The Raider (A Highland Guard Novel) Read online

  He closed the door behind him and strode toward her. “I might ask you the same thing.”

  He was close enough to see the flush heat her skin and the pulse in her neck begin to quicken. She was nervous. But whether it was his presence in her chamber, the fact that he stood close enough to smell the mint of the rub she’d used to clean her teeth, or something else, he didn’t know. “Why were the shutters open?”

  He was watching her closely, closely enough to see the flutter of that quickened pulse before she replied. “The room was warm, so I cracked one of the shutters. It must have blown open while I slept. I’m sorry to have woken you, but as you can see, there is no cause for your concern.”

  A quick sweeping glance of the room seemed to confirm her words. The iron brazier was stocked with peat and burning in the far corner of the room, the small table set out with the items he’d asked Kirkton to procure for her next to it, candle on the nightstand, bed against the window…

  Everything was where it should be.

  But something wasn’t right. He reached for the latch of the shutters behind her. She hitched her breath as his hand crossed right in front of her, grazing her chest. He jerked at the contact, every nerve ending snapping to attention, but didn’t look at her.

  Leaning over, he peered outside. It was a mistake. Her soft feminine scent, which to that point had been faint and gently teasing, turned deep and penetrating, engulfing his senses and making him feel as if he were drowning.

  How anyone could smell that good after two days in a saddle and being trapped in a burning building, he didn’t know. It must be some secret women’s magic to drive men insane.

  His body was pulled as tight as one of MacGregor’s bowstrings as he quickly scanned the darkness. Though he didn’t see anything, his instincts were telling him that something was wrong, and they’d saved him too many times for him to ignore them.

  The boy. “Where’s Roger?”

  Though it was dark, he could see her eyes flicker before darting to the adjoining garret. “Sleeping.”

  He started to move toward the door, but she stopped him with the soft press of her hand on his arm.

  Jesus! His blood hammered. She was too close. Touching him.

  “Please, don’t wake him. He’s so tired and needs to rest.”

  Their eyes met. Something passed between them. Something that stopped his breath, stopped his heart, and made the floor shift under his feet.

  He was hot, hard, and poised on the edge of a precipice, struggling to hold on. Struggling not to touch her. But this might be a battle he could not win.

  His heart pounded, restraint making his muscles flex. The weight of inevitability came crushing down on top of him, a weight too heavy for even him to hold off. He wanted her so intensely he could taste her on his tongue.

  Her eyes fell to his mouth. Her lips parted. She leaned closer.

  The subtle invitation was too much to resist; the battle was lost. His mouth fell on hers with a deep groan. For a moment it was just like the first time he’d kissed her. He felt the same unexpected ripple of shock at how good she tasted. How soft her lips were. How the innocent tremble of her mouth under his made him ache to be the one to teach her about passion.

  But then it changed, because this time he didn’t pull back. This time he didn’t fight the urge to deepen the kiss. This time he slid his arm around her waist, dragged her up against him, and let himself sink into the honey softness of her mouth to taste her fully. This time he caught the tremble of her lips with his and showed her how to open for him, how to take his tongue in her mouth and let him stroke her.

  Aye, he stroked her. With long, slow pulls of his tongue until she stroked him back. The first flick of her tongue against his made him groan. His knees almost buckled.

  It was incredible.

  Bone melting.

  Blood heating.

  Mind blowing.

  About the best damned thing he’d ever felt. And with every stroke it got better. Hotter. Even more incredible.

  The role of tutor was not one Robbie had assumed before—preferring experienced women in his bed—but he found himself reveling in it, enjoying her soft moans of awakening as if they were his own.

  He liked knowing that this was new to her. That she’d never let a man kiss her like this before. That he would be the one to inflame her passion for the first time.

  He felt an unexpected wave of tenderness that gave him the strength—even when other parts of his body were urging differently—to go slowly.

  Just a kiss, he told himself. Nothing he hadn’t done countless times before.

  But he was fighting new sensations of his own. Kissing her was…different. It wasn’t just that she tasted incredible, that her lips were about the softest damned things he’d ever felt, that the tentative stroke of her tongue against his had made him as hard as if she’d licked his cock, or that he felt like he was burning up and drowning at the same time, it was also the sense of peace that came over him. Real peace. For the first time in a long time—hell, he couldn’t remember the last—the restlessness inside him eased. At that moment, he knew he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

  He felt a pleasure so engulfing it seemed to drown out everything else. All he could think about was how soft her cheek was in his hand, how she smelled like rosewater, how good she felt pressed against him, and how he could go on kissing her like this forever.

  If only he weren’t so hot. If only his blood weren’t roaring through his veins and his heart weren’t hammering in his chest. If only those soft little mewls of pleasure weren’t reaching down to grab him by the bollocks and giving him a tug. If only her hands weren’t on his shoulders, her nails digging into the muscles, a visceral marking of her growing pleasure. If only her breasts weren’t crushed against his chest and his cock weren’t throbbing hard against her stomach. And if only her hips hadn’t started to move.

  Aye, especially that. The tentative press, the sweet grind, the slow circling of her hips against the part of him that he was doing his damnedest to ignore set off something loose inside him. The faint voice in the back of his head that wanted to make her his turned to a loud roar. The knowledge that she wanted him as much as he wanted her snapped whatever rein he had on his control.

  Rosalin hadn’t meant it to happen, but when it did, it felt so inevitable—so destined—that she wondered that it had taken so long.

  The magic and wonder, the sense of stunned shock, she’d felt the first time his lips had touched hers was nothing to the perfect myriad of sensations that crashed over her when he kissed her, really kissed her.

  She felt enveloped in heat, drowned in the heady taste of whisky, and possessed by emotions she didn’t fully understand. Fierce emotions. Poignant emotions. Intense emotions that made her breath catch, her heart jump, and her body feel as if it were melting into a pool of heat.

  She’d been kissed since that first time, but never like this. Never so thoroughly, in a way that took her breath away. Never with such all-encompassing need, such possession, such skilled seduction, and such tenderness.

  That was the biggest surprise of all. That this fierce warrior, this ruthless enforcer, this man who stormed and pillaged his way across the countryside, could kiss so tenderly. That the soft strokes of his mouth and tongue could entreat and not command. That this man of incredible strength could be so gentle. She would never have believed it. But here she was half-kneeling on her bed, half-cradled against his chest, being kissed as if she were the most precious thing in the world.

  His hand cradled her jaw, the big callused fingers that could grip the hilt of a sword with such deadly purpose caressing her cheek with the gentle stroke of a mother to a newborn babe, as he coaxed her mouth open to the deft plunges of his tongue.

  Deft and slow, and knee-weakeningly sweet. The shock she might have felt at the intimate invasion was blunted by the sensation of utter rightness. There was nothing more natural or perfect than the warm slide of his t