Page 40 of The Highlander's Auctioned Wife
There was something in his expression that she’d seen before—that hunger that she’d looked for, ever since Jackson had mentioned it. And though both of them were being honest, laying everything out on the table, she thought she saw a flicker of insult in the tension of his face. As if it offended him that she believed he was the same as all those other men.
She tilted her chin up in defiance. “Well, I daenae see what could have changed between then and now—in just a few days. So, aye, I have nay choice but to believe that’s the only reason I’m here, that ye’re just the same as?—”
“Dinnae finish that sentence,” he growled, closing the gap between them.
“Ye wanted to ken what I had to say about—” she tried to argue, but his lips stopped any further protest from escaping, his mouth covering up what he clearly didn’t want to hear, kissing her with a ferocity that stole away all breath and thought.
His arm slid around her waist, pulling her hard against him. A gasp slipped from her lips, her hands grasping fistfuls of his shirt in retaliation, while her mouth responded in fervent kind. She was transported back to the woods, and couldn’t help herself, needing to be reminded of just how well this man kissed.
Another gasp escaped her as his free hand seized hold of her buttock and, with one swift and powerful move, hoisted her up off the floor. Clutching her to him, that deft hand skimmed along the underside of her thigh, drawing her leg around his waist.
Her other leg followed instinctively, locking around him as she brought her hands to his face, kissing him like a woman possessed, bruising her own lips against his, needing the roughness of that passion to temper her anger and exasperation. As ifhehad become the outlet for it all, and she was pouring into him all those years of feeling helpless, nothing more than a cow at market, waiting to be sold to the highest bidder.
“Am I the same as those fawnin’ dogs?” he growled against her throat, as he dipped his head to trace his lips across her skin, his kisses like touchpaper igniting her most burning desire.
She moaned a faint “nay” as his teeth raked the soft flesh of her earlobe, sending a fiery shiver through her. He’d enchanted her again, all memory of what they were arguing about disappearingwith each graze of his lips, each searching caress and grasp of his hands, each press of her body against his. If he was the Devil, she was only too happy to be damned.
“Do ye want honesty or false flattery?” he purred, his mouth finding its way down from her throat to her chest, his fingertips tugging aside her neckline.
“Honesty,” she panted. “I want?—”
Her cry of bliss interrupted, the ability to speak snatched away from her throat as she felt his mouth on her, that warm heat surrounding the peak of her nipple, sucking. His mouth was the fuse, igniting the canister that had just exploded within her. Crackling pulses of electricity shot across her chest and down through her stomach, sparking through every limb, her breath catching at the sudden intensity, her heart racing as if she were in the midst of a marathon.
“What do ye want?” Gordon growled, demanding his answer, withdrawing that shivering pleasure from her until he received it.
“I… told ye,” she rasped. “Honesty. I want… honesty.”
His arm swiped at the surface of his desk, clearing it of papers, quills, ledgers. The clatter of things tumbling to the floor made Anna startle in his embrace, uncertain of what he was doing.
Had she angered him?
He didn’t feel angry, as his mouth plundered hers once more, kissing her with a passion that swept her away on a tide of need.
For what? She wasn’t entirely sure. That was part of the thrill.
Her breath hitched as he set her down on the edge of the desk with a thud, not treating her as a precious vessel that could break at any moment, but as a lass who would not shy away from his roughness.
Staring at her for a moment, the air bristling with promise around them, Gordon’s hands settled on her thighs. His grip tightened as he leaned in, fingertips sinking into that soft flesh through the barrier of her skirt, with a pressure that teetered between pleasure and pain. A feeling that he was claiming her, letting her know that she was his.
His kiss found her lips in a blazing press, her back arching with the weight of his body pressing against hers. With a light push, he spread her thighs and stood between them, while the intensity of his kiss pushed her further and further back, until she lay flat against the desk.
Gordon bent with her, their kisses rushed and frantic and feverish, her breath shallow and hot, her gasps catching in her throat as she felt something between her thighs. A solidity she hadn’t felt before, a hard pressure straining against her, inciting her curiosity and fueling her desire.
“Do ye wish to return home?” he said in that rumbling voice, etching the question along the curve of her neck. “Should I pack ye and all yer things in those carriages and send ye on yer way?”
She shook her head, closing her eyes as she felt his lips wander, moving down, over the ridge of her collarbone.
“Say it,” he growled, flicking his tongue against the peak of her nipple.
“Nay,” she panted, swallowing thickly.
He gripped the edge of her neckline for a moment, snarling his annoyance. For a moment, she thought he might rip the bodice, tearing the gown off her… but he seemed to think better of it, kissing the silk and whalebone. Perhaps, he knew it would be torment for her, not to feel his lips on her truly. He would have been right.
Rip it… just rip it,she pleaded internally, as he moved lower and lower.
Slowly, he sank to his knees and his callused palms began to skim up the stockinged line of her calves. The hem of her gown gathered against his corded forearms and as his touch edged higher, the fabric went with it… until she felt those coarse palms against her bare skin at last: a friction so delicious that she trembled, her every nerve responding to that caress.
“Are ye the lass I think ye are?” he murmured, easing the skirts and petticoats of her gown over her knees, gliding the silky fabric over her thighs, in stark contrast to his palms.
