“Ah, Maggie…you’re so beautiful,” he murmured against her tingling flesh, then he lifted his head to stare into her eyes as he stepped into the tub to join her.
His gaze as black as night, darkened by desire, he pressed the soaking wet sponge into her hand and then it became her turn to bathe him…his groan ragged when she squeezed warm water down the hard planes of his chest.
She stared, fascinated, at the fine dark hair now slicked to his skin, and marveled that she hadn’t noticed it before. She couldn’t resist sliding a wet hand from one side of his chest to the other, his muscles twitching at her touch as he groaned again from deep in his throat.
He took the sponge from her and dipped it into the water, and then gave it back so she could squeeze a warm torrent atop his massive shoulders…Magdalene leaning so close that her breasts pressed against him.
With all that was seductively feminine, she raised herself on her toes to squeeze water down his back and kissed him at the base of his throat—his pulse racing as rampantly against her lips as her own heartbeat.
She felt him shudder and heard him moan, Magdalene gasping when he cupped her bottom with both hands and lifted her from the tub.
The sponge plopping into the water and droplets flying everywhere, the blazing logs in the fireplace sizzling and hissing.
“Wrap your legs around me, Maggie,” he bade her raggedly, and she did, pressing her calves to his hard buttocks.
Breathless, she knew the bed was close, but they didn’t make it that far.
Instead he moved with her to the tapestry-covered wall and braced himself there with one arm, the other still holding her as he thrust himself into the slick wetness between her thighs.
She cried out, not in pain but in ecstasy, for already she shook at his powerful onslaught, the hard thickness of his body filling her…only to recede and then thrust again and again.
Gabriel shook, too, Magdalene gripping his shoulders as he captured her mouth with his kiss, his breathing hard, his broken groans growing louder.
She scarcely heard them for her own—and later she would wonder if she’d screamed when her climax burst like white-hot lightning upon her.
Her hips driving against Gabriel’s, even as he buried himself inside her so deeply that they might have been one flesh…shuddering, quaking, until Magdalene went limp against him with her back pressed into the wall.
The thick softness of the tapestry behind her and Gabriel’s sweat-slicked body flush against the front of her, skin pressed to skin, his mouth teasing hers with a languorous kiss that made her moan all over again.
She could not say when he moved with her to the bed, but she opened her eyes to find him lying beside her—Gabriel still kissing her, his tongue wetting her lips and delving inside her mouth again to taste her, tease her.
She closed her eyelids and tasted him, too, her tongue swirling around his in so intimate and carnal a fashion that he stiffened against her…and then began to chuckle.
“Greedy wench. We’ve yet tae finish our bath—yet tae eat.”
She smiled up at him and wound her arms around his neck, gently shaking her head.
“No bath, then?”
“No, husband.”
“No food?”
“Mayhap in a while. I’d rather you kiss me again—oh!”
He had rolled with her so suddenly to the opposite side of the bed, Magdalene now atop him, that she felt lightheaded even as he drew her down to nibble her lips.
Yet only for a moment before he lifted her slightly and grew still beneath her, staring into her eyes with all seriousness as he traced the curve of her mouth with his thumb.
“I love you, Magdalene. Never forget how much.”
“Never…” she echoed, her long, tawny hair like a veil enveloping them as she leaned down to kiss him.
Sweetly. Tenderly. Her heart so full that she didn’t know if she could utter another word, though she somehow managed a whisper.
“I love you, Gabriel MacLachlan. Forever…”
* * *
