The Hawk: A Highland Guard Novel Read online

  She gave a gentle squeeze and tug. He made a rough sound of half-pleasure, half-pain. He clenched and started to pulse.

  She jerked back her hand. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

  He shook his head, blood raging like an inferno in his ears. He wanted to come so badly he could barely think.

  “God, no.” His eyes burned as he gazed into her worried face. “It feels perfect.”

  She smiled, causing the heat in his blood to spread to his chest. She touched him again, and he sighed into her hand, the relief acute. He leaned back and closed his eyes, trying not to think about what she was doing to him, while savoring each dark sensation. The warmth. The tentative brush of her fingertip as she traced him from root to the top of his thick, sensitive head. And the exquisite pressure when she finally gripped him in her hand.

  Her hand skimmed the waistband of his braies. His heart pounded with anticipation. He held his breath, praying to those gods again.

  They must have been listening.

  “Do I …?”

  He nodded, his body clenched in a vise, waiting. She fumbled with the ties. Christ, how could someone so bloody efficient take so long?

  At last she succeeded in releasing him and his erection bobbed free.

  Her eyes widened. He grew even harder under the heavy weight of her stare. Finally she ventured a glance at him. “You are far more powerful-looking than other men I’ve seen before.”

  He managed a strained smile. This was one stick where he wasn’t going to come up short. “And you have a good basis for comparison?”

  She blushed so furiously, he would have laughed if he wasn’t in such pain. “Of course not! But I have brothers, and I’ve seen enough men relieve themselves outdoors.”

  He was too aroused to tease her anymore. “Put your hand on me, Ellie.”

  She eyed him cautiously and tentatively reached out to touch him. He groaned at the skin-to-skin contact, and then at the wonder in her eyes.

  “You’re so soft.”

  Hardly. But he didn’t have the strength to quibble about semantics.

  She explored him again, her maidenly gasps and little observations driving him mad. He had to grit his teeth against the urge to thrust up in her hand and give over to the powerful lust raging inside him.

  When she rubbed her thumb over his tip, easing a thick drop from the sensitive head, and instinctively moistened her lips, it was all he could take. Exploring time was over.

  He grabbed her wrist and looked into her eyes. “You’re killing me.”

  She looked a little too pleased. “I am?”

  Vixen. He covered her hand with his. “Stroke me, Ellie.”

  He showed her how to milk him with her hand, to apply just the right amount of pressure, and to find his rhythm.

  He could say one thing for her, she was a damned quick learner.

  A few hard pumps and he felt the pressure intensifying at the base of his spine. His bollocks pulled up tight. His stomach muscles clenched. He strained against the release, not wanting it to be over too quickly, wanting to drag out every moment of pleasure.

  But he was right there. “That’s it,” he ground out through clenched teeth. Christ.

  He tensed. He was going to come, releasing his lust the way he’d done countless times before. Then he made a mistake. He looked into her eyes and felt himself caught in a current far stronger than any he’d ever faced at sea. It dragged him under. He was drowning in a whirlpool of emotion too strong to resist.

  He felt connected to her in a way he’d never felt before. It was primal. Intense. And more powerful than he thought possible.

  It was too much. He felt exposed. As if she’d just seen a part of him that he’d never revealed before. He wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t.

  His heart pounded. His chest squeezed. He gave a hoarse cry and thrust deep into her hand as the pressure exploded and the deep, pulsing spasms tore from his loins.

  She held him, holding his gaze the entire time, not letting go, draining every last ounce of pleasure from him. He collapsed in a spent, boneless heap, feeling as if he’d just finished one of MacLeod’s training exercises. When his breathing and heartbeat returned to normal, he lifted his head to find her watching him with an adorable expression of wonder on her face. She looked as if she’d just unlocked an exciting mystery.

  His chest swelled with tenderness. He tipped her chin and looked deep into her luminous, green-flecked hazel eyes, dropping a soft kiss on her lips. “Thank you.”

  She blushed with pleasure. “I never realized …”

  She didn’t finish her thought, but he knew what she was going to say. That it could be like that.

  It wasn’t. Not for him. He’d hadn’t been that aroused in … hell, he couldn’t recall ever being that aroused. His little nursemaid was turning out to be a very pleasant surprise.

  And she wasn’t done yet.

  “Can I do that again?” she asked with all the bright-eyed exuberance of a bairn at Yule.

  He groaned. Was she trying to kill him? “A man needs a little bit of time to rest, lass.”

  But when he pulled her in his arms and started to kiss her again, sliding his hand between her legs and stroking her to another climax, it turned out he didn’t need nearly as much time as he’d thought.

  It had to be the sauna.

  Fifteen

  The next day, Ellie lay curled in Hawk’s arms, her head resting against the warm, hard wall of his leather-clad chest, awash in the delirious afterglow of their shared release. She listened to the fierce pounding of his heart and thought it the most wonderful sound she’d ever heard.

  She did this to him. Yesterday hadn’t been her imagination. That a girl like her could hold a man like him in the palm of her hand—literally—and make him wild with passion was a heady discovery. She’d become almost drunk on her first taste of sensual power. Drunk enough to sneak away like a trollop in the middle of the day to the barn for another illicit liaison.

  It was wicked. Wrong. A sin against God and a betrayal of the pledge she’d made to Ralph. She knew it, but when he’d come up behind her in the garden and whispered in her ear to meet him in the barn, her body had flooded with all those deliciously dark sensations. Her conscience had warred with desire for all of thirty seconds. The temptation was even stronger now that she’d had her first taste.

  She assuaged her guilt by telling herself that she was doing no lasting harm, that after years of perfect propriety and attending to the needs of everyone else, she deserved these few selfish, stolen moments of happiness. But she knew she was only trying to justify something that could not be justified—no matter how right it felt.

  And it did feel right. Looking into his eyes as he touched her—as she touched him—as they brought each other to the highest peak and then catapulted into a realm of unimaginable ecstasy, she knew she would never feel anything like it again. Perhaps this had been a mistake. For now she would have to live with the knowledge of what she was missing.

  But she could not regret it.

  She snuggled closer to him and sighed, wanting to hold on to this moment for as long as she could. Who would have thought that Lady Elyne de Burgh, one of the greatest heiresses in Ireland, could be content to lie in a dilapidated barn on a pile of hay, the musty scent of livestock filling her nose, bundled in the steely embrace of a pirate?

  But never had she felt so cherished and protected—or so happy.

  She could almost convince herself that this meant something. That these feelings they aroused when touching each other were not just lust. That when she looked into his eyes he felt the same intense, heart-tugging connection that she did.

  Almost.

  No matter how right it felt, she could not let herself forget that it was only temporary and nothing serious. Passion for passion’s sake. But it was getting harder and harder to remind herself of that, when her own feelings were in such turmoil.

  She didn’t know how this could have happ