The Reiver Read Online Free Page A

he set about undressing her. She blushed when he removed her shirt and covered her breasts with her hands, but he pushed them away with a gentle shake of his head.
    “Do not be ashamed, runag . They are just as I imagined. Small and firm and the perfect size to fit in my mouth.”
    “In your mouth?” she asked, her eyes wide with puzzlement.
    Her innocence was adorable. After such a difficult life, that she should come to him so obviously untouched seemed something of a miracle. That she had come to him at all was miracle enough.
    He bent his head and encompassed the entire, lovely rosebud of one breast in his mouth. The salty tang of her skin was in perfect harmony with the lemony scent that clung to her.
    “Oh,” she sighed in wonderment as he flicked his tongue across the hardening nipple.
    “You see. Perfect, just as I said.”
    The remainder of her garb came off with greater ease and less resistance. As each inch of her was revealed, he found more beauty to explore with his hands and mouth—the velvet-skinned expanse of her belly, the swirl of dark red-tinged curls at the apex of her thighs, the unexpected length of her slender yet muscular thighs and calves.
    His own clothes he removed with even greater alacrity, nearly frantic in his need to lie with her, naked skin to naked skin. When he knelt between her thighs and eased his way inside her, he shook with the effort to maintain his control, fearful both of hurting her and of reaching his pleasure before he found hers.
    He needn’t have worried. She wrapped her arms and legs around him the way she’d wrapped herself around his heart and urged him on. They rocked together as though they had made love like this hundreds of times before, each attuned to the other’s rhythms and sensations as both climbed toward the precipice and then tipped over it, in unison, into rapture.
    The only thing that marred his pleasure was that, when she cried out his name, he could not call out hers in return.

    “You shall have to give your name for the wedding ceremony, you know,” he observed some time later.
    She lifted her head from its cradle in his shoulder and looked down at him, her expression guarded and a little sad. “You know I cannot,” she whispered.
    “What if I promised not to seek revenge upon your family for the raid?”
    Her eyebrows flew up her forehead. “You would do that? For me?”
    He stroked her hair. “Aye, lass, I would. In fact, perhaps I should be thanking them.”
    “Why?”
    “Because if they had not tried to reive my cattle that night, I would never have met you.”
    He pulled her head down toward his and gave her what he meant to be a sweet and reassuring kiss, but the instant their mouths touched, his intent was entirely forgotten. Her lips parted, ardent and inviting, and her tongue darted daringly into his mouth. He groaned as a fresh wave of desire spiraled downward through his loins. With no small effort, he broke the kiss and forced his raging need back under control. While he could make love to her a half dozen more times without consequence, the same could not be said for her. She’d be sore enough on the ride back to Lochmorton Castle as it was.
    As he drew away, she reached up and traced her thumb across the scar that marred his left cheek. “Did it hurt terribly?” she asked.
    He recognized that she was changing the subject, but decided to go along with it. “Aye. Like fire.”
    The memory of that day was as crisp as if it had happened yesterday, and yet as confused and chaotic as the events themselves. His father had insisted that they join their cousin, John, Lord Maxwell, in his campaign against Sir James Johnstone. With decades of enmity between the Maxwells and the Johnstones, there’d been no doubt that the battle would be bloody and ugly.
    What both his father and Lord Maxwell had failed to anticipate was the formidable advantage the Johnstones’ familiarity with the terrain of Dryfe Sands would give them despite