“I have wanted you forever, you know,” he whispered softly against her mouth.
She shook her head.
“Nay…I had not known…”
His hand ran up and down her body, cupping, teasing, caressing her breasts. Stroking her hip, covering the black triangle of her pelvic hair. Then stroked her thighs and slid between them.
“Forever…”
“Aye?” she gasped, struggling then against his hold, anxious to bury herself against him, desperate to end the torment that burned into her now, desperate as well for it to go on and on…
His lips were close to hers again. His touch…was wickedly intimate. Her breath came in gasps, she burned, she writhed.
“Aye, lady, you were young, you were impetuous, you were so very arrogant! But I was waiting, you know, because I supposed that I had loved you forever.”
“In…deed?” she gasped.
“Loved you, wanted you. And one way or the other, Shawna, would have had you…”
His whisper carried on the flames within the cavern, soft, echoing, sweeping around her. Then play ceased, and he was over her and within her. She didn’t feel the hardness of the earth beneath her, for the blanket that sheltered her back was as warm as the flesh that encompassed her, and she had again been seduced to such a point that she was desperate for fruition. The earth seemed to rock with the grinding rhythm of his hips, the fever inside of her spiraled until she was aware of nothing but her need for him, and the golden fire that seemed to spill throughout the cavern and into her. He stroked and withdrew, stroked and withdrew, found her lips, her throat, her breasts...She arched and thrashed and climbed until the wild rhythm exploded into a pinnacle of fiery light, bursting sweetly upon her so that she clung to him as she drifted back down to the reality of hard stone beneath her back and the chill of the cavern with only a single fire burning against the cold of the night.
But she fought not to shiver, for he lay at her side, holding her, trying to keep her from the cold, silent then as his eyes kept focus upon the rock above them. She stroked the contours of his face.
“’Tis a pity I am the one left without a coat of fur,” she said softly. “For ’tis said that I would control you, if you’re a demon, beast, or selkie, that is, if I could but steal that Douglas tartan perhaps, hide it away, and have you in my power.”
A slow smile curved into his lips, and he turned his gaze to her. “You don’t think that you’ve enough in your power, my lady?”
She shook her head. “I hold only what you give, Laird Douglas, and you are capable of being quite stingy!”
He laughed and held her more closely. Then his expression sobered as he said softly, “I lost everything once, including my own identity. I fear to lose everything again, life itself this time, if I do not take the gravest care. You are among what I can most easily lose.”
“Does that mean then, m’laird, that I am something you wish to have—and keep?”
He rolled toward her, twirling a strand of her hair in his fingers. “1 have come back for all that is mine,” he informed her. “And you will note, I believe, that I am quite willing to fight for what is mine. I will not be betrayed again, and though I do believe in your innocence, I promise as well that I will readily kill any man guilty of treachery against me again, and if a woman were guilty, my love, I do swear that she would pay the price.”
“But—”
“Shawna,” he said, his touch then upon her chin so that their eyes met, “I have told you, I believe you. You say that you have told me the truth, that there is nothing more you know, there is nothing more at all that you can tell me about the past. Then I believe you.”
She found it very difficult to breathe. She wanted to be as they were then forever. His warmth, his strength—his tenderness—all given to her. The curve of his smile serious yet gentle. His touch…a lover’s touch. The warmth that remained when passion was spent.
“I swear to you…”
His lips touched hers.
“I believe you.”
“I love you, David.”
“Sweet Jesus! How long it took to draw those words from you!” he exclaimed.
She flushed, pushing suddenly against his chest. “It might have aided you in that quest, Laird Douglas, had you thought to speak such words yourself!”
“I told you quite clearly that I had wanted you forever.”
“Wanting is not the same.”
“Ah, well, I wanted you because I loved you.”