Underneath The Mistletoe Collection. Marguerite Kaye

her. Her face. Her neck. His mouth on her throat. Kissing his way along the curve of her décolletage, his tongue licking the swell of her breasts, his hands splayed on her back, feathering over the exposed skin of her nape, the knot at the top of her spine, then down to pick open the buttons of her gown.

      He kissed the tender spot behind her ears. He slid her gown over her arms, kissing her shoulders, the crook of her elbow, her wrists, tilting her gently back to work her gown down, over her legs. When he took off her shoes, he kissed her ankles through the silk of her stockings. And her calves. The backs of her knees. His mouth, thin silk, her skin. She watched him, her eyes wide open, not wanting to miss a moment, enthralled, astonished that simply watching could be so stimulating. His cheeks were flushed. His blue-black hair, grown longer since he came to Strone Bridge, was ruffled. She ran her fingers through it. Soft as silk. She pulled him down towards her, wanting the weight of him on her, and claimed his mouth. Hot, his mouth was. ‘Sinful,’ she murmured, lips against lips. ‘I want to be sinful.’

      Innes laughed, rolling to his knees again, pulling her with him to work at the ties of her stays. His eyes were dark in this light, midnight blue, his pupils dilated. His shirt was open at the neck. The firelight danced over it, showing her shadows of muscle, making her ache to touch him. While he worked on her corsets, cursing under his breath at the time it was taking, she tugged at the shirt, pulling it free from the leather belt, sighing as her palms found his flesh, sighing again when he flexed and his muscles tensed. Flesh. Heated flesh. She pressed her mouth to his throat and licked his skin, feeling the vibration of his response. Then his triumphant growl as he finally cast her corsets aside and tore at her shift, leaving her in just her pantaloons and her stockings, the bright pink of her garters, which perfectly matched the flowers on her gown.

      A fleeting urge to cover up her breasts faded as Innes devoured her with his eyes and then feasted on her with his mouth. Sucking. Nipping. Stroking. Setting up paths of heat, making her blood pulse and the muscles inside her contract. She fell back onto the quilt, tensing, heating, watching him kiss her, touch her, watching his hands on her skin, tanned, rough hands, covering her breasts, flattened over her belly, then pulling at the drawstring of her last undergarment. She looked so pale in the firelight. Her skin milky. The curls between her thighs seemed tinged with autumn colours.

      Innes smiled at her. She smiled back. Sinful. Sure. He pulled his shirt over his head, and she watched, clenching inside, the revelation of flesh and muscle, the smattering of dark hair on his chest, the thinner line from his navel to the belt of his kilt. The plaid tickled her thighs and her belly as he knelt over to kiss her. She could feel the tip of his shaft nudging between her legs. She tilted towards him, her fingers gripping into the muscles of his shoulders, and it touched her, the tensest part of her. ‘Yes,’ she said, not meaning to, not quite sure what she meant.

      He sat up, still straddling her, and reached under his kilt, which was spread over the two of them. She could not see what he did, but she could see the intent in his eyes. Stroking, up and down, slick sliding, unmistakably not his hand, sliding. He was watching her. ‘Yes,’ she said, quite deliberately, ‘again.’

      Stroking. Sliding. She must be wet. She was tight. She was getting tighter. Stroking and sliding. And then more stroking. And more sliding. And she came. Suddenly. What she now knew was a climax, though it felt like an explosion. He lifted her, his hands under her, cupping the bare flesh of her bottom as she cried out, and the pulsing took her over, and he pushed his way inside her, thick, hard, pushing her apart, finding his way higher as her muscles pulsed around him, pulling him in, tighter, and higher and tighter.

      He paused, his face tense, his breathing heavy. ‘Ainsley?’

      ‘Yes. Oh, yes.’ She dug her fingers into his shoulder, remembering just in time Felicity’s caution. ‘But, Innes, be careful.’

      ‘Of course. I promise. Always.’ It pained her that he believed there was a need, then he tilted her farther, his hands cupping her bottom, and she forgot about it. She wrapped her legs around him, anxious, feeling anxious, not nervous, but like a runner, wanting to run, wanting to be off, wanting.

      And then she was. Not running but better. He thrust inside her, and she met him, held him, thrust back. He thrust again, and she met him again. Not a race. But like a race. Inside her, tensing again, pooling, holding him tight. His chest was slick with sweat. The firelight danced over the planes of his chest. His eyes, midnight-dark eyes, were on her, watching her. She did not look away. She looked down at their bodies. At the dark, hard peaks of her nipples, at the shudder of her breasts as he thrust, and the entity that they were beneath his kilt, joined, flesh melding into flesh, heat and sweat. And then it happened, different but the same, a climax pulsing, and she heard him cry out, and pull away from her, chest heaving, as his climax took him, too.

      * * *

      Afterwards, she wanted to laugh with the sheer delight of it. Fun and pleasure, Felicity had said, and she had been right. ‘Astonishing,’ she said to Innes, and he laughed. ‘I had no idea,’ she said, and he laughed again, only it was a different kind of laugh. There was pride in it, and something proprietary. She would have minded that, under any other circumstances. Tonight, on what Madame Hera would no doubt call a voyage of discovery, Ainsley found that there was something rather exciting about a man in a kilt who looked as if he would like to mark every bit of her body as his own. She wanted to do the same to him herself.

      She kissed him, tangling her tongue with his, pressing her breasts into the still-damp skin of his chest, relishing the frisson that the contact made, the roughness of his hair on the sensitive skin of her nipples. She straddled him in the firelight, as he had straddled her, and felt the stirrings of his member against her. Deciding that this time she wanted to see for herself, she undid the ornate buckle of his belt. The kilt fell open. She watched, fascinated, as he thickened and hardened before her eyes. She wanted to touch him, but this was quite new territory for her. Even the wanting was new.

      Innes was leaning up on his elbows. She could see the ripple of his belly muscles as he breathed. His eyes on her. Waiting for her. ‘Tell me what you want,’ she said, an echo of what he had said, wanting to know, sure that what he wanted so too would she.

      ‘Touch me.’ She reached for him, running a tentative finger down the sleek length of him. He shuddered. She did it again. A finger, from the thick base of him, to the tip.

      Innes’s chest rose and fell. ‘More,’ he said.

      She could guess what he wanted now, but she would not. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

      He knew she was playing. She could see he liked it. ‘Stroke me,’ he said.

      She did, feathering her fingers up and down the length of him. ‘Like that?’

      ‘No. You know what I want.’

      She leaned forward again, brushing her breasts against his chest. Her nipples ached. ‘Then tell me, Innes,’ she said, nipping his earlobe. ‘Tell me exactly what you want.’

      ‘Put your hands around me, Ainsley.’

      She was shocked, not by what he asked, but by the effect it had on her. She sat up, sliding against him so that the soft folds of her sex touched his body, enjoying the separate frisson of pleasure this sent through her. Then she did what he asked. She wrapped her hand around his girth, and stroked. ‘Like that?’

      He groaned.

      She did it again. ‘Like that, Innes?’

      ‘Yes. Oh, Ainsley, yes.’

      ‘Not like this,’ she said, squeezing him lightly.

      He swore.

      ‘Or like this?’ She slid herself against him. Her skin on his, her hand, her sex. Different textures. Same heat. She stroked. ‘Do you mean like this, Innes?’ she persisted.

      ‘You are a witch.’

      ‘A white witch, or a black witch?’ she asked, her fingers tightening and releasing, tightening and releasing.

      He put his hands around her waist and lifted her, pulling