Black Raven's Lady: Highland Lairds Trilogy (28 page)

“Damn,” he muttered in mock disgust, hoping to hear her laugh again. “I just dried off.”

Her eyes alight with mischief, Raine shook her sopping-wet locks, spraying water all around them. As the drops ran in rivulets down his face and bare chest, she broke into giggles. “I thought a canny lad like you would be prepared for a dousing,” she teased. “Mayhap you should have worn a carpenter’s apron. Or a serving maid’s.”

Keir awarded Raine with his best diabolical grin. “Since I’m already soaked,” he said with a smirk, “I might as well get into the bath.”

As he rose to his feet, she shrieked with laughter. “You can’t get in here with me! You’re far too big! You’ll never fit!”

Keir unbuckled his belt and let it fall to the floor, along with his kilt and sporran. “If you don’t mind, lass, I’ll be joining you in the tub now.”

Her startled gaze flew to his engorged sex, then slowly moved up his scarred abdomen and chest to meet his eyes. “I’m . . . I’m not certain there’s room for the two of us,” she said, her choked words soft and husky.

“Let’s find out,” Keir suggested. He sat down in the large wooden vat across from her, his bent knees sticking out of the water, his feet on either side of her hips. Then he clasped her ankles and tugged her closer, till her heels rested on his thighs.

Raine smiled at him shyly. Her wide sloe eyes grew luminous in the rising steam of the bath. “We fit,” she conceded, “but just barely.”

Keir’s breath stalled in his chest at her innocent words. His heart slammed against his breastbone at his lustful thoughts. His words came thick and suffocated. “Barely is all we need, darling lass.”

Using the soft cloth, Keir lathered the scented bar and proceeded to bathe her supple body. He lingered as he washed her up-tilted breasts, brushing lightly across the rosy aureoles and bud-tight nipples. He reached around and swabbed Raine’s back, then lifted her feet and scrubbed her toes.

“Mm,” she murmured with an appreciative sigh. “ ’Tis wonderful, what you’re doing, Laird MacNeil.”

“I can make it more wonderful than this,” he promised, his deep voice hoarse with longing. He caught Raine about her waist and drew her toward him, the water sloshing across their bodies in gentle, lapping waves. Steam from the bath rose up around them, wafting an exotic, spicy perfume.

Every muscle in Keir’s massive frame tensed in erotic anticipation. He guided Raine’s long legs around him, showing her how to straddle his hips. Then he played with her gently, letting the water swirl around her delicate pink folds as his practiced fingers built the sexual yearning within her.

Beneath his touch, Raine’s lids drooped slowly. An expression of sensuous elation swept over her bonny features. Her thick, black lashes, clumped into wet spikes, shadowed her ivory skin. Her mouth opened slightly as her breath came faster.

“I’m going to lift you on top of me, Rainey, love,” he whispered.

Her eyes flew open and a tiny smile curved her lips. “While we’re still in the bath?”

Consumed with desire, Keir nodded. “Let me show you,” he murmured. He bracketed Raine’s slender hips with his hands, lifted her up, then guided her slowly downward, till the sensitive tip of his thickened sex pressed against her tight female sheath. “Let yourself open up to me, darling,” he urged. “ I’ll come into your sweet body slowly and carefully.”

Raine buried her fingers in his damp hair. She met his gaze and a burgeoning excitation shone in her wide sloe eyes. “Keir,” she sighed on a long, drawn-out breath as she followed his directions.

“That’s the way, love,” Keir encouraged. He kissed Raine deeply, his tongue moving in and out of her mouth, showing her what he planned to do, pouring all the longing he felt into his kiss.

Raine looked down to watch their bodies join together beneath the moving water, and her heart seemed to skip beats in her frantic excitement. Bit by bit she sank down on top of him, until his turgid manhood filled her completely. Keir moved up slightly, pushing deeper inside, and gently bumped against her womb. An unbelievable pleasure spread through Raine’s secret parts. She moaned in delight, unable to resist the waves of exquisite sensations surging through her.

Nudging the gold hoop in his ear aside with her nose, Raine pressed her face into the curve of Keir’s strong neck. Her fingers clasped the silver chain that held his holy medal. Then she lifted her head and traced her tongue lightly over the scars on his face and showered kisses on his lids, his broken nose, his cheeks, his lips—just as he’d once done to her—and felt him smile beneath her kisses.

Raine slowly became aware that she was rocking the sensitive layers of her female tissues against Keir’s firm male flesh. She felt his strong hands beneath her buttocks, helping her move, sustaining the rhythm she’d set without thinking. “Am I doing this right?” she asked, suddenly unsure of herself and painfully embarrassed.

“You’re doing it perfectly, darling,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re taking me straight to heaven.”

Raine shook her head and nipped him on the shoulder. “I’m not certain such an earthly pleasure should be described in heavenly terms.”

“If this isn’t bliss,” Keir answered huskily, “I can’t imagine anything else that would come even close.”

Raine splayed her hands on his muscled chest and traced the battle scars with her fingertips. Brushing her palms across his flat nipples, she could feel the
thump-thump
of his heart steadily increase beneath her touch. Their breaths mingled as their tongues met, and she sighed against his mouth in pure exhilaration. Each slight movement she made brought ripples of intoxicating pleasure through her body. She hummed beneath her breath, telling him without words how much she delighted in his every touch.

Keir thrust his hardened sex inside Raine’s soft female tissues while he explored her sugared mouth with his tongue. Aware of her mounting excitement, he sought to prolong their voluptuous lovemaking.

“Slip your arms around my neck and keep your legs locked around my hips,” Keir urged softly. “Now hold on tight, sweetheart. We’re going to stay joined together while I move us to the bed.”

He could hear Raine’s gasp of surprise as he grasped the edges of the wooden barrel and pushed himself upright in the water, his manhood still snugly embedded up to her womb. Then he cupped her buttocks in his palms, adjusted her comfortably against him, and stepped out of the tub.

“Look at us, Rainey, love,” Keir whispered, moving so she could see their bodies reflected in the tall stern windows.

Dazed with passion, Raine turned her head. In the glass’s hazy reflection, she saw Keir’s powerful torso, his long, muscled limbs, his strong hands holding her up with ease as she wrapped her arms and legs tightly around him.

Male and female, they stood naked and joined together in a dance as old as time, their wet, heated bodies glistening from the warm, soapy bath. The lantern light cast a golden glow around them as they kissed again and again, lost to the world outside.

Time and space shrank to just the two of them—there in Keir’s quarters, on the
Black Raven
, sailing before the wind.

Sailing homeward.

“My God, lass, you’re bonny,” he told her, his words hoarse with sexual need. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

Raine brushed her nipples back and forth across his hard chest in a ploy of instinctive feminine seduction. “ ’Tis you who are beautiful,” she answered with a teasing smile, “my braw Highland warrior. ’Tis no wonder you’re so arrogant and brash.”

Keir moved to his large bed where he laid Raine down on the soft mattress and then carefully eased his throbbing sex out of her tight sheath.

“Oh, Keir,” she whispered, and he could hear the disappointment in her sigh.

“We have all night, lass,” he assured her, “and I intend to take my time. I’m going to spend the midnight hours worshiping you with my body.”

Keir came over Raine, his hands braced on either side of her head, careful not to catch her long, wet curls beneath his palms. He kissed her brow, her fluttering lids, the tip of her nose, her soft lips. Dipping the tip of his tongue into the hollow of her throat, he moved lower to suckle each perfect breast.

Raine gazed up at the superb male leaning over her, deeply aware of his all-consuming sensuality and her open capitulation to his every wish.

“Don’t be afraid to touch me, love,” he murmured in her ear, “just as I am touching you.”

Battered by waves of physical pleasure, Raine responded to his hushed words without hesitation. She moved her hands across his massive frame, admiring the strength of his chest, his arms and thighs. She felt his corded muscles tense beneath her lightest touch.

Through a haze of sexual arousal, Keir listened to Raine telling him how much she admired his male body. He moved over Raine’s moist, perfumed figure, kissing and caressing every silken inch.

Sliding to his knees on the floor, Keir placed Raine’s long, slender legs over his shoulders. He gently spread the delicate folds of her sex and touched his tongue to her sensitive petals, licking and suckling until Raine writhed and moaned in ecstasy. As she grew moist and slick beneath his hedonistic onslaught, Keir’s aching bollocks tightened, his hard shaft throbbed for release.

“Keir,” she whispered, “I want you inside me.”

To his delight, Raine reached toward him as he moved over her once again.

Her fingers curling around his engorged sex, she stroked and cupped him. The sweetness of her gentle touch seemed to suck the breath out of his lungs. He gasped with pleasure.

“Aye, love,” Keir answered hoarsely. “I want it too.”

Surrendering to what they both craved, Keir positioned himself between Raine’s silken thighs. He moved inside her, withdrawing and re-entering, inching into her honeyed warmth until he’d sheathed himself deep in her vulnerable flesh. The pressure of her female tissues clutching and pulling on his tumescent manhood brought jolt after jolt of undiluted pleasure.

Taking her with him, Keir rolled onto his back so that Raine straddled his hips, her bent knees beside his flanks. Firmly embedded inside her, he lifted up, increasing her enjoyment. She gasped, her eyes widening in surprise. When she instinctively started to move her soft folds against him, Keir grasped her smooth buttocks and held her fast in place.

“Raine,” he said, making no attempt to hide his easy male dominance, “we’re going to be married.”

“Of course, we will,” she said in an absent tone, still trying to rock against him.

“At once,” he informed her, holding her immobile. “I won’t be satisfied until I hear you vow in church before both our families to be meek and mild in bed and at board. I won’t have you running off against my will the way you did at Castle Calbhaigh.”

Immersed in carnal gratification, she failed to recognize his lingering wrath over her willful disobedience nor even remember his threat of punishment as he raged against his chains.

Instead Raine gave him a brilliant smile. “I told you at the stones of Calanais that we were bound together for life, but you refused to believe me. All in all I think I’d rather have my vows written by the faeries, who—as everyone knows—are anything but meek and mild.”

“Goddammit,” he grated, his temper rising, “this isn’t about any idiotic faery enchantment. I love you, and you love me. Now repeat that loud and strong.”

Her brilliant eyes sparkled with naughtiness. Raine bent down, her long hair falling over them like a damp satin curtain, and nibbled on his lips, then thrust her tongue in his mouth in blatant provocation.

Keir rolled over on top of her. “Don’t you have something to say to me?” he demanded.

She gave a deep throaty laugh, one of sultry female seduction. “Would you truly believe me, if I did? Or would you blame my feelings on a silly belief in the faery folk?”

“Say it, Raine,” he commanded, bending over her and nipping her earlobe. He moved deeper inside her, then started to pull back as if he planned to withdraw completely.

She threw her arms around him, attempting to hold him in place. “I love you, you brash, arrogant warrior,” Raine answered, then sighed happily. “Though I never thought I would ever say that.”

“Neither did I.” Joy flooded Keir’s big arrogant body. “Tell me again,” he insisted as he moved in and out rhythmically, building their carnal excitement to a higher and higher pitch. “I want to hear you say it every day of my life,” he told her, his breath coming in deep drafts, “till I’m an old man and you need to shout in my ear just to be heard.”

Leaning on his forearms, he moved within her, plunging and retreating in steady, rhythmic strokes.

Raine responded to the cadence Keir set, her body moving of its own volition. She matched his increasing tempo, as sparks of white-hot excitement ignited within her. Pulsating with a need fueled by each thrust and withdrawal, she found herself chanting to the rhythm he set. “I love you, Keir MacNeil. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Every fiber in Raine’s quivering body reached for Keir. She took in deep drafts of air, breathing in his musky scent, rubbing her face across his muscled shoulder, touching the inked Celtic images on the bulging muscles of his upper arm with her tongue. His powerful thrusts rocked her as each jolt brought her nearer to the whirling sensations that threaten to push her across the brink of ecstasy.

“Keir,” she gasped in breathless wonder. Waves of exquisite pleasure spiraled through her body, as she called his name again and again in a cry of total female surrender.

Keir reached between their bodies to play with Raine’s engorged tissues as he continued to drive into her, increasing and extending her rapture. His entire body tightened and jerked in the breath-stealing convulsions of release. “Rainey, darling,” he uttered as he poured his seed into her soft, nurturing warmth. “I love you.”

Gasping for air, Keir stretched out beside Raine on the satin coverlet. He slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and brought her limp, satiated body tight against his. She gazed at him in astonishment, her eyes shining in the afterglow of sexual fulfillment. He understood her look of dazed quiescence, for he was filled with an unalloyed happiness such as he’d never kenned before. He smiled at the ceiling above them.