The Highlander's Harlot (Sword and Thistle 1)

I looked up at him wanting only to be broken. “I won't struggle.”

Beyond the intensity of the state he was working himself into, I could still see that he looked pleased, and feral, and proud. “I’m going to fuck you, and then I'm going to spill my seed onto you, and we'll see what bastard you may breed. Now, turn over for me.”

I quietly turned, my awareness of Ian’s stare now acute. I couldn't look at him. So I lay back, and spread my thighs, the dark curls damp on my mound bare for both men to see. Ian swallowed, looking away as if he didn’t want to feel the arousal that he plainly did.

But it was then that the laird’s eyes seemed to soften. Maybe it was my posture. Maybe it was the surrender in my eyes. Maybe it was my obedience. Whatever it was, he ran his finger gently down my cheek and tenderly caressed my side. “I know I've been hard on you . . . but sacrifices must be painful, otherwise, they are not sacrifices.”

I just shook my head with an impatient, aroused moan as his hands drifted down my body and plucked at my nipples. “Do you like that you’re being watched?”

“It shames me,” I admitted, not knowing whether I liked it or not. My body was responding, but my mind was reeling.

“And it should,” Ian said, fists clenched, as if he couldn’t decide whether he should stand up and go, or if he should beg leave to join us upon the bed.

My laird was untroubled. “That's what you offered me. Shame. That's what you have always offered me. We’ve always understood one another, you and I. Ian doesn’t understand, but we do. We didn't need words to say it. We understood what the currency was. And only a girl who understands shame, and its beauty and worth would have offered it.”

With that, he lifted his tunic and climbed between my legs. My body respond to the certain proximity of his cock with instant pleasure. My hips undulated under him, brushing his skin, feeling the length and strength of him on me.

“Heather, you obey me because you want to. But for tonight, for this moment, when I take your maidenhead, you can go ahead and hate me. Feel angry if you need to. Feel taken,” he said as his thick cockhead probed at my entrance.

My eyes lolled back slightly in ecstasy and anticipation as I reached out for him in sudden eagerness, wanting him to sink the length of him inside me. But he slammed my hands back onto the bed. “No. A skilled harlot gets paid to touch her laird, but you’re still a crofter’s girl. I haven’t taught you how to touch me yet, in the way that I most enjoy. And though you’ve a natural instinct for it, tonight is about only one thing. Me taking you. So, feel Ian’s eyes on you. He’s going to watch you lose your maidenhead and be able to tell the tale of how you begged for it.”

My insides seized. He was waiting for me to beg? He wouldn’t command it, but he’d wait for it. And he wouldn’t have to wait long, because I was desperate for him. The heat of his cockhead as it slid against my clit and thighs drove me mad. And Ian’s judgmental, but hungry gaze made me wanton. “Please take me. Please take me. Please!”

“Look at me,” the laird said, crushing down upon me with his wide chest and hovering above me with his strong arms.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “I can’t.”

“Look. At. Me.”

My eyes lifted and met his. I felt captured by his gaze, and then was rewarded by a sharp thrust up inside me. It was brutal, painful and quick. I saw the expression of triumph on his face. It was a crude mixture of emotion. A certain compassion for me, possession of me, tenderness and cruelty melded into an unmistakable expression of ownership. I was a slut and a whore in that moment, and his. And I would never forget it.

I let out a cry and let my fingers dig into the bed linens as the pain washed over me in waves. I was torn. But expertly. He’d done it quickly. And knowing that he’d known just how to do it made the pleasure seep over me and block out the pain.

Soon, I was being fucked. My breasts jiggled with every thrust, and I tried to hold them still, but he stopped me. He wanted me to lie still and do nothing but get fucked. He working inside me, pushing me. Stretching me.Giving me feelings I’d never known before. “Oh, god. Sweet Jesus!” I cried, wanting to curse profanely at the shocking relief and pleasure of it all.

I tried to hold it back, but found that I couldn’t. I was coming. Crying out and straining against the bed, my body reached its shuddering climax to be taken this way—the ultimate shame. They all saw it. They all knew it. I couldn’t even hide it. His cock was pinioning me. It was in me, filling me. Unrelenting and possessive. And I was climaxing, overcome with a rush of release that made me scream. Made to feel so much pleasure at the way his tool opened me that I would want to do it a thousand times again.

At my orgasmic screams, the laird growled, grunted, grasping me hard as he began to jerk his seed into my pussy. It was with such force, such intense pleasure that he pulled out for a moment, and splashed some across my belly and breasts before he finished inside me. He collapsed on me, his hands on my face. And he kissed me. Kissed me as if for the first time. With lust and release and a tenderness he hadn’t had before. His skin was hot and wet, and his lips full and affectionate. His breathing was hard and his satisfaction made him almost worshipful.

For Ian’s benefit, he asked, “And do you think you’ll be curled up and weeping tomorrow, lass?”

“Only if you don’t do this to me all over again,” I replied, kissing him back.

He chuckled, kissed both of my hands, and nuzzled against my cheek. Then eyed Ian, whose eyes smoldered from across the room. And I wondered if he would have me next. I even dared to hope, for a moment, that they might both have me together. The laird noticed, and held me tighter. “You want her. I know you do. But just like this clan, she’s mine.”

Ian glowered. “So is that what this is about? You want to rub my face in everything you have that I want and can’t have?”

My laird pulled the blanket over him and leaned on one elbow, his expression taking on one of sympathy for his cousin. “I want you to know what kind of man you’ve given your fealty to, Ian.”

“I know you,” Ian said. “Known you since we were bairns together.”

“And we were friends then, weren’t we?” my laird said, and for the first time, I realized how much it pained him to have lost that friendship. “I’m a hard man, with faults. With strange urges, yes. But I’m still the lad who was your friend. I’m not a rapist or an abuser of women—at least not the way you think I am. If you still think so, after what you’ve seen tonight, then I release you from your oath, and you may leave the castle freely.”

Ian seethed. “You’ve got a war band coming from the Donalds and you need every sword you can get! Even a half-crippled one, still bleeding from a wound.”

“I know,” the laird said. “But I won’t force a man to fight for me who doesn’t want to anymore than I’d force a woman to my bed.”

“I fight for clan Macrae,” Ian said, his throat working. “Which means that I fight for the clan’s laird. And that’s you, you sick bastard.”