Five breaths. Five breaths was all it took him to recover.
A hum of masculine satisfaction rumbled deep in his throat before he threaded his fingers through hers and slowly guided them above her head as he finally began to move.
Her eyes flew open and she gasped at the sight. Even though she’d seen him dozens of times, his beauty still had the power to startle her if she wasn’t prepared.
Hadn’t he just…? How was he still…? Oh God, that felt good…
“The only Mackenzie trait I’m glad of, lass,” he said by way of arrogant explanation. “We spend ourselves more than once.”
Jesus Jehosephat Christ.
Samantha’s eyes fluttered closed again as each slick, slow glide branded her with unparalleled sensation. She concentrated on opening her legs wider, on taking him deeper, on trying not to lose herself in the lyrical nonsense he murmured against her ear.
He stretched her, filled her, opened her, with sleek, almost ruthlessly patient movements. His eyes burned down at her from features growing ever darker as night loomed.
The muscles in her back, in her buttocks, in her thighs couldn’t help but respond to the whispers of pleasure that mounted into waves, and threatened to become pulses. She tried to call back the tiny mewls that were quickly becoming sobs.
What was this? She’d been beneath a man before… butnot like this. Not a man like him. This building pleasure wasn’t just the alchemy of a man and a woman fulfilling a biological imperative or a marital contract. This was something deeper than that.
So much deeper.
And the depth of it shocked and terrified her.
His controlled breaths frayed and fractured into gasps, then jagged pants. “God,” he bit out. “You’re too lovely… I’m too deep.”
She could attest to that.
The release that took her wasn’t sudden as it had been in the bath. It built in slow waves, made more intense because she stood on the shore watching them come for her, knowing she’d be swept away. That she’d drown in it, become a willing victim of its awe-inspiring force. Suddenly she couldn’t move at all. Her body became a prison of pleasure, arcing against it as he rode her through crashing peaks of unimaginable sensation.
Somewhere through the storm of bliss, she was dimly aware of his low sound of surprise when his body gave a great shudder and then several rhythmic spasms. She reveled in her body’s sinuous clenches around the hard flesh buried inside of her. The pleasure noises he made harmonized with the melody of hers, and the thunder created the perfect percussion to their erotic crescendo.
A pleasant, heady exhaustion blurred the moments in which they remained tangled into incalculable measurements. Eventually, he lifted off her, took a cloth and dipped it into the bath, and returned to wash the remnants of their pleasure from them both.
She fought heavy eyelids as he used a separate towel to dry himself, and the rest of her with patient blots and long drags. She felt drunk, almost like she’d done upon waking in his arms half out of her mind with laudanum.
She was dimly aware of a dull ache in her leg, and was certain that so much flexing and straining couldn’t have been helpful, but what did she care?
Lord, had her husband just quite literally fucked the wits out of her?
She glared at him through slits between lids that felt increasingly swollen with sleep. She’d be mad if she wasn’t so damn content.
“Poor bonny,” he crooned to her as he lifted her yet again and conducted her to the bed. “It’s not many a lass who can survive me. Ye’ve done decently well.”
“Decently well?” she huffed, a stab of indignation permeating her bliss.
“I told ye when a woman loses consciousness around me, it’s either a swoon or exhaustion.” He wiggled arrogant brows at her, and lifted her arms so he could pull her nightgown over her head.
“Oh, spare me.” Her jaw cracked on a yawn as she passively allowed him to dress her. “I’m a cripple,” she said with a scowl. “Just wait until all my parts are in working order, then I’ll show youdecent,” she muttered as he moved to his side of the bed and rummaged for something on the stand beside it.
“Trust me, lass. All yer parts work just fine.” The bed compressed behind her, but still she sat staring at the fire, unwilling to be charmed by him just yet. “Better than fine.” His breath tickled her neck from behind, as he gathered her still-wet hair from her ear. “In fact, I’d hazard to say yer parts are fast becoming my favorite parts. Even the crippled ones.”
That elicited a bashful smile she was glad he couldn’t see as he pressed a kiss to her jaw.
A slight tug on her hair brought her scowl back. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve got to work these snarls out, lass, or there’ll be no fixing this in the morn.”
He was… brushing her hair?