Chapter Twenty-three
SWALLOWING HER TREPIDATION, EMMA drifted toward Jamie, exposing herself fully to the moonlight and his burning gaze. In that moment he looked like every virgin’s worst nightmare—desperate and dangerous and only to be approached with tremendous caution, if at all.
“I’ve always been a very good girl,” she said, each measured step carrying her closer to him, “and a dutiful daughter—the one who was always called upon to set the example for my younger sisters. It was always ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, ma’am’ and ‘As you wish.’ I wore what my mother selected for me. I ate everything that was put in front of me, whether I liked it or not. I went everywhere I was told to go and did everything they asked of me.” She stopped just out of Jamie’s reach. “But I will not marry the earl. And you and I both know there’s only one sure way to convince him I’m no longer fit to be his bride.”
Jamie didn’t say a word. He just continued to gaze at her, his expression as unreadable as the petrified pages of the Holy Bible moldering in the corner.
She managed an awkward laugh. “Bon was right all along, wasn’t he? I know you’ve convinced yourself you’d have to be content with proving the Hepburn murdered your parents. But wouldn’t your vengeance be even more satisfying if you returned his bride to him having been ravished by a Sinclair? Especially a Sinclair who just happens to be his bastard grandson.”
“More satisfying for me, certainly.” Jamie folded his arms over his chest, the smoky heat of his gaze making her shiver somewhere deep inside. “What about that ramshackle manor house in Lancashire you love so well? If the earl demands his settlement back, how will your father keep his creditors from seizing the house and tossing the lot of you in the poorhouse?”
“I’m confident the earl will graciously insist he keep the settlement. Especially if he doesn’t want everyone in London to learn that he’s suspected of having his own son—and the mother of his grandson—murdered in cold blood.”
Jamie cocked his head, eyeing her with reluctant admiration. “I never would have guessed such a bonny face could hide such a ruthless streak.”
She flashed him a bitter smile. “Since coming to the Highlands I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the best.”
“Your home may be spared and your father may avoid debtor’s prison but have you thought about the consequences you’ll suffer once you return to England with your family?” Jamie moved forward to circle her while he spoke, his husky burr weaving a web she no longer had any desire to escape. “The earl has a tongue like a viper. Rather than let anyone believe he was fool enough to let his young bride be stolen out from under his nose, he’ll start spreading rumors that you went into my arms—and my bed—willingly. And even if he doesn’t, it won’t matter to society if you were seduced or raped. The shadow your first fiancé cast over your reputation will be nothing compared to this. Decent folk will turn their heads when you walk by in the street. No one will receive you. You’ll be a social pariah and you’ll be giving up all hope of ever finding a husband or having a family of your own.”
“Then I’ll be free to return to Lancashire and live out my life in peace.” She faced him, giving her curls a bold toss. “If I get bored, I can always take a strapping young lover. Or two.”
He saw right through her bravado, just as he had the first time she had said those words. He reached up to trace the delicate curve of her jaw with the backs of his knuckles, his voice even more gentle than his touch. “There are other considerations, lass. What if I should put my babe inside you?”
Emma didn’t bother ducking her head to hide the blush she could feel creeping over her cheekbones. She knew it was no use. “You may find me distressingly naïve but thanks to my mother’s tutelage I’m not completely ignorant of the ways of the world. Or of men. If there weren’t ways to prevent such things, then there would be more by-blows than legitimate heirs walking the streets of London.”
He nodded, conceding her point. “So you truly believe this is the only way to keep the Hepburn’s lecherous hands off you? To make sure you’re free to live out your life as the mistress of your own fate?”
She nodded, her voice finally deserting her now that her courage was spent. There were a thousand other reasons for going to his bed that she might have confessed to him in that moment had pride not stilled her tongue. She could have told him she wanted to feel alive at least one more time before burying herself beneath the crushing censure of society. That she didn’t think she would survive spending the rest of her life alone without first spending one night in his arms.
“Then what choice do I have?” He leaned down, his lips grazing hers like the brush of angel wings.
Emma’s breath caught in her throat. How was it that she could feel more like a bride standing here in this crumbling ruin of a church than she had ever felt in the Hepburn’s majestic abbey?
“Wait here,” he whispered, drawing away from her with palpable reluctance.
She waited in an agony of suspense until he returned with the blankets from her bedroll draped over one arm. This time when he took her hand, she went with him willingly. As he led her out of the moonlight and into the shadows, she laced her fingers tightly through his, not wanting him to know she was quaking all the way down to her toes.
He led her to the corner of a small chamber where two walls still stood, defying the ravages of time. They had set up camp in the trees bordering the bluff so Emma knew Jamie had deliberately chosen this spot to protect her from his men’s prying eyes.
But before he could spread out the blankets, she grabbed his arm. “Wait!”
He eyed her warily, plainly fearing she had changed her mind.
She inclined her head toward the crooked stone arch that had once housed a door, indicating that it was his turn to follow her. Judging by the look in his eye, he would have followed her to the very ends of the earth.
They climbed those worn stone steps to the old bell tower, emerging in a misty pool of moonlight. She took the blankets from Jamie and spread them out in the center of the tower, leaving only the sky and the moon to witness what was about to happen.
When she was done she faced him, feeling impossibly shy. “So what’s it to be, Mr. Sinclair? Do you plan to seduce me or ravish me?”
His lazy grin made her heart double its rhythm. “Both.”
He drew her against him, surprising her anew with his size, his strength, his irresistible heat. For a long moment, he simply held her, letting her grow accustomed to the feel of his arms around her, the whisper of his breath in her hair. She rested her cheek against his chest, feeling each shuddering beat of his heart as if it were her own. After a moment, she grew bolder, slipping her hands around his waist and beneath his shirt, marveling at the smoothness of his skin, the supple flex of the muscles beneath her palms as he lifted one hand to stroke her hair.
“Oh, dear,” she mumbled, suddenly overwhelmed by the magnitude of what she was about to do with this man.
“What is it?”
She kept her face buried in his chest. “My mother’s instructions seem to have deserted me. I’m not entirely sure how we should proceed from here.”
“Why don’t you leave that to me?” he murmured, tipping her chin up with one finger and lowering his mouth to hers.
He gently feathered his lips over hers, his undeniable expertise leaving little doubt that he knew exactly how to proceed. He didn’t kiss like a man who considered it simply a means to an end—some sort of quaint ritual required by females to coax them into taking off their clothes. He kissed her slowly and with exquisite deliberation, as if he would be content to spend all night just making love to her mouth.
She had always scorned women who swooned at the slightest provocation, but the tender flick of his tongue over hers left her so breathless and dizzy that she felt her knees go weak and her ears begin to ring as if there were still bells in the tower. She might have succumbed to the temptation but she didn’t want to miss a moment in Ja
mie’s arms. So she simply closed her eyes and hung on, tasting his tongue with her own until she heard a groan rumble up from deep in his throat.
When her eyes finally fluttered open, she was surprised to find them both on their knees in the middle of the blankets. Perhaps Jamie’s legs had failed him as well.
“That went very well indeed,” she murmured, sighing against his lips. “What would you suggest we do next?”
He leaned back to survey her face, his expression disarmingly earnest. “I thought we’d both take off all our clothes.”
Apparently she had been wrong about the kiss. “But… but… then we’d both be… unclothed.”
He pondered her words for a moment. “Well, if you’d like, you could just take off your clothes. I could keep mine on… for now.”
Emma eyed him, growing increasingly suspicious. “My mother never said a word about disrobing. I think I would have remembered that.”
It was Jamie’s turn to sigh. “Just what did she tell you?”
“She said I was to lie back and close my eyes and the earl”—Emma could not quite suppress her shudder—“my husband would simply fold the hem of my nightdress up a few inches—after the lamps were extinguished, of course—and perform his husbandly duty.”
“While the idea has its charms, it simply won’t do.” The callused pads of Jamie’s fingertips played lightly over her sensitive nape. He lowered his voice to a husky growl, his breath moist and hot in her ear. “Because I’m going to go mad, lass, if I can’t see you naked.”
This time Emma’s shudder was one of desire. “Perhaps you could coax me into taking my gown off. If you put forth your best effort.”
His throaty chuckle warned her that was just the challenge for which he had been waiting. Lifting the weight of her hair with one hand, he ever so gently laid his seeking lips against the wildly beating pulse at the side of her throat. Emma gasped. Judging by the scorching sweetness of his lips against her flesh, it must be his intention to melt the gown from her body.
Her head fell back of its own volition, giving his mouth full dominion over the graceful column of her throat. After a few breathless moments of that delicious torment, she was forced to dig her fingernails into his sleeve just to remain upright. “For a brutish Highlander, you’ve a rather persuasive touch, sir.”
“Those fancy English gents are the ones who start all those nasty rumors about us and our sheep. They just don’t want their lasses to know what they’re missing.”
As his tongue swirled around the delicate shell of her ear, making her toes curl with pleasure, she bit back a moan. “Maybe they don’t want their sheep to know what they’re missing.”
Jamie’s laugh was a deep-throated rumble that warmed her from the inside out. While his mouth was having its way with her ear, his hands were gently easing her gown down to bare one creamy shoulder. Emma was ever so grateful to Muira for gifting her with such a simple gown, not one adorned with slippery pearl buttons or rows of sharp, steely hooks. Or painful stays to contain flesh already aching for Jamie’s touch.
All it took was a deliberate tug and one of her breasts was freed from the confines of the bodice. Jamie gazed down at her in the moonlight, his expression so dark with hunger it made both her pulse and her stomach flutter. She could feel her nipples begin to swell and throb in anticipation of the pleasure she sensed was coming.
That pleasure arrived with a jolt of pure sensation when Jamie leaned down and touched the very tip of his tongue to her. As he laved that pebbled peak with maddening tenderness, then drew it into his mouth, suckling deep and hard, Emma could no longer bite back a moan of raw delight.
She moaned again when he dipped his hand into the other side of her bodice and claimed that breast for his own as well, molding it to his palm and gently squeezing.
How was it possible a man could be possessed of so many hands? One of them had taken advantage of her breathless distraction to work its way beneath her skirt. Even now it was sliding between her knees and up, up, up until it brushed the silky curls between her thighs.
As Jamie closed his hand over her as if she no longer belonged to herself, but to him, Emma shook her head, nearly mute with shock. “But my mother never—”
Jamie withdrew his other hand from her bodice to lay it over her mouth, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “Would it be possible for you not to mention your mother again, sweeting? During lovemaking most men find that something of a… distraction.”
As he removed his hand, Emma laughed. “You’d have found her instructions for discouraging a woman’s husband from seeking her company in the bedchamber even more… distracting.”
Jamie surprised her by leaning down and kissing the very tip of her nose before lowering his mouth to hers once again. His lips slanted over hers, encouraging her to open wider for him, to welcome him deeper as his tongue began to take her mouth in a rhythm that was both carnal and irresistible. Before long they were breathing as one, her every sigh becoming one with his own.
Only then did his seeking fingers breach those curls between her thighs, finding a silk that was even hotter and slicker beneath them. He trapped her helpless whimper between his lips, his deft fingertips coaxing the tender petals of her body open like some exotic flower ripe with the sweetest and thickest of nectars.
Emma had never known such pleasure was possible. She was torn between clenching her thighs tightly together to ease the growing ache between them and letting them fall apart so Jamie could do it. But his touch only deepened the ache and before long her breath was coming in fierce little pants.
Ignoring the fact that she was already grinding herself against his palm in a frenzy of need, he stroked and petted and fondled her slick, swollen flesh as if there was nothing else in the world he would rather do and he had all night to do it. Just when she thought his exquisite torture couldn’t possibly get any more diabolical, he began to brush the pad of his thumb over the hooded little nub at the crux of her curls in maddening circles. Even as he did so, his longest finger slid lower, dipping gently once, twice, a third time before delving deep inside of her.
His name broke from her lips on a sob as Emma’s body erupted in one long, glorious, blinding shudder of rapture.
The second she could see and breathe and move again, she dropped to a sitting position and tugged off her boots.
“What are you doing?” he asked, clearly alarmed.
“Rewarding your efforts,” she replied, peeling off her stockings.
“Oh, I was just getting started,” he warned as she returned to her knees and drew her gown over her head.
Tossing it aside, she boldly faced him, knowing she must look like the most shameless of hoydens kneeling before him with her hair tumbling every which way and her cheeks and breasts still flushed from the pleasure he had given her. But any fear that Jamie might find her lacking was dispelled by the mingled lust and adoration in his eyes as he gazed upon her naked body for the first time.
“You’re so fine,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes slowly devouring every inch of her. “You don’t deserve this. You deserve a grand bed carved o’ the finest mahogany. And mountains o’ feather pillows. And candlelight. And silk sheets. And—”
It was her turn to lay her fingers across his lips. “I may deserve every one of those things. But all I want is you.”
He reached for her then, crushing her naked softness against him as if he could somehow make them one with the sheer passion of his embrace. He was hard where she was soft, unyielding and angled where she was gently curved. Emma twined her fingers through his hair and buried her face against his throat, surprised to feel the sting of tears in her eyes. He smelled like woodsmoke and spring rain and the wind blowing through the pines on a cold winter’s night. He smelled like a freedom she had never known before this night.
“So what must I do to coax you into taking off your clothes?” she murmured, dusting the broad column of his throat with her kisses.
He gently set her
away from him, a rakish grin curving his lips. “You, my lady, have only to ask.”
Before Emma had time to catch her breath, he had divested himself of shirt, stockings and boots. She might have perished from mortification as he reached for the leather laces of his breeches if she hadn’t noticed that his hands were less than steady.
As he peeled off his breeches and rose back to his knees, Emma’s curiosity quickly overcame her maidenly shyness. His was a beautiful body—sleek and taut and masculine, even more thickly muscled than she had imagined.
Unable to resist the temptation, she reached out and trailed a hand over his chest, marveling at the havoc her touch was wreaking on him. Despite the chill in the air he was sweating, his brawny body coated with a glistening sheen of perspiration. Encouraged by the glazed look in his eye, the uneven hitch in his breath, her hand wandered lower—skating over the incredibly well-defined muscles of his abdomen—then lower still, closing gently over the part of him that was jutting forward as if begging for her touch.
He threw back his head with a guttural groan.
Emma’s surge of desire was matched by a surge of delight. He no longer held all the power. She had power over him now, the power to bend him to her will, both literally and figuratively; to mold him with her palm and watch him lengthen and swell even further, although she would have sworn that wasn’t even possible. As she drew her hand along his rigid shaft, a single drop of seed—like the most rare and precious of pearls—welled up from its velvety crown to dampen her fingertips.
“You once told me it hurt,” she reminded him solemnly, her gaze flicking to his face.
“Aye, lass,” he replied, panting out the words between clenched teeth. “’Tis the sweetest pain I’ve ever known.”
They both knew there was only one way to alleviate his suffering. As he eased her down on the blanket and covered her, shielding her from the moonlight, she realized she had brought him to this place because his was the only shadow she was seeking, the only darkness to which she was willing to surrender herself.