she decided, however, that perhaps he could use a little push in the rightdirection. She reached between them to touch him where he was stiff and aching.
The moment she made contact, he let out a low string of curses in the old language.
“Are ye certain?” he asked when she gave him a telltale caress, then used the arm around her back to pull her closer. “I’ll not be able to stop after I get a proper taste of ye.”
She shook her head. “I want this, Ciaran. I wantye.”
“I dinnae deserve this kind of heaven, lass,” he groaned, but it wasn’t an argument. “I deserve the pits of hell for this, but I will certainly go a happy man.”
As soon as the words had left his lips, he pressed his mouth back to Eilidh’s, then replaced her hand with his own and used his position to slowly, carefully guide himself inside her.
Eilidh struggled not to tense at this new way of using her body. She feared that if she gave any hint of discomfort. Ciaran would pull back, and she didn’t care that there was a faint, stretching pain to his progression forward. She wanted it. She needed him.
“Oh, Christ, lassie,” he murmured against her mouth. He paused to press his forehead to hers, apparently needing a moment to collect himself. “God, Eilidh. What I wouldnae do for ye. Ye feel so bloody good.”
“Show me,” she urged him. “Please.”
And then, slowly at first, then in an earth-shattering rhythm, he began to move. The gentle rocks of his hips against hers grew longer and more confident until they were powerful thrusts, and the motion stopped feeling strange and started feeling marvelous, like the sensation of his fingers but only a thousand times more. She heard herself letting out little gasps of pleasure with each thrust forward. She couldn’t have stopped them if she tried.
“Say my name again,” he murmured. “I want to hear it when the world falls away.”
