Stepping closer, Adrienne placed her hand on his muscled thigh and stared into his eyes provocatively. His nostrils flared, and his eyes darkened beneath hooded lids. With her other hand she tugged the bodice of her gown, freeing her breasts to spill over the top. She felt deliciously wicked, knowing her nipples were rosy, puckered, and begging to be kissed. When he leaned forward to do just that, she pushed him back playfully, slid her hand up his thigh, and wrapped it around his shaft, delighted by his husky groan. “Nothing beneath this plaid, just as I suspected,” she observed pertly.
“Adrienne. You’re killing me.”
“I’ve only just begun, my love.” She wrapped her fingers around his magnificent arousal and slipped her hand up and down his shaft with a velvety friction.
Hawk grabbed her hips and lowered his head to kiss her; but she moved her head and laughed when he buried his face in her breasts instead.
“Stop,” she commanded.
“What?” he asked disbelieving.
“Step back,” she encouraged. “Don’t touch me until I ask you to. Let me touch you.”
Hawk groaned loudly, but let his hands fall from her body. His eyes were fierce and wild, and Adrienne suspected he wouldn’t permit her subtle torture much longer.
She leisurely unfastened his kilt and dropped it to the floor. Her husband stood nude before her, his bronze body glistening in the candlelight, his hard shaft bucking insistently. Adrienne traced a fascinated and admiring path over his shoulders and across his broad, muscled chest. She lightly brushed his lips with hers, kissed his jaw, his nipples, teased his rippled abdomen with her tongue, then sank to her knees, her mouth inches from his shaft, her hands splayed on his thighs.
“Adrienne!”
She kissed the sweetness of him, stroking her tongue up and down his hard length. Hawk buried his hands in her hair and made a raw sound deep in his throat. “Enough!” he pulled her to her feet and backed her against the ledge beneath the windows. He swept her off her feet, deposited her upon the ledge, and tossed her gown up, spreading her legs to accommodate him. “Now, Adrienne. I want you now.” He kissed her deeply as he gently but insistently thrust into her beckoning wetness. Adrienne gasped with pleasure as he filled her completely. Hawk stared into her face, taking careful note of each shudder, each moan that escaped her lips, and just when she reached convulsively for the exquisite apex, just when she felt the sweet tremor begin—he stopped moving completely.
“Hawk!”
“Will you be teasing me again like this, my love?” he murmured.
“Absolutely,” Adrienne replied saucily.
“You will?”
“Of course. Because I know my husband would never leave me wanting. Just as I would never tease him without completely satisfying his desires. So, satisfy me, my sweet highland laird. Take me to Valhalla, husband.”
He laughed softly, then thrust into her carefully and gently until they came in perfect tempo. The intensity of their union, so perfect in body and soul, made Adrienne cry aloud with the wonder of it.
Later, the Hawk shut the nursery door and carried his sleepy, satisfied wife to the Peacock Room, where he held her in his arms through the night, marveling at the completeness of his life with her in it.
Lydia smiled when she heard the nursery door close soundly above her. All was well at Dalkeith-Upon-the-Sea. She paused a dreamy moment imagining the wee bairns that would grace the nursery soon.
Life had never been sweeter.
But it could be even sweeter still, Lydia.
Lydia’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully on Tavis MacTarvitt’s back as he stood pensively before the fire. A wave of guilt crashed over her as she recalled how he’d come back to her that night after talking to the Hawk, and she’d turned a cold shoulder to him, and retreated once again into the familiar safety of formality.
The strain in his patient smile was all the reproof he’d betrayed.
My love, he’d called her, and she’d felt so guilty for having love when her son had been so alone that she had refused to acknowledge it. How much more time do you plan to waste, lass?
Very quietly, Lydia unpinned her plaits, freeing her wavy chestnut hair. Her eyes never wavered from Travis’s back. With a smile of anticipation she tossed her head upside-down, finger-combed her hair into tousled curls, then flipped it back over her head, allowing it to fall in a wild tumble down her back.
So many years!
She tugged nervously at her gown, studied his back another moment, then shrugged and unbuttoned a few pearl buttons at her collar. She took a deep, trembling breath as the butterflies took silken wing inside her belly.