Beyond the Highland Myst(749)
With the instincts of a natural-born predator, Cian sensed the change in her body. He broke the kiss and drew back, gazing down at her. His sexy mouth was kiss-slicked and half-opened on the hard, fast breathing of lust, and his dark, hooded eyes glinted dangerously.
She moved back a few steps and stood staring up at him, panting as raggedly as he.
He reached out and lightly brushed her jaw with the back of his knuckles. When he spoke his voice was rough, hot, and low. “Is aught amiss, woman?”
She shook her head.
“I doona think I would handle it well if you played games with me, Jessica.”
Swallowing audibly, she shook her head again.
“What, then?” he demanded.
She shrugged helplessly. She had no words. She couldn’t explain. She wanted him right now more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life and, at the same time, she felt as if she’d suddenly found herself perched on the edge of a precipice, and had no idea what she was doing there. Was goaded by some bone-deep, desperate imperative to back away, to seek safer ground.
She didn’t understand it. She was no coward. She was certainly no cock-tease. She wanted him. And not just for sex, but much more, which was the way she’d always believed it should and would be when she finally slept with a man. Here he was, the man she desired, and he desired her too. Twice before she’d been ready to plunge right in and have sex with him. So what in the world was wrong with her now?
Cian scrutinized Jessica. Now would have been a fine time to be able to deep-read his woman, but he couldn’t, so he turned his focus to her body instead of her mind.
Her jade eyes were stormy. Defiance shaped her stance. Her chin was uptilted, her delicate nostrils flared, her feet planted shoulder-width apart, like a little warrior.
Yet counterpoint to the blatantly telegraphed denial was—not merely invitation—but sheer feminine taunt. Look at me. Her spine was arched, her ass out-thrust, her heavy breasts proudly raised and displayed to their finest.
Her nipples were hard, poking through her snug white sweater.
And she’d just wet her lips again. Tossed her head in a challenging come-hither.
Don’t touch me/Come and get me, every ounce of her was saying.
Cian closed the distance between them, ducked his head, and inhaled sharply. She stepped back again, but not before he’d gotten what he’d been after. He smiled, pleased by her dichotomy. He fathomed it well.
She smelled of an exquisite combination of fear, defiance, and desperate sexual hunger. ’Twas a scent he’d waited all his life to smell, a desire that had intensified painfully in him over these past days.
He’d wager, even as learned as she was, she didn’t fully understand what she was feeling.
But he did. Perfectly.
It was all he’d dared hope for.
Jessica St. James had accepted him as her man, and for more than just this night. If she hadn’t, she’d not have smelled of this unique combination. A woman seeking only a night’s pleasure smelled of desire, little more. Certainly not fear and defiance, unless the man was doing something he shouldn’t be, things the woman didn’t want, and such a bastard should be put down. Women were precious, to be cared for, not despoiled and abused.
But a woman recognizing her mate smelled of those things because such recognition heralded significant life change. In his century, the woman would have recognized that babes were coming, that she was leaving her girlhood and her clan behind, bonding to a new clan, cleaving to her husband and his people, embarking upon the impassioned tear- and joy-filled route of her mother before her.
A strong, independent, modern woman like Jessica St. James would instinctively resist such change, in proportions equal to her desire for it. She was a woman accustomed to being in control. With him, her control would be threatened.
He intended to threaten the hell out of it.
It was time he made her his. Time he made it clear that, although she might one day lie with another man, none would ever be him, none would ever be good enough, none would ever make her feel the way he had this night. The way he would make her feel the next and the next and the next. He would sear his mark into her in ways she would never be able to forget. When one day she took another man to her bed, he would be on that mattress between them, a great, big, dark Highlander using up too much space, a barrier around her heart, forever alive in her memory.
When he reached for her and pulled her back into his arms, he got more of her womanly dichotomy, but ’twas a dichotomy a man could work with, verily, a wise man would savor.
For as she came into his arms, she turned her back to him as if to deny him, yet at the same time backed right up to him, thrusting her sweet ass against his hard, hot cock. She wanted what he wanted: claiming first, loving later.