That experienced tongue licked through the seam with repeated intent. “Open for me,” he instructed.
She did, and hell broke loose, allied with a vision of paradise. His tongue delved in her mouth, tangling with hers as a moan escaped her. Her skin heated, her heart was like a thousand horse-hooves pounding the ground, her body blindly seeking more.
His other hand lined her nape to keep her where he wanted her and savour her better. Vaguely, she realised her back leant on irregular stone. She did not care if he guided them far inside the gatehouse; she yearned to taste the banquet of him uninterrupted.
From her waist, his hand climbed up, spanning her ribs, pausing just under her breast. The incomplete trajectory had her pressing against him, in a plea for more. In response, the large, square appendage covered her swollen, peaked breast. The sensation sent her sky-high, driving her spine to arch against him.
But he made it so much worse when his thumb had the same bad idea of hers and grazed the poor peak. Lightning cut through her and melted in her very centre, where a sense of emptiness installed itself. Her throat emitted a sound totally foreign to her.
It made him lift his head just that little to look into her pleasure-drenched eyes. “Do you see what you did to me?” he breathed raggedly.
Oh, she did see. And who cared she should not have? Done that to him, that is. Her breath came hard, her centre was at the bursting point, and there was too much room between them. A strange annoyance sneaked in her with the ceasing of the kiss. So she dived both hands in his luxuriant hair and pulled him back to her. With a surprised grunt he came, his mouth demanding she open wider, his tongue driving deeper, their bodies drawing closer. He plastered her against the wall with his weight while his lips and hands transformed her into a pliant mass of want and fire.
The hardness of him imprinted on her belly, giving her a notion of his long, thick erection. It made her more desperate for him, that sense of emptiness going insane. She arched more into him, her arms tightening with a pleading whimper.
Suddenly, his hands held her shoulders and put distance between their voracious bodies. “A horse is approaching,” he said none too steady. “Stay here.” And he strode quickly out of the ruin to wait for the newcomer.
Catriona’s head fell back to the wall, her eyes closing as she drew a deep, invigorating breath. She found no other feeling in her aside from the frustration the interruption caused. No guilt so far, no screaming conscience, no self-reproach or self-loathing. Nothing more than this elemental thing of nature coursing through her as she waited for her heart to decrease its mad galloping.
“Craig, what’s the matter?” Fingal said outside after a few minutes.
“Miss Paddington’s mare, my laird.” The stable master stopped talking for a few seconds. “She is a little restless. Might be in heat.”
Poor thing, Catriona lamented, because now she gained a fairly precise idea of what the horse was suffering.
“I’ll talk to the lass,” Fingal answered.
“Aye, my laird,” Craig said before riding away.
Emerging, she saw the rider far down the track. “I’ll go see her,” she said, grabbing at the opportunity to get away from him, even forgetting she had fallen earlier.
Daring to lift her head, she clashed with darkened eyes. Darkened, heated, with a gleam that bordered on the uncivilised. Her skin quivered with the sight of it. It sadly mirrored her exact sensation. She did not waste a moment longer and walked back to the stables before she lost her head and pushed him back into the ruin. To her own ruin.
CHAPTER FIVE
Fingal waited for the doctor to finish examining Emily, pacing outside her room. The sun sank towards west as his thoughts raced in a jam of memories and musings.
He must be the most stupid man in the world to have succumbed to that lethally delicious kiss. The only one to drive him into the most deranged state of delectation and need he had ever experienced. One minute he was carrying her, and on the next, they were pressed against a stone wall devouring each other as if it was the last kiss in the history of humanity. The white-hot ball of fire that took him by assault shut down any lucid, sensible thought and drowned him in a desire so uncontrollable he felt lost.
And he needed more
No, he did not need more.
He needed it again and again and again. Until this unexpected, inconvenient fever abated. Relieved. Disappeared.
He was on the brink of getting married, for pity’s sake. There was no chance of entangling himself in this kind of situation.
For two things became clear. She did not have a husband. The evidence lay in the fact she had never been kissed before, leading to the consideration that she must be untouched. If so, she did not come here running from a scandal in London—which made him conclude she travelled to the Highlands simply due to the advertisement he put in the paper. No convoluted reason; she was not lying. It proved her an innocent, and one he held the responsibility to protect, guard. Not ravish.
That he had been the first to kiss her only threw him in a hellish pit of fire. That he could be her first man drove him to the verge of a feverish carnality. That she must remain untouched to get properly married made him mad with possessiveness.
The prompt interruption by Craig had saved him even if the impulse to punch the stable master for tearing him from her at the gatehouse assaulted him. Luckily, he had heard the hooves in time to get outside and cool down his rampant condition.
At that instant, the door to her chamber opened, and the doctor came to talk to him. “She has only a small bruise on her backside. Nothing to worry.” He sported a balding head, a spine curved by his advanced years, and benevolent eyes. “I gave her a jar of salve for it.”
Satisfied, Fingal paid the doctor, and the old man took his leave.
An image stormed into his head of her spreading the oily unguent on that delectable pert backside of hers, enough to get him hard to the point of shedding all decency. It’s a bruise, you pervert! The admonishment held no dampening effect, however. He clattered down the stairs to his study pursued by the fantasy of his big hands rubbing the salve on her.