She was afraid. Oh God, she was afraid! She was terrified of the feelings that he stirred in her, feelings so unexpected that she felt like she was struggling to catch up with herself, to make sense of the storm inside her.
She was newly divorced for pity’s sake! She shouldnotbe feeling this way. And yet she couldn’t help it. Cailean, and what she felt for him, seemed more real, more visceral than anything she’d felt before.
He sat beside her now, silent and watchful, as if waiting for her to decide the next move. Firelight flickered over the hard edge of his jaw, the riot of emotion in his dark, dark eyes.
Rose was tired ofthinking. She was tired of trying to do the right thing. Tired of trying to be good. Just this once, she wanted to let go, to act on instinct. So, giving in to what she’d wanted to do for what felt an age, she leaned close and pressed her lips against his.
He stilled for a heartbeat, a sharp intake of breath against her mouth. Then he kissed her back.
Rough, sure, desperate. His hands cupped her face, one sliding into her damp hair, holding her close. The blanket slipped from hershoulders, forgotten. The storm faded into the background, just a distant, inconsequential roar that had lost all meaning.
Only this moment mattered.
The kiss deepened, Cailean’s lips hot and insistent against hers, full of hunger and need. She gasped against his mouth as he grabbed her hips, pulled her into his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck, tangling her fingers in his luscious hair and trailing them across the hard muscles of his shoulders, wanting to feel every inch of him against every inch of her.
His kisses tasted of salt and heat and something she couldn’t quite define, something that lit an ache deep in her belly and drew a moan from her lips. Oh God. She wanted him. She wanted him so badly it made her muscles ache and her stomach constrict.
But he suddenly broke the kiss. Breathing close by her ear, he murmured, “Tell me to stop and I will.”
“Don’t,” she whispered, her voice ragged. “Please… don’t.”
His eyes slid closed with a low groan. He caught her lip between his teeth and then they were kissing again, her hands all over him, his hands all over her, and Rose could no longer tell which way was up, which way was down, or whether anything existed in the world other than this man and the fire he was lighting inside her.
She didn’t know who started pulling at whose clothes first. She just knew that suddenly they were shedding garments until they were both right down to the skin and Cailean was pushing her onto her back in front of the fire and following her down, kissing her neck, her ears, her collarbone until she arched and gasped beneath him. She’d yanked off his shirt and now her eyes roved over the ridges and contours of his hard body, the firelight casting dimples of shadow and light across his muscular frame.
It was a body that spoke of hardness and strength, and yet his touch was as soft as gossamer as he trailed the tips of his fingers along her sides, across her belly, and down to the core of heat between herlegs. She gasped as he lowered his head and took one of her nipples into his mouth at the same moment that his fingers sank into the heat of her.
Fire ignited within and she gasped and arched, screwing her eyes shut tight and tangling her fingers in his hair. Oh. What was he doing to her? This was… this was… she had no name for what it was.
“Cailean,” she gasped. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
He didn’t. His tongue licked and sucked at her nipples and his fingers worked her core with expert precision, knowing exactly where to stroke, where to apply pressure and how much, and Rose felt herself beginning to come apart.
She had expected him to be good, but she had never expected him to bethisgood, able to read her body like a book and give her exactly what she needed.
He raised his head and looked at her, his eyes like pools of ink as he watched her, full of desire and heat. “Let go,” he murmured as his fingers continued their work. “I want to see ye shatter.”
And Rose did. With a cry, she tipped over the edge, felt herself clenching around his fingers, and crashing down the other side of a tingling, blissful wave.
Her eyes fluttered closed as she surrendered to the sensations coursing through her and when she opened them again, she found Cailean looking down at her, his hair falling forward to frame his face.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. “Ye are so beautiful.”
Rose just reached up, laced her hands behind his neck and pulled him down into a kiss. She was not sated. Despite what he’d just done to her, despite the climax that had just sent her soaring, she wanted more. She wantedhim. All of him. Every last inch.
Her kiss was wild and hungry, full of longing and need. Cailean responded in kind, his lips crashing against hers, his tongue slipping into her mouth and dancing with her own. Rose tangled one hand in his hair but with the other she reached down, skimming her palmalong the hard lines of his chest and belly, down between his legs where she found him hard and ready for her.
His breath hitched as she began to stroke him gently, slowly, the tips of her fingers barely touching him, but raising goosebumps along his skin all the same.
A low growl sounded deep in his throat. “Dear God, woman, what are ye trying to do to me? If ye dinna stop I’m going to have to take ye right now.”
His words sent a thrill right through her. That ache was back again, deep in her core, that ache that only he could satisfy.
“Then what are you waiting for?”
It was all the invitation he needed. He rose onto his hands and knees and positioned himself above her. Dark eyes fixed on her, he nudged her legs apart with his knees. Then slowly, not breaking her gaze, he lowered himself on top of her. Rose shifted to meet him, and he suddenly jerked his hips and thrust into her, burying himself up to the hilt.
Rose gasped as she felt him fill her, felt herself stretching to accommodate every inch of him, felt the shudder that went through his body as they joined.
