She could see his strong silhouette, but not much more, as he was against the light. She distributed small kisses on his neck and chest, heading down to his stomach. She glanced up at him as her hand moved down and wrapped around his large, stiff arousal. His muscles flexed under her mouth, and he hissed.
Am I touching you right? She faltered as she overthought her actions. Am I pleasing you? She didn’t even notice she had whispered her thoughts out loud.
“You’re driving me crazy,” he said, his hand running over her back, dipping between her buttocks to tease her again. “Still wet. Do ye want tae come again?”
He didn’t wait for her answer, touching her leisurely. He would give anything to feel her mouth on him, but he didn’t want to press or scare her on their first time together.
She gasped when his finger dipped inside her again, but it emboldened her; she ran her hand over the full length of him, and her mouth ran down from his chest to his stomach and over the tip of his manhood. She tongued the slit, tasting his salty-sweet taste.
His breath caught.
She licked her lips, looked at him, and took him deep in her mouth, making little noises as she rolled her tongue over his tip, sucking him gently.
A loud groan left his mouth. He was sure her lush, parted lips wrapping around his thick erection was the most erotic thing he’d ever witnessed. He directed her hand to the base of his penis, covering it with his, teaching how he liked it. His hand covered hers, moving faster and tighter, and the other fisted her hair to guide her head.
“Deeper,” Tavish grunted, pushing her head down. When she grasped the movement, one of his hands returned to pleasure her.
His hips suddenly thrust, forcing himself deeper into her mouth. He expected her to pull back, but when she didn’t, he found himself thrusting faster in her mouth. “Suck harder.”
Knowing she controlled the giant of a man before her while his thumb worked her and an index finger plunged faster inside her, she came again, moaning around him and squeezing her hand harder around his penis.
“Fucking Christ.” It was all too much: the look of her naked body, her recent climaxes, the feel of her warm lips around him, her submission to his control. He pushed her shoulder, a silent warning that he was close. He was going to come at any moment. His eyes found hers; his chest rose and fell, keeping frantic time with her. He gripped the sheets so as not to grab her hair again and nearly released years of pent up frustrations into her mouth.
“I’m coming!” he gasped. On the verge of losing control, he looped an arm around her waist, pulled her to his chest, taking her mouth in a hard kiss and handling his erection, stroking harder and tighter. His hips rose up from the bed, his torso arched.
She broke the kiss to look at him masturbating himself, fascinated.
His low grunts grew louder, chanting her name. When he came, his semen spurted all over his stomach, in strong and long jets.
His release was so violent it astonished him. He dropped completely exhausted on the mattress, crushing her hard to his chest.
She studied his handsome face in the very dim light. His jaw was strong, proud. Though she could only make out the outline of it, her eyes had already memorized the look of him, because she could almost imagine his features perfectly, down to every angle.
“This was . . .” she murmured, lazily opening her eyes, “the most wonderful thing . . . that happened in my whole life.”
What looked very much like manly satisfaction, and a deeper emotion she couldn’t name, shone in his gaze. He leaned down to kiss her. “I have yet many of those to show you.”
She pulled back and sat down over her legs, her heart hammering in her chest, trying to break free.
“Did I do something wrong?” she whispered. “I know I’m not skilled, but you didn’t even let me . . .”
“Little Elf, if you aren’t skilled, I doona know what you are.” He had no energy to laugh, so he grinned at her. “It’s just . . . I didn’t want to make you shy on the first time.”
She let out a deep breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Ah. So I can try next time?”
Jesus fucking Christ! He groaned, cleaning himself with the sheet, then throwing it on the floor. He pulled her to lie in his arms and kissed her lips. “Next time, you can do with me whatever you feel like.”
CHAPTER 23
Afghanistan
December 2008
The bullet ripped through his thigh like a hot poker, breaking into fragments inside his leg, destroying flesh and bone.
Tavish saw himself rolling down the steep mountain as though watching a horror film. Somehow he had precariously hung on a ledge, and he used the chain and every ounce of strength he had to pull himself up.
Each movement he made caused his mind to scream, demanding that he just lie down and let go, but his medical and military training told him that if he didn’t move now, it was going to be too late.
He pushed to stand and fell down on his back. His thigh had been blown open by the bullet. On the edge of losing consciousness, as the pain climbed higher and higher, he flipped to his stomach and crawled in pain, using his right leg and elbows, the chain making it harder than it should have, into the nearest shadowed cave as his freely bleeding leg left a trail behind on the snow.
I won’t die, not now. Dispassionately, he catalogued his injuries. The gloves had protected his hands, he had minor cuts on his face and neck, but his leg was ravaged.
The shock he was in came as a relief, as it depersonalized what he had to do to survive and numbed the pain and let him view the leg as not a part of his body. He rattled off the procedure to himself as he tied a tourniquet around his upper thigh, near his groin, and dressed the wound the best he could. Not a scream of pain left his lips, but when he finished, his bottom lip was cut and freely bleeding.
His eyes closed in slumber for an hour. When they snapped open again, he started to crawl down the mountain, looking for a nearby road, but even after hours of agonizing crawling, he found nothing but whiteness and rough caves.
In between bouts of dry retching and vomiting, and stopping numerous times in too small caves and under not-big-enough ledges, he managed to distance himself as much as he could from his kidnappers. With his vision tunneling in and out, he found two branches, which he made into a splint, and then found a cave that would fit him and his outstretched leg.
Some strange noise awoke him from his feverish sleep; a stealthy sound that mingled with those of diverse Afghanistan wildlife stopped him.
“Stop,” he said hoarsely, “I’ll fucking shoot ye.”
Silence answered him.
He assessed himself: his pulse was weak, and his fever was very high, despite all the ice he had been consuming and using on his wound.
He passed a hand over his face and exhaled hard. After so many months of horrifying tortures in the hands of the Taliban, he knew that his mind was decaying. He crawled for two long nights, keeping active in the coldest hours and resting during the warmest day hours, until he got in that small cave, which scarcely fit his too-big and not-so-strong-anymore body. The open wound on his leg was already showing necrotic tissue, and he had applied a dressing moistened in snow, hoping it would dry.
He felt for the dressing through the slit on his trousers. Dry.
He knew that he should count that as a blessing, but he didn’t relish what was to come. Methodically, he tore more pieces from the terrorist’s tunic, and gritting his teeth, he pulled the dressing away, but all he could see were dark, large spots in front of his eyes. Fuck!
The dressing had pulled away whatever necrotic skin was there, but the redness didn’t lie; an infection had set in. He was aware that if he didn’t find help soon he was going to die, and his death would be slow and painful.
Your order is tae survive, Doc. He gathered a bit of snow in his gloved hands and let it thaw a bit to drink it. He considered eating one of the rodents that had been trying to bite him every now and then, but he
knew it would be a drastic measure that would bring him no good. Instead, he devised a new recipe to add to the many he had already imagined every time a pang of hunger had hit him during those six months.
The howling wind was rapidly accelerating the effects of the cold; his lethargy and shivering were clear first symptoms of hypothermia. Exercise. I should exercise. His eyes shuttered, but his head lolling woke him up. Get fucking moving, goddammit.
Straining to determine the furtive sound, he wondered if he could start crawling again. Still cautiously, but louder, therefore closer, the sounds became footsteps. He dragged himself forward, not caring anymore if he was going to face another member of the Taliban militia. He had discovered he could kill in cold blood, and if necessary, he would kill again to protect himself, bare-handed if needed.
The very fact that he had killed, being a doctor, hurt him more than any physical pain, as it carved his oath out from his soul and tore at his heart. As a compassionate human being, he was profoundly shocked by the very possibility of killing another. However, as a survivor, he welcomed the brutality and opened his soul to the unleashed lawless wild beast he had found in himself.
His hands towed the rest of his body to the cave’s border where the AK-47 rested, ready to be used. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw SAS soldiers, the elite of the British soldiers, following his trail.
For a moment, he wondered if he, with long, tangled hair and several months of beard growth, would be recognized as the missing Doctor Lieutenant Colonel Lord Tavish Uilleam Davenport MacCraig. Pushing his torso out of the cave, waving his hand as high as he could, he called, “Here! Help! Doctor MacCraig.”
The SAS soldiers stopped, and the first one in the line shouted, “Identify yourself!”
“Doctor Lieutenant Colonel MacCraig. Shot in the thigh, infected open broken-bone wound,” he shouted and continued to fill in as many explanations he could muster to explain his presence there.
In slow motion, he saw the first SAS in the line shoulder his rifle, take a knee, and point it directly at him from feet away.
“Doona shot.” He picked up his handgun. To stay alive, he would shoot a fellow officer if necessary, but he would consider a warning first. “Stay the fuck back.”
His shot echoed in the mountains and embedded itself in the snow inches from the officer. “Hold fire, Doc.”
He crouched the best he could and shouldered his rifle, waiting for a reaction. He saw the rest of the team engage immediately, blasts and curses flying around him.
Another bullet passed over the cave’s entrance, and the body of a Taliban insurgent fell over the mouth of the cave.
Jesus! He could not believe his disappearance had brought men to die in this hellish place. He pushed himself back in the cave, not believing that after all those months, after all that had happened, he might die now, on the cusp of rescue, and, even worse, that others might die now for his sake.
“How’re you doing, Doc?” One of the men started to crawl in his direction as the others covered him. “We’re taking you back. Alive. Fuck them and their ransom.”
Mallory Court
11:26 p.m.
Tavish rolled to his side and switched on the bedside table lamp. With one hand, he propped his head up to look at her, and with his other, he idly stroked her face.
“Mmm . . .” She skimmed her hand on the crescent-moon shapes her nails left on his biceps. “I hurt you.”
“A pleasurable hurt.”
Her hand caressed his ribs and waist and went down to his hip, stopping just short of the longest discolored line on his gold, tanned skin. Oh. God. Her breath caught in her lungs. As much as his small scars were evidence of his strength and courage, appealing to her feminine side, such a long one was testimony to great pain.
She glanced up at him with a horrified look, her mouth agape.
Her reaction triggered a vulnerability he’d thought dead. Perceiving her to be so inexperienced and pure and himself so brutal and vile made him feel he was the devil dancing in a church, and he didn’t like the feeling. Fuck. You don’t need this, Tavish Uilleam.
His fingers curled around her wrist, and he put her hand on the bed between them. Fierceness swirling in his eyes, he stood up and didn’t say a word, then marched to the bathroom without looking at her.
Mortified, Laetitia heard him locking the door behind him. She put a hand over her mouth to muffle a sob and rubbed the other over her eyes to wipe away the tears that had gathered there. Don’t show pity, Laetitia. Don’t you dare. From the floor, she picked up the first thing she saw, his sweater, and pulled it over her head. His oak-chocolate, masculine scent enveloped her just as he opened the bathroom door, a towel around his waist. His stoic mask was back as he walked to a styled duffel bag, his intent clear.
“Tavish Uilleam?” she asked quietly.
What! He stopped in the middle of the room and said dryly, “Are you curious? Or repulsed?”
It felt as though he’d slapped her, but it didn’t hinder her from asking, “May I see them?”
Of course, my dear. Why not? He almost laughed out loud in disgust, but he turned, dropped the towel, and lay down naked beside her, his eyes on the ceiling, rigid, as if in a surgery room, expecting to endure pain. “Look your fill.” Poke even, if you feel like it.
She didn’t let her hand waver when she lightly traced all the scars, as she had done with his tattoo.
It was not a very pretty sight.
His war injury riddled his left upper leg in a crisscross of scar tissue. The left side of his groin had only a smattering of hair interspersed with small and midsize thin scars, which lowered to his upper thigh and merged into a long, sunken larger scar on the middle of his thigh.
“Does it still hurt?” she breathed, retracing them up and down in a tender caress.
Studying the specimen, Doctor? “Sometimes,” he answered curtly, “if I happen to hit a fragment still embedded.”
“Fragment?” she managed to keep her voice even and soft, although all she wished to do was cry.
“A couple lay too near vital organs to risk removing them. I have regular X-ray follow-ups and monitoring to keep track of any problem. The prosthesis is made of titanium. The muscles have fully regenerated, and my limping is due to occasional pain,” he rattled in a doctorly way.
“So it hurts.” She inched closer.
“Aye.” He relaxed a degree.
Her fingers skated a lengthier road now: down to his knee, up to his hip, then higher, reaching the tail of the dragon, following upward to its head. He shivered when she cupped his cheek, making him look at her. “I’m sorry if I led you to think I find them ugly or was disgusted by them. I don’t, and I’m not.”
How could you not? His black brows furrowed at that. “Nae?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But I was . . . shocked, yes.”
His eyes snapped shut. “I appreciate your candor.”
“Would you rather have me lying? I was expecting a wound scar, yes. However, this . . . God! Tavish Uilleam, this is a destruction. You could have died.”
“Aye, but I dinna.”
“No.” She grinned. “It’s proof of your tough will and stubborn character.”
His anger deflated by half. “I’m . . . I’m no’ exactly proud of them.”
I can’t imagine why. “You should be,” she whispered, lying down on his chest again, so he didn’t see her blink away the tears that threatened to fall. “Only those who have not lived don’t have scars.”
“I’ve seen things, done things, that can rend apart even the stoutest men. I don’t know if I can follow any chart that has been drawn, for me or by myself.” Tightening his arms around her, he brought her up, nestling her against him completely. “I’m sorry, Little Elf. It’s a painful, long, and complex story.”
“When you wish to tell me,” she offered gently, “I’ll be here to hear it.”
“Maybe one day,” he murmured against her hair.
/> “And what does it mean?” She ran her fingertips over the dragon. The wing opened over his heart, and the head was bent down, as if daring someone to get near it. It was a splash of yellows, reds, and greens, the dragon coming alive each time Tavish breathed.
“A Celtic dragon,” he said noncommittally.
“Ha-ha.” She made a face and traced the three Gaelic sentences, scripted in yellow, red, and green, on his inner arm. “You know I mean this.”
“Aren’t we curious?”
She flashed him a smile he couldn’t resist.
Jesus, she’s beautiful. Dressed in his enormous sweater, with her lips flushed and swollen from his mouth and her silver-blonde hair spilled all over his chest, she was a vision. “I got it when I came back from war. I did it so I’d never forget my new goals in life.” He gazed into her eyes steadily, when he translated, “In yellow: Power to do; in red: Strength to be; and in green: Freedom to dream.”
She craned her neck. “Are you always going to be moody like this?”
He laughed as relief pulsed through him. “Probably. It comes with the package.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.” She smiled up at him and nestled into his chest.
“Tell me something about you.”
“What would you like to know?” Despite all her deep reservations, she was willing to open up to him, at least to some small extent.
He flashed his perfect, white teeth. “Everything.”
“Greedy.” She grinned, admiring how his somber expression lightened when he joked. He looked so relaxed and younger by just smiling that she was sure one day in his past he had been a very different man from the one she was coming to know now.
He looked at her lithe body with an impish smile. “Ballet?”
“Typical sexist idea.” She rolled her eyes at him.