The silence between them was not uncomfortable. No, it was charged with the dance of intimacy, all the words they did not say.
Freya’s tongue flicked out between her lips, moistening them. His gaze lowered, inadvertently taking in her beautiful mouth, that full bottom lip.
He wanted to kiss her. Again.
He started, in an attempt to offer a reply of some sort, unsure of what to say.
Freya put a finger to his mouth. “If ye apologize for the kiss one more time, I'll no' ever kiss ye again.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she rose on her tiptoes and caressed his mouth with hers. Her face was cold from the chill in the air, but her lips were warm, her tongue hot.
God, her tongue. She stroked inside his mouth, brushing his tongue with her own and setting off an explosion of excitement. Anticipation. Want.
His body prickled with desire and he found his hands curling into her hair, pulling her closer against him. She pressed her body to his, her hips meeting the spot where arousal grew hard and insistent.
Lust pounded through him and echoed in his ears with a steady roar. If his behavior was feral, Freya did not seem to mind. Rather, she matched his excitement with a frenzy of her own.
Her hands moved in a restless, aimless path over his back, his arms, his chest. His abdomen.
A low groan escaped deep in his throat. His hands shifted under her cloak so his palms could glide over her narrow waist and up to her breasts.
His fingertips skirted over the line of her bodice. A swell of flesh met his blind touch, firm and round. Freya moaned and pushed her breasts toward him.
The chaste life he had been so proud of now worked against him, welling against the dam of his control like a raging river. He didn't know how much longer he could fight the torrent of lust, of need.
Or if he even wanted to.
CHAPTER TEN
Ewan's body burned with a fire unlike any other he'd encountered before. He'd been with women in the past, of course. Not many, and only ones who were unwed and not virgins. Women who understood his inability to offer anything other than a solitary night.
Lust had been a basic need fulfilled - an itch scratched until the next time it chafed again.
But Freya, whose shapely, naked body had dusted his fantasies like sugar, who shared his bed and whose presence kept him from sleeping, was different. The woman turned a needful itch into so, so much more, into something maddening.
He stilled in his discovery of Freya's body under her cloak. If he did let this continue, he might not be able to stop.
She grabbed her bodice and jerked it downward so the heat of her freed breasts met his fingertips.
He sucked in a breath and allowed himself to be led into an empty stall. His body went hot despite the cold, burning with an anticipation he could not snuff. A quiet click met his ears and the cloak Freya wore fell away. The conservative bodice remained pulled low, revealing the beauty of the breasts he'd but glimpsed before.
Her rose-colored nipples had drawn into taut buds. With a groan, he ducked his head and sucked the first one into his mouth. He flicked his tongue over it repeatedly until Freya squirmed against him, frustrated.
He eased her skirts up and let his fingers trail up the smooth path of her inner thighs to where the juncture between her legs grew warmer and warmer until it was hot. He slid his middle finger along the slippery slit between her legs before gently probing within.
Freya gasped and her legs bent, as if they meant to buckle. He clasped her waist with his free hand and gently eased his finger deeper inside her while finding the swollen bud of her sex with his thumb.
She clutched at his cloak for a long moment before jerking it from his body. No sooner had it fallen from his shoulders when her fingers pawed at his leine, and it too joined the discarded cloak. The cold he hadn't felt before bathed his skin in the most delicious contrast. Hot bodies and cold air, a private act in a public enough place, his wife and yet not his wife.
“My bodice.” Her voice was husky with lust, a voice meant for the bedroom, for love.
He switched his attention to her other nipple, cradling the heaviness of her breast with one hand while fumbling with her lacings with the other. Finally, he caught the dangling end and tugged it free. He straightened and captured her lips while his hands snagged and pulled repeatedly at the bindings of her bodice. Ewan sucked Freya's full lower lip into his mouth and gently bit down. She hissed her pleasure and their breaths mingled, sharing between them the little air left.
“Here?” he groaned. “In the barn?” Even as he spoke, he drew the bodice off her body.
She reached behind her back to undo her skirts. “Ye'd rather do it in the silence of the home with everyone having tea below, wondering at all the curious sounds?”
“Ye raise a good point.” Ewan tugged at his belt and his kilt fell away.
Freya’s gaze eagerly grazed down his body, and she drew in a slow breath. “God, ye're a beautiful man.”
She slipped down her skirts, revealing the wool stocking still drawn up past her knees. Never had wool stockings been so alluring as those clinging to the long slender legs of Freya Campbell.
“Ye're mighty bonny yerself, wife.” He swept her in his arms, her skin hot against his, warming him in a deliciously intimate way. He drew her down to the ground, on the makeshift bedding created by their abundance of discarded clothing.
Something pinched at his waist. The bullet wound?
The thought entered his mind once before Freya opened her legs beneath his hovering form and stared up at him with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. No longer feeling the pinch, he eased on top of her and let his mouth caress hers. His cock throbbed as though it would explode, pulsing with such greed. It was impossible for him to find her center without guiding himself toward her with one hand.
He pressed the head of his cock against the slick wet heat of her and rubbed it up and over her, readying her. Her hands curled into fists against the clothing she lay atop. Then he thrust in - hard and deep.
Freya gasped sharply. Not with lust, but with...pain?
He stilled, his cock buried inside the wet grip of her. He longed for the continual stroke of her silky sheath, and his back muscles ached for movement. “Am I hurting ye?”
Freya blinked up at him. “Ye're no' hurting me.” She flexed her hips, drawing him closer.
He groaned and thrust deeper inside her. Freya's head lay back and a soft moan escaped her parted lips. His body tingled with sensations until they threatened to overwhelm his mind. Hunger and pleasure and lust mixed into something bigger than even he could control.