Never Been Bit (35 page)

Her heart beat rapidly within her chest. He could hear it.

“Nervous?” he asked when he finally lifted his head.

She ducked her head shyly. “Maybe just a little.”

“Don’t be. I know what I’m doing.”

“Thank heavens one of us does.” She bit her bottom lip, making the plump flesh pout a bit. “But I doona like that ye have been with other women.”

“There’s not much I can do to change that,” he admitted, as he thought about her complaint. Then he drew her into his arms and she automatically laid her head on his chest.

“But since the moment I saw you at Castle Hythe, I’ve wanted no one else.” He tipped her chin up with his finger.

“You’re the one I want. For the rest of my life.”

She raised a fingernail to nibble on it. “Speakin’ of the rest of our lives. There’s somethin’ I want ye ta do for me, for us.”

He spun her around and began to work the buttons of her yellow gown. “Can you tell me about it later? I’ve been waiting and waiting. And now the only thing I want is to make love to my wife.”

“Ye do?” she asked quietly. As though she couldn’t tell from the frantic way he was disrobing her. When he had her down to her chemise, he began to remove his clothes as well, shucking them piece by piece and tossing them across the floor. It was only when he was down to his smallclothes that he stopped.

“I do,” he whispered. God, he wanted to touch her. He wanted to surge inside her. He wanted Sorcha.

“Did ye change yer bedclothes since last night?” she suddenly blurted out.

Alec raised his head and looked into her eyes. “Beg your pardon?”

“Well, Miss Sewell was here last night, so I was hopin’ ye would have changed the bedclothes since she left.” She looked as mischievous as he’d ever seen her.

“Ask your vines. If not, perhaps you can call them in here to do it for me.”

She giggled until he shucked off his unmentionables.

Then he tugged her chemise over her head, leaving her as naked as he was, aside from her stockings and garters. He bent in front of her to roll them down and off her feet.

“Alec!” she cried, as she shoved at his head.

Not that he could be blamed for his inability to keep his eyes off her. Alec took her hips in his hands and spun her around. “There, now your modesty is intact,” he said with a chuckle. The view of her backside was just as nice.

Her face was scarlet when she looked at him over her shoulder. “That’s no’ much better,” she mumbled.

“It’s just fine for me,” he teased as he pulled the last stocking over her toes and ran his hands up the backs of her thighs. Then he leaned forward and nibbled the flesh on her hip very gently. His teeth were fully distended and had been since the moment they’d walked upstairs.

Alec appraised her body as he stood up. She was absolute perfection. He could look at her all day. He might do that very thing after he finally got to have her. Just keep her in bed for the rest of the day, naked, so he could explore her whole body. Maybe he could even count her freckles. Alec turned her back to face him and dropped his lips to her shoulder. He wanted to taste every part of her.

He cupped her bottom and raised her against him, letting her feel how much he wanted her.

“That was a very naughty thing you did last night. I have never seen Miss Sewell so put out. How did you know she would come here?”

“I dinna ken for sure,” she said with a shrug. “But I had an inklin’ so I just whispered a little somethin’ on my way out yesterday. Yer ivy told me the whole tale when we arrived this mornin’.” She giggled. “Did her slipper really hit her in backside?”

“You are a force to be reckoned with, my devious little witch. And you look so sweet on the outside.”

“I am sweet,” she whispered, and Alec nearly shivered as she pressed her lips to his shoulder and trailed a tiny path up the side of his neck.

She was sweet and then some. “Stop that,” he warned.

“Or I’ll disgrace myself like I did the last time we were together.”

“One of my coven sisters says that’s fairly normal.”

He jerked her back gently to look at her face. “You told them about that?” He might have to toss her over his knee for the infraction.

“Well, one of them brought it up when she was talkin’ about her experience with her own vampyre,” she said sheepishly. Then she raised her hands as though surrendering. “I promise I dinna tell them about ye. But it was interestin’ ta hear it happens ta more men than just ye.”

“One of the former vampyres, eh?” he asked absently as he tugged the pins from her hair, letting the dark locks cascade over her shoulders. “Which one? I’d like to give him a hard time about it.”

Sorcha’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “Ye would no’ do such a thing.”

He might. It would all depend on whether it was Kettering or the oh-so-noble Blodswell. “Which one?” he asked again.

“I’ll never tell,” Sorcha teased. Then she squealed as Alec once again picked her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. He very gently placed her in the middle and wasted no time crawling up to seat himself between her thighs. “Now?” she asked, a little hesitance in her voice.

He gazed down into the depths of her eyes, in awe of what he saw staring back at him. She trusted him to take care of her. And he would, for the rest of his days. Or the rest of hers at least. “Not yet,” he whispered as he dipped his head and took the tip of her breast into his mouth.

Sorcha arched her back, her hands sliding into his hair as she tugged him closer to him.

“Alec,” she cried. “My heart is beatin’ so hard.”

“I know,” he said as he switched to her other breast. “I can hear it.” Then his head dipped again. She even tasted like apples. It had been so long since he’d eaten that ripe fruit that he was momentarily put off by it.

“Somethin’ wrong?” she questioned as she sat up on her elbows.

“You taste like apples,” he admitted.

She laughed. “I get ta maneuver the trees,” she said with a shrug. “It’s a benefit. For now, at least.”

“For now?”

“Ye said ye wanted to talk about that later,” she reminded him.

Not that he needed a ton of encouragement to return his complete focus to her delightful apple essence. “I wonder if you taste like that everywhere?” He kissed his way down her belly. It fluttered beneath his lips as she began to squirm.

“No’ there, Alec,” she cried, attempting to close her legs.

“There,” he affirmed, just before his fingers parted her folds and his tongue found her entrance. “Lie back and enjoy it.”

Her mouth fell open and her head fell back as he licked across her center. “Alec,” she cried, his mouth moving across her most sensitive skin as she begged and pleaded for release. Alec replaced his mouth with his thumb and strummed across that little bundle of nerves he knew would drive her crazy as he turned his head and licked her inner thigh. Her pulse beat beyond that delicate skin. “Allow me to take from you?” he asked.

“Aye!” she cried out as he got her closer and closer to release. Just as she toppled over the barrier and into bliss, Alec bit into the silky flesh, finding her pulse point as he drank her in. Her pleasure hit him first. His manhood throbbed for release, but he continued to milk the vein in her thigh as he strummed across that delicate little nub. Her pleasure nearly swamped him as she cried his name over and over, and she took his joy at pleasuring her in response.

When her hips slowed and her body unclenched, Alec licked across the wounds he’d made to close them and heard her sigh from above him. He climbed up her body until he could kiss her tenderly. Her lips were soft and pliant beneath his, and her heart still beat a mad rhythm. “Will ye take me now?” she asked quietly.

He continued to kiss her as he probed at her center, his manhood hard and ready, nearly screaming for release.

Wetness surrounded him as he slid into her chamber slowly, allowing her time to stretch around him.

Sorcha held tightly to his forearms, her tiny little fingernails digging into his skin like pleasurable talons of delight. “Are you all right?” he stopped to ask.

Her legs rose to tug him farther into her and locked behind his back. “Please,” she whispered against his lips.

“Slow down just a moment,” he warned as her feet tugged him farther inside her. She flinched beneath him.

He’d suspected it was coming. But he’d never taken an innocent before. “Sorch?”

“Make it better,” she said quietly as her legs wrapped more tightly around him. He slid his full length inside her and stopped when he was fully seated within her sheath.

“Tell me I didn’t harm you,” he prompted, staying still within her.

“I’ll harm ye if ye keep tryin’ ta treat me like I’ll break,” she replied. Her gasp when he began to move hit him like an anvil over the head. The breathy little moans she made nearly tore him in two. He pulled back and then sank inside her, and she willingly accepted every inch of him.

“Sorch,” he murmured into her hair as he tried to hold off.

He wanted to bring her over the pinnacle with him, so he reached between them and strummed her back up to those heights he’d had her at a moment before. And she burst at the same time he did, screaming his name loudly as he finished inside her. She quivered around his flesh, wringing every drop of pleasure from his body as she settled in his arms. When they were done, he rolled to his side and drew her to lie on his chest. “You’re sure you’re all right?” he asked as he placed a kiss in her hair.

“Better than all right,” she said, her voice sleepy and sated. “I love ye, Alec,” she whispered. He heard her quite well. And the place where his heart had once been ached as she lay draped across him, her slender, naked body arousing him anew. “My coven sisters gave me no clues it would be like that.” She inhaled deeply and then said, “I will miss them so much when they’re gone.”

“I’ll take you to see them any time you wish.”

Her fingers trailed in small circles through the light hair on his chest. She raised her head and looked directly at him.

“That’s no’ what I meant.”

He must have had a blank look on his face, because she rushed to continue. “I mean when they’re old and dead and gone.” She looked at everything but him. “I’ll miss bein’ a witch, but I love you more than I love the
Còig
.”

“Sorch, I don’t understand.” And he didn’t. Why would she stop being a witch? No one had said a thing to him about that. All the other witches were still witches.

She raised herself up on her elbows to look into his face.

She was so beautiful, with her trusting brown eyes and passion-bruised lips. “I have decided I want ye ta turn me. So we can be together forever.”

Forever. Was that what she had meant in the wedding ceremony? Had she lost her mind? “Turn you?” Alec sat up and glared at her. He must sound like an idiot. “I’m not going to turn you. Not into what I am.” Where the devil had she gotten that idea?

“But it’s the only way we can be together forever, do ye no’ see?” Her eyebrows scrunched together. “Ye want ta be with me for always?”

He wanted nothing more than to be with her until the end of time, but he wouldn’t curse her the same way he had been. Seeing Sorcha turned to a parasite like him would certainly kill him as quickly as a well-placed wooden stake.

“I’ll miss bein’ a witch,” she continued, seemingly oblivious to his tortured thoughts. “But the others assure me I should follow my heart.”

She was willing to give up her life? To give up her powers? To give up her mortality? To give it all up for him?

Sorcha loved him enough to do all of that? To change her life so completely? To love him over everyone and everything she’d ever known?

A searing pain hit Alec’s chest, swamping him even more than her pleasure had. He fell back to the bed as the excruciating ache within his chest nearly cut him to ribbons.

“Alec, are ye all right?” Sorcha cried as she hopped up on her knees to hover over him.

Her voice sounded farther and farther away as the pain grew worse.

Then all he knew was darkness.

~*~

Havers!
Sorcha took Alec by the shoulders and shook with all her might. “Alec!” she called loudly. “Alec, what’s wrong?”

A moment earlier, they’d been joined together and it had honestly been the most amazing moment of her life. He might not love her, but he did care for her, and it showed in his tender touch, in the way he looked into her eyes as he took her beneath him, in the way he saw to her pleasure first.

But now he was lying lifeless, and Sorcha thought she might expire right alongside him. “Ye’re finally mine, Alec MacQuarrie. Doona do this ta me.”

A knock sounded at the door as it opened just a crack.

“Are you all right, lass?” Lord Blodswell’s voice crept around the door.

“Please help me!” Sorcha cried as she scurried to the foot of the bed, retrieved the counterpane, and covered Alec with it.

“Are you decent, Mrs. MacQuarrie?” Lord Kettering’s disembodied voice asked from the corridor.

She glanced down at her own nakedness. She was quite indecent, now that he mentioned it. She snatched her chemise from the floor and threw it over her head. “Aye.”

Modesty be damned, there was no time to wait for her to be properly attired. Something was wrong with her husband.

Blodswell and Kettering tumbled into the room, one right after the other. She could have sworn she saw a concerned Lycan or two hovering behind them. But Lord Blodswell kicked the door shut and she heard a loud curse from beyond the closed portal.

“Meddling Lycans,” Kettering mumbled, as he brushed a lock of hair from his face. Another loud yelp sounded from the corridor. “However, it sounds as though your wife has them well under control.”

Blodswell chuckled. “Lightning does have its uses, outside of storm building.”

How could they laugh? “I doona ken what ye think is so amusing. Where is Elspeth?” Sorcha demanded. “Ye have ta get Elspeth ta heal him!” Hot tears tracked down her face, and she dashed them away with her fingertips.

“None of this is amusing, lass,” Blodswell informed her, the grin leaving his face as soon as he realized how upset she truly was.