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Chapter Twenty-One

Lillian was taking a luxurious, warm bath. The water lapped at her bare skin, cradling her buoyant limbs. And then Kirk appeared. He was bare-chested, just as he’d been beside the creek so many days ago. His pale eyes burned with blue fire as they swept over her bare body.

Heat built between her legs. She shivered, feeling exposed before him, and yet unwilling to hide.

Kirk moved closer. Then he stepped into the large wooden tub, the water sloshing against his breeches. He lowered himself toward her, and she opened to him, widening her legs to take him in. His weight settled on her, his manhood pressing against her aching center…

Lillian came awake with a sharp inhale. Dawn was just breaking. The wind from the night before had chased away the clouds, and the clear sky was buttery yellow with the sun’s warming light. Though the air was markedly colder this morning than last night, her skin radiated heat as she remembered her dream.

She lay still, for a warm, heavy weight pinned her to the ground .

Kirk .

He pressed against her back, their bodies molded together as if they had been made to fit that way. His knees were folded behind hers, the crown of her head tucked beneath his bristled chin.

This was the first time she’d ever woken beside him. Every night they’d shared his cloak, he’d always been moving quietly about camp by the time she woke. She’d thought before that it was shocking to fall asleep lying beside him, their arms barely brushing, but this was far more intimate. To fall asleep beside him was done out of necessity, but to wake in his arms was a dangerous luxury.

She blinked, her eyes scanning their makeshift camp. There was no sign of Logan Mackenzie. For that she was relieved.

As the last vestiges of sleep fled her mind, she realized where the weight and heat pressing into her were coming from. His arm looped over her ribcage, his large, rough hand gently cupping one of her breasts. And her hand lay atop his, as if she had placed his palm over her breast.

Unbidden, her nipples drew taut. Tingles of awareness shot through her. Though she knew it was wrong—wrong to want the heat of Kirk’s body pressed against her, wrong not to move away—she couldn’t muster the energy to disentangle herself.

She couldn’t deny it. She wanted this—wanted him . She wanted to feel alive, the way she had when he’d kissed her. She wanted the white-hot desire he stirred in her to chase away reality. She wanted to peel back his armor and see his true self, the one she’d glimpsed but never fully known.

Suddenly a terrible sadness washed over her. She was a fool. He was her captor, her enemy, the one delivering her to harm. No matter how right it felt to be folded into the warm protection of his strong arms, what she truly wanted—to know his heart, and for him to know hers—was impossible.

She should feel scared of how much she was drawn to him. It made no logical sense, the need she felt for him, the invisible thread that seemed to connect them and pull her ever closer to the enigma that was Kirk.

But all she felt was empty, for what could ever come of her desire? Lillian bit her lip to stop the sob that rose in her throat. She must have tensed, for Kirk stirred behind her.

His fingers tightened on her breast for the briefest of moments. Then she heard him inhale sharply. He began to pull back, but she held his hand where it was.

“Nay,” she murmured, her throat tight with emotion. “Don’t pull away. Please.”

His whole body radiated tension. “This isnae wise, lass.”

“Where is Logan Mackenzie?”

“Gone,” he replied. “We are alone.”

A ragged breath escaped her lips and the last threads of her composure snapped .

“I’m so tired,” she whispered. “I’m so tired of running. So tired of fighting…fighting this .”

He moved his hand ever so slightly against her breast. Her already-peaked nipple rasped against the wool of her dress and his callused palm. Bolts of heat shot through her, straight to the aching spot between her legs.

Her breath hitched and she arched into his hand. The curve of her spine pushed her bottom against his lap. She could feel the hard length of his manhood straining against his breeches.

“ Christ ,” he hissed. He ground his hips into her bottom, showing her that his desire matched her own. That knowledge made her feel wild, wanton. Not like a staid, proper widow, but like a woman—a woman who wanted a man in the most basic way.

He thumbed her pearled nipple through her dress. Slick warmth gathered in her center. She writhed, needing more.

Suddenly he jerked his hand back as if she’d burned him with her desire. He propped himself on one elbow, shifting away so that his warm, hard body no longer cradled her from behind.

Desolate at the loss of his nearness, she rolled onto her back so that she could look up at him. A wintry storm brewed in his pale eyes. His dark hair was disheveled, a thick lock falling over his forehead.

“What are ye doing, Lillian?”

“I want this,” she replied, reaching for him. She looped her arms around his neck and tried to drag him down, but he tensed, and she might as well have been trying to move a mountain.

“Ye dinnae understand,” he rasped harshly. Yet despite his tone, his gaze turned to blue fire—just like in her dream. He wanted this, too. But then why was he denying it—denying her ?

“Aye, I don’t,” she said, holding his gaze. “I don’t understand what lies between us. This heat. This need. I cannot pretend any longer. I’m too tired for that. All I know is that you are the only one who has ever made me feel this way.”

His nostrils flared, and a wild look came into his eyes. She curled her fingers into the nape of his neck, trying to draw him down to her once more, but his hands suddenly shot out and gripped her wrists. He thrust her hands over her head and pinned them to the ground, his breath coming short past his parted lips.

“Nay. Ye dinnae understand ,” he repeated, his voice half-whisper, half-growl. “I swore to ye that I wouldnae touch ye.”

He loomed over her, lowering half his weight on top of her. “Ye thought I said that to ease yer mind, to soothe yer fears of me,” he went on. “But it was a vow to myself—for I kenned from the moment I laid eyes on ye that I wanted ye.”

He pressed his hips into hers, wedging himself between her legs. She gasped as her knees involuntarily bent upward and parted, her skirts hitching up .

“And I kenned if I touched ye,” he rasped, tightening his grip on her wrists, “I wouldnae be able to stop. I would want all of ye.”

“Please,” she panted, tilting her hips up under his.

“I cannae. If I do, I’ll never be able to let ye go.” His voice was nigh strangled with desperation, his eyes blazing with blue fire.

Despite his words, the thick column of his manhood rubbed at that aching spot between her legs. She sucked in a breath. The pressure of his cock only intensified the throbbing there.

One of Kirk’s hands suddenly dropped from her wrists. It darted down where their hips ground together. In one swift jerk, he’d pulled his cock free of the confines of his breeches. Its hot length pulsed heavily against the crux of her legs.

Her woolen skirts had pooled around her hips, but her linen shift had gotten tangled in her legs and now lay between them, the thinnest of barriers. She thought he would shove it aside as he had his breeches, but his hand rose once more to pin her wrists over her head.

“I cannae,” he murmured through clenched teeth, but he seemed to be speaking more to himself than to her.

But he did not stop. His hips moved against hers, and the long ridge of his cock slid along the folds of her womanhood, dragging her shift with it. The linen dampened against her sex, and even through the material she could feel the velvety steel of his cock .

She moaned like some sort of half-wild animal, arching against him. Her knees fell open around his hips as blazing pleasure tore through her like a wildfire over dry rushes.

Kirk groaned his own pleasure as he drew back slightly, then slid against her once more. His chest brushed against her arching breasts, sending another jolt of ecstasy through her.

Something was building within her, some new precipice of pleasure that she’d never known before, but that she reached toward now with the desperation of blind need.

Her breaths came short and ragged, her whole body twisting and writhing as she struggled toward that invisible height.

She opened completely then, surrendering to Kirk, to the wild need he ignited within her. He rocked against her once, twice, again and again, his hard cock sliding over that point of pleasure just above her opening. The exquisite sensation was muted only slightly by the thin, desire-dampened bit of linen between them.

And then she was climbing higher and higher, spiraling upward toward that blinding pleasure awakened only by Kirk.

“Oh God. Yes .”

Ecstasy broke over her, hard and swift, and she shattered into a thousand pieces. Her whole body shook with the force of her release.

Just as she began to drift down from the heights of pleasure, she felt Kirk’s hands tighten on her wrists. He drove against her once more, then he went taut above her, his cock pinned against her low belly. He groaned and shook, and then she felt his hot seed on her stomach.

Panting, he slowly eased his grip on her wrists and lifted some of his weight off her.

Their eyes locked. Lillian made no attempt to guard her face from revealing her emotions. Instead, she let all her hope, all her sadness, all her longing lie naked in her eyes.

The emotion in his gaze mirrored her own, but there was a darker pain lurking in their ice-blue depths.

He looked away, and she sensed his armor sliding into place once more.

“That was yer first orgasm, wasnae it?” His voice surprised her with its softness, but he would not meet her eyes again.

“A-aye,” she murmured, feeling a blush heat her cheeks.

Kirk muttered a curse. He eased back, careful to keep from touching her.

His sudden distance made a lump rise to her throat. But when he spoke again, his words were gentle.

“We’ll rest here for the day. Ye can sleep more if ye like, or wash in the loch.”

At last his eyes lifted to hers. His gaze was like a caress as it traced over her warm cheeks, then to her lips, and back up to her eyes .

“Just stay within my line of sight,” he murmured. “I…I dinnae want to lose ye again.”

She swallowed, unable to speak through the lump that remained in her throat.

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