Glorious, even.
Then his finger slid inside of her…and the rainbow fractured into a hundred different colors, each brighter than the last.
For a long while, Lachlan just petted, and stroked, and kissed, all while whispering sweet nothings in her ear in a language that her ears didn’t comprehend, but her heart did. Dividing his attention between her lips, and her breasts, and the curls between her legs, he seemed to be driving hertowardssomething…a hill, or a peak, or even a mountain. She was too delirious to care which. Too drunk on desire to notice how high they were climbing.
“Aye, and ye’re wet and wanting, are ye not,ionmhainneach?” he rasped, and when she nodded–because of course she nodded–he captured her wrist and gently guided her hand to the core of his body where he was nearly as damp as she, and hot, and pulsing besides.
Tentatively, and then with a growing confidence spurred on by his groans, she encircled his staff and ran her palm along its heavy length all the way to the base before reversing direction, instinctively pleasuring him as he had pleasured her.
His jaw clenched. Candlelight reflected off the sheen of sweat clinging to his temple. Without warning, he grabbed her arm, and when she looked at him in question, he made a tortured sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a moan. “I was soon tae spend meself like a green lad if ye didna stop.” He tenderly brushed a curl off her cheek. “Are ye ready for me, Bry?”
Her eyes widened. “That wasn’t…that wasn’t it?”
There was that devilish grin again. Stealing across his mouth like a thief through the night. “Oh,luaidh mo chèile. We’ve barely begun.”
She didn’t understand what he meant…and then, all at once, she did.
He was right.
There was more.
So much more than she was ever capable of imagining. But then, how could you explain the infinite vastness of the ocean to someone who had never stepped foot upon the sand?
As sensation after sensation washed over her, she clung to him, her slender calves wrapping around his muscular buttocks to follow the undulation of his hips as he filled her, deeper and deeper. Until suddenly, they weren’t climbing the mountain, they were standing on top of it.
A plunging thrust of his hips as he claimed her mouth in a possessive kiss that demanded she give all of herself to him, and both Lachlan and Brynne soared over the edge together.
Chapter Sixteen
Never, in allhis life, had Lachlan felt complete.
There was always something…restlessstirring inside of him. Something that never permitted him to fully settle. To halt whatever he was doing, take a breath, and find satisfaction in what he’d already done.
But as he laid beside Brynne, his arm draped securely around her waist and her wee little feet tucked between his legs, he knew nothing but contentment. Nothing but a sense of fulfillment that came not from a job well done or money earned, but from filling a space inside of himself that he hadn’t even known was wanting.
Or maybe hehadknown, and that’s why Brynne was always the one for him.
As a boy teetering on that sharp, uneven edge of manhood, he’d found solace in her company. She was a safe harbor to share his innermost thoughts and feelings. Someone who accepted him as he was when no one at Eton, with a few rare exceptions, wanted to accept him at all.
As a young man with no bloody idea of how to navigate the shark-infested waters of High Society, she’d provided another port in the storm. Their one dance, on that one night, had carried him through an entire Season of dullness and drudgery.
As a man full grown and filled with ambition and grueling purpose, she’d given him a reason to continue his uphill battle in resurrecting the abandoned dreams of his great-great-grandfather. The kiss by the brook, his first taste of genuine magic and all the power it contained, had led him to persist when everyone else told him to quit. And while the distillery was a dream still outstanding, this–finally having his arms around the woman he loved–was not.
Every step he’d taken, every decision he’d made (both the good and the bad), every road he’d gone down…it brought him here. To this night. To Brynne. For that he was grateful, and humbled, and more determined than ever to see the rest of his hopes realized. For himself. For his soon-to-be wife. For the children they’d make together. Raise together. Love together.
When morning dawned, he watched his bride get dressed, his heart filled to the brim with pride and possibility as she patiently ran a comb through all that thick, luscious hair before using the pins he’d dropped the night before to fashion it into a loose chignon at the top of her head with tendrils to frame her face. His gaze lingered unabashedly on her shapely calves as she donned her stockings, and a delightful blush, warm and pink, spread across her chest when she caught him staring at her breasts as she slipped into her chemise.
“It isn’t fair,” she said, slanting him a reproving glance. “All the layers of clothing women are required to wear as opposed to men. You’ve been ready for nearly an hour, and I’ve yet to even put on my corset.”
He gave a dismissive shrug. “Go without it.”
“Go without acorset?” For all the incredulity in his tone, he might have suggested that she parade down the aisle naked.
“Aye. They’re little more than devices of torture as it is, and I’d like tae meet the person who decided the female shape needed tae be changed from the way God designed it. Ye dinna alter perfection. Besides,” he went on, a roguish glint shining in his eyes, “I’m just going tae be undressing ye later. Seems a waste of time tae wrap up a package that’s soon to be opened.”
“I suppose it would make for more comfortable travel on the train,” she relented. Forgoing the corset–they really were accursed contraptions–she stepped into a pair of white drawers that tied at the waist, and then turned to the dress she’d carefully laid out on the back of a chair. “Would you…?”
It was the invitation Lachlan was waiting for. In an instant, he was off the bed and guiding the gown over her outstretched arms.
