Page 10 of The Castle of Carnal Desires

I had been scared to ask him this question, because I liked Durell, but what could I do? I couldn’t halt the progress of the hotel or offer him another place to live. He couldn’t leave if he hated it. He was tethered to the place, and his opinion couldn’t matter. What was I going to tell Mr Ellengrew? Sorry, but the ghost of the last living Laird doesn't want his ancestral home debauched?

“I briefly considered becoming a poltergeist, and scarin’ the workman away. But I have been alone here for so long, watching the place crumble around me. It’s better for it to have some life in it again than to be haunting a ruin. Besides, the view will be interestin’.” He gave me that wicked grin again and waggled his eyebrows.

“You dirty old voyeur,” I laughed. And then it hit me. “You weren’t watching me and…”

“The young Mr McTavish? Nae, lass, not for long anyway. I wouldnae infringe on ye privacy like that. Unless ye wanted me to?”

For some strange reason, the idea of Durell watching me and Derek have sex made me uncomfortably hot in my own skin. Not that it mattered, because I was never going to sleep with Derek again. Never ever.

Sure, Aili, keep telling yourself that.

Great, not even my subconscious believed me.

I decided it was safer to ignore the question and just laughed it off. I yawned and snuggled down into the blankets. I let my eyelids slide closed, but all I could see was the body of the dead fox and the words written in blood on the stone steps.

I shifted, and tried thinking of anything else, but the red blood just appeared every time. I sniffed, fear giving way to self-pity. What had I done to deserve such hatred? I’d gone out of my way to be friendly to the townspeople. I didn’t even want to be on this stupid project.

Tears started to leak down my face, and I swiped at them with my hand.

“Dinna cry, lass.” Durell caught a tear on his finger.

I turned away from him and buried my face in the pillow.

He rubbed circles on my back and sung to me in Gaelic, something melodic that sounded like a child's lullaby.

Unfortunately, instead of making me sleepy, it was having the opposite effect. Every stroke of his rough hands on the thin fabric of nightgown was sending tingles straight to my lady parts. I sucked in a breath and he paused. He ran his finger up my spine to my nape, running his hard nails against the base of my scalp and making me shudder. His finger ran back down my spine and over the curve of my lower back and then over the swell of my ass. His hand spread wide and he let out a groan. “I havnae seen an ass this perfect in centuries.”

I rolled over so I could see his face. I was surprised to see that he was completely corporeal. He was a real flesh and blood man in my bed. All of a sudden, I couldn’t think of anything but kissing him. What the fuck was in the water in Scotland that turned me into such a sex fiend?

He was taking in every inch of my body, and I raised myself up on my elbows, pushing my breasts out. He leaned forward and kissed my mouth roughly, twining his fingers in my hair and holding my head firmly against his own. He let go of my head and ran his hand down my body, slowly, taking in every soft curve like a blind man. His tongue worked its magic inside my mouth, slowly devouring me until I was panting for breath.

He pulled away and bit my lower lip, pulling at it with his teeth before letting go and kissing his way down my neck. He slid one strap of my nightgown off my shoulder, kissing along my collarbone before switching sides and sliding off the other strap. He pushed the bodice of my nightgown down to my waist, baring my breasts to the cool night air. He scraped his teeth against one of my pebbled nipples, and then the other, the whole-time muttering to me, or himself, in old Gaelic that I couldn’t understand but made me feel even hotter.

He sucked a nipple into his mouth and my back arched, riding the sensation. His strong hands held me to his mouth effortlessly, like a feast that he couldn’t get enough of. His hands worked my nightgown lower, until he hit the elastic of my panties. He stopped and looked up at me.

“Do you want me to stop?”

I shook my head so furiously that I may have given myself whiplash. He gave me a roguish grin and pulled my underwear down over my hips and then my knees, and I kicked the scraps of cloth away. He moved so that he was kneeling between my knees, his eyes taking in every inch of my bare body. He was looking at me like I was an artwork so beautiful that he’d like to stare at it until he dies. Oh, the irony.

Luckily for my nerves, he moved on from staring to action, sliding his hands up the outsides of my thighs and under my ass, squeezing hard, and then hooking my legs over his shoulders. He kissed the inside of each of my thighs delicately.

Then he buried his face at the apex and growled. My hands twisted in the sheets and I writhed against his mouth. His tongue flicked and thrust, and I squirmed, trying to push myself closer to his mouth and closer to the edge. He sucked my clit between his lips and I moaned his name. He added one finger, then two, keeping time with the gentle strokes of his tongue and that was it, my body convulsed and I was screaming my climax.

He moved my body lower, my sensitive core running over the rough fabric of his shirt, drawing out my climax as my nub hit every firm muscle on the way down until I was position just above his hard cock, which was tenting his kilt.

“Are ye ready, Aili?” I ground myself against him as an answer.

He hiked up his kilt and answered a very pressing question that I had always wondered. Nothing.

As he found my entrance, and slid himself home, our mutual moans of pleasure echoed off the walls. He shifted so that he was propped over my body, our faces close, and my legs voluntarily wrapped around the hard muscles of his ass.

He kissed me hard and drove his body into mine, over and over, pushing us up the bed. My hands clawed under his shirt, my nails digging into his back.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god.” I thrust my body up to meet his, taking him deeper and deeper with every stroke.

I could feel my climax building, as my body rose to meet his with every thrust. When my orgasm finally exploded, I bit his shoulder hard, and he let out his own roar of release, the look of pure relief on his face making me smile.

He lowered himself to his forearms and kissed me softly. Then, his brow knitted, a look of confusion clouding his handsome face, and then he was just gone. Disappeared into thin air.

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