Mad About the Marquess (Highland Brides Book 2) (49 page)

“Aye, my wee Quince. Keep saying my name like that. Keep saying
please
in that lovely, wanton, needy voice, and I will grant every last one of your desires.” He picked her up, and carried her to the bed, where he came down on top of her, pressing her into the soft mattress with his weight and his strength and his need.

She could feel the length of his arousal between them from the crease of her thigh to her belly. And when he moved, easing himself against her, her own body rose of its own accord, rubbing against him like a cat, eager for his touch, meeting his need with her own desire.

And eager to touch for herself. She clutched his back, greedy for the weight and length of him atop her body, greedy for the kisses that grew hotter and bolder still, until she could think and feel and taste nothing but the lazy, breathless rapture of his tongue twining with hers.
 

Quince breathed in the taste and scent of him—the clean drink of rain, the exotic dash of spice mixed with the aura of experience—and let it go to her head. She was intoxicated with him—she had been from the first moment she saw him, tempting her from across the ballroom, her own red, forbidden fruit.

And she was hungry for him. She wanted to taste that fruit of his knowledge, to share everything and all that she was with him. He had already seen her at her most naked, most flawed, and he had not turned away.

She was suddenly anxious for him to be naked in reality, to shed the last vestiges of cover between them. She went at his clothing with careless abandon, heedless of buttons and seams, anxious to feel the breadth and curve of his firm muscles beneath her palms. To feel the sleek bliss of his skin against hers.
 

Alasdair laughed and lifted away from her enough to shuck his coat and waistcoat, sending them sailing across the room to land on some unseen piece of furniture, before he reared back on his knees to peel his linen shirt off over his head, and she could marvel and ogle him as she had that day in the inn.
 

But now she could touch him as well. She could skate her hands across the firm boundaries of his chest, and tease the flat of his nipples into tight contraction, and trace the line of bright ginger hair down to the waist of his breeches. “Are you really going to be ginger all over?”

He laughed. “We’ll find out, won’t we? But not yet. Not just yet. There’s more I’m curious about, as well.” He curled his hand around her breast, cupping and touching her through the fine cotton lawn of her chemise, thumbing her until the sensitive peak of her nipple contracted into a tight bud, and something darker and more demanding than mere need spiked through her with all the finesse of a thunderclap.
 

And then his lips replaced his hands, and he was kissing her, wetting and nipping through the layer of fabric until his mouth closed around her nipple.
 

“Please,” was all she could think to say—all other words but entreaty abandoned her. All other thoughts dissolved until she was nothing but want and need and shivering, wondrous desire.
 

But she didn’t care. Not when he bared his teeth and bit down gently, teasing and abrading her nipple until she arced up into the blissfully painful pleasure.

Alasdair was a fair man, and transferred his attentions to her other breast, kneading and kissing the tight pink bud into an exquisite peak with his hands and mouth.

That familiar slippery jangle of anticipatory excitement burst within her veins, spreading like an opiate, until want became physical desire, an insistent demand that drove her on. She fisted up the chemise, dragging it up and off her skin.
 

He leaned away, lifting himself on elbows and then hands, and then levering himself to kneeling, as she drew the thin fabric up and over her head.
 

And she was naked and wanting before him. Just as he had said she would be.

“Strathcairn.” She said his name because she wanted him to know. Wanted him to understand.

And he did. He looked at her, letting this hands trail where his eyes led, smoothing around the curve of her breast, stroking down the sides of her ribcage, and sweeping down across the flat of her belly to the flesh of her thighs. “Milky white,” he said. “I knew they would be.”

He came over her, laying his long lean body over hers once more, teaching her the shock of sensation as the rough fabric of his breeches rubbed against her sensitive skin, and the buttons on his breeks bit teasingly into her flesh.
 

“They would, wouldn’t they, being your buttons.”

He could not possibly understand her, but he smiled anyway—she felt it in the warm hum of vibration as he bent his head to toy with the sensitized peaks of her breasts. He speared his fingers into her hair, his big hand cradling her skull, holding her as he ravaged her with pleasure.

She wasn’t idle, or passive—she wanted to touch him as well. To run her own fingers through the bright fall of his russet hair, press her palms flat to the warmth of his muscles, and taste the salty tang of his smooth skin.

She wrapped her hand around his neck, and pulled him to her so she could kiss his face and let her lips skate across the smooth planes of his cheekbones, along the firm pliancy of his mouth, and along the rougher, raspier skin of his strong jaw.
 

She filled her hands with him, reaching between them to cover the length of his arousal where it pressed into the soft flesh of her belly.

“Oh, God, aye, lass,” he breathed, before he backed off the bed and stood, toeing off his boots and stomping out of his stockings. Urgency finally had him in her greedy grip, and Quince watched with equal parts wonder and awe as he rapidly unbuttoned the row of fasteners down the placket of his breeches.
 

And then he was shucking the breeches off, flinging them over his shoulder to join her discarded clothing scattered across the floor and furniture. And then he was there, crawling back over her, and his mouth was on hers, filling her senses until every thought and feeling began and ended with his kiss.
 

Quince held on tight, running the flat of her palms along the sinuous line of his shoulders, leaner and harder than any man who lived in London had a right to be. “What on Earth do you do there, to make you like this?”

She didn’t wait for an answer, as he could have no idea what she was talking about, but went on with her admiration of him, stroking down the sleek muscles of his back and up the long straight column of his spine.

She kissed him with everything she had within her, all her wit and cleverness and exuberance. But all her charms were nothing compared to him, and his skill and experience and subtlety. He touched her and every thought disappeared, every obstacle fell away, until they were rolling, tumbling together with his long legs scissoring through hers. Until she was giddy with happiness and the rush of pleasure that came from knowing they were at last together. That nothing was ever going to keep them apart.

Her legs tangled with his, twisting and lacing them together until they were one body, one heart, one mind. And they were kissing and kissing until she began to laugh out loud from simple silly happiness.

This was what she wanted. This. This man. This love.

His hand once again covered the roundness of her breast, before his lips followed to kiss her flesh into tight peaks. “Magnificent,’ he said, his voice turning rough. “Magnificent and mine.”

And she was arching into him, giving herself to him, abandoning herself to the exquisite pleasure that blossomed deep as the pull of his lips created a tight needy heat low in her belly.

The warm summer air caressed her bare skin as he rose above her, and let his hand trail down the line of her inner thigh, making tight, lazy circles across the surface of her skin with the tips of his fingers, slowly tantalizing her.
 

She felt his touch all the way through her, deep inside, a tight constriction of want that spread through her, leaving her breathless and rising into his hand. Needy for some stronger touch.
 

“Strathcairn,” was all she could say to try and articulate the heedless hunger that was rising within. “Alasdair.”

She wanted to say more, to find the words to tell him what she wanted, but he stopped her mouth with a kiss, and came down on top of her, his long, strong body fitting over hers with perfectly imperfect symmetry, like the two halves of a lock, meshing together.
 

She closed her eyes and gave herself over to him, to the soul deep pleasure that burned under her skin as his hands drew down the long run of her legs, and back up, nearer and nearer to the center of her pain and pleasure.
 

Again and again he stroked up and down until she was moving beneath him, arching and twisting in needy anticipation, opening to him as wave after wave of sensation pushed her higher and higher on the crest of desire.

She felt stretched beyond the limits of what was possible, taut and ready—ready for the pleasure he gave her like a gift. Her skin was on fire with anticipation as his long clever fingers teased at the tight heat at the junction of her thighs. Her body was moving of its own accord, arcing toward his hand, opening to the exquisite torture of wanting more. More than she had. More than she understood.

And then he gave her more.
 

He bent his head toward her heat and kissed her there. There, where the tip of his tongue slid inside her, and she was nothing but bliss and need bound together, gasping for air and holding her breath all at the same time.

“Quince.” Her name on his lips was a sound of approval and encouragement that vibrated into her core and echoed down through her body like a shout. The warmth of his mouth filled her, arousing and soothing all at once, kindling her desire into flame, stoking the fire higher, until she was rising, soaring on the pleasure he lavished upon her.
 

And then with one exquisite touch, he licked her once more, and she felt as if she were bursting into flame, burning away her edges, spending and renewing the growing, glowing heat within.

She made a breathless sound of want, as if she were desperate for air, desperate for water to quench the flame.

But he touched her with his tongue again, and again, swirling the hot passion through her until it reached the palms of her hands, and still it spread until there was no place left for it to go, nothing left but him and his mouth and bliss pouring over her.

And then she went higher still. He slipped a finger inside her, touching her deeply, stroking gently and strongly all at the same time, until a pleasure so sweet and so intense it was almost pain rained down inside her.

Her hands closed into fists in his long, gorgeous, russet hair, holding him to her. Holding him tight. Holding her love.
 

But she couldn’t contain all the need and desperate yearning. Another sound, a gasp of hunger and want poured out of her, but he heard her and understood, because that moment another long articulate finger followed the first, and she began to feel filled up to the brim of her longing.

With his fingers in her, his tongue swirled over her one last time, and she threw herself out—out into the heat and sunshine, out into the warm oblivion, soaring into the hot, happy bliss.

It was minutes—hours, days—before she came back awareness, to find herself in the soft comfort of her husband’s bed. He was on his knees before her, watching her, smiling with a grave sort of wonder.
 

“Is something wrong?” she asked. Not that she really cared. She felt dazed and lazy and so happy she couldn’t be bothered with thinking.

“Impossible,” he assured her. His voice came closer, and the mattress shifted as he leaned down to kiss first one, then the other eyelid closed. “Just go on as you’ve begun.”

“Begun?”

“Only just begun, lass. There’s more. So much more.”
 

She closed her eyes obligingly, and then the pad of his thumb brushed against her lower lip, a gentle invitation to a kiss. His mouth followed his hand, deepening the kiss, asking her to open to him, to the heat and smooth friction of his tongue. To the hunger that reasserted itself at the first taste of him.

But she was not alone in her hunger. He kissed her with the same sort of appetite, as if he were fast exhausting his share of patience and prudence and caution. As if he too had a need that only she could fill.

The weight of his body pressed her deeper into the soft mattress, and her senses were filled with him—with the taut texture of his mouth, with the soft fall of his long red hair as it brushed against her breasts, with the sharp rasp of his teeth as he kissed his rough way along the sensitive line of her jaw.
 

Her head fell back into the pillows, letting him have his wicked way with her, nipping and laving the hollow at the base of her throat, moving lower still until his tongue and lips were on her breasts, teasing and tugging, unraveling the twisted skein of her soul. And she was arching up to meet him, giving him all that she had, offering up the entirety of her being, if only he would give her more of the pleasure as potent as whisky.

She cradled his skull, holding him to her, holding herself tight against the potent rush of pleasure that coiled within.