Page 44 of Sweet Home Highlander
Niall bristled at her loyal defense and the insinuation that he was the opposite. “Fenella said ye’d been riding with the nob, that ye’d been seen at the inn together. Alone.”
“Fenella.” The odd note in Aisla’s voice threw him, but then she started to laugh, and for a moment, he was mesmerized at the display of her long elegant throat, thrown back in mirth. She lifted a wet palm to wipe tears from her eyes before she met his gaze once more. “Of course, it had to be her,” she murmured. “I’ve the strangest sense of history repeating itself.”
“What do ye mean?”
“Two words: Dougal Buchanan.”
He half rose out of his seat, a rush anger making him shake. “Dono’say that bloody name to me.”
“Why?” She smiled, though like her laugh, it was humorless. “Because Fenella told you I was flirting with him? Because you listened to her lies so many times instead of trusting me, your own wife?”
Fury and jealousy ignited within him. He’d seen her flirting first hand when he’d crept to Paris like a dog, desperate to win her back. Leclerc wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last. “Didnae ye?”
“You always believed what you wanted to believe, Niall,” she said. “It never mattered what I said, did it?”
“It wasnae just Fenella,” he bit out. “Buchanan himself spoke of the birthmark on yer lower back. How else would he have seen such a thing?”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “Perhaps when he spied on me bathing at the loch at Montgomery. My brothers, Callan and Patrick, thrashed him to within an inch of his life when they caught him.”
“And I suppose he conveniently remembered such an intimate detail years later.”
She shook her head. “Why would he even mention that to you?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Niall laughed, rage and pain making him ruthless. “Will ye be true to him, then? Yer Frenchman, when all this is said and done?”
Her mouth opened and shut, her beautiful face glowering with outrage. “Will I…how dare ye? Ye were the one who I found drunk as a wheelbarrow in Fenella’s cottage.”
“Yer brogue is back,” he taunted with no small amount of gratification.
“Youcan go straight to hell.” She glared at him, resting her arms along the copper edge of the tub. “Turn around so I can get out.”
“Nae.”
He leaned back in his chair, reveling in her discomfort. He’d stay there all day if he had to. No doubt she would as well, as stubborn as she was, but he’d be damned if he gave in first. However, it seemed that Niall had underestimated her once again. Her mouth twisted and those eyes glittered with defiant purpose as she held his gaze—and rose. He lost his breath, and all his good sense, as she surfaced like a naiad from the waves, water sluicing down her flushed, naked body.
Hell.
She was Venus in the flesh.
Anger forgotten, Niall gorged on the sight. Her breasts were round and firm, her waist small. Her legs were as long and trim as he remembered, though the luscious curve of her bottom and the womanly flare of her hips were both new. The damp tuft of gold at the juncture of her thighs sent a wave of heat and desire surging through his body, weakening him in places and hardening him painfully in others. Aisla had always been a beautiful girl, but now, the woman left him utterly speechless.Mindlesswith want.
Still boldly holding his stare, though a deepening pink flush now crested her cheeks, she reached for a length of toweling and lifted one svelte limb over the side of the tub. It was followed by the other in a graceful arc that hinted briefly at the shadowed treasure lying between them. Niall gulped. He was as hard as stone, any other emotion forgotten but lust. It coursed through him like a current, erasing everything in the wake of his driving, blistering need. His fingers gripped the armrest of the chair so hard that the wood nearly splintered beneath them. An inarticulate sound escaped his throat—a growl of a predator—and Aisla stilled, watching him.
And then he was out of his seat, and she was in his arms, his lips on hers, savage and wild. Aisla met him with the same fervor, holding nothing back, and the beast in him rejoiced. In that moment, she was his mate. Unlike their last kiss, there was nothing chaste in the joining of their mouths. It was a kiss born of suffocated desires, of anger and jealousy, of shared pain and buried hurts. It was a bridge between the past and the present, one made of thorns that pricked and burned even as it soothed.
His mouth parted widely on hers, his tongue sinking deep. Hers met his as ferociously, as ferally, tangling and dueling, caressing and plunging. She bit at his lips, making sounds in her throat that made his desire explode. He clutched her closer, the only thing between them a flimsy length of toweling. He ground his arousal into her, and tore his lips away to bend his head to her breast. With a groan, his mouth closed over her nipple, sucking hard through the fabric. Aisla moaned, her head falling back.
Releasing her breast, Niall climbed up the column of her neck in wet open-mouthed bites and nudges until he found her swollen lips once more. He took them almost gently, licking softly into the interior of her mouth, begging forgiveness for his earlier savagery. He wanted to sip from her body, to remember the tender sentiment that had filled him to the brim whenever he’d held her in his arms, when nothing had mattered but the two of them.
“Aisla… Aisla…” he muttered against her sweet-scented skin, his hand wandering down to the edge of the cloth and skimming up the inside of her warm thigh. His knuckles brushed that damp place between her legs, making her gasp. “Are ye wet for me, lass?”
She stiffened, and he paused, his hand falling away. “Niall.”
Lost in the throes of his desire, it took him a moment to realize that though she’d responded to his kisses, her own hands had remained at her sides, gripping the toweling in place. Her ragged breaths matched his, but she was tense, not soft. His eyes met hers, and he nearly toppled back. They were dilated with desire, but there was something else there, too. A queer, untouchable remoteness that made him falter…that made sanity come rushing back.
“Do you yield?” she whispered, her half-naked body still indecently glued to his.
“Yield?”
