He boldly tweaked a nipple with his fingers, then dragged his lips from hers, dipped down, so that he could kiss the swell of her breast. With his hand, he pulled one breast free, took it in his mouth.
“Oh!” she whispered above him. She rose up and arched her back a little, pushing her breast into his mouth. He teased her rigid nipple with his tongue and his teeth, sucking and nipping at her as he let his hands slide down her body, around to her hips, squeezing and pushing her against him.
With each nip of his teeth, Mared would gasp and arch her back again, until she was scarcely breathing at all. Payton rose up, his lips sliding up her bosom, to her neck, and then to her mouth again. He pulled her tightly to him, pressed her hips against him, her bared breast against his chest.
But his desire had grown to an ache to be inside her, and he felt only moments away from it. His heart forced his body to stop, for as much as he wanted her, he would not take her there on a sheep trail on the south side of Ben Cluaran.
He dragged his lips from hers, carefully pushed her breast inside her bodice as Mared’s head lolled helplessly on his shoulder, then buried his face in her neck and begged her. “Come home with me, Mared, come now, and let me give ye pleasure, lass,” he whispered thickly as his hand stroked the top her head, the silk of her hair, the curve of her waist into her hip. “Let me give ye the pleasure ye’ve dreamed of.”
His voice must have roused her, because Mared suddenly gasped and wrenched away, stumbling a little as she gaped at him, her hand on her ravaged breast. He could almost see her rise out of the fog of her own desire to stare at him in horror.
He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth as he watched her fumble with her plaid and dip down to retrieve her hat and basket and his crop. “Diah,” she muttered as she straightened. Her gaze, swimming with lust and confusion, roamed the length of him, pausing at the sight of the bulge in his buckskins before rising to his face once more.
He held out his hand to her, palm up, silently offering himself to her.
Mared stared at his hand, at his silent offer, and her eyes, the most arrestingly beautiful eyes in all of Scotland, suddenly welled with tears. “Diah,” she whispered again.
“No, no, donna cry, lass…ye know I’ve long adored ye,” he said softly. “Carson a tha eagal ort?”
“I am no’ afraid!” she snapped in response, and slapped the crop into his open palm. “But I’ll never fall into yer trap!” she said angrily, and turned on her heel and walked away from him down the glen, her dogs eagerly taking up the walk with her.
Payton stood there, watching her march away, her hair floating behind her, her hat firmly on her head, the basket bumping mercilessly against her hip. He stood there until he could no longer see her, long after his body had ceased to ache.
It wasn’t until Cailean whimpered at him that he moved.
Four
A fter that blistering kiss, Mared walked down the sheep trail in a daze, her body and her mind unable or unwilling to move past the sensation of Payton’s mouth on her bare breast.
Oh aye, he’d kissed her, hadn’t he? It was the sort of kiss she’d believed she’d never know, deep and long and…and if it hadn’t been for his iron grip on her, she would have melted into a warm little puddle and drowned in happy delirium.
It was as extraordinary as it was unexpected, and had sent a stream of hot desire through her, climaxing in a raw longing that scorched her from the inside out. Her heart had thrashed about in her chest and she hadn’t been able to breathe, gasping for air like a drowning woman into his mouth, bringing his breath deep into her lungs.
The memory of it made her shudder violently, and impetuously she turned and looked up the trail. He was standing exactly where she’d left him; his legs braced apart, his crop hanging upside down in his hand.
Mared quickly turned around again, lest he see how he still made her skin burn, even from this distance—but her conscience squeaked a faint protest.
She crushed whatever protest her conscience thought to make, for that was Payton Douglas standing on the trail above her, a man who had almost single-handedly ruined her family by introducing sheep to the hills around the lochs. The same man whose ancestors had tormented hers, whose family had betrayed the Lockharts in more ways than could be recalled, and who would force her into a marriage for a mere three thousand pounds, denying her the chance to live her life on her own terms.
To her, that meant away from here and the curse.
It hardly mattered that the sight of him made her heart pound like a bloody drum and her knees tremble with a weakness that infuriated her. Or that when he smiled, when he gave her nothing more than a smile, her blood seemed to simmer in her veins.