His hair was loose, not yet laced back for the day, and the soft red tickle of it brushed my thighs. The solid weight of his body rested comfortably between my legs, broad hands cupped on the roundness of my hips.
“Mmmm?” came a interrogative sound from below.
I arched my hips slightly in response, and a brief chuckle grazed my skin with warmth.
The hands slid beneath my hips and raised me, and I relaxed into deliquescence as the tiny shudder grew and spread, rising in seconds to a fulfillment that left me limp and gasping, Jamie’s head resting on my thigh. He waited a moment for me to recover, caressing the slope of my leg, before returning to his self-appointed task.
I smoothed the tumbled hair back, caressing those ears, so incongruously small and neat for such a large, blunt man. The upper curve glowed with a faint, translucent pink, and I ran my thumb along the edge of the curve.
“They’re pointed at the tips,” I said. “Just a bit. Like a faun’s.”
“Oh, aye?” he said, interrupting his labors for a moment. “Like a small deer, ye mean, or the things ye see in classical paintings wi’ goat’s legs, chasing naked women?”
I lifted my head and peered down across the roil of bedclothes, nightgown, and naked flesh, to the deep blue cat-eyes, gleaming above damp curls of brown hair.
“If the shoe fits,” I said, “wear it.” And let my head fall back on the pillow as the resultant muffled laugh vibrated against my all too sensitive flesh.
“Oh,” I said, straining upward. “Oh, my. Jamie, come here.”
“Not yet,” he said, doing something with the tip of his tongue that made me squirm uncontrollably.
“Now,” I said.
He didn’t bother to reply, and I had no more breath to speak with.
“Oh,” I said, a bit later. “That’s…”
“Mmmm?”
“Good,” I murmured. “Come here.”
“No, I’ll do,” he said, face invisible behind the tangle of roan and cinnamon. “Would ye like it if I…”
“Jamie,” I said. “I want you. Come here.”
Sighing in resignation, he rose to his knees and let me pull him upward, settling at last with his weight balanced on his elbows, but comfortingly solid on top of me, belly to belly and lips to lips. He opened his mouth to protest further, but I promptly kissed him, and he slid between my thighs before he could stop himself. He moaned slightly in involuntary pleasure as he entered me, muscles tensing as he gripped my shoulders.
He was gentle and slow, pausing now and then to kiss me deeply, moving again only at my silent urging. I ran my hands softly down the slope of his back, careful not to press on the healing ridges of the fresh scars. The long muscles of his thigh trembled briefly against my own, but he held back, unwilling to move as quickly as he needed to.
I moved my hips against him, to bring him deeper.
He closed his eyes, and his brow furrowed slightly in concentration. His mouth was open, and his breath came hard.
“I can’t…” he said. “Oh, God, I canna help it.” His buttocks clenched suddenly, taut beneath my hands.
I sighed with deep satisfaction, and pulled him hard against me.
“You’re all right?” he asked, a few moments later.
“I won’t break, you know,” I said, smiling into his eyes.
He laughed huskily. “Maybe not, Sassenach, but I may.” He gathered me close against him, his cheek pressed against my hair. I flipped the quilt up and tucked it around his shoulders, sealing us in a pocket of warmth. The heat of the fire had not yet reached the bed, but the ice on the window was thawing, the crusted edge of the rime melted into glowing diamonds.
We lay quiet for a time, listening to the occasional crack of the burning applewood in the hearth and the faint sounds of the inn as the guests stirred to life. There were callings to and fro from the balconies across the courtyard, the swish and clop of hooves on the slushy stones outside, and the odd squeal now and then from below, from the piglets the landlady was raising in the kitchen behind the stove.
“Très français, n’est-ce pas?” I said, smiling at the sounds of an altercation drifting up through the floorboards, an amiable settling of accounts between the innkeeper’s wife and the local vintner.
“Diseased son of a pox-ridden whore,” the female voice remarked. “The brandy from last week tasted like horse-piss.”
I didn’t need to see the reply to imagine the one-shouldered shrug that went with it.
“How would you know, Madame? After the sixth glass, it all tastes the same, is it not so?”
The bed shook slightly as Jamie laughed with me. He lifted his head from the pillow and sniffed appreciatively at the scent of frying ham that filtered through the drafty chinks of the floorboards.