Wee William's Woman, Book Three of the Clan MacDougall Series (36 page)

“Are you certain?” she asked as she looked at him with tears welling in her eyes. “I would not hold it against you.”

He did the thing he had been aching to do for weeks. He lifted her chin and pressed his lips to hers. It was a tender and gentle kiss that made his heart swell with joy when he felt her return it. “Lass,” Wee William said softly. “I meant what I said earlier today. I want to spend the rest of me life with ye, and no other. Ye have claimed me heart, me verra soul. I will never want another woman as I want ye.”

Nora smiled, happy and relieved for she couldn’t see herself with anyone but this gentle giant bent on one knee before her.

“May I ask another question?”

He did not know if his heart could take learning anything else that Horace had done to her. He braced himself and nodded his head. “Aye, ye may.”

He saw a twinkle in her eye as she bit her lower lip. “Do you think you could kiss me, like you did in the storage room earlier this day?”

He blew a sigh of relief and pulled her into his chest. “I’ll kiss ye any way ye wish.”

Nora had no recollection of removing her dress or her chemise, but somehow she had lost all items of clothing and now she lay on top of her husband, naked as the day she was born. She remembered tugging William’s shirt over his head and throwing it somewhere over her shoulder.
 
His skin felt hot against hers and the soft hair of his chest tickled her skin.

He caressed her with large, warm hands, and she felt both hot and cold at the same time. Every inch of her tingled with excitement and the roof of her mouth tickled again. She did not want his kisses to end. He could kiss her for the next hundred years or so and she’d not grow weary of it.

He was exploring her neck with his lips and tongue as he continued to caress her back. Her stomach fluttered and felt warm. Nay, she had never felt this way before.

“William?” she asked breathlessly.

“Hmm?” he murmured against her neck.

“Your sword,”

He was not paying much attention, lost he was in the softness of her skin. “What?” he asked as he nibbled on the other side of her neck.

“Your sword, William. It is poking me in the leg. Could you remove it?”

He quit kissing her and his hands stopped. The bed began to shake and it took a moment for her to realize it was shaking because her husband was trying to hold his laughter in.

“What is so funny?” she asked, wishing he’d go back to kissing her.

“Lass, that no’ be me sword.”

Was he daft? “Of course it is, I can feel it along my leg.”

He could no longer contain his laughter. Nora rolled her eyes before rolling herself off of him. “You see,” she began to speak but then realized she had in fact been wrong. That was definitely
not
his sword. Her faced burned with embarrassment and her eyes grew as wide as trenchers. She said the first thing that came to her mind. “It’s a tree root!”

Wee William could not speak. He shook with laughter.

He could see her thoughts as they played across her face. She looked both surprised and afraid. He finally managed to speak, “Lass, it be no’
that
big!”

She looked at him as though he had lost his mind. Not that big? Was he insane? Did he really plan to put that, that, that thing where she now knew it properly went?

“Lass, ye needn’t worry it,” he said as his laughter began to subside. He was beginning to feel a bit guilty for laughing at her. “Certainly ye’ve seen one of these before.”

She shook her head. “Not one that is the size of a tree root! And why is it staring at me?” She buried her face in her hands, mortified beyond imagination, and turned away from her husband. She pulled the sheet around her body. This was not going to go well, she just knew it.

Wee William propped himself up on one elbow. Though he felt guilty for laughing, he could not deny feeling a bit proud. He did not want to terrify his wife to the point of distraction. He wrapped one of the long tendrils of her hair around his finger. “Nora, it will be all right. I promise.”

She thought of Horace’s tiny-in-comparison male member. He hadn’t even been doing it correctly and it had hurt beyond measure. How on earth would this
thing
not hurt as well and with a husband that was going to do it correctly?

Wee William touched her shoulder tenderly with his fingers.
 
“Nora, there are all manner of things we can do, that will no’ hurt. We can do those all the night long until ye are ready.” He was trying to be as patient as possible with her, but his ‘tree root’ had been waiting far too long. He knew he had to take his time with his wife but it was not going to be easy. She smelled of lavender and lilacs and woman. Her long hair was tousled and tumbling down her beautiful back. The sheet that covered her did little by way of hiding those magnificent breasts of hers. He really had to stop drooling over those, lest she think him insane.

She finally looked at him, doubt awash in her eyes. “Other things?” she dared ask the question. “Such as what?”

A devilish smile came to his lips as he pulled her down onto the bed. He caressed her cheeks with the backs of his fingers very slowly. Her breath hitched and she closed her eyes. “How about I show ye instead?”

Nora could not think, she could only feel her husband’s hands as they caressed her body so tenderly. She felt pleasure in places she did not know she possessed until this night. He’d explained it to her after the first wave of sinfully wicked, unbelievably delicious pleasure had come crashing over her, taking her breath away, making her eyes roll back in her head. She had almost pulled his hair out from his head and flew from the bed.

She apologized to her husband several times, for she hadn’t meant to kick him in his eye with her knee the third time he had taken her to heights of ecstasy. But what Wee William had been doing to her, well, she simply held no control over her own extremities. ’Twas his own fault really, and he had no one to blame but himself. But still, she apologized and thanked him. Repeatedly.

By the time she had experienced the fifth wave a pleasure, she was begging him to stop.
 
She needed to breathe and she was certain she was going to die if he didn’t cease immediately. The tickling on the roof of her mouth would not cease and her tongue felt thick and swollen. Why he found that so humorous, she could not begin to fathom. There was a decidedly proud tone to his voice.

When he told her that he was going to burst if he didn’t get relief of his own, she didn’t, at that point, care what he was going to do with that tree root of his. As long as he allowed her to breathe in a more normal fashion and less like a wild boar that had been chased through the woods for days, she did not care.

Normal breathing would not be hers for quite some time. Especially when he began to do things the right way. Aye, at first it did hurt, but it wasn’t the kind of pain Horace had inflicted upon her. It was different and lasted only a few moments and was quickly replaced by a new wave of those unique, exciting, thrumming, gratifying pleasures.

Reflexively, driven by instinct, she had squeezed those new muscles she had discovered and it was now Wee William’s turn to beg her to stop. She took marvelous pleasure in hearing his heavy panting breaths, the growling in his throat, and the beads of sweat that had begun to form on his forehead.

“Nora, I’ll come undone if ye do no’ stop!” he hissed into her ear.

“It would serve you right,” she murmured in return. “You have undone me five times now!” She wiggled and squeezed again. “It hardly seems fair and I insist you should match me undone for undone.”

The low growl in his throat turned to a chuckle and he tried to explain that
that
was not possible, but then she was twisting in pleasure, digging her fingers into his shoulders and holding on for dear life. “Make that six undones!” she said moments later through ragged breaths and clenched teeth.

Never in a thousand years, would Wee William have believed it was possible to feel this way when joined with a woman. It was worth the black eye, the swollen lip, and the scratch marks he was sure she had left on his back. Just as he was beginning to wonder if it were wrong or sinful to take such pride in what he was doing to his wife, his own release arrived.

He could no longer hold back. His wife’s machinations of his
tree
root
as she had begun to refer to it, along with her rapid, strained breaths, the way she called out his name, over and over again, was all too much. Stars exploded in front of his eyes as warmth enveloped him clear to his toes. For a moment, he thought his soul had left his body and floated high above the earth all the while his blood rushed in his ears, and his heart was either beating too fast to feel or it had stopped all together, he wasn’t sure.

He wondered he had lost his mind all together.

Nora lay with her head resting on Wee Williams chest and one leg thrown over his. They had slept through dawn breaking over the horizon, in one another’s arms, clinging to each other if they were afraid to let go.

Wee William listened to his wife’s steady breathing as she lay peacefully in his arms. She had warned him the night before that she often suffered nightmares and had gone so far as to apologize to him beforehand. As near as he could tell, the nightmares had been kept at bay and he took a good deal of satisfaction in believing it was him -- and his loving of her -- that had kept the bad dreams away.

He liked how she felt curled up next to him. She slept peacefully and did not stir when he gently placed his hand on hers. With a feather light caress, he ran his thumb over her wrist, thinking how wonderful it was going to be to wake up like this every morning for the rest of his days.

Lost in his ruminations he continued his gentle caress of her wrist, listening to her breathing, taking great delight in relieving the loving they had shared just hours ago. Several long moments had passed before he realized something was wrong with Nora’s wrist. It felt odd. Carefully, he opened his eyes to examine it more closely.

Scars. Thick scars surrounded her wrist. He felt his stomach tighten as his mind raced for an explanation. He had been too busy last night with taking pleasure in loving her to notice any imperfections, big or small, that her body may have held. In Wee William’s mind, Nora
was
perfection.