Wishing For A Highlander by Jessi Gage

Author:Jessi Gage
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Lyrical Press, Inc.
Published: 2013-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Since he’d met her, Malina had felt like a wee, delicate flower to Darcy. Oafish as he was, he’d been afraid of hurting her merely by being near her. But holding her like this, in a big, soft bed in the peaceful dark, she didn’t feel so wee. The vast difference in their heights didn’t seem to matter so much when they lay down together, and the darkness hid the fragile lines of her delicate face and frame.

She felt solid and sure in his arms. She felt like she belonged there. Like a cog rotated into a companion wheel, Malina fit him perfectly. She moved him.

The skin of her bare shoulders cooled the sensitive underside of his forearm. Her belly, rounded and firm with the bairn inside, pressed the hard muscles of his stomach, and he lamented the thin fabric of her shift between them. Her breath ruffled the hairs on his chest, and he became jealous of those hairs for being so near to that lovely rosebud mouth. Bath fragrances from her time with the Lady Murray made their bed smell like a bower lined with blooming honeysuckle.

He craved her kisses like the crops craved spring rains. Would she give him those lips freely if he tilted her face up and took them? He thought she would. Judging by the way he’d found her tonight–his cock throbbed beneath his doubled-up plaid at the memory–he thought his Malina would give him everything if he asked for it. And he’d take it if he could. But he couldn’t. And so he didn’t ask for her kiss or anything else.

Instead, he merely held her, and when the feel of her, so cool and soft and trusting in his arms, had his body strung so tight he didn’t think he could bear it, he forced his thoughts to the mystery of Malina wanting him. His da had taught him that proper women didn’t much care for meeting their husbands’ bodily needs except mayhap on rare occasion, but that a good wife offered her body willingly nevertheless just as her husband faithfully provided her food, shelter, protection, and leadership. His da had said only wanton women craved a man’s attentions. “Wed a woman like that,” his da would say, “and ye’ll be a cuckold in no time.”

Anya had been a wanton woman, which was why he’d avoided her for so long. If Malina desired him, did that make her wanton? He didn’t wish to think of her as such. With her sweetness and bravery and her selfless spirit, she was nothing like Anya. And yet she had gotten with child without a husband. Mayhap she had been wanton and she was trying earnestly not to be any longer. Or mayhap she wasn’t wanton at all but merely wished to meet the bodily needs she assumed he had, as a good wife should.

He should explain to her that she didn’t need to fash about that particular duty. But something in the way she clung to him told him she desired him beyond a wife’s duty.

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