Page 86 of My Scot, My Surrender
“He’ll never hurt any of you again,” Brandt said fervently, looking into his brother’s pale blue eyes. Oddly, the color did not make him think of Rodric. Perhaps because they weren’t inhumanly glacial. No, Patrick’s eyes were all too human and all too vulnerable. “I swear it.”
“Are ye no’ afraid that he’ll return?” Callan asked.
Brandt lifted cold, determined eyes to his youngest brother and reached out to clasp his arm as well. “Afraid? No. Hopeful, yes. I want him to return, so one of us can kill him.” Brandt grinned. “Though, if he does, I wager it will be young Aisla who will put an arrow through him. She’s gifted with the bow.”
Patrick nodded. “Yer wife has been a good influence on her.”
“They’ve been good for each other.”
That reminded Brandt of Sorcha and his earlier inclinations. Callan burst into laughter at the besotted look on his face, but Brandt did not have the grace or will to look ashamed. He would not be faulted for desiring—or loving—his wife.
“I don’t blame ye,” Callan chortled. “Yer duchess is quite a lass.”
With a grin, Brandt chucked his brother in the shoulder. “Go find your own.”
He took the stairs two at a time, stopping to catch his breath at the door to his bedchamber before opening it. He was glad that he had, because the sight that greeted him snatched the air from his lungs. Sorcha had just finished her bath and was rising from the water like a river nymph, her skin rosy and glistening. His greedy eyes followed the droplets sluicing from her breasts to her stomach to the sable triangle between her legs. Brandt felt his mouth go dry with a sudden desperate thirst, one he could slake only with her inimitable body.
Even with fresh bruises from training discoloring her limbs and hips in darkened swatches, she was stunning. A warrior goddess in the flesh. And she belonged to him. He watched the play of muscles on her strong, lean thighs as she stepped out of the wooden tub onto the length of toweling that Morag must have placed there. Brandt could hear the maid moving behind the privacy screen, but he was too busy ogling as Sorcha dried herself, her fingers drifting over her breasts and her thighs. Morag’s presence was the only thing keeping him from crossing the room, picking up his wife, and tossing her onto the bed.
Sorcha’s eyes met his and held them as Brandt looked his fill in silence. A visceral current shot between them, hot and bright. Carnal lust shone boldly in those luminous blue eyes and struck him straight in the groin. He could never get enough of how sensuous his wife was—with those limber legs, mouth-watering curves, and exceedingly passionate nature, she was a hedonist’s dream. He was already painfully erect. When she lifted a slender leg to the edge of the tub to chase the droplets with the toweling, he couldn’t help the growl that broke from his throat.
With a squawk, Morag hurried from the room. His beautiful wife stepped toward him, but before the door closed, Brandt already had her in his arms, with his mouth on hers. He groaned at her taste. She was sweetness and honey, light and laughter. She was water to his thirst. And he wanted it all…every drop of it. When he finally lifted his head, Sorcha’s lips glistened, and her eyes had darkened. The secrets she harbored were still there, but for the moment, they’d been eclipsed by the desire sweeping through her.
“Husband,” she said. His minx of a wife smiled at him and dropped the toweling to the floor. Lust poured through him. She reached for the hem of his kilt and shot him a naughty grin. “My favorite part about kilts is the easy access.”
When she grabbed gentle hold of his erection through his smallclothes, Brandt almost spent himself then and there. He wanted her with a longing that made his brain shrink to the size of a pea, while other parts of him grew larger still. His wife’s fingers left him to undo the ties of his smalls. She made quick work of his shirt, and a few galloping heartbeats later, he wore only his kilt. He arched an eyebrow at the fact that he was still partially clothed, but she only smiled.
Brandt gathered her warm, naked body in his arms, holding her to him. The yielding softness of her breasts pillowed into the hardness of his chest. His thick arousal pressed up through the folds of his plaid into the firm planes of her stomach. She was muscled, too, his Sorcha, though everything about her was all woman—the beautiful peaks of her satiny nipples, her slim waist, her firm, rounded arse. Groaning softly, he took her mouth in another kiss, though this was different from the first. There was nothing gentle in this kiss. It plundered. It ravaged. Ittook.
Sorcha dug her nails into his shoulders and dragged her lips from his. “Take me here, now, where we stand,” she said, her breathing clipped as she bit her bottom lip. “I couldn’t stop staring at you in the fields today and imagining you…with me.”
“How did it make you feel?”
“Wet.”
Brandt didn’t need to hear any more. If he didn’t bury himself into her, he was going to burst. Reaching down to grasp her buttocks, he hefted her upward and shoved his plaid to the side. Without being prompted, Sorcha hooked her legs around his hips and sank her body onto his shaft. She was, indeed, quite damp. Soft and wet and slick. Their movements were limited, their muscles working frantically as she ground herself down into him using her thighs while he guided her with his hands. It was a ragged, desperate coupling, one with its culmination looming hot and fast.
“Sorcha—”
Brandt wanted her to find her pleasure first, but he’d lost all control. So had she. There was nothing but lust and feeling and carnal heat bursting between them. Her eyes were closed, her mouth parted in cresting bliss as her hips slammed into his. And then her body was rippling around his in molten undulations, coaxing forth his own furious release. He swallowed the sounds of her passion with his mouth as he spilled his seed into her and tumbled backward to the bed, whereupon he collapsed.
Sorcha sprawled on top of him and gave him a satisfied grin. “Well, that was different.”
For the second time since he entered the chamber, he caught his breath. “To say the least. I should wear a kilt more often.”
Sorcha rolled off him to the side and trailed a hand down his coarsely furred thigh. “That you should, my laird. I like the look of your knees.”
“Only my knees?” he teased.
“And other things.”
Brandt laughed and tucked her into his side, drawing the blankets over their legs. He didn’t want to ruin the moment, but he knew that they were both only stalling. He’d wanted to make love to her, but he also wanted to know what was in her head. He grazed one of the fresh bruises on her ribs with the backs of his knuckles.
“Why are you pushing yourself so hard?” he asked.
For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer him, that she was going to shove her feelings down to where she didn’t have to deal with them. But then her head tipped up, her eyes shadowed. “I owe it to them,” she whispered. “To you.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
