Idiot, she said to herself. He doesn’t want me like I want him. She held out her hands to allow him to pull her up. “Yes. The cold water will be like an ice pack and help the swelling go down.”

“Aye.” He hesitated to take her hands, though, as if he thought it might not be a good idea for her to stand in the swiftly moving water when she was partly incapacitated.

But she knew she could do it. At least she was bound and determined to try. When he didn’t take her hands quickly enough, she placed them on either side of her and pressed against the earth. Which sent a ripple of pain into her ankle, and she moaned a little.

He quickly moved in close to her and leaned down to lift her at the waist, but as soon as he did, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and again their gazes met. She lifted her face to his and kissed him.

His mouth was hard and firm and still. For a moment, she thought he didn’t want her. That she’d attempted to seduce a laird, for heaven sakes, when they probably were used to doing the seducing on their own terms with whom they wanted. That’s when she again noticed how cloudy with lust his eyes were. How his hands had stilled on her waist. How his lips had remained noncommittal.

She wasn’t the kind of woman who forced herself on an unwilling man, ever. Yet by the way he looked at her and the virile smell of him, she knew he was just holding back. And that made her want even more for him to acknowledge the craving he had for her just like she had for him.

She swept her lips over his mouth, kept her arms locked around his neck, closed her eyes, and savored the feel and smell of him. Piney woods, manly, wolfish, delicious. She concentrated on his mouth and licked the seams, her heart pounding, his beating at a faster pace. She felt the gradual change in him, the way his lips took on a life of their own, sweeping across hers very much the way she had his, tongue teasing her lips open and pressuring her to give herself to him.

Luring, hard, wanting.

But he wasn’t gentle like she’d been. He angled his mouth over hers and kissed her lips with passion and strength and determination. It was as if he’d been holding back because he couldn’t control the primal need once it was released. And she welcomed it. Welcomed what his kissing did to her. Fed into desire so strong, her body melting with shivers of pleasure, that she wanted him like a wolf wanted a mate. She couldn’t have him in that way. But she could still satisfy some of the pent-up urge as she kissed him back with the same desperate desire, like a woman who’d been without a man for way too long.

He rubbed his cheek against hers, first on one side, then the other, his stubble lightly abrasive, but she didn’t care. She yearned to have more of him, more of his heated kisses, the way his mouth molded to hers, claiming her for his own; the way his lips swept gently and roughly across hers, willing her into submission.

His tongue licked the seam of her mouth, and then when he found her opening to him, he entered, his breath heavy, his body hardening, his hands tightening on her shoulders. She savored the velvet warmth of his tongue, the stroking heat, the simulation of what he would do if he could thrust into her as her mate. She moaned with the thought, tangling her tongue in a gypsy dance, tightened her arms around his neck, claiming his mouth, him, if only for the moment.

Hungry, greedy for his touch, she encouraged his deepening kiss, his hands hard on her shoulders, holding her as if he never wanted to let go. Her hands were on his waist, clinging to the fortress of a man, hard and hot and sexy.

But before she was through, before she was ready to end the kiss, she felt his body tense slightly, felt his mouth pulling away a hint. No! She wanted more. Much, much more.

His breath heavy, he broke from the kiss, smiled tightly, and pulled her from the ground, careful not to let her foot touch the soil. “Your ankle?”

Chapter 10

Julia bit back her sexual frustration.

It almost seemed comical, as if she had forgotten her mission to see the falls in a kiss that had sent her soaring to the moon and falling back to earth again in a matter of seconds at the edge of the stream. But it wasn’t over. She could feel it in the way Ian’s body was hard with desire and her nipples were firm and her breasts swollen, the way she ached deeply for fulfillment, the way she wanted him to keep on kissing her until they were too exhausted to do anything else. But he was putting on the brakes, showing her that he did have some control when she seemed to have lost all sense of hers.

She tried to quash the irritation with herself that she’d let her emotions get the better of her, when she never usually did. Not with men. Not like this.

Silent, he kept an arm around her waist and held on tight as she stepped gingerly into the icy water. The rocks were slippery, but Ian’s strong grip kept her on her feet. The dogs raced in and out of the water, snapping at the spray and running about them in excited circles. She almost envied them—the fact they were dogs and didn’t care whether they were Irish or American or English or Scottish. That titles and land and power didn’t mean anything to them. But dogs mated with any other dog, and that didn’t agree with her. No, wolves had it right as far as choosing a mate for life.

“They like it here,” she said as Ian wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back against his chest tightly so she could see the falls while the water iced her swollen ankle. But more than anything, her attention remained riveted on his touch. She couldn’t help it. He was too damned sexy.

“One of their favorite places to run,” he said, his voice low and gravelly, appealing and hot.

His arm moved higher under her breasts. The cold of the water seemed to fade away. With her eyes closed, she concentrated on the feel of him pressed against her back. He was fully aroused, and she recalled the way his wet trousers had clung to him in the pub. He was really well hung.

He leaned down and nuzzled her neck with his whiskery cheek. She melted like a stiff rag dipped in water. He said something in Gaelic, a whisper against her ear that sent tingles of anticipation zipping through her system. Love words? Curses? She didn’t know.

And didn’t care.

His mouth nibbled her ear while his hand slid over a breast. Sweet heaven, she was already getting wet, and it had nothing to do with standing ankle deep in the water or the light spray from the waterfall.

With her back to his chest, she was at a disadvantage. No way to kiss him or hold him close. She was at his mercy. A new experience for her. She wanted him, wanted to kiss him, to bare her skin to him, to feel him thrusting deep inside of her, to satisfy the deep-seated ache that was growing with his simple touches. Yet for their kind, there was no way to go that far without becoming committed to each other for life. And there was no way that was happening.

She did the only thing a hot-blooded female could do when backed up against a hard-bodied hunk who was stirring up her hormones to firestorm proportions—rub up against him. Give him a little back.

He groaned. Then his hand tightened on her breast, his tongue licking her neck, and his free hand moved down her thighs, then between her legs, and cupped her tight against him. She stilled.

She’d awakened the Highland wolf.

The pleasurable feeling of his touch, the way he showed her how much he wanted her, increased the unbearable ache between her thighs. She pushed her back harder against his rigid staff, and his fingers rubbed between her legs, pressing the jeans fabric and her silk panties between her feminine folds.

She moved, wanted to be free of her clothes, to feel him thrusting inside of her, deep, rigid, free, and feral. He breathed so hard, his heart pounding, hers beating just as fiercely, as he continued to stroke her that the roar of the falls seemed to fade into the distance. She’d never experienced anything as erotic as this when she was still wearing every stitch of clothes, minus her shoes and socks.

“Bonny lass,” Ian whispered in her ear, his voice husky and sensuous with its Scottish burr.

She spread her legs, hoping she wouldn’t push against him too hard and make him lose his balance on the slippery rocks. But he seemed surefooted and, like the castle itself, steadfast and immovable.

Except for his hands, which were doing sweet things to her body. First, his fingers pressed erotically against the fabric between her legs. And then, his free hand slipped under her sweater until he’d reached her bra and tugged it down, exposing her breast to the underside of the soft cashmere sweater.

Again, he spoke in Gaelic, and she managed a weak smile between clenched teeth as she rode the rising tidal wave of pleasure, his fingers rolling the nipple between them while he continued to stroke her. The roar of the falls in front of them drowned out her heavy moans.

“Are you talking dirty to me?” she murmured, so breathlessly that she didn’t think he could hear her.

He chuckled and nipped her ear, but he continued to press to his advantage, his fingers shifting from between her legs and beginning to work on her zipper. The fastener slid downward, and he jerked her jeans past her hips as if impatient to get on with business. But he left her panties in place until his fingers pushed the panel aside at the crotch so he could access her eager wetness.

If he hadn’t been half holding her up, she would have sunk into the churning water at her feet. But his arm tightened under her breasts and his other hand plied her with hard, urgent strokes, dipping inside and then slipping out to stroke her some more.

She could barely breathe now, could barely stand as his member strained against his trousers and pressed hard against her back. She felt the end coming, so close, so very, very close that she could almost taste the beauty of the rising climax, the need so great she could hardly stand the sweet ecstasy, desperate for release.

Like the beauty and power of the falls, she felt the climax shooting through her, a heavenly exquisite release like no other. She melted in pure satiated exhilaration in his arms. Limp and without body, she didn’t think she could make it back to the bank of the burn, much less to the castle. Ripples of climax filled her with a wondrous sensation, and she savored every moment.

He helped tug her clothes back in place and fastened her zipper.

As if he knew she was unable to make it to the bank on her own, he lifted her in his arms and carried her back. “I believe we might be late for dinner,” he said, with a half smile that garnered a smile from her own lips. Dinner could wait an eternity.