Hazy blue eyes stared up at him, as she gasped for air. Her breasts rose and fell under the frail silk covering.
When she caught his hand and brought it to her lips, more tenderness threatened to choke him. Even if they stopped now, she’d turned a wedding night that he’d dreaded into an occasion of extraordinary joy.
She brought his hand down to her breast. “Touch me,” she whispered, pressing his palm against that luscious roundness.
“Fiona…” he forced out through a throat jammed with pleas and questions and, damn it, piercing emotion. He bit back a groan, as he shaped his hand to her. When his thumb brushed a hard nipple, she gave a huff of surprise.
“If I do, I’ll…” He couldn’t finish. She knew what he wanted.
“I want to give you pleasure.” She seemed to have no trouble putting a sentence together, whereas words scattered in front of him like seagulls running across the beach at Canmara. “Let me give you this.”
“I…” He wanted to tell her he could wait, but his hand tightened on her breast.
She released his hand and fumbled with the hem of her nightdress. During their voracious kisses, it had ridden high over her slender thighs. Now she bunched it in her hands and tugged it up to reveal a tangle of ash blond curls at the base of her flat stomach. Lamplight glistened on damp, feathery hair, proof of her arousal.
Diarmid swallowed the jagged boulder that blocked his throat and made himself say what he must. “Ye dinna have to do this.”
“Aye, I do.” To his surprise, she smiled with an openness he’d never seen before. “Not just because you’re my husband and I owe you my duty. Diarmid, I want to give myself to you.”
In his wildest dreams, he’d never imagined Fiona saying those words. Her admission filled him with gratitude and astonished joy and scrambled every coherent thought in his head.
He kissed her to try to tell her what he couldn’t say. When he raised his head, she trembled, but he was—almost—certain that this was desire, not fear of a man’s possession.
Releasing her breast, he slid his hand down to the soft plain of her belly. He paused to explore the pale, satiny skin, then ventured a few inches lower to cup her mound. She gave a start and bit the lips he’d kissed over and over tonight.
“Should I stop?” he asked.
She flattened her hand over his chest, where his heart labored as if he pushed a loaded wagon up a hill. “No.”
“You dinna sound too sure.”
“I’m sure.”
Diarmid didn’t quite believe her, but while she might be nervous, she was aroused, too. Need darkened her eyes, turned them heavy. Her nipples pressed tight and hard against her silk nightdress.
He kissed her again. At first, she was awkward in his arms, but soon she kissed him back with gratifying enthusiasm. Only then, while his lips still teased at hers, did he launch a gentle invasion of her body’s secret hollows.
“I love to touch ye,” he whispered, nibbling a line down her neck and feeling her shiver as he scraped his teeth across the nerve where her neck curved into her shoulder.
Fiona tangled her fingers in his and after a pause that seemed to last an eon, she relaxed under him. Her legs parted to allow his caresses where, God willing, he’d soon join his body to hers.
She was sleek and hot. As his seeking fingers met the proof of her response, relief washed through him. She hadn’t lied about wanting him. Slowly he explored the satiny folds.
Her hand clenched in his hair. “What are you doing?” she asked unsteadily.
“Ye dinna like it?”
“I’m not…”
As he caressed the sensitive pearl of flesh, another huff of surprise escaped her. “Oh.”
Once again, he thought how virginal she was. She knew nothing of her body’s potential for pleasure. How could she, married off as little more than a child to a brute who made no attempt to teach her about enjoyment?
Diarmid leaned in and took one beaded nipple between his lips. The silk was a tantaliz
ing barrier. He burned to rip away this rag of a nightdress. But some corner of his brain retained enough grip on strategy to recognize that once she was naked, her fears might resurface. Right now, she was drunk on new sensations, not thinking beyond the next delightful shock.
As he drew on her nipple, his touch between her legs became more purposeful. One finger circled the entrance to her body, then slid inside. He tensed his jaw as she closed around his finger. Even aroused, she was tight.