Bride of the Beast (41 page)

"Ouch!"
She set down the offending candlestick and thrust the tip of her smarting finger into her mouth just as the door swung wide.

"Ouch?" He stepped inside with his usual lordly grace, pausing only to drop the drawbar in place before bending down to scoop Leo into his arms.

Leo wriggled with glee, squirming wildly as he welcomed Sir Marmaduke with enthusiastic little dog kisses. And all the while he regarded her with a look that could only be called ... smoldering.

Smoldering in a sensual
and
practical sense, for patches of his hair appeared singed, as did one eyebrow. Setting Leo on the floor, he crossed the room with great strides, the little dog running exuberant circles around him.

He gathered her in his arms, crushing her to him. "It is over," he murmured against her hair, his voice tired but thick with some emotion she hadn't heard before. "Kinraven is no more and Sir Hugh has breathed his last."

Caterine pulled back to look at him, an odd mixture of relief and dread coursing through her. Relief that he'd returned, dread at knowing he'd now see his purpose here fulfilled.

"I t
hank
you," she managed, her gratitude sincere even if the words sounded frightfully hollow.

He shook his head. "Nay, my lady. It is your companion and your sister we must t
hank
," he said, clearly meaning something entirely different from Sir Hugh's demise.

"Those fair ladies and mayhap one handsome devil of a
Highland
laird," he added, his good eye crinkling in amusement.

Caterine's gaze flickered to his singed hair. "You have been burned," she said, skimming her fingers across his right eyebrow.

He gave her a lopsided smile. "The saints only protect me from sword cuts. Swords and other sundry arms of evil." The mirth in his voice assured her he bore no more serious injury than patches of frizzled hair. "They never promised to keep me safe from flying embers and sparks."

He quirked his blackened brow at her. "I'd hoped if I bathed and washed my hair before I came abovestairs, you'd not notice."

Marmaduke cringed inwardly at the grave understatement.

He'd taken greatest pains to comb his unmarred hair over the singed patches, had even rubbed some of Linnet's
beauty treatment
on the crinkled spots, all in the hope of disguising

the damage.

Apparently in vain.

But to his vast relief, a tiny smile curved his lady's lips and she pushed up on her toes to brush a kiss against his ruined eyebrow. "It doesn't matter, my lord," she said, reaching for his hand.

"Come, and let me give you a proper welcome home," she added, leading him to the bed.

And Marmaduke gladly followed.

The morrow would be time enough to tell her it was indeed time to go home.

Home to Balkenzie.

a
good while
later, as the dark night wrapped itself around Dunlaidir and the rest of the world slept, Sir Marmaduke tossed in a tangled whirl of satiny bedcoverings and his lady's silken thighs, and ... dreamed.

Of dark, smoldering passion and throaty, sated sighs.

Of sensual ecstasy, tight and winding, the shattering glory of his lady's release.

The thundering spill of his own.

The lingering bliss of her so sweet upon his lips. Her musky female scent, warm, roused, and fanning the flames inside him, its heady tang flooding his senses with each drawn breath.

He came awake at once... and found his wife's sleek, golden heat poised mere inches from his mouth. She straddled him, holding him pinion between her supple thighs, her lush thatch of curls tangled and glistening ...
saturated.

Desire, hot and thick as molten steel, shot into his shaft, stretching and swelling him as great waves of hunger and longing swept away all but his pounding need.

"Christ and all his saints!" Blooded lust hammering through his loins, he inhaled deeply of the sleek temptation hovering so near. He touched his tongue to her, swirling its tip over the tiny, swollen nub at the very heart of her passion.

She cried out, collapsing against him, limp and sweet, the whole length of her quivering with the fierce breaking of her swift release.

Smoothing his hands over the satiny warmth of her back, Marmaduke soothed her ...
loved
her.

"I didn't think you'd ever awaken," she breathed at last, the whispered words thick and ragged. She slid a trembling hand along his muscled shoulder, down his hard-slabbed chest. "I've been ... touching you for hours."

Marmaduke swallowed . . . t
hank
ed the saints he'd awakened, and that her touch, the
love
brimming in her passion-glazed eyes hadn't been a dream.

Raging need consuming him, he pushed up on his elbows and watched her hot gaze caress the hard length of his arousal. Her hand teased across his abdomen, and he willed her to explore
lower,
his heart almost stopping when she plunged her fingers deep into the thicket of dark, springy hair at his groin. He almost spilled when her fingers brushed against his swollen shaft. Near to bursting, his arousal bucked and strained, urgently seeking relief.

A husky groan swelled in his throat and he released it on a ragged breath. "Would you see me run mad?"

"I would pleasure you." She curled her fingers around him, sliding her hand up and down his rigid length.

"You pleasure me my every waking hour," he vowed. "Watching you
breathe
pleasures me."

He caught her to him, kissing her deeply, but she pulled away, straightening her back so the full thrust of her breasts pushed through her streaming, unbound hair.

"You have not yet taken full ease with me," she said, her hand still gripped tight around his shaft, caressing him. "I would give you that release now."
And she almost did.
Simply by stating her intent. His passion surging, raw, wild, and set free at last, he looked at her, studied her face for any sign of wariness or hesitation ... and saw none.

Nothing marked her save her beauty and willingness.

Her acceptance and desire to please him.

That
wonder swirled around him, caressing his very soul. Embracing him as surely as her stroking hands drove him toward the bursting release of all the tight hunger and need roaring through him.

"I shall never let you go," he vowed, the shackles of his doubt finally falling away ... spinning into the shadows.

Dissolving as if they'd never been.

And I shall not let you go,
he thought he heard her say, though, in truth, she'd only sighed.

I
want you to stay.

That, he heard ... with his heart.

Truly spoken or nay, the words hovered between them, a challenge tossed, but not accepted. And not menacing enough to dim the blazing need raging inside him.

Her golden hair spilling around her in wild abandon, she held his gaze and parted her streaming tresses so the distended tips of her full breasts could peek through.

"I know you enjoy looking at them." Very deliberately, she eased away every last strand of hair until her nipples were fully displayed. "I want this night to be filled with everything that brings
you
pleasure," she said, the over-large rounds of her areolas tightening beautifully beneath his gaze.

Marmaduke clenched his hands, another ragged groan rising deep in his throat.

Still sliding her hand up and down his hard arousal, she began caressing his inner thighs with the other and he caught another delicate whiff of her scent... and knew.

His lady was sore aroused.

Sheerest want consumed her, and seeing it near broke his last restraint.

She wanted him.

As fully as he burned for her. And this time, he would assuage that burning. He lowered his head to her breast, licked her large, swollen nipples, drew one deeply into his mouth, sucking on her...
hard.

Reaching between her legs, he caressed her, testing her dampness. "Shall I kiss you first?" He gave her the choice, full aware of the pleasure she took in his intimate kisses, intoxicated by his own need to taste her.

"Or shall I stroke you a bit instead?" he probed at her, his skilled fingers already working their magic. Unable
not
to.

Acute sensual need ripping through him, he slid his fingers into her golden fleece, massaging her, stroking her cleft. Up and down, and up and down ... luxuriously slow strokes ... a lanquid gliding along her most tender flesh. A worshipping of the wetness he found there. "If you wish me to kiss you, then settle yourself above me so I can lick you until you are ready," he offered, his finger circling,
rubbing,
her most sensitive spot, the tiny nub at the very crux of her dampened curls.

Something—passion?—darkened her eyes and she slipped off him to stretch back against the pillows. "Did you mis-hear me, my lord?" she asked, and parted her thighs, spreading them wide. "I
am
ready. I want you to take me. Fully, and with all of you."

"You are certain?" he had to ask, his doubts and demons not quite ready to clear the field, their insistent voices warning that revulsion would flash across her face the instant he mounted her.

But the desire in her eyes, the rocking of her hips, and her opened arms called louder. And he capitulated.

"I love you, Caterine," he said, at last moving over her. 'Then have me," she said, reaching for him again. Not the answer he'd hoped for, but her touch, her fingers moving so sweetly on his swollen phallus, blinded him to all else.

Wholly besieged, he positioned himself over her, taking his weight on his arms and letting her guide him to her sweetness.

Touching him to her silken cleft, she cupped his cheek with her free hand, traced his scar. "You are a true champion," she said, "and I care deeply for you."

Care deeply?

Alarm bells clanged loud in Marmaduke's ears, and a bone-chilling cold iced his heart in the very moment the tip of his shaft slipped inside her.

And then he was lost.

Too consumed by her velvety tightness, the pulsing heat clenching around him, to heed the frost of a poorly turned phrase.

With the last thread of his restraint, he paused, holding himself above her with just the head of his shaft inside her... waiting only long enough to slide his hand between them to rub at her little nub of pleasure, and thus ease his taking of her.

Verging dangerously on the edge of his own release, he plied the swollen nub with slow, circling strokes ... and
very slowly
began inching his length ever deeper into her silken heat.

Only when her breathing became shallow, little gasps and the rocking of her hips grew frantic, did he draw back and plunge fully inside her, making her his with one smooth, claiming stroke.

The sheer pleasure of possessing her near milked him at first glide. She arched her hips, pressing against him, and he lowered his head to draw one of her nipples into his mouth. He swirled his tongue round and round,
pulled
on the swollen peak as he glided in and out of her with long, languid strokes. And all the while he kept his hand wedged between them, and
rubbed
her.

No... please...

Marmaduke stilled at once, cold dread plunging icy talons deep into -his gut, into his pride, but then she moaned ... a sweet sigh of bliss, and his doubts withdrew.

With another, deeper cry—a throaty, full-passioned one—she dug her fingers into his shoulders, clinging to him, her body trembling and tensing beneath him, her wild abandon thrilling him, and assuring him as nothing else could, that he'd imagined the barely audible protest.

One last taunt thrown at him by his devils.

Ignoring them, he lifted his head to capture her mouth, catching her cries and giving her his, their very breaths melding as he claimed her lips in a deep, slaking kiss, and made her his with his lips and his passion.

Her thighs clenching around him, she drew him closer, the tremors of her release ripping through her in splendid rhythm with the thunderous pull of his own.

And then a brilliant whiteness seized him, a spinning whirlwind of sensual ecstasy so powerful, so intense, he could scarce breathe.

He moaned with the glory of it and even thought he heard her cry his name, but his blood pounded so fiercely in his ears, he couldn't be sure.

So he simply held her... and hoped she'd called out his name.

He
knew
she'd found release.

And he'd found the veriest of heavens.

**

Hold her legs wide.
...

Whore.

The words ... the taunts and jeers ... began even before her champion slipped back into the deep sleep she'd pulled him from. They came at her from the shadows, long-suppressed images crashing onto the wildest shores of her heart, haunting her even as the triumph of their tumultuous passion still washed over her. Ghosts of the past to damn her.