The Laird's Willful Lass (The Lairds Most Likely 1)

“You want me, too,” she said, sounding as if she accused him of a crime.

“More than my life, my bonny,” he said, rubbing luxuriantly against her sex, lingering in the satiny folds. They were both shaking after that.

With unsteady hands, he untied her drawers and tugged them down her hips and off. She was in such turmoil, she barely registered that at last they were both naked.

Marina began to touch him, running eager hands over his arms and shoulders, down that strong, flexible back, pressing into the firm globes of his buttocks. He groaned and scraped his teeth along her neck until she moaned and bit his shoulder in retaliation.

He kissed her hard and pulled her knees up, opening her to him. She tilted her hips in immediate invitation, but he kept stroking her, bringing her again and again to the point where she must break apart, then easing back.

Marina felt wrung out and exhausted, yet on edge and jumpy. She sucked in a breath that tasted of male musk and female desire and prepared to tell Fergus to stop teasing her. Then all conscious thought fled as the pressure between her legs became harder and hotter and more purposeful.

“Fergus…” she whispered in welcome, as her senses dissolved in a mixture of discomfort and delight.

He rose on his elbows so he could watch her face. The skin stretched tight across his chiseled features, and he struggled for every breath.

Cielo, without him inside her, she felt empty. Instinct made her lift her hips to take him. With a smoothness that astounded her, he shifted forward. She cried out at the sharp sting as he took her virginity, then forgot the brief discomfort when Fergus seated himself fully within her.

The experience ranged beyond her most extravagant imaginings. Fergus conquered more than her body; he claimed her very soul. Unashamedly possessive hands slid down his back, loving how the powerful muscles shifted under her caress. Her hungry gaze sought his. His gray eyes were dark and smoky and alight with joy.

“You’re mine now.” She couldn’t mistake the masculine triumph in his words.

A week ago, she might have contested that statement, despite being so obviously at his mercy. Today she stared into that remarkable face and found it in her to smile. “And you’re mine. Don’t try and deny it.”

His gasp of laughter quivered through her. Every time she shifted, he moved inside her. The raw intimacy of this connection thrilled her as nothing else, even her art, ever had. In silent affirmation of his possession, her body softened and settled around him.

“Aye, I think you might be right.”

His muscles tightened under the hands she rested on the small of his back. With his slow withdrawal, she gave a long, reverberant moan. Her eyes fluttered shut as pleasure engulfed her. Then opened wide in amazement when he slid forward again, stirring every nerve to fresh sensation.

“Ooh,” she said on a gasp of happy discovery. “There’s more.”

“Aye, much more.”

“Eccellente.” She clenched around him in an instinctive attempt to keep him with her.

Fergus gave a broken groan, and the eyes gazing down into hers turned glassy. “Devil take you, do that again.”

She tensed on purpose, relishing how he trembled in response. How she loved the pleasure she gave him.

This time when he moved, Marina rose to meet him. Seduction exploded into a fiery dance of bodies meeting and parting. Anticipation surged anew, spiraling inside her like hot, twisting wire. It was the way she’d felt when he’d touched her to the point of torture, but now, nothing stopped her climbing the wave that towered higher and higher.

Her fingers dug into his back as he took her in long, deliberate strokes. Each glide of his body heightened the yearning after something she’d never known but instinctively sensed awaited. Her breath emerged in harsh gasps, and she pressed up toward him as the wild storm loomed closer and closer.

“Let go, Marina,” he crooned, his Scottish burr stronger than she’d ever heard it.

His breath against her ear as he

rolled the ‘R’ in her name added yet another element to the whirling magic. She shivered, and her arousal soared higher yet, without sending her tumbling over into relief.

“I don’t know what to do,” she panted. “It’s like running after something I’ll never catch.”

“You’ll catch it.” He lurched onto his knees and tugged her hips up. The change in position thundered through her. He plunged into her hard and high and slammed against some deep part of her that she hadn’t known was there.

She convulsed into immediate climax. The world around her dissolved into white lightning, and she cried out Fergus’s name in wonder as everything flashed into blinding light.

At last Fergus’s control frayed. The relentless, driving rhythm of his thrusts became choppy, and his breath escaped in great groans of pleasure. For what felt like an eon, Marina remained suspended at a peak of rapture so pure it dimmed the sun. Then as she floated down, he jolted in her arms and went rigid.

With a guttural cry, he wrenched away to spill his seed in powerful spurts on her naked stomach. He clutched her hips, holding her in place as he found his release.