Beyond the Highland Myst(615)

Gabby closed her eyes; her breasts felt tight in his hands, swelling from his touch. His unshaven jaw rasped against her hair, then against her cheek as he nudged aside her hair. The sleek wet heat of his tongue traced a velvety trail down the side of her neck, sending shivers of sensual delight skittering up her spine. She was going to pull away, to stop him. Any minute now...

"Did you never fantasize about us? Tell me you didn't. Say. 'No. Adam. I never even thought about it once.' " He laughed huskily, wickedly, as if endlessly amused by the thought, his thumbs tracing light circles on her breasts, just beneath her nipples, on the soft underside where she was so sensitive. Her nipples were so hard they were poking through both her bra and her shirt, hungry for touch.

He closed his fingers on the puckered peaks at the precise moment that he bit down on the nape of her neck, and she clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. He knew, damn him, he knew. Her secret fantasies, the inner, eternal battle she waged. He knew all about it.

"Why so quiet? Why won't you say it, Gabrielle?" A pause. "Because you did think it. Many times." A sleek glide of his tongue down her neck. Another gentle nip on the tender, sensitive cord that ran from her neck to her shoulder, making her whole body shiver with desire. A delicious light pinch on her nipples. "Is it so hard to admit? I know you did. You wondered what it would be like for one of us to take you to bed. To strip you naked and make you come so many times that you couldn't even move. To give you so much pleasure that it left you limp and exhausted, unable to do anything but lay there while your Fae lover fed you from his hands, tended you, and rebuilt your strength so he could do it to you again and again. So he could ride you slow and deep, take you fast and hard from behind. So he could lift you astride him and feel you shudder on top of him when you came. So he could lick and taste and kiss every inch of your body until nothing else existed, until all else ceased to matter but what he was doing to you, the completion only he could give you."

She was panting softly. Damn him. She'd imagined all those things and more. And his words were painting much too vivid pictures in her mind's eye: Adam doing all those things to her. Being lifted astride him; on her hands and knees for him as he thrust into her from behind...

God, she thought feverishly, had she always been picturing him? Try though she might, she couldn't recall the face of the dream prince that she'd so lovingly detailed in her teen fantasies. Either he'd blasted it right out of her memories, replacing her imaginary lover with his dark eyes, his hard body, his seductive voice and devastating touch, or it had always been him.

Pull away, O'Callaghan, you know this will get you nothing but screwed— and not just physically, the inner, very faint voice of reason warned.

Right, in just a minute...

"You fantasized," he continued, his voice low and hypnotic. "You may be virgin in body, but not in mind. I feel the heat and passion in you; there's a fury of it inside you. I felt it the moment I saw you. You're not normal. You'll never be normal. Give it up. Stop trying to fit in a world that will never accept you. Nobody can understand you the way I can. You're a Sidhe-seer. You want to spend your whole life denying it? What you see. What you are. What you want. Sad way to live and die."

There was silence for a moment while he just held her, hands gone still on her breasts, breath warm against her neck, unmoving.

She knew this was her moment to rescue herself. To rage at him. To tell him he was wrong, that he didn't know the first damn thing about what he was talking about.

But she couldn't, because he did.

Everything he'd said was true. She wasn't normal, and no matter what she did, she would never be normal. She'd been torn between worlds all her life, trying to ignore the one and fit into the other— both equally futile ventures— wondering if all there would be for her in the end was the kind of life Gram had lived. A baby, no husband, a big empty house. Telling herself it would be enough, if that was what had to be. In the meantime, giving it her best shot, trying to make things work with a boyfriend.

But no boyfriend had ever been able to compete with the fantastic Fae males she'd been seeing since childhood. No human boyfriend had ever been able to vie with a world that was intrinsically so much hotter and brighter and more sensual. And not with any boyfriend had she ever truly been able to be herself. And the sad fact was, a large part of why she was still a virgin was because she didn't want a man. damn it. she wanted a fairy. She always had.

And she was tired of wondering what it would be like with one, of forcing herself to look away, to turn away, to never touch.

Tired of repressing all those sinfully seductive fantasies.