Chapter 18
"I am confused," Sandra said, rubbing her head. "I suppose your ploy to drunken me with celebration wine has succeeded. My mind is filled with feathers." She looked once more to the broken pallet, then back to his face, a face that was disarmingly handsome with or without a smile. "Are you throwing me out?"
He laughed with a warming richness that was answer enough. "For the first time I can truly enjoy your innocence." Before she even knew what was happening, he bent forward and kissed her on both cheeks, letting his lips linger on her flushed skin, slow and deliberate.
"You have not answered my question," she said, trying to hold onto some semblance of sanity as her eyes flittered open.
"I am not throwing you out," he started as he took her by the hand and pulled her gently the rest of the way into the warm room, then latched the door behind her.
"I am...still...confused," she managed to piece together a coherent phrase as he walked toward his wardrobe and unfastened what sounded like the clank of his belt buckle.
"Could it really be any other way tonight after the performance we gave them down there?"
She had fallen in so deeply this time that it took a blow that hard to remind her what a master he was at concealing his emotions, if he truly had any.
"Would you want it any other way?" she had to ask. What could one last attempt hurt?
He stopped what his hands were doing and stood perfectly motionless for an uncomfortable moment. What was he thinking? She wished he would turn around so she could read his face for herself.
"There are many things in my life I would change if I could, Sandra."
His answer was not enough. The regret in his voice gave her hope. Uncertainty swam through her veins like a slippery eel. She was unable to harness it, but the edge of fear it created was exciting. With nothing left to lose in a night that had been one surprise after another, she stepped up to him and let her hand rest on his back. "Is meeting me that stormy night one of the things you would change?"
His back became rigid under her touch as if he were steeling himself against her. "Most definitely."
Sandra's hand dropped back down to her side. She took a step back from him, and then another, until she felt the latch of the door press into the small of her back. Tears were in her eyes, tears she did not want him to see. It hurt terribly to hear it put so finally, but she was the one who had asked. "Damn it!" she swore, both at him and at the locked door she could not get opened behind her back.
It was too late. He turned and saw her tears before she could brush them away.
With an outstretched hand that looked so comforting and welcoming, he came toward her. "Do not go," he said, and in that request she heard his real answer to her question, one she should have known he would never admit to. It just would not be Lex MacLachlan if he had.
"I do not need your pity. I have a full life ahead of me here." A little sniffle weakened her strong decree.
"I know you do," he said when he finally reached out for her and wrapped her in his arms. At first she remained stiff, unwilling to fall prey to him again, but it was too warm, too safe, too welcoming. With the ease of sinking into one’s own bed at the end of a long journey home, Sandra let her face nuzzle into his chest. "I would not change that night," he whispered into the top of her hair and then laid a gentle kiss on it.
She pulled back and gazed up into his serious face. He meant it this time, she knew it in her heart. "Neither would I." She only had to stretch up slightly to meet his descending lips. They were soft, tender, but somehow withheld.
"Tonight, down there, all this, I just wanted to remember how it was in a clan, how it could be. There is just one more thing to do to make this final."
Her heart leapt. Had he changed his mind completely? Was he really that susceptible to her tears?
She watched his swaying pleats as he walked with his lithe power over to a large trunk in the wardrobe. He flipped back the lid, lifted something out, and when he stood and faced her again she froze in fear.
"That is papa's," she said in a small voice, her hand already reaching out to touch the thick woolen fabric of her father's worn tartan as Lex walked toward her.
"Aye, it is...and so is this." He lifted the tasseled edge of the wrap to reveal the gleaming edge of the MacEwen claymore. Its intricately etched blade was part of her every childhood memory. Her fingers ran over the luxurious steel and relived every night she had spent in her father's arms in front of the MacEwen hearth with the claymore mounted there as her protector.
"Why is it not at MacEwen Castle? What has happened to my father?" She began to feel the acrid burn of panic rising in her throat as her mind raced over the horrible possibilities of why he had her father's tartan and her clan's ceremonial sword.
"He is the same as before," he comforted her. Her tension eased a little with his reassurance. "...but he knows it is time for you to make a choice for your clan. You must choose the one who will wield this sword and protect what is yours." In its blanket of MacEwen plaid he held the sword out reverently, then set it on the floor at her feet. "It should be in the hands of someone who is willing to die for you and stand by your side always."
"What would you say if I asked you to be that man?" She did not look at him. Her eyes remained transfixed on the sharp blade separating them.
"It is better that you do not ask. I came here with leaving always my plan," he said, pulling her shaking body up to his as he stepped over the sword. She allowed herself to soak up the strength he was offering with those engulfing arms. Other than her father, no man had ever made her feel so safe and cherished before.
"Will you at least grant me one last request as your wife?" This time she did dare to look him in the eye when she asked. You have nothing to lose, Sandra, she told herself, except the chance for a wonderful memory.
He started to slowly shake his head as he closed his eyes, and she had not even asked her boon yet. "Do not ask of me that which you know is better left unsaid."
Nothing to lose, she emboldened herself. "Stay with me tonight...just tonight."
His eyes reopened with a questioning glance down at her in his arms. "I am returning to England. I cannot stay."
"I know that and accept it," she said plainly. "Just tonight, that is all I ask for."
He looked at her suspiciously, as if she had another trick in the planning. "Why?"
She glanced down, unable to meet his scrutiny with the raw feelings she felt inside, unsure of whether to reveal more to him and lay herself completely vulnerable or leave better off alone. "I...I...think I love you," she got out, not really even positive she had said it aloud, it sounded so foreign and odd to her own ears.
"Do not say that," he said in a voice that sounded as if it hurt him to hear the words from her.
He did feel something too, she had heard it in his voice, only he was afraid of it being true, while she hoped and prayed it was. "But I do love you. I have just realized it for the first time right now, right as I looked at you, knowing I was saying good-bye and it hurt so deeply,” she said more boldly, face to face, woman to man. She saw his desire for her plain in his confused eyes and twitching lips. She would not stop at asking now.
"I cannot..." he started, but she cut off his denial with a soft kiss on the tip of his chin.
"I know, you cannot stay in the Highlands," she finished for him as she moved her lips up a little higher and stalled his refusal further with a tender kiss just under his bottom lip.
"I have to leave..." he said with the breathless exhale of a man fighting himself.
She brought his uncertain hands that had been resting on her hips up to either side of her face and kissed each of his palms in turn with a slow tender caress of her lips. "I know, you have to leave tomorrow." She looked up into his eyes. The heat of his desire was slowly melting his uncertainty away. She released his hands and they cupped her head tightly on their own. Her own hands slid down and brushed the trail of her plaid from her shoulder.
With an abrupt move, his hand came down over hers and stopped it just as she was about to slip her blouse off her shoulders as well. Sandra was surprised and dismayed. She had thought her actions had worked a magic over him.
"It will not be like this," he said as he lifted her plaid back onto her shoulder. "You deserve to be loved by a man without any tricks of seduction."
Sandra's bottom lip began to quiver. She thought she had nothing to lose, but it hurt as if she had lost more than what she began with.
Lex tilted her face back up toward him with the tip of his finger under her shaking chin. "I will be that man...tonight." His kiss was tender yet demanding and wiped away all the doubts and hurt that had spilled over her at the thought of his rejection.
She let her hand fall away to be replaced by his as he again began to unwind her plaid from her shoulders, then her waist. When it fell to the floor around her ankles, a sudden draft breezed over her naked skin under her loose blouse. The coolness of her skin was vanquished by the first touch of his hands worshiping her through the thin remaining fabric. He did not kiss her lips or her throat. He did not move toward her at all. He just touched her in the most exquisite way, up and down her back, then her front, not stopping in one place too long, not moving too fast over her most responsive areas. He felt the curves of her body as if he were memorizing every detail of her for the future.
"You are perfect," he whispered in a voice echoing with so much desire it rumbled more than just the sensitive hairs of her ears. "Were you truly made just for me, Sandra MacEwen? The God I know would never grant me my every wish...and then some." He breached the distance between them with his mouth again, this time letting it take in the full hard peak of her breast under her blouse. The wetness of the fabric grew larger and larger as his bites became more ravenous, taking in more and more of her with every forward nudge of his head. The crispness of the clinging material tantalizingly rubbed between her eager flesh and his searching tongue. The feelings swirling up through her were on the very edge of every emotion she had ever known, yet not one could completely describe what was happening to her now.
"My God has answered my every prayer," she said as she grasped her fists into his soft black hair and let her hips be pulled into him.
His trail of wetness blazed a new path to her other breast and from there he slowly knelt down and traced his way down her belly...and then much lower. Her blouse hung down to mid-thigh, but nothing else was covering her under it. His hot breath blew through the hair on her most tender parts as if no shirt was there at all. She felt it roll over every curl between her thighs and instinctively she arched forward to catch another gust of delight from the sinfully hot wind of his breath.
"I must have you." His hands bunched her blouse up around her waist and his lips tenderly kissed the inside of both of her thighs. She let her back press against the door behind her as he pressed ever harder into his kisses. Her eyes flew open. What was he about? her mind panicked. Bess had never mentioned anything like this to her before, other than that a husband could give her pleasures beyond the delights of this world. Let go, she reminded herself once more. Just surrender to him, trust him.
She heard her own gasp echo out into the room as if it had come from another's body. His mouth was now the musician playing her body as he licked the sensitive strings of her harp and plucked at them methodically, pulling from her a different cord with every strum, creating a melody of their bodies moving together as one. The magic continued as the pace of his song quickened. The boundaries of their dance floor were shattered in all directions as she whirled over the edge of all those feelings she had been teetering on. He supported her spine with his hands as she gasped against the last thick notes he ended with.
"How many parts are left to please now?" he asked as he looked up at her and lightly brushed soft kisses over her quivering belly.
"I never knew I had so many," she answered breathlessly.
"I intend to find every one of them...tonight." He lifted her blouse the rest of the way over her head, then sat back on his heels and started on his own belted plaid.
Sandra reached out and ran her hands over the ripples of muscles flexing in his shoulders as he feverishly pulled to free himself from his shirt and tartan. Her body was still pulsing with the loving he had just shared with her, but she ached inside for something even deeper. She knew what it was. She had already felt it once before. This time she did not have Derrdra with her to lead the way, but she felt bold enough to take and give whatever she wanted with this man.
"There is no rush," she whispered into his mouth as her hands stopped his from ripping the leather belt right out of his buckle. His hands went still and his mouth just let her take hold of his lips, one by one, and suckle them into the cradle of her own as she kneeled down on the floor in front of him. Her small mouth mimicked his own prowess as she burned a trail down his bare chest and tense stomach as she undressed him. Every taste of her tongue, every pluck of her wet lips on his skin brought a moan from deep inside him.
She could feel the heat rising up out of his pleated plaid and the rigid part of him begging for release just beneath it. Her fingers slowly stroked up the tense muscles of his two massive thighs, bunching up the woolen MacLachlan plaid as they went, until they reached his belt.
She was naked and on her knees before him, his own majestic form nearly as revealed. Wetness formed under her tongue and between her thighs as she looked upon his flexing hardness, bared to her for the taking. Just one taste was all she wanted. It seemed so sinful, yet she knew how wonderful it had felt to her.
Tenderly she took hold of him with one hand and brought her lips to his silken tip. Then tasted him. His eyes followed her down like a captive being led by a chain. His own mouth was as wide as hers, taking in one deep breath after another.
"How many parts do I have left to please?" she asked as her tongue licked over his hot skin. It flexed toward her from the light touch and she knew he would indeed enjoy this as much as she had. "I must have you," she used his own words, whispering each one lightly over his already tight skin. Her tongue flicked out and licked him slowly, and taste him she did down his entire length. Her moan of pleasure reverberated on her lips and she felt his response shudder through his whole body.
"It is not the same for a man as it is for a woman," he said right before he lifted her away from this newfound delight. "There are other pleasures I still intend for you and they entail the use of the very part you wish to devour."
"I did not please you?" she asked, uncertain of his true reaction based on the control behind his eyes.
"I have never been so wonderfully pleased." He tugged at his belt and freed his plaid completely. He spread it out over the wooden boards of the floor, then spread hers out on top of that. "This time we will make love the Highland way."
Ever so gently he laid her back in their Scottish haven and sealed out the world with the covering of his body over hers. Their mouths found the sweetness they had been searching for in each other as his thighs one at a time, ever so gently made room for him between her own. As if every part of each of them had a matching counterpart created in heaven for only one other, they found their way together down the entire length of their bodies. No wedding night could have been more complete. No planning could have made it more perfect. His body shuddering into hers with all his strength and tenderness at once. Her body reaching up to meet and openly accept the pleasure he was offering. They moved together as she knew her God had intended man and wife to move, one body, one soul...one tremor of delight after another.
They had this wonderful night together, and as she silently counted her blessings she dared ask for one more boon from God...snow...large, large quantities of snow tonight.