The Highlander's Stolen Touch (16 page)

* * *

The rest of the day went quickly, as the hours before her wedding seemed to go by. Ciara spent some of the time with James’s mother while James worked with the men in the training yard. Unwilling to see Tavis just then, she avoided it while turning another plan over in her mind. Certain it would not work, certain he would refuse, she knew she had to try it.

Passion would not be enough. When men feared something, something they could not admit or face, sometimes it was up to a woman to show it to them. And Tavis had carried fear in his heart every day since Saraid’s death. The fear had such a tight grip on him that he needed someone to help rid it from him.

She sought out the midwife who Saraid had seen during her carrying and asked questions that had plagued her since her death. If Gunna thought her questions strange or out of place, she did not say. Most likely she thought them natural ones for a young woman about to marry and her last words, trying to ease her fears of the marriage bed and bearing bairns, confirmed it.

Just as her explanation had confirmed the one thing that still held terror over Tavis—that he or something he did or did not do caused Saraid’s death.

If she did nothing else before she left Lairig Dubh as James Murray’s wife, she would free her first and dearest friend from the tyranny that held his heart prisoner.

If she did nothing else before she said the words that would make her James Murray’s wife, she would have the passion that she was forfeiting on the day of her marriage.

If she did nothing else before ending her time as Marian and Duncan’s daughter, she would be the bold, confident woman they had raised her to be.

* * *

With a plan in mind to fulfill those needs and desires, Ciara waited for her parents and siblings to seek their rest. Once the house had settled and only the sound of night birds broke the stillness of the silence around them, she considered her plans one last time.

What she planned to do was scandalous. She had told James she would come to him a virgin, but now would offer that to Tavis. If he accepted it. And now, in the quiet of the night, she did not know if he would reject her once more.

Shaking her head, she crept from her bed and gathered what she needed. She would not let doubt or fear or guilt rule her as it did Tavis. If she would live by duty for the rest of her life, this night would be about love.

And if this was the only night she would have with him, so be it.

But she had waited almost her whole life for him and she, they, would have this night.

Chapter Seventeen

T
avis worked as hard and as long and as late as he could, trying to avoid returning to his empty cottage. He took on all opponents in the training yard and faced off with an equal number of MacLeries as well as several more of the Murrays before having enough. Aching from working out the frustration that would not be tamed, he accepted an invitation to share the evening meal with Rurik and Margriet and stayed longer than he should, speaking about another assignment from Connor.

When, with another not-subtle pointed glance at both his bedchamber’s door and the door of the cottage, Rurik told him to leave, Tavis did so, walking slowly along the path back to his cottage. He was in no rush to face the empty cottage that mocked him, reminding him of promises broken and lives lost.

Strange. When he looked at the door of it, he could still see Ciara as she stood there that night, asking him to marry her. Not Saraid, whose ghost still haunted the rooms within it.

Tavis noticed that the shutters were closed. That was not how he’d left them. As he approached, he saw the flickering light of flames in the hearth through the crack between the door and the frame.

Someone had been here while he was not. Someone might yet be inside. His hand grasped the hilt of his dagger before he thought it and he positioned his body to the side of the doorway as he lifted the latch and entered carefully.

Ciara sat before the hearth, reading by the light of several candles. Her hair, loose and lovely, flowed over her shoulders. Dressed in a simple gown with a plaid shawl, she was the essence of Highland lass. His mouth watered, his hands itched and his heart ached just looking at her and knowing she could not be his.

‘Ciara?’ he asked, stepping further inside and sliding the dagger back in its scabbard. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Waiting for you,’ she said, closing the book and placing it on the wooden mantel above the hearth. ‘I needed to see you in private to speak to you.’ He did not reply immediately. He waited for what seemed an eternity of time before speaking. So many wrong things to say and very few right ones crossed his mind.

‘Ciara, ’tis best if we do not. The last time...’ He thought about their last encounter alone in the night and how it ended up with her in his arms devouring her mouth with a kiss he could still remember and taste.

‘I have a last request for my closest friend before I set off to my marriage.’

Did she have to remind him that she would leave him forever? For a brief moment when he entered the cottage, he’d allowed himself to imagine that this was how he would find her on his return each night. Waiting for him. Waiting for his touch, his kiss, his body...his love.

The words brought him back to the reality that would be—she was not his. He swallowed several times, trying to clear his throat from the sudden emotion clogging it.

‘What is your request?’

‘James and I spoke about our marriage and it is clear he wants a calm, sensible relationship, built on polite conversations and companionable peace.’

Tavis could believe both that she could have spoken to the man about that and that young James would be a calm, dispassionate, courteous husband to Ciara. Not that that was the way he would have her to wife, but...

A sudden vision of them in bed, with him buried deep in her flesh, urging her with hands and body to explode in passion with him. Her hair spread around them as his hands pleasured her lovely, rose-tipped breasts. He was hard before he finished the thought.

‘If I must face a life of calm and sensible affection,’ she said, now walking towards him, ‘then I wish to know the passion and pleasure I will be missing with you.’

Bloody hell! Did she not know the temptation she was to him? How much of a struggle it had been to keep his hands to himself and to seek his own release when the need for her tempted him in the deep of the night, every night, since he’d given in and tasted her mouth?

‘Ciara, I beg you to leave now,’ he forced out from behind clenched teeth. ‘Before it is too late.’

‘It has been too late for some time, Tavis.’ She reached up and touched his cheek. ‘But I will leave if you can kiss me once and let me go.’ Her smile filled with wicked temptation.

Sweet Christ, but the lass knew how to challenge his resolve!

‘One true kiss, Tavis. I beg you,’ she whispered, the very word and the image sending blood pumping harder through his veins. ‘One true kiss and I will leave with that memory in my heart forever.’

Surely he had enough honour and strength to suffer through a kiss, only one kiss before he would send her away?

He nodded.

With his hands placed firmly at his sides, he would not touch her. If he did that, he was certain that he could control himself, but damn the lass, she had other plans. When he leaned his face down to touch her lips, she placed her fingers there and shook her head.

‘Nay. One kiss. I decide when.’

He was going to die and go to hell, of that he was now certain, but he had resisted her thus far and he would keep his control. He would...he must...

He might have had a chance
if
she had not reached for the belt holding his plaid in place.
If
she had not moved around him, stripping him of his weapons, his belt, the plaid and the shirt under it. He could have
if
she’d not brought over a bucket of steaming water and begun to wash him.

Oh, hell, he never stood a chance and she knew it from the unrepentant gleam in her eyes.

If she was startled to find him as he was, she did not mention it. Worse, her tongue slipped out and touched her lips as she washed him.

‘I have seen you before,’ she whispered as she stroked the warm, wet cloth over his back and lower. ‘At the stream in Dunalastair. You were naked there and I watched.’

Her words undid him and his resolve. He laughed at her admission.

‘You were wicked to do that.’ She laughed softly but did not stop her ministrations. ‘And even more wicked to do this.’

She finished his back and drifted around front again. The virgin that she was showed herself for a moment when she reached for him and then stopped. Tavis took her hand and the cloth and wrapped them around the length of him. The expression on her face and the way she opened her mouth, breathing through it quickly, just enhanced his response and his flesh surged in her grasp. He guided her lower and then tossed the cloth aside and splashed some water over his skin to rinse the soap away as she watched.

It was time to show her that one kiss would not be enough, never be enough, but she stopped him once more by moving away.

Her hands loosened the laces behind her with practised ease. She pulled the gown over her head, giving him a clear view of her naked body beneath the sheer chemise. The flames from the hearth revealed her exquisite curves and the dark triangle of hair hiding the place he longed most to touch...and stroke...and taste. Her nipples tightened—did she even notice?—as he watched her. And as she watched him.

Bold as he knew her to be and braver than he could ever hope to be, she walked to him now and offered herself to him. Oh, aye, he would pleasure her, but he would not cross the line to dishonour another man’s betrothed, idiot that the man was or not and idiot that he himself might be.

‘I will not take that which is not mine,’ he whispered. ‘But I will give you the pleasure you seek, the pleasure that can be between a man and a woman.’

‘The pleasure that can be between you and me, Tavis.’

Innocent and a seductress in every breath, she probably did not realise that pleasure did not mean he had to take her maidenhead. ‘That kiss, Ciara. ’Tis time for your kiss.’

He thought her game was over, but she took off the chemise and placed her hands beneath her breasts, offering them to him. Arching her back to lift them higher, she whispered, ‘Kiss me here, Tavis.’

He stared, oh, aye, he did, for this was the vision from his dreams come to life. Her lithe body, her breasts that would fit perfectly in his hands as he kissed them—all of it was straight from his dreams.

He closed his eyes and prayed for the strength to keep his honourable pledge even as he leaned down to take the tip of one of her breasts in his mouth. She gasped and he knew she’d expected a polite kiss and not the hunger-filled taking he gave. When he felt her legs tremble, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to his bed.

He would show her the full measure of a kiss now. Kneeling next to her, he touched her with only his mouth. First he took the other nipple in his mouth and suckled it, rubbing and teasing the tip of it even harder. If he was, she would be, too. Her body arched beneath his mouth and she whispered his name over and over. Kissing and licking his way up her body, Tavis took her mouth next.

He smiled as she opened it for him, but he teased her lips, kissing them gently until she smiled. Then he possessed her there, his tongue tasting hers and then feeling the shards of pleasure shoot through him as she sucked his. Bold lass that she was, he felt her hands in his hair, pulling him closer, holding him, not letting him move away.

And that was fine with him, for he could kiss her for hours and not tire of it. He could tell from her restless, innocent movements that she did not know what pleasure still awaited her.

This had not been part of her plan at all. She’d thought,
when she had been able to think, that he would hold her and kiss her. Once he declared that he would not take her virginity, she thought she understood. But nothing, not even the way her body reacted to seeing him naked the other time, prepared her for the tumultuous, rolling waves of pleasure pulsing through her body now. Or for the way she wanted, she craved something more.

His mouth was hot and his tongue rough against hers. Her body wept in that place between her legs and throbbed there with every caress of his tongue as some pulse within her matched his every touch.

He lifted his head in spite of her effort to hold him to her and laughed. ‘Worry not. I am not through kissing you yet.’

She lost her breath at that promise and allowed him leave to move as he would. Ciara could not have imagined the pleasure of the way his beard felt as he kissed back down her body, teasing and rubbing her now-sensitive flesh. She waited and hoped he would kiss her breasts again and when he did, she arched over and over under his mouth, gasping at the feel of such a thing.

His mouth tormented her, soothed her and then tortured her over and over as anticipation built. Towards something, however—she knew not what. When his mouth moved from her breasts and then downwards, downwards towards that aching place, she stopped breathing. He laughed, the beast! He knew what he was doing to her and enjoyed it.

She reached out for his head, grabbing his hair and threading her hands through it, just as he kissed her mound. Ciara thought she might have moaned aloud then, but lost herself completely when he urged her to open to him. Her body and legs understood, spreading as he moved to kneel there.

Then he stopped.

Opening the eyes she didn’t even realise she’d clenched shut, she could see him staring at her. Staring
there, between her legs. She tried to bring her legs together, but his body, his hard thighs blocked her. She leaned up on her elbows and tried to cover herself with her hand, but the wicked, wicked grin on his face stopped her.

‘Another place to kiss, Ciara.’

She felt the heat rush into her cheeks then. ‘Surely not?’ she whispered. Lips and mouths were for kissing. That place was for...

‘Ah, aye, lass. ’Tis a splendid place to show you the true pleasure of a kiss.’

He kissed the inside of her thighs, tickling them with his beard’s growth and then moved closer and closer to the heated flesh that throbbed already. He smiled at her as he placed his mouth...
there.

Her mind retreated from the intensity of the pleasure from it. Her body gave in and she lost control. Lips. Tongue. Teeth. Driving her mad and pushing her body and her soul on to something more. Ciara fell back on the bed and simply felt it all.

Spiralling pleasure, rolling through her body and mixing with tendrils of need and heat and hunger for him and what he did to her. She opened wider to him, allowing him whatever he wanted. Her body arched, pressing against his mouth harder, forcing his tongue deeper into that place.

She did scream then as her body shivered and trembled against his mouth. Something deep within her, something wound so tight she could not breath, loosened in an instant and wave upon wave of ecstasy rushed through her blood and into every part of her. She lost herself in that moment and only later did she realise that he lay now at her side, whispering to her.

Ciara did not know she cried until she felt him wiping the tears from her cheeks, kissing them away. After such abandonment of control, she did not know if she could meet his gaze. A gentle touch of his lips on hers convinced her to risk it.

And love shone back at her.