much. You’d better stop. I can’t hurry this time.”
“Why not?”
He took her hand from his stomach and smiled down at her with an expression she had never seen before on his face. A glowing tenderness, almost a sweetness, that set oddly on his usually cynical features. “I told you once I wasn’t a welcher. Last time you gave me more than I gave you. I was so damn drunk, all I could think about was how much I needed you. I should have been gentler. I should have taken more time.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the palm. His lips were warm, teasing her flesh. “I was rough as hell. It’s a wonder you don’t hate me.”
“I don’t remember you being rough.” She remembered nothing but heat and possession and Dominic within her body. “It seemed entirely… adequate.”
He flinched. “Adequate. What a puling word.” A sudden flicker of humor touched his lips. “I guess I’ll just have to work on changing your opinion. Stay right where you are, love.” He moved out of the lean-to and rapidly discarded the rest of his clothing. Then he was kneeling beside her, his face alight with the same smile that had shaken her before. His bronze flesh was burnished by the firelight and his voice was velvet soft as he gathered her close. “Now, let me see what I can do about banishing that word from your mind. Part your legs, love.” His fingers ran down her body, delicate and loving as a sculptor creating a work of art. Everywhere he touched was blessed with fire-her breasts, her throat, her belly. His hands nudged her legs apart and he moved between them, stroking the nest of curls surrounding her womanhood, his fingers splaying out to tangle and play. “You’re different here too. Not rough, just different.” His head bent and he slowly rubbed his cheek back and forth on her belly. The faint abrasion of the stubble on his chin was wildly exciting. “Soft and yet strong…” His teeth nipped gently at that softness, and then his tongue followed to soothe and tease. She could feel his warm breath on her flesh, then his moist tongue moving lazily. The muscles of her belly tautened in response.
“No, not yet.” His hand moved up to rub gently at the rigid muscles, trying to relax them. “It will be better for you if you don’t get excited too soon. Relax, love.”
Relax? How was she expected to relax when every muscle was vibrating at an excruciating pitch of anticipation? “Don’t be daft,” she said tartly. “What a truly stupid thing to say.”
Her sudden shift from docility disconcerted him for a moment, and he went still, his cheek on her stomach, his expression hidden from her. Then his shoulders began to shake. He raised his head to look at her, his face alight with laughter. “I’ll try to refrain from any further idiocy.” He shook his head, his eyes still glowing with laughter and tenderness. “I don’t know why I expected you to respond as any other woman would. You’ve never done anything else in the ordinary way.”
This was how he should look, Elspeth thought suddenly. This was how he would have looked if the gentleness and humor had not been stolen from him by those grim years of hiding and pursuit. She wanted to give him back those years of laughter with a desire that sprang as much from protectiveness as from passion. Her hand reached out and moved over his crisp thick curls, tenderly pushing an unruly lock back from his forehead. “I didn’t mean to discourage you.”
“Oh, you didn’t.” His fingers were between her thighs, searching. She gave a low cry as the search ended. Her fingers clenched helplessly in his hair as he began to press, rotate, flick. His gaze was warm with pleasure as he watched her face. “You couldn’t discourage me. Not in the next thousand years. Do you like this?”
“Yes.” She could scarcely speak through the haze of pleasure. She was trembling, shivering. What was he doing to her?
“Good.” Two fingers plunged suddenly and she opened her lips in a silent scream as the breath left her body. Her head thrashed back and forth on the tartan as he began a rhythm that sent her into convulsions of pleasure and hunger.
“Dominic!”
“Shhh…” His face above her was flushed and sensual. “I know. Just let me do this for a little while. It will make the rest better for you.” He wanted to pleasure her with an intensity that surprised him. He had always tried to give his ladies satisfaction; it made his own enjoyment stronger. But this was different. He felt that Elspeth’s every response was linked in some mysterious fashion with his own. Every tingle of pleasure he gave her was his pleasure. He bent impulsively and kissed her lips with a softness that wove a honeycomb of golden sweetness about them both. “But I don’t think I can wait much longer,” he said hoarsely as he lifted his head. “May I come in and show you more, Elspeth?”
Her smile was radiant as she nodded. “Please.”
He slid within her very slowly, letting her become accustomed to him. Fullness. That wonderful primitive joining. He began to move, alternating short strokes with long ones; depth with shallowness, swiftness with leisurely slowness.
His chest was moving in and out with the harshness of his breathing as he struggled to maintain control. “Elspeth, I’ve missed you so.” His teeth were clenched, his words almost guttural. “The tightness… I feel as if you’re grabbing me every time I-” He stopped and looked down at her, his light eyes glittering and wild in the firelight. “Do you know what you’re doing to me?”
She was beginning to learn and that knowledge filled her with pagan anticipation. She suddenly made an undulating movement with her lower body. He gasped, and a shudder ran through him. She could do it, too, she suddenly realized with delight. She could give him this wonder he was giving her. She experimented again, clenching around him.
He closed his eyes, the pulse leaping in his throat. “Lord, Elspeth, don’t do that. You’re making me lose control.”
But her delight was too heady, her sense of power too new. She ran her hand over the tangle of hair on his chest as she began a rhythm of her own.
His breath was coming in rough gasps as he opened his eyes. “All right, love,” he said thickly. “If you want it this way, heaven knows, it’s what I want too.”
He plunged deep, piercing her, filling her, each thrust lightning fast, lightning hot, searing her. His palms cupped her bottom, squeezing the cheeks with every bold invasion, lifting her to each thrust, forcing her to take more of him. She tried to offer him that response she had so recently learned, but she was being overwhelmed, deluged in just the taking of him. She was half-sobbing in a fever of heating pleasure. Her nails bit into his arms, released, and then bit in again. The world was expanding, a silver box with a ruby center, a red MacGregor tartan, Dominic’s eyes looking down at her with laughter and hot delight. Beauty merged with passion, as she was merging with Dominic.
His fingers moved skillfully as he thrust, and she felt something building that she vaguely remembered from that other time.
“Elspeth-” Dominic’s face was tautened with strain. His fingers moved more urgently. “I can’t hold on.”
Hold on to what? she wondered dimly. Then she knew as the tension that had been building released in a wonder of rapture that shook her to the depths of her soul. She heard Dominic’s low cry above her as that same rapture claimed him.
“Thank God,” Dominic breathed. “I was afraid for a moment I’d leave you behind.” He leaned down and kissed her again. Sweetness, gratitude, warmth were all there, wrapping her in a cocoon to shelter her from any chill that might follow the storm. “I don’t want ever to leave you behind, Elspeth.”
There was no danger of her ever letting him leave her, Elspeth thought. Not now. If he left her, she would follow him. If he grew tired of her as a lover, she would find a way to make herself necessary to him in another way. He had told her tonight that she was strong. Well, she would use that strength to make him belong to her in all the ways a man could belong to a woman. “I pleased you?”
“Oh, yes.” His hand gently stroked her hair back from her face. “You’re a joy and a surprise. Not one of those hetaeras you’re always talking about could have been better, Elspeth MacGregor.”
“Elspeth Delaney,” she corrected him. She smiled up at him. “And I thank you for the fine words. I’ll try to improve with practice.” He had not said he loved her but he had said she had given him pleasure. It would have to do for now. “Shall we continue?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Not now, I think it best if we rest for a while.” He lifted off her and to the side before bringing her into his arms. His lips brushed her temple as he settled her head on his shoulder. “We have time.”
She settled her cheek on his shoulder, running the tips of her fingers down the muscles of his chest in a loving
