One Night with the Laird. Nicola Cornick

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СКАЧАТЬ on a shout at the heat and warmth and slickness of her, but she swallowed his cries in a kiss. She rocked, deeper and deeper, tighter and tighter and his mind splintered and he grabbed her hips hard, grinding her down on him as he came violently, desperately, calling out.

      She rolled off him and lay by his side. Above the harsh pants of his own breathing he could hear the quick gasp of hers. Despite the shocking wantonness of the entire coupling, Jack felt as though something was missing, something he did not understand.

      He turned his head to look at her, foolishly since he could see nothing of her in the oppressive dark. Suddenly, though, he had the certainty that she was about to run. He felt it in the flicker of movement through her body, heard it in her intake of breath.

      His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist just as she started to move. He pulled her back against him, tucking her into his side, holding her still.

      “Don’t you know it is bad manners to run out on a man so soon after having him?” His whisper teased her hair. He felt it brush his lips.

      After a moment she laughed and he felt her body soften against his. She said nothing, though.

      “What is your name?” He wanted to talk to her, wanted it quite desperately, in fact, as though the physical connection between them simply was not enough. Odd, when previously he had never wanted more from a woman than the simply physical.

      “Rose.” There had been the very slightest hesitation in her voice before she had spoken. Not her name, then.

      “I’m Jack.” He did not deal in lies, half-truths or evasions. It was not his style.

      She rubbed her hand gently over his bare chest in acknowledgment. She might be a woman of few words, but she made up for it in other ways. His blood was tingling from that small touch.

      “I want to see you.”

      “No.” Her response was instant and with a note of panic in her voice.

      “Why not, sweetheart?” In deference to the fear, he kept his own tone light, brushing the tangled hair away from her face, his fingers a gentle caress against her cheek.

      She shifted slightly in his arms as though she was uncomfortable with both the endearment and the gentleness. He knew she was rejecting the intimacy. It was odd when they had just shared the most intimate experience possible.

      “I don’t want any light.” Now there was an unconscious command in her voice. A woman accustomed to giving orders, then. That made her all the more intriguing.

      “And what if I do?”

      “You will have to be satisfied with touch.”

      She took his hand and placed it over her breast. It was a gesture intended to stop conversation. He realized that. Yet he still succumbed. He felt her nipple harden against his palm and felt his blood heat in response. He toyed with her breasts with fingers, lips, teeth and tongue, allowing himself to be distracted, taking pleasure from her gasps and the way she arched to his touch. She urged him on in broken whispers, begging him to nip and suck harder to a point where pleasure turns to pain. He was painfully erect again by then and she spread herself for him and pleaded for him to take her hard, then harder still, her hands gripping the wooden headboard tight as he plunged into her. It was wild and wicked and he felt as though he were in a hot, dark dream, but even as he ravished her he felt the touch of a shadow on him as though something, somewhere was wrong. It almost felt as though she was asking to be punished, as though each stroke of his body into hers, each nip of his teeth at her breast, was penance.

      Through the long night she let him do whatever he wished to her; she was his plaything and it was spectacular, unimaginably exciting, and he felt exhausted, satiated, but he couldn’t quell that stubborn instinct that something was missing. The final time he made love to her slowly, languorously, trying to anchor the intimacy between them in something deeper, trying to capture and hold her. Jack had no idea why he wanted that connection when he was by nature a man who wanted only the most superficial of love affairs. Perhaps it was the challenge; he was unaccustomed to a woman who held something back. Normally they were the ones pushing him into a closeness he did not want.

      By now her skin was flushed and damp, slick against his. She moved with him on the same dark tide of desire and pleasure, she came for him when he demanded it, her body was his, and yet somehow it felt as though she still eluded him in all the ways that mattered. Afterward she slept but he lay awake listening to her breathing, his mind alert. At one point she cried out. He pulled her into his arms and held her and she calmed, but he felt tears on her cheek where it was pressed against his chest.

      Eventually the warmth of her in his arms lulled him into sleep too, only to awake hours later when the sun was high in the sky and the room was bathed in light.

      Jack knew before he opened his eyes that she would be gone.

      * * *

      IT WAS STILL dark when Mairi woke. For a moment her mind felt empty, light and free, and her body felt supremely ripe with pleasure, satiated and satisfied. A second later the desolation swept in, dark, cold and lonely as a winter’s night, banishing the light.

      It was always like this when she woke up. There was an all too brief period of blissful peace and then she fell into the dark. Grief and loss crouched in the shadows, waiting to spring. This morning the misery was sharper than usual, painful as a whetted knife. She had sought to drown her unhappiness in sensual pleasure and had only made matters worse.

      She slipped from the bed and immediately missed Jack’s warmth. He had been lying on his side, with one arm draped across her in casual possession, drawing her close in to the curve of his body. She was not sure how she had been able to sleep like that, in the arms of a stranger. It seemed wrong, impossible to accept when she rejected any sort of intimacy with anyone. Odd that she could give her body to him wholly and completely, holding nothing back, and yet the act of sleeping together afterward was something she regretted.

      Shivering, she dragged on her underclothes, then tiptoed to the chest and took out a plain gown and shawl. Her hands shook as she tried to tie the fastenings. She could not see what she was doing. She tiptoed to the door, slippers in her hand. Light was starting to creep through the shutters now. She did not want to look back, but something compelled her to turn.

      Jack was lying in the center of the big bed, in the midst of all the crumpled sheets and tumbled blankets. The covers rode low over his hips, revealing the broad expanse of his muscular chest dusted with golden hair. Tawny hair several shades darker fell over his forehead, a contrast to the stubble shadowing his chin. His eyes were closed, the lashes thick and black. The strengthening light skipped across the lean planes of his face, a long nose and resolute chin. It was a strong face, handsome enough to cause any woman to catch her breath, but that was not why Mairi gasped.

      She felt a pang of shock, then a pang of horror, sharper, stronger, almost violent in its intensity.

      Jack Rutherford.

      It could not be.

      She put out a hand and grabbed the bedpost for support. No. It was not possible. She had deliberately chosen a stranger, picked him out at a masquerade ball. She had seen him across the ballroom in his black domino and mask, and there had been something about him that captured her interest. She had thought he looked a little dangerous, a little wild, unknown to her, perfect for her purpose. They had not even spoken; they had had one dance and she had been so aware of him, burning with the need that possessed her, that at the СКАЧАТЬ