Page 43 of Connal

“You dinnae ken me so well to believe thus,” he chided.

“You were going to stop before because you thought I was afraid,” she told him. “You were inside me, and you wanted me so much, and still, you stopped yourself. That’s how I know.”

His mouth thinned, and he looked away from her. She could have pulled whatever bothered him from his thoughts, but she guessed he didn’t want her to know whatever was in his head right now.

Give him something else to think about, then.

“Since you can’t read my mind, I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.” She pushed herself up to straddle his belly, and took hold of his hands. “I like who I am with you when we’re naked. It’s so good I never want to get dressed again––and you, you have an amazing body. You’re so big and warm and strong I can’t stop touching you. All these muscles, all mine to play with.” She trailed her fingers over the vault of his chest. “You don’t mind that, do you?”

He gave her a wry look. “I’m a man. If I minded, I’d be insane.”

“I like touching you with more than my hands. Although technically speaking, that’s kissing you.” She bent down to press her lips against one hard flat nipple, and licked it before she shifted back, moving her legs to the outside of his, and letting the damp pale curls between her legs tease his swelling erection. “If I remember right, you wanted to watch me put my mouth on you, too.”

Connal’s thighs tightened under her in reaction. “You’ve the prettiest lips.”

Now she watched his eyes as she moved down his body, taking all the time she wanted to touch and kiss and lick him. His skin tasted salty from his sweat, and the dark curly hair around his navel tickled her nose. She let her cheek glance against the thick column of his hard shaft, and the pulse of his reaction trembled against her skin when she placed a kiss just to the right of the wide base. It bemused her to think just a short time ago all of this, all of him had been inside her.

You don’t have to do that for me, Dale had said the one time she’d tried to please him this way. I know women don’t like it.

Valerie lifted her head to see the intense expression on Connal’s face. She had already captured his full attention, and she hadn’t done anything yet. He wasn’t going to tell her to stop. Knowing she had that much freedom with him made her toes curl with delight.

She’d better make sure he wanted this, however. “I’m not reading your mind now. If you want me to do anything, you have to tell me.”

His hands took hold of the ticking cover. “You’d put those pretty lips on my cock?”

“Like this?” She brushed a soft kiss on the heavy plum-shaped dome of his cockhead. “Or like this?” She parted her lips, bathing him with her breath before she engulfed him with her mouth and sucked lightly.

“Aye, thus.” He pushed back the curls that had fallen against her cheek, and then gathered her hair and held it back from her face.

Valerie forgot to read his mind as she enjoyed his body. She couldn’t take all of him in her mouth, but curled her fingers around his base as she sucked him as deeply as she could. Judging by his reactions he liked being rubbed by her tongue along the ridge of his glans, which made his shaft swell even thicker. She took her time, satisfying her own curiosity while pleasuring him, and when she finally found a rhythm which seemed to make him crazy she used it to give him the deepest strokes she could manage. At the same time her own sex pulsed with a wonderful ache between her thighs.

If she had been able to speak Valerie would have told him how much she loved sucking his cock. Not once did it seem wrong or dirty, and it gave her a sense of power she’d never before experienced in bed. She could drive him wild this way, slowing down to savor him while she watched his eyes darken and burn with need. His body told her everything she wanted to know. When he grew closer to his climax his hand tightened on her curls, and he began to guide her head into a quicker rhythm. When she tugged harder on his cockhead he groaned and his hips lifted. A few moments before he came his balls tightened, and his shaft twitched between her lips. When he began to jet she drank from him as if they’d done this a thousand times.

Once he’d given her all he had, he dragged her up and wrapped his arms around her, his chest still heaving. The kiss he placed on her swollen lips made her sigh into his mouth.

“You’re a wanton lass,” Connal said as he slid his hand down to her folds, and parted them to rub his thumb against the throbbing knot of her clit. “I shall do the same to your soft little quim, if you’ll permit me.”

She was so close to coming herself she shook with her own need, and couldn’t wait. “Just do this. Oh, Connal, it’s so good.” She gasped as he penetrated her with two long fingers. “Kiss me, please.”

He gave her his mouth and his tongue, and that shoved her over the brink. Her longing and satisfaction twined with the sensations he gave her with his hand and his kiss, and suddenly burst into a dazzling shower of ecstasy that cascaded through her again and again.

When Valerie drifted down from her own heights, she looked up to see Connal watching her through a strange blur. The moment she blinked tears spilled over her lower lashes, and he bent his head to kiss them away.

“I’m sorry.” Why was she crying? “I’m so happy, I promise. I just…I’ve never…”

“You’ve never had another man,” he said softly, and when she nodded he rubbed his cheek against her curls. “I shallnae tell you your husband would wish you happy with me. Sometimes I suspect Joana desired me dwell in misery the rest of my days.”

Valerie hated the thought, but it fit for both of them. “That’s probably what Dale wanted, too.” She tilted her head back. “I take that back. I’m not sorry.”

“Nor I, mo bòidhchead.” For the first time since she’d come to the island Connal laughed. “Nor I.”

Chapter Fourteen

Meg moved her buckets from the floor of the cave to a higher niche in the walls, which kept the waves coming in from upending them. Filled to the brims with the fat, juicy oysters Brochan loved for his seafood stews, they might be the last work she ever did in this miserable life of hers. She hadn’t spent all morning gathering them from the tide pools to give them back to the sea.

You’re a stubborn lass, Meggie, Joana’s sweet voice said from a morning long past, when she had found her trying to untangle what a cat had done while playing with the lady’s skeins of embroidery threads. I shall ask the laird buy new when we visit my kin on the mainland.

Save your coin, my lady, she had replied, and ask him kill that wretched beast.