Page 66 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
“This is what you want,” he said, nearly upon her. “As do I.”
“I don’t want this!” she insisted, but her words sounded false to her own ears. “You don’t understand,” she said, her voice trembling now. “I am standing on the edge of utter destruction, Rabbie.Youstand on the edge of ruining a young woman’s life. Is this...thisinfatuationworth that?” she asked pleadingly. “You need to be with her now! We both must rid ourselves of the madness that has gripped us!”
He put his hand on her elbow and drew her into him. He shoved his fingers into her hair, pulled her head back and kissed her hard.
Bernadette splintered.
She rose up on her toes and gripped his arms as she returned his kiss with a ferociousness that felt quite unlike her. He was suddenly holding her so tightly that she could feel the thud of his heart against her chest. “I want you, Bernadette,” he whispered into her ear. He roughly ran his palm over her hair while his gaze searched her face. “Aye, I do, I want you, and you want me. You betray your mistress. I betray a memory. We are both of us traitors, then, we are, but let’s no’ betray each other.”
Her heart pulse was racing, her body craving him, her mind screaming its warning to her. “It’s sowrong.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “But the desire exists between us, andDiah,we’ll neither of us rest until we’ve put an end to it.”
“Go back to Balhaire and leave me be,” she pleaded with him. “Thatwill end it.”
One corner of his mouth tipped up. “If only it would, I’d be gone a thousand times over. But you know as well as I it will no’ do anything but fan the flames.”
He was right. As much as Bernadette hated to admit it, he was right.
She pressed her hand against his chest. He covered it with his, and pulled it free, then stepped backward, tugging her along.
“What are you doing?”
He responded by turning to walk up the hill with her in tow. Bernadette let him lead her. Again. She had no power to resist him, the last of it having bled out of her when he kissed her.
He led her up the hill and into the trees near his horse. There was a small clearing there, and he let go of her hand, removed his cloak and spread it on the ground. He looked back at her and his eyes, which had once reminded her of storms, were full of hunger.
She couldn’t believe she was going through with this, but she stepped up to his cloak, unfastened the clasp of her own and let it slide from her body.
Rabbie drew her closer, helped her down onto his cloak.
Bernadette couldn’t breathe—it was if the air had been snatched from her.“Soirbh,”he murmured. “Easy,mo chridha,” he murmured and shifted his body over hers.
She smoothed hair back from his face and traced her fingers along his chin, feeling the stubble of his beard.
Rabbie lowered his head, freed her breast from the confines of the gown and took it in his mouth.
“I mean to tell her,” Bernadette said breathlessly as his mouth and tongue teased her. She grasped his head, her fingers raking through his hair. “I can’t bear to live with myself if I don’t.”
He didn’t care or he didn’t hear her. He rose up, his mouth on hers, one hand sweeping down her side, to her hip, then down her leg.
Bernadette turned her gaze to the patch of gray sky above them as he moved his lips over her chin, kissed the hollow of her throat, then down, to her breast again, as his hand slid higher up her leg.
Intensely physical sensations began to flow through her. She could feel his hardness, the strength of his legs surrounding hers. His kisses were deepening, turning wilder, and Bernadette’s response was turning wild, too. She pressed her breasts against him and explored him with her hands, moving over thick arms, across a muscled back, down a trim waist, and around, to the front of his plaid, and the hardness of his erection.
He moaned when she touched him and lifted his head as if he meant to speak, but when he gazed down at her, his lashes fluttered, and he shook his head.“Alainn,”he muttered.
She didn’t know what he said, but whatever it was, spoken in such intimate circumstances, caused a dam to burst in her, flooding every part of her with pleasure and desire and affection—intense, undeniable affection for him.
Rabbie kissed her neck as he slipped his arms behind her back and crushed her to him.“Diah, leannan,”he said.
He suddenly rolled onto his back, pulling Bernadette on top of him. She straddled his body, pulled her skirts free, then pushed his plaid up around his waist. She slid her hands over his legs. They were sinewy and hard, his skin dampened with perspiration. She wrapped her hands around his member and could feel his heartbeat beneath her hand, the steady, rapid rhythm of need.
She was terribly aroused and leaned down to kiss him as she moved her hand on him.
But Rabbie was too impatient. He put his arm around her and tossed her on her back, and moved between her legs. Something primal began to surge through Bernadette, ripping through her veins, drowning out all rational thought, submitting everything in her to the need to feel his body inside of hers.
Rabbie pressed the tip of his erection against her sex; she drew her leg up, locked her gaze with his, then reached between them and guided him into her body.
