Then he started to move, thrusting with long deep strokes. Strokes that reverberated through her body from head to toe, each staking a further claim. It was the most erotic, intimate moment of her life.
No other man could make her feel like this because no other man existed for her.
Duncan didn’t think anything could feel more incredible than Jeannie’s soft, pink mouth stretched around the head of his cock, her tongue stroking him, her mouth sucking him deeper and deeper into her throat.
But he was wrong.
Raw lust was nothing to the emotion that gripped his heart as he sank into her inch by incredible inch. Her eyes pulled him in. Deeper and deeper. To touch her soul.
She was so warm. So wet. So sweetly tight. He’d forgotten how it felt to be inside her. How her body felt under his. She was so tiny and soft he worried that he would crush her, but she pulled him down, seeking the connection of skin on skin. Her breasts were crushed to his chest as he thrust high inside her, her nipples raking him.
He closed his eyes, sensation showering over him in a warm, tingling wave.
He thrust again, groaning. It felt too good. The pleasure too intense to contain. Her body clenched around him like a fist, pumping, milking.
She moaned and lifted her hips, meeting him, circling in a slow, delicious dance.
Blood pounded through him, concentrating at the sensitive head. Sensation coiled at the base of his spine in a hot pulsing fist. He was going to explode.
Sweat poured off his forehead as he fought to hold on. He thrust high and hard, forcing her…
She cried out, calling his name as her body racked with the spasm of her release. The sheer ecstasy on her face pushed him over the edge. He drove into her one more time and stiffened, then jerked with the force of his own release as pleasure crashed over him in a hard, earth-shattering wave.
He stayed inside her until the spasms ebbed and the last drop of pleasure had been wrung from him. But even then he was reluctant to break the connection. Only the knowledge that he was probably crushing her forced him to slide from the warm embrace of her body. Rolling to the side, he gathered her up in his arms, cradling her against his shoulder. The night air cooled his heated skin.
They were silent for a while. After what had just happened it seemed fitting. Words would be lacking.
Her finger weaved absently through the thin triangle of hair below his neck, following the thin trail down to his stomach. He could tell she was thinking.
“Did you mean it?” she asked, gazing up at him.
He didn’t need to ask what she meant. “Aye.”
“What made you realize that it wasn’t me who took the map?”
He twirled a lock of silky red hair in his finger, letting it fall in a soft puddle on his chest. “It wasn’t any one thing. I suppose I started to see beyond the ‘proof and listened to my gut. Your reaction had a lot to do with it. I realized how much my leaving had hurt you. You acted wronged, not guilty.” He felt a hard burning in his chest as the ramifications of what he’d done hit him. “God, Jeannie, I’m sorry.” He heard her voice in his head begging him not to leave and tried to shut it out. By all rights she should hate him. “I should have trusted you. I should have given you a chance to explain. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Why were you so quick to find me guilty?”
She wasn’t asking about the specific evidence against her, but the more difficult question of why he believed it. He thought back, remembering. He’d been so young, barely a man, still making his way in the world and couldn’t quite believe he could be that fortunate to find someone like her. “I’d seen you with your father, and knew how much you loved him, knew the loyalty you felt to your family. You were young, beautiful, and could have had your pick of any man in the Highlands. Part of me couldn’t believe you’d give that all up for a bastard with nothing to his name.” He made a harsh sound. “Who didn’t even have a name.”
She lay perfectly still. “I saw the man you were. I believed in you, Duncan, not in your birth. Did I ever give you reason to think it mattered to me? Did I ever make you feel like you were anything less than the most wonderful, amazing man I’d ever known?”
The anger in her voice took him aback. “Nay,” he admitted.
She relaxed, her body easing into his once again.
“Why believe me now?” she asked. “What’s changed?”
“Me. You. We aren’t the same people we were then. I guess I didn’t give either of us enough credit. I didn’t see what you did, that we make our own destiny not by our birth, but by our actions.”
Jeannie peered up at him, a strange look in her eyes. “Do you really believe that?”
He sensed there was something behind her question—something important. “Aye, I do.”
She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. She was quiet for a few minutes, lost in thought. Finally, she said, “What can we do?”
He cocked an eyebrow, a wry smile on his lips. “We?”
