Page 26 of Joanna's Highlander (Highland Protector 2)

Damn you.Joanna shivered, snugged into his hardness, and curled one leg around him. She slid her socked foot up and down his muscular calf and thigh, wishing they were skin to skin. “You’re not fighting fair,” she said, her nipples pebbling so tight they stung with a delicious throb.

“I fight to win.” Grant lifted her up and sat her on the counter. Pressing his forehead against hers, he teasingly smoothed his hands up and down the outside of her thighs. “And as soon as I’ve gotten some food into ye, we’ll retire upstairs for another fine battle.”

He expected her to eat? Now? When he already had her libido shifting into second gear and humming toward orgasm overdrive? “I don’t need food just yet. I need you.”

Joanna locked her thighs around his torso and crossed her ankles behind his back. She unbuttoned his shirt and yanked it free of his belted kilt with an impatient jerk. Slipping both hands inside his shirt to slide it off his shoulders, she breathed in the heat of him. A delightfully expectant shudder washed across her with the memory of those hard pecs and abs sliding against her body.

“Joanna,” Grant said in a scolding tone. “Ye’ve no’ had a thing but whisky and coffee all day.” He kissed her long and hard, then finally raised his head. “Ye’ll need yer strength for what I have in mind this evenin’.” Rubbing his lips back and forth across hers, he slid a hand up under her shirt and cupped one of her breasts. “I swear it. Ye willna be disappointed.”

“But I need you now.” She hadn’t meant to groan out the words, but she just couldn’t help it. Maybe she was light-headed from no food, caffeine, and the latent effects of alcohol, but all she really knew was that she was on fire and needed release. Badly. She reached down and cupped the hard ridge outlined at the front of his kilt, massaging and pulling. Before Grant could react, she flipped the kilt out of the way and rhythmically stroked the prize she was fighting to win. “Please…don’t be selfish and leave me like this. It feels like you’d enjoy a little release too.”

“When ye say it like that, ye leave me no choice.” Grant slipped his thumbs under the waistband of her sweatpants and before she realized what was happening, he jerked hard and yanked them and her panties down around her ankles. The cold countertop against her heated flesh nearly took her breath.

Smiling, she stripped her shirt and bra off over her head and lay back on the counter. “Now, this is the perfect appetizer.” A shiver wiggled her across the countertop.

Grant pulled a condom packet out of the sporran hanging at his side, ripped it open, then slid it on. Leaning over her, he licked her from her belly button all the way up to her throat, then nibbled his way to her mouth. “When I had this counter built t’suit m’height, I had no idea what a boon it would truly be.”

Joanna scrubbed her feet together, trying to kick free of her knotted pants and panties.Dammit! I’m tangled up.She slid her hand to Grant’s chest and gently pushed him away. “I need a little help. You’ve got my ankles tied together.”

Grant looked down at her with a wicked grin. “Aye, lass. And tied up is the way ye’ll stay.” He stepped back and flipped her over onto her stomach, bare ass in the air. He playfully nipped and bit across the fullness of her butt cheeks while teasing his fingertips across her drenched slit in the process.

Joanna shuddered, stretching to grab hold of the other edge of the counter while grinding her mons against the cold hardness of the granite edge at the tops of her legs. She wriggled, trying to spread her legs wider and hike her rear into Grant’s hand. She needed relief. Cock or fingers. She didn’t care which, but she needed something now. “Please—I need…”

Grant bent over her and swept her hair aside. Pressing his long, hard length along the crack of her ass, he rained nipping kisses along her shoulder and up to her ear. “What d’ye need, lass?” he whispered, hunger echoing in his rasping tone. “Tell me.”

Joanna bucked, the cold, hard counter beneath her growing hotter by the minute. She wriggled her butt against Grant, straining to spread her thighs. “You. Please. Now.”

“As ye wish,” Grant said as he slid his cock in between her folds and slowly, with a teasing gyration of his body, buried himself to the hilt.

“Yes!” Joanna gasped and arched, hanging on to the edge of the counter until her knuckles popped. The tight wet fullness. The pulsing heat. Just a few more strokes. “Please, you’ve got to move for me. Now!”

“Aye, m’love. Aye!” He hammered hard and fast, the fronts of his thighs slapping against the backs of her legs as he drove as deep as he could go.

Just three strokes in, Joanna’s world exploded into body-shaking bliss. A shriek ripped free of her throat as she arched her back and reared up on the counter, stretching into the best yoga cobra pose she’d ever achieved and holding it while orgasmic lightning crashed through her in excruciatingly delightful waves.

Grant pounded faster, then dove in deep and stayed, pressing his forehead between her shoulder blades as his body tensed and pulsed inside her. Holding her where her legs joined her body, he suddenly straightened, yanked her hard back against him, then roared something unintelligible that echoed to the rafters.

So, this is what it feels like to be suspended in time.Joanna smiled at the first coherent thought making its way through the after-orgasm fog. She relaxed her arms and sprawled across the counter. Grant groaned one last time, then fell forward on top of her, body heaving as he gasped to catch his breath.

A shrill, ear-splitting beep peeled out, shattering the moment and managing to yank Joanna out of her delicious euphoria. She stirred under Grant, shifted to the side, then lifted her head and sniffed. Her eyes popped open.Shit!Smoke.

“Grant! The cornbread!”

Chapter 12

Two quick beeps of the horn and Carolina Adventures’ sleek black shuttle bus rolled out of the park, headed for the bed-and-breakfast with a load of extremely hung-over senior citizens.

Grant smiled and raised his hand in farewell. For the first time in a very long time, as a matter of fact for the first time since they’d arrived in this accursed century, he felt a sense of peace—and maybe even a little anticipation.

“Do ye no’ think ’tis time ye took the girl before the Heartstone and sought its advice? Ye’ve finally made her yer own. ’Tis time to seek the blessing in person and tell the lass the MacDara history.”

Dwyn MacKay. The nosy, redheaded demigod determined to be a thorn in every MacDara’s arse. Long ago, the goddesses ordained him as guide to all the druid clans—guardian to them, in fact. Grudgingly, Grant admitted that without Dwyn’s help with acclimating to the twenty-first century after they’d first arrived—and even now after they’d been here sixteen years—the MacDaras’ survival in this strange time wouldha been questionable.

“Ignorin’ me will do ye no good, ye ken? Ye best answer me, boy.”

“Go away, ye old bastard,” Grant replied without turning around. “Ye ken good and well how I feel about the Heartstone and its druthers.” The damn stone and the meddlin’ goddesses were as responsible for the murder of his precious Leannan and their unborn child just as surely as if they’d been the ones that had slit her throat. He’d had little to do with the stone and the goddesses since that terrible day. He didna care if his soul was headed for certain damnation. His heart had already been there for well over a decade.

Dwyn stepped up and stood beside him. The wiry demigod wore his usual attire of an expensive three-piece suit complete with a gold watch chain and starched handkerchief peeping out of the breast pocket. While larger than life when it came to personality, in his physical form, Dwyn was dwarfed by Grant’s size. His bushy red brows knotted above his narrowed eyes in a furious scowl and he clasped his hands to the small of his back. He glared up at Grant with an impatient sideways glance. “The stone doesna set nor choose yer fate, lad. It merely guides us and shows us the proper path for the good of all concerned. Remember yer teachings, aye?”

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