“Hold me,” he said roughly. “Hold me tight and put yer mouth against my shoulder,” he said, easing himself down to his elbows. “And know that I love ye, aye?”
Mared wrapped her arms tightly around him, closed her eyes, and put her face to his shoulder. Payton held her tightly to him, but she had the impression that his efforts to restrain himself, to move slowly with her, were taking every bit of his strength. He stroked her hair, whispered in her ear that he loved her once more, and thrust powerfully into her.
Her cry of pain was muffled by his shoulder, and he stroked her hair, her shoulder, her face. “Easy,” he murmured, “rest easy, leannan,” kissing her eyes and her lips. “The pain will be gone soon, m’annsachd, beloved.”
The pain did begin to ease as her body adjusted to him, and she thought it a miracle that a man and woman could fit like a hand and glove, and when he began to move so seductively inside her, tantalizing her with the breadth and the depths to which he smoothly stroked, Mared was amazed at how bottomlessly intimate this single act was.
Now she understood.
Now she knew what he’d meant when he said he’d always be a part of her. At that magical moment, she could not imagine ever being apart from him at all.
His strokes lengthened, and her body seemed to know inherently how to respond, for she was starting to move with him, her hips lifting to meet his thrusts, her knees squeezing around him. Payton groaned; his breath was coming in gasps, his strokes had deepened within her, and he suddenly came up on his elbows, his eyes wildly roaming her face, stroking her brow and her cheeks, kissing her passionately as he drove into her, over and over again until he closed his eyes and found his release with a powerful thrust and a strangled cry.
His release was hot and potent; she felt him fill her completely, felt the fluid slide deeply inside her as he murmured her name. With one last shudder, he collapsed beside her, gathered her tenderly in his arms and kissed the top of her head. “Mared,” he whispered into her hair. “Tha gaol agam ort.”
She loved him, too.
Twenty-four
T hey lay in the bed as the candles melted away, holding the world and their past at bay for a time, engaged in a gentle exploration of one another, both physically and mentally. It was a slice of peace and contentment neither had ever known, a feeling of being one with another person that, in the light of day, they both might have sworn was impossible.
While Mared giggled, Payton helped her dress before dawn and, with a kiss, sent her hurrying back to her room at the other end of the castle before anyone was about.
He dressed, too, and packed his things. They were leaving for Eilean Ros that very morning, and he bade Alan and Charlie to hurry things along, for he wanted to be home, where he believed that his dreams would finally come true.
On that bright, sunlit morning at Castle Leven, Payton truly believed that Eilean Ros would finally be filled with laughter and love and wee bairns underfoot. What had happened between him and Mared last night had the might of a sea change, and while he had not had an opportunity to fully absorb it, he believed in its power.
He even thought the sun was an omen. The early autumn was usually quite rainy, but the weather had held for his cousin’s wedding and had dawned clear and bright for their journey home. He believed that the sun was an indication that God was smiling on him. Personally.
He said his farewells to his family, caught Mared’s eye and winked as she dutifully boarded the smaller coach, and told the coachman to make haste, for he wanted to be home as soon as possible. He and Mared had agreed that they would ride separately in their departure from Castle Leven, for it would not do to have any of the servants or relatives believe something had occurred between them during the journey. As they set out, Payton anticipated paying a call to her family to tell them the happy news, then perhaps rounding up the staff for a bit of a chat before making a public and formal announcement.
When their little caravan stopped for the night, Payton tried to linger at the coach to speak to Mared, but his good and loyal staff would not hear of his helping, and he felt compelled to go inside the inn and make the arrangements, lest they begin to suspect something was amiss.
And even later, when he had a dram of ale in the common room, he could not seem to catch Mared without the ever present Una. He resigned himself to the idea that he would have to wait until they reached Eilean Ros the next evening before he might touch her again.
So therefore, when the second coach threw an axle pin the next morning, Payton was not as agitated as he otherwise might have been, for he saw a golden opportunity when Mr. Haig, the coachman, announced that he could not mend the axle without a new pin.
“Then take Charlie and Alan with ye into the next village,” Payton responded easily, withdrawing his purse and a few shillings. “I’ll remain with the women.”