I don’t think she realizes what the etchings are. People fucking. The marriage bed passed down from generation to generation, blessed to breed a large, healthy clan, the responsibility on the shoulders of the first-born son.
Those times are past though. There is no more MacLeod clan.
I ignore the sick feeling at the thought.
Melissa looks out the window. I watch her take it in before shifting my gaze to see this landscape again for the first time in thirteen years. Almost half my lifetime.
How have I forgotten how beautiful it is here? Even in the rain and mist. The water, the mountains, the cliffs. She hasn’t even seen what’s beyond those cliffs yet. Endless beauty. So wild and utterly different from the Vegas strip.
Christ. I remember this. I remember all of it and that longing for the soil of my home. I’ve not felt it this acutely in too many years.
I’ve not allowed myself to feel anything at all.
“The Atlantic lies just beyond those cliffs. Climate’s very different than Las Vegas.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she says, turning to me, then scanning the room, the antique furniture that’s been in my family for generations, the tattered rugs on the floor so necessary against the chill in these old stone estates.
I walk into the second room, which should be a sitting room, but I see it’s been converted into a huge closet stuffed to the gills with dresses and shoes and bags, all brand names I recognize. All wholly unnecessary and impractical for the Scottish Highlands. Many not even worn with tags still attached.
This is Ann’s work. Her pathetic legacy.
I return to the main room, trying like hell to manage whatever the fuck is going on in my head and in my gut.
“There’s a bathroom through here if you need it,” I say, opening the door to find they had updated the bathroom with modern luxuries.
Melissa walks toward me. “Are you okay?”
I look over her head, out at the sprawling hills and the lush green grass. The wind has cleared the sun of clouds for the moment and the light it casts is more beautiful than that of constant sunshine.
But in the next instant, it’s dark again and rain pelts the windows.
She touches her hand to my cheek. “Hawk?”
I look down at her.
She didn’t sleep last night, not much at least, but even so, she’s still beautiful. Las Vegas, and that first night, and the auction, and everything, all those things, it feels like a lifetime ago.
She feels like a lifetime ago and I realize how much my own thoughts and feelings about her have changed. Have become something strange and foreign to me.
I give a shake of my head.
Now’s not the time for that. Now I need to deal with my family.
But I need one thing from her first.
I need to fuck her. To bury myself in the familiar warmth of her.
I walk her to the bed and there, turn her, hold her to me as I undo her jeans with one hand and slide my other hand up her sweater to cup her lace-clad breast. I shove her jeans half-down her hips and push her over the bed. Her panties are askew, and I push them down too. I gaze down at her ass, her perfect ass, as I undo my jeans and take myself out.
Crouching down behind her, I spread her open and look at her, lick the length of her. Dip my tongue inside her and taste her wet cunt before standing, keeping her spread as I drive into her.
She’s not ready and she struggles against me.
“Be still,” I say, taking her wrists and spreading her arms wide, like she’s the Christ nailed to the cross that’s hanging over the bed. Like she’s the sacrifice.
But she isn’t that.
I am.
I was.
I lay my weight on her. Looking up at that thing when I fuck her, holding her down, her cunt slickening, wetting the passage for me. This is what I need. Her. To fuck her. To be inside her and feel her.
This fucking, it’s like animals rutting. There’s nothing slow or sensual about it. It’s simple need. And soon I hear her breathing change, coming short and fast. So I fuck her harder and I don’t care if she comes, not right now. This is about something else.
I need release.
And being here, I need to stake my claim.
When I’m just a thrust away, I pull out of her, fisting my cock as it throbs, and I come. I come all over their bed, their sheets, their pillows. I cover their bed in cum as Melissa watches.
I know she doesn’t understand. Even as orgasm racks my body, I see her, and I know she does not understand.
When I’m finished, I pull my jeans up, look at my work, then at her. I see the expression of shock on her face as if I’ve just defiled a fucking church altar.