Page 71 of Wed to the Highlander
“Find you beautiful?” he interrupted, voice low. “I’ve got eyes, lass. You’re lovelier than ever. I see every curve, every change, and I thank God for them. You’ve become the woman you were meant to be—and I’m honored to call you mine.”
Her breath caught and she believed every word, drawn in by the earnest, desirous gleam in his eyes.
Duncan kissed her, slow and deep, his hand cradling her jaw gently. She responded with a desire that surprised her, a need that had simmered beneath exhaustion and healing. His touch was patient, coaxing, rediscovering. Her body responded with warmth, with longing, with the ache of recognition.
They didn’t undress fully, opening buttons, pushing aside, and peeling down fabric to bare the parts the other craved.
“You’re perfect,” Duncan whispered, the heat of his breath making her nipple peak. “Every inch,” he said before he took itinto his mouth. More sensitive than ever before, she cried out, arching toward him, her fingers sinking into his hair to hold him to her.
He worshipped her with his hands, his mouth, his whispered praise.
When they joined, he sank into her with tender care. Watching for the slightest twinge. But she wrapped a leg around his hips, urging him into a rhythm born of familiarity and rediscovery. It was glorious, her soaring into the bliss of him inside her much too soon. But it had been so long, he quickly followed her into a shuddering release.
Afterward, they lay tangled together, the breeze lifting strands of hair and rustling the crocuses. Duncan’s hand rested on her waist, thumb stroking absentmindedly.
“I wish we could stay,” Maggie sighed. “But Jamie will be wanting his supper.”
He bent and kissed her belly, each breast, then her lips. “We’ll come back,” he promised.
The wind shifted, cooler than before. Gray clouds gathered on the horizon.
Duncan sat up, squinting. “The weather’s about to change.”
“Didn’t our last picnic end something like this?” Maggie asked, as her fingers did up the buttons of her blouse. She rose, moving off the blanket as Duncan stowed everything in the basket. Then she froze, her gaze fixed on the parapets of the castle visible in the distance.
“What is it?” Duncan asked, tucking his shirt into his trews.
She pointed. “Is that…smoke?”
His gaze followed hers, tensing with alarm when he saw a plume, darker than the sky, curling upward.
“We need to go. Now.”
They scrambled to dress as they ran toward Flint. Duncan lifted her hurriedly into the saddle then swung up behind her, urgency in every movement.
The gelding’s hooves pounded the softened trail as they raced toward home—toward whatever waited beyond the rising smoke, toward their infant son.
Thunder rolled in the distance, low and ominous. As they reached the castle gates, a groom came sprinting up the path, panting hard.
“My lord! The stables—there’s fire!”
“What happened?”
“We think maybe a lightning strike! The hay caught. Flames leapt tae the roof.”
Duncan jumped down, taking Maggie with him. As soon as her feet touched down, he hurried off, issuing orders. “Summon every available man and start the bucket line.”
As men and women rushed around her on their way to pitch in, Maggie didn’t attempt to follow. Unlike the peat fire, she had another priority—Jamie and making sure he was safe.
She hurried up the steps, the wind clawing at her skirts. It would make fighting the blaze more difficult, and she prayed for a downpour.
Upstairs in the nursery, on the other side of the dressing room—a door adjoining the rooms made at her request by Duncan—she found Lillie seated with Jamie, rocking him by lamplight.
He began squalling when she took him in her arms but calmed as soon as she put him to her breast to nurse. She took Lillie’s vacated chair, rocking and cooing to him as she tried not to worry about his father battling yet another crisis.
A flicker of unease stirred within her. “Please don’t let this be the start of another spring filled with trouble.”
After Jamie was fed and changed, sleeping again now that he had a full belly, she pressed a kiss to his forehead and whispered, “Sleep well,mo chridhe,” before laying him gently in the cradle.
