He didn’t look down.
She gave him a little huff, and probably would have peered down her nose if she hadn’t been plastered to his side. “Obviously you aren’t as strong as all those muscles make you look.”
There was something admiring in her voice that heated his blood and sent all jests to the wayside. She liked his body.
She must have felt the change in him, because the gaze that was turned to his grew suddenly soft. Aroused.Hot.
Had he not been perched in a tree, with her wrapped around him, he might have kissed her. Hewouldhave kissed her. Nothing could have stopped him.
Instead he shuffled her around so that she was on the inside closest to the trunk. From there he loosened his hold around her so that she could grab the branch.
“Do you think you can get down the rest of the way from here?” he asked.
She peered at the grid of limbs below here feet. She only needed to climb down a handful, and she would be close enough to the ground to drop.
“I think so.”
“I’ll go first and guide you down.”
She nodded. They were on familiar ground, and it didn’t take long before they were on solid ground as well.
He caught her to him and let her go. Or rather, he intended to let her go, but she kept holding him.
He didn’t know who moved first, but one minute he was staring into her eyes, and the next his mouth was on hers. All the heat, all the passion, all the desire that had been simmering in the air between them since that night in the kitchens boiled over.
He pushed her back against the tree they’d just climbed down, cupping her head with one hand to protect it from the bark, and lacing his other under her leg to wrap around his hip.
It was as close to heaven as he could imagine. Their tongues sparred, circled, and stroked, harder and faster. Deeper. It was as if they were starved for one another and were now feasting, devouring, consuming.
He couldn’t breathe, but he didn’t care. She tasted so warm and sweet, all he wanted was her.
And she wanted him.
He could feel it in the fervor of her response, in the stroke of her tongue, in the way her hands gripped the muscles of his arms and back, her leg tightened around his hip, bringing his cock into that sweet little juncture, and her hips moved against him.
Aye, he could definitely feel that. It made him groan and throb, and pulse in anticipation. For an innocent, she sure as hell knew how to drive him wild. Instinct was a powerful weapon, and she wielded it with the skilled precision to bring him to his knees.
He was out of control. His mouth was on her neck, his hand was cupping her breast, squeezing, rubbing his thumb over the taut peak. The erotic sounds of her gasps and breathy moans egged him on.
Too fast... not fast enough.
He had to touch her, had to feel all that heat and dampness on his fingertips. He slid his hand under her skirts and groaned with pure molten pleasure. She was so warm and silky, and ready for him. He wanted to make her come. He wanted to be inside her.
Honor? Nobility? He didn’t care about either right now. All that he cared about was making the girl he’d wanted his forever.
A cry stopped him. Not her cry, but her brother’s. “Elizabeth!”
He heard his own name, too. He thought it was MacLeod’s voice.
He swore and pulled away. He wished he could say the shock was like a bucket of ice water poured over his senses, but his body was still on fire, desire still fisted like a ball at the base of his spine, and his head still roared with the primitive call to mate.
“Down here,” he managed to respond tightly, moving out from the canopy of tree branches that he hoped had been enough to shield them from view.
From Jamie’s expression, it appeared they had been. He looked more concerned and suspicious than ready to kill. “Where’s Ella? Is she all right?”
Elizabeth stepped out beside him. “Right here, and I’m fine.”
One glance at her ravaged appearance andnowJamie’s expression was ready to kill. “What the hell are you doing down there?”
