“Walk,” Cearnach warned and shook his head.

“Were you like that at his age?” Elaine asked, her eyes and lips smiling as she wiped the water from her face.

Cearnach chuckled. “And then some. Though I would have helped you to remove your sweater and towel-dried you.”

She laughed, then began washing the mother dog. “Not if a man older than you was watching, and he had some interest in the girl who was more the older guy’s age.”

“It would depend,” he said, joining her, unable to help his feral gaze from roaming over her sexy, wet body.

He finished washing Sheba, then rinsed her off and took her into the drying room. When Elaine joined him, he reached over and shut and locked the door.

Elaine frowned. “Logan can’t get in.”

“That’s the general idea.”

Chapter 20

Elaine eyed Cearnach with intrigue as he secreted her away in the dog kennels’ drying room. Smiling at her with lustful intent, he shifted his gaze to the wet sweater clinging to her breasts. She smiled back at him. “What do you have in mind?”

“Helping to dry you off a wee bit, lass,” he said with a devilish glint in his eyes.

All the dogs were curled up on mats, some of them mostly dry and sleeping, some licking their wet fur, others sitting and watching Cearnach and Elaine, their tails thumping enthusiastically on their beds. Cearnach drew off Elaine’s wet sweater and tossed it on a bench. She felt wickedly exposed as he towel-dried her breasts while warm air from the heater vents swirled around them. The smell of citrus shampoo and wet dog and a couple of wet shifter wolves filled the room.

“You’re nearly as wet as me.” She reached up and touched the damp shirt outlining his hard muscles. Wanting to expose his brawny chest, she’d tugged his shirt barely past his navel before he took charge.

He yanked his shirt off and tossed it on the bench with hers. She picked up another clean towel and ran it over his beautiful pecs and abs—beach-body perfect, making her think of him lying on Pensacola Beach with her, enjoying the sun and surf.

“I’ll never wash the dogs again without thinking of you in that wet sweater, or like this, half naked in the drying room.” He cupped her breasts, then ran his fingers over the extended nipples, taut and sensitive. Her breathing suspended as she gloried in the sweep of his fingers against her flesh. “There’s a room off this one for the person who stays with the dogs when they have new pups. The sheets have been changed since no one’s slept in here for the last month.”

Thank God for that! She could envision pushing a wolfhound off its damp bed to make room for two wolves who wanted to find a soft spot to make love—yuck!—or having to run back to his bedchamber in the castle in wet clothes in the chilly breeze in front of those working on the grounds and inside the stone building. Cearnach kissed her lips gently, then moved her into the room where a twin bed covered with a light blue blanket and comforter sat against a wall, a wooden table and a chair beside it. Shades were pulled closed over the one window, and she noticed a sink and toilet in a half bath off the room.

Just as Cearnach reached for Elaine’s jeans zipper, they heard movement beyond the locked drying-room door. They froze.

“Cearnach, I’ve got the lady’s clothes for her,” Logan said, trying the door to the drying room, the doorknob twisting back and forth. “Cearnach?” Then the lad grumbled under his breath, “She is too your girlfriend.”

Cearnach grinned down at Elaine. “Leave them on one of the dry benches, Logan. You can come back in half an hour and exercise the dogs,” Cearnach said.

Elaine and Cearnach waited, listening, until they heard Logan slosh across the wet floor, then slam the door to the kennels.

Cearnach smiled and shook his head.

Elaine pulled off her jeans in a hurry, worried someone else would interrupt them, as Cearnach quickly shucked the rest of his clothes. Then he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed.

Pulse quickening, she smiled up at him, loving the heat of his naked chest pressed against her, the feel of his hard muscles bunching as he laid her on the bed.

He stretched out on top of her, claiming her—all that sinewy strength and virile heat rubbing against her. Kissing her mouth, slowly, luxuriously, he moved his body against hers, working his stiff cock against her mound. She groaned with feral need, wanting him inside her now.

She slipped her arms around his neck, pulling him close, holding him against her. Spreading her legs, she willed him to enter her, her tongue teasing his smiling lips, his eyes already clouded with desire. She loved his passion, the way he couldn’t seem to get enough of her, the way he loved her just as much as she loved him.

“Elaine,” he groaned as she pressed her tongue into his mouth. She felt the heat between them building, his body rocking against hers, his erection pressing against her damp heat, urgent, relentless, not entering her yet, but close.

So close.

She angled her hips, trying to capture his erection so that she could sheathe the throbbing part of him that would join them together as one.

His hands shifted again to her breasts, cupping, massaging the flesh. His fingers toyed with her nipples, making them hard and sensitive and just as needy for his touch as the rest of her. She arched against him, aching for him.

He bent his head and licked a nipple, then the other, while her hands moved down his back, stroking, touching, loving the feel of his heated skin, his hard-working muscles.

Then before he seemed ready, she bent her knees, digging her heels into the mattress, willing him to penetrate her. Cradled between her legs, he reached between them and stroked her sweet spot, harder, faster, until she was soaring toward the burning hot sun, ready to explode. Then it hit her. Shudders of fine ecstasy filled her body as her heat enveloped him.

Sweet wolf, he was everything she ever wanted in a man, someone who could give her the sun and moon and love her as she did him.

She wrapped her legs around his back, locking her ankles together, urging him to fill her with his cock, to find his own release deep within her.

He slid slowly inside her, saying her name in his sexy Scottish way, which turned her on all the more. He drove deep, trying to satisfy the savage hunger, then pulled out slowly. As soon as she lifted her hips to take him back inside her, he moved inside her again, deepening the penetration, burying himself to the hilt while he kissed her neck and throat and chin.

Her pelvis met his as they continued to rock together, the bed squeaking, their hearts beating frantically as he pinned her against the mattress. Urging him on, she felt his body working, his thick cock sliding into her. Pleasure. Rapture.

All of a sudden, he held still, buried deep, and then he increased the plunges, racing to the end. Taking her with him. A starburst of delicious fulfillment shot through her as he spilled his seed inside her, jerking with release. She sagged beneath him, satiated as the waves of contractions moved through her, loving him and the pure joy of being with him.

He pumped into her several more times as if milking every last drop, depositing a wolfish treasure deep inside her, then moving around so that she could rest on top of him on the small mattress.

For a long while, he lightly stroked her arm as they lay there, their breathing ragged, their hearts beating wildly as they cuddled. She ran her finger over his chest. “What are you thinking about, Cearnach?”

He leaned down and kissed her head, then wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug. “How I should never have lost you the first time I saw you in St. Andrews. And how I’m going to love making up so much lost time between us.”

She couldn’t agree more.

Cearnach snuggled with Elaine, nearly falling asleep on the small bed, the warm air circulating around them. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been happier. But he had to get dressed before Logan returned to walk the dogs.

He again considered that bastard Rafferty and his crew. Elaine said she’d killed a couple of them that had been guarding her, but he couldn’t stop wondering what had become of the rest of them.

She kissed his chest and looked up at him. “What are you thinking that has you frowning so?”

“Do you know what happened to the rest of Rafferty’s men?”

“I’d heard that some had died at sea during storms, some due to encountering ships that had more guns, some due to hangings. Three were murdered near where I relocated. I don’t know about the rest. If they didn’t make the newspapers, I had no way of knowing.”

“The stolen goods your uncles had hidden?” He combed his fingers through her silky hair.

“They may be long gone by now,” she warned. “What was the merchandise that my uncles stole from your ships?”

“Pearls, twenty hogshead barrels of sugar, gold dust, indigo, silver plate, emeralds, silk. All very valuable back then. Some just as valuable today.”

“Oh,” she said.

“You had no idea?”

She shook her head. “I thought the joke might be on Robert if the treasure was something perishable, like the sugar. I can just imagine what centuries-old sugar would be worth. Are the goods so valuable now that you still want the treasure that badly?”

“Only to keep it out of Kilpatrick’s hands because he wants it so badly.”

“Why, after all these years, would they want the treasure? For me, I wanted to see what my uncles thought so precious that they risked their lives to obtain it. Like you, I agree that Robert doesn’t deserve it. So if anything, I want to keep him from having the spoils as much as possible.”

“I understand. The MacNeill merchandise might not have been hidden in Scotland, though,” Cearnach said. “It became my duty to learn why your uncles had sailed to St. Andrews when I witnessed what happened to them and to see if that shed any light on where you’d vanished to. Had they had business there or elsewhere? We assume that was just where they docked. Beyond that, they could have had business at some other location.”

She closed her gaping mouth, and he realized she really hadn’t known what her uncles had planned for her. Perhaps they had wanted to see their relations, ensure that one of them would suit her as a mate, and leave her with the family to give her a chance to be with someone other than Kelly.