Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (24 page)

Her answer unleashed raucous cheers as, throughout the hall, clansmen banged flagons and dirk hilts on the long tables, stamped their feet until the floor shook.

The fervor in her voice and the light in her eyes as she’d said the words unmanned Magnus, scouring him with a hot-burning pleasure that had naught to do with the rousing draw of her warm, womanly appeal, her earthy sensuality—much as he desired her.

Nay, it was the implied pride in being
his
and her unabashed delight in that state, that undid him. The knowledge knocked great gaps in his defenses until he had the uncomfortable sense of standing naked and vulnerable right smack in the crossroads of his destiny.

Most unsettling of all, he found himself glad to be there.

“Then go to him, my good-sister.” Dugan’s voice rose above the jubilation of their kinsmen. He gave a nudge to the small of her back, urged her forward.

Not that she needed any such assistance.

Abandoning all pretense of ladylike reserve, she launched herself at Magnus, throwing her arms around his neck and twining her fingers into the thick waves of his hair.

“Whoa, lass . . . my precious lass,” Magnus heard himself say as he steadied her, the endearment a truth he could no sooner have kept to himself than stop breathing.

He
did
settle his hands on her shoulders, holding her back just a wee bit so he could revel in just looking at her,
savor
the glory of her. How disarmingly
alive
she was.

How alive she made him feel.

Aye, she undid him entirely, marched hot-footed over every defense he’d thought to erect against her. Ne’er had he beheld a more stunning woman, a more desirous, utterly
female
one.

He looked at her, allowing himself for the first time since his homecoming to truly lose himself in the pleasure of simply gazing on her.

The lass who’d chosen him above all others.

The woman he would have made his long ago, had the fates been kinder.

Firelight cast a golden glow over her face and reflected in her hair, making her glossy raven braids glisten like moonlight on night-blackened water. She’d coiled them above her ears again, had woven pretty blue ribbons into the plaits, and he burned to undo them. Toss aside the ribbons and let her unbound hair spill through his fingers like finest watered silk.

Her mad dash into his arms had set her magnificent breasts to swaying, and even through the folds of her cloak, he could feel their fullness swinging against the insides of his forearms as he held her. The erotic contact, both exquisite and maddening, tantalized him beyond endurance.

“You are lovely,” he told her, lifting a hand from her shoulder to feather a caress along the curve of her cheek, touch awed fingers to the cool silk of her gleaming braids.

One glossy tendril had slipped free from the artfully coiled plaits and he reached for it, let the silky strands curl around his fingertip. “Sweeting, I must ask you—you ken there can be no retreat from this point?”

Especially not for him.

Not now.

Not after she’d declared herself so beautifully in front of God and all his kinsmen. And especially not after he’d known the gift of her lush curves straining against him—and that through the folds of her ridiculously voluminous cloak!

He’d lose his soul when the time came for them to stand in a full-naked embrace.

He blew out a gusty breath, knew himself already lost.

“Well, lass?” he probed, toying with the glossy black curl,
praying
she’d not disappoint him. “You ken tonight’s significance?”

She nodded, wordless, but her magnificent eyes brimmed with glittery starlight—the brightness of unshed tears and newfound hope.

Hope, acceptance, joy, and . . . aye . . . a desire that surely burned bright as his own.

And seeing those emotions shining all over her beautiful face nearly brought him to his knees. Still, his honor forced another question from his tongue.

One for her ears alone.

“You are aware of what next transpires when we are escorted abovestairs?” He near choked on the words, hoped her boldness wouldn’t abandon her now. “In especial, what will happen
after
our kinsmen leave us?”

Taking her lower lip between her teeth, her only outward sign of nervousness, she nodded.

Then she drew a long, quivering breath. “I have e’er yearned for this moment,” she said, her dark eyes luminous. “Be assured that I will revel in what happens when we are alone. There shall not be a moment of it that I have not dreamed of for long.”

She took her hand from behind his neck just long enough to swipe at the moisture shimmering high on her cheek. “Far longer than you know,” she breathed, her voice hitching.

“Lass. . . .”
Magnus could say no more, the thickness swelling in his own throat refused to let out the words he burned to say.

And as well, for his gawking kinsmen had edged near, the whole long-nosed lot of them tilting their heads and cupping their ears to try and catch whispered intimacies he wasn’t about to share with them.

His bride showed much less reluctance.

Smiling triumphantly, if a bit wobbly-lipped, she lifted her chin for a kiss . . . letting the seductive brush of her curves, still rubbing so soft and yielding against him,
demand
he give her one.

Trying not to hear the ribald shouts erupting all around them, Magnus swept his arms around her, dragged her flush against him. Lost, he arched her voluptuous body until they stood lips to toe, so close they almost melded together.

A throaty
purring
sound escaped her as she stretched her fingers into his hair, caressed his nape, her touch sending delicious shivers rippling down his back.

“Are you not going to kiss me?” She parted her lips in an invitation no man would even think to deny.

“Aye, I am going to kiss you indeed,” Magnus vowed, holding her gaze, reveling in its smoldering intensity.

I shall kiss you in ways you ne’er dreamed of, sweet lass.

Raw desire pounding through him, he lowered his head, intending—for now—only to brush his lips over hers a few times, but she slid one hand down his back to cup his buttocks and—saints alive!—urged his hips ever tighter against her own.

Another deep, throaty
purr
came from low in her throat at the startling, bone-melting impact, and before he’d slid his lips but once, twice, across the yielding softness of hers, she stunned him by sliding her tongue inside his mouth.

“Christ and all His saints!” he moaned against her lips, his breath mingling with hers. The intimacy enflaming him, his entire body tightened as her tongue met his in a hot, sweeping glide.

You are unmanning me,
he thought he heard himself growl, not quite sure if he’d spoken the words aloud.

And even if he had, he didn’t care.

Wielding her best weapons with boldest intent, she unraveled him stroke by sweet-sliding stroke. Hot, slick, and deliciously silky, her tongue swirled over and around his in a lascivious dance that shot jolt after jolt of heat ripping across his groin.

And each lush sweep, each hot tangle of her tongue with his, claimed another never-to-be-won-back piece of Magnus MacKinnon—deftly turning what should have been a quick, perfunctory pass of his lips over hers into a breathy, open-mouthed kiss. A white-hot conflagration of sharpest, most brilliant need.

A wild slaking, a drinking in of each other’s essences, that set his senses to reeling and had him so ragingly hard, so needy, he was close to tossing her over his shoulder, charging out of the hall, and tossing up her skirts to thrust himself full-tilt inside her as soon as he’d put the throng of roistering onlookers behind them.

Onlookers who, from their increasingly bawdy shouts, seemed more than eager to see him do just that.

Only here in the hall—to
their
enthralled delight!

“If she kisses him like that during the bedding ceremony, I swear I am not exiting the chamber!” a rowdy kinsman roared close by Magnus’s ear.

So close the man’s ale-fumed breath fanned across his cheek. Close enough for him to know the lout had already enjoyed a more than ample eyeful.

Indeed, the clansman’s persistent ale fumes reminded him that not just one but
every
MacKinnon on the isle had witnessed his capitulation—a notion that doused his lust faster than if he’d poured a bucket of iciest loch water into his braies!

“By God, I’d say the lass has her heart hung on him!” another clansman bellowed the moment Magnus broke the kiss, and set his heavy-breathing vixen from him.

Nigh panting himself, hottest need still blazing inside him, he searched the hall for prattle-tongued Dagda, eager to have done with the remaining
traditions
and throw off the yoke of onlookers.

More eager still to do some serious
looking
himself—just not at an assembled mass of ugly, bearded faces!

And until he’d composed himself, he wasn’t looking
her
way, either.

His blood yet burned too hot for him to risk even one glance in her direction. Even standing so near to her left him trembling in the aftermath of the riptide that had just swept him.

The aftermath of her boldness.

A brazen act the like of which she’d ne’er believed she’d perform. Moistening lips gone decidedly tender from their soul-devouring kiss, Amicia drew in small, shallow breaths. She struggled against the overwhelming need to press her hand to her breasts and pull in
great, greedy gulps
of air.

Faith, did she need them.

She’d run to within an inch of shaming herself. Nay, more than an inch. Yet even if she could retrace her steps and start anew, she’d do the same again. Mayhap even hold him tighter than she had, kiss him all the harder when he tried to break away.

There could be no shame in seizing a dream.

A happiness she’d been chasing too long not to grasp firm and glory in, now that it’d come tantalizingly close to her reach.

Nay, she would not be ashamed.

She’d only be furious with herself if she
hadn’t
allowed herself such sweet, sweet bliss.

Even if now, in the afterglow of their startlingly intimate kiss, he wouldn’t look at her.

Later, once they were alone and the bedchamber door’s drawbar soundly in place, she’d address that long-standing habit of his. She’d
make
him look at her . . . and at places other than her peaty-brown eyes!

For now, though, she let him gaze where he would.

And following that gaze, her jaw dropped, for the jostling mass of clansmen were stepping aside, freeing a path through their midst for Dagda and the old laird. A common enough sight in Coldstone’s cavernous hall—until one spied the enormous bronze drinking mazer Dagda held aloft.

“’Tis the Claiming Cup,” Magnus whispered, his warm breath a caress at her ear. “A great bronze drinking vessel believed to hail from Reginald’s time, and even if not, it is of great antiquity, fashioned with miniature war galleys embossed around its rim,” he told her.

“All newly married MacKinnons must share of a drink from it. First the pair, together, and then the mazer will be passed to our kinsmen. Everyone present will drink from it, usually a fresh-made batch of heather ale. . . .” He paused, amazed how easily the words
our kinsmen
had rolled off his tongue.

Stunned at the way his heart warmed at the implication.

“Dagda will speak a few words, and then after everyone has had their token sip, the feasting will commence.”

“And thereafter the bedding?”

Magnus nodded, unable to speak, his throat, and certain other parts of him, being too tight and swollen for him to risk forming another word.

Not if he didn’t want to sound like a spluttering eunuch.

Blessedly, the approach of Dagda and his da spared him any such embarrassment. Not far behind them, Colin was making his own slow progress through the crush as well, the fair Janet hanging on his arm—
her
lips looking nigh as kiss-swollen as Magnus’s lady wife’s.

A condition that would explain the notable absence of the two from the hall until just now—as did the slight swagger to Colin’s almost-good-as-new strides.

To Magnus’s further relief, Dagda the grim wore a smile. Or rather, her best semblance of one.

Looking well-pleased indeed, she didn’t even grumble annoyance when some of the vessel’s contents sloshed over the elaborate rim to spill down the front of her widow’s gown.

A light touch to his sleeve proved to him that he’d only fooled himself by thinking the arrival of the heavy bronze mazer would get his mind on . . . other things.

More grateful that Scots favored plaids than he’d e’er been in his life, he turned to find Amicia peering at him, her brow knitted.

“Shouldn’t your da be the one to speak whate’er will be said when we drink from the mazer?”

“Da used to say the words, to be sure,” he admitted. “But he relinquished the duty to Dagda years back when he began ailing. The ceremony falls within her responsibilities as seneschal, and she always seems to relish it as her part in MacKinnon weddings. With all her faults, the old lass has e’er had a soft heart for . . . young pairs.”

He’d almost said
young lovers,
but caught himself in time.

Passion was well and good—a bliss he’d sorely missed in recent times. Years, were he honest.
Love,
however, was something he was not near prepared to consider.

Not even this night.

Mayhap never.

Another tug at his arm underscored the silliness of any such notion. Just how bad it stood with him. “Aye?” he asked, wishing he didn’t feel as if he were teetering along a cliff-edge and about to lose his balance.

“Why is it called the
Claiming Cup
?” His wife posed the one question he’d hoped she wouldn’t.

“There’s a good reason for that,” he said, trying to give the words a light tone. “The mazer is brought forth after the bride and groom have accepted, or
claimed,
each other. The shared drink signifies their union as one. The passing of the mazer around the hall symbolizes their oneness with the clan and . . .”