Chapter 24
"Are you sure about your decision?" Lex asked one more time.
"You were destined to be a MacLachlan chieftain. I could not take that away from you. You will lead both clans but each person will be free to take the name of their own choosing. All I ask is that we keep part of the MacEwen legacy alive by using our plaid for the whole clan." Sandra curled in closer to his chest and pulled the green velvet cover up around her bare shoulder. "Besides, I rather like the sound of Sandra MacLachlan, especially when you say it. Say it for me." Her request was accompanied by a soft kiss to his chin and an enticing nudge of her naked thigh between his.
He chuckled once deep in his throat and with the same strength and stealth he had used to overpower Worthington, he rolled on top of her and pinned her snugly to the soft padded mattress of their wedding bed. It was the same bed they had already shared many times before, but it was different now. It was their bed, in their chamber, in their MacLachlan Manor.
"Surrender, Sandra MacLachlan, by the order of your chieftain." His voice was deep but not stern. How could it be with his smile so wide and his eye so alive with mischief?
"I will not surrender to a MacLachlan chieftain..." Lex pulled his laughing face away from hers and raised a questioning brow. "...no matter how much he tortures me." She smiled a mischievous smile to match his.
"Oh, you will be tortured for certain now...Sandra MacLachlan. I will win every battle tonight." He said her name with such pride it made her heart ache with the love she could now freely share with him.
"They always have to win," Sandra heard Derrdra say. "But what a pleasure it is when they do." A little sigh followed Derrdra's advice.
"Come on, you insatiable wench," Iain said from the same direction that Derrdra's voice had come. "Thanks to their joining of the clans we have many battles ahead of us as well...in a more heavenly place."
Sandra scooted out from under Lex and sat up with the blanket pulled over her chest. "You are leaving?" She knew Iain had always been free to go but Derrdra was confined to the manor.
"Why would I leave when things are just getting started?" Lex asked.
"No, them," she said. "Derrdra and Iain are leaving."
"I thought they could not."
"Derrdra is free now because the place she died in is now her clan home as well," Iain said. "What is MacEwen is now MacLachlan, and what is MacLachlan is now MacEwen. One clan, one home. We are free."
Sandra smiled knowing that it was truly over. The prophecy had been fulfilled. The clans were joined for all eternity because she and Lex fell in love, thanks to Derrdra and Iain. "Will you ever return?" she asked with a little sadness edging into her voice.
"If you ever get that Oran and Corkie out of the women's quarters we might be convinced to pay ya a visit now and again," Iain answered.
"Oran and Corkie are in the women's quarters?" Sandra asked her question to the ghost but she was looking at Lex, a very guilty-looking Lex.
"I just newly hand-fasted them. As their chieftain it was my responsibility to find them a place to do what newly hand-fasted couples do so well and frequently. And believe me, with those two you will appreciate that they have a closed door to do it behind." He finished with a wide smile and a nudging pressure of his body that pushed her back into the soft mattress.
"We will be going now," Derrdra said. "The sight of you two is making heaven seem quite a ways off."
"We could make a quick stop at the hunting shed I told ya about. It is no longer occupied by Ronald," Iain purred out in his roughest Highland burr that still managed to warm Sandra's heart every time she heard it.
"You will get no fight from me this time," Derrdra said with a squeal of laughter. Sandra listened as their delightful banter faded out into silence.
"You look sad. Are they gone?" Lex so easily read her every feeling and responded to it with the concern of a new husband preparing a fragile bride for his loving. His arms cradled her close but not tight. His hand gently stroked her hair and face as he softly kissed her ear, then her forehead, then her other ear.
"Yes, they are gone," she said, closing her eyes and arching her neck to make it more accessible to him. "What do I get if tears actually come from my eyes?"
She got a nip on her earlobe and a tickle of her ribs. "And here I thought I had married myself an honest girl, still fresh with innocence."
"I was until I met you." Sandra rolled him over on his back and pushed him down on the pillows with a hand on each of his rounded shoulders. "Surrender to me, MacLachlan."
"And just what do you plan to invade me with if I do not, wee lassie?" His own burr was growing richer with every moment he passed in their homeland. Soon she would erase all the memories of his hurtful past and replace them with warm nights and happy days in their huge new family clan.
Lex took on the stance of a chieftain, unthreatened and in control, as he tucked his hands behind his head and opened himself up for whatever she wanted to do to him.
"The choice is yours. My hands," she said as she slid them down from his shoulders to caress his chest, circling his sensitive nipples with her index fingers, "...or my mouth." Her eyes watched as his pupils darkened with the descent of her head toward his already peaked flesh. She stopped just before she reached his first nipple and exhaled a hot breath over it. His eyes closed and his chest expanded, bringing his hard peak fully into her mouth.
"Both," he rumbled out his reply in a hum of satisfaction.
She sat straight up and smiled at her wonderful MacLachlan husband. He had been in her dreams since she was a girl and now that he lay before her in all his revealed grandness, he was even more than she could have ever dreamed up in any one man. "Are you truly real?" she asked with that feeling of dreaminess she had been experiencing ever since he came to her rescue in the storm, came back to save her from Worthington.
Lex sat up, a serious look in his eyes, but a smile still curving his lips. "I am not going to disappear, if that is what you mean." He took her face between both his hands and kissed her tenderly on the mouth. "I will be here by your side when you bear our first son and I will be here holding your hand when he marries a MacEwen bride as beautiful as his mother.”
Sandra fell into his embrace and nuzzled into his bare shoulder. He was the only man for the MacEwen Charm, and she was the only woman for him, the MacLachlan chieftain who headed her clan. Destiny had chosen them for each other long before they were born, and many helpers had been sent from heaven to ensure they found their way into each other’s hearts no matter how foolishly they fought it.
"What do you think heaven will be like?" she asked in her dreamy state of mind again. “Everything is so perfect, so wonderful right here, right now.”
"It will be like this," he said as he softly placed her head on the pillow and came down over her for a kiss. "Except instead of a bed of straw and feathers I will be laying you back in a meadow of sweet-smelling blue periwinkles. Besides that it will feel just like this." He kissed her again, slow and deep.
"Then this is like being in heaven?" she said with her eyes closed but her senses open wide to his every touch.
"Aye, loving you is the closest thing to heaven a man can ever touch. I love you, Sandra, with all that I am and have to give."
She cupped his face with her hands. "I have always known that. You did not have to say it."
"I never wanted to say it until I met you. Now that I have, I wonder why I did not say it sooner. It feels good to say it to you and see your smile and know you are mine for all time."
"Then say it again."
"I love you and only you, Sandra MacLachlan. I will love you forever."
The End
If you enjoyed this historical romance by T.L. Kitchens, while she works on Rory MacLachlan’s love story next, sample one of her Welsh romances in The Keeper Saga.
www.TLKitchens.com