Their glazes locked and held.
Her cheeks were flushed, her lips pink and puffy from his kisses. Her breathing was as ragged and choppy as his own.
Connor froze, waiting, wondering if she was going to stop him.
She didn't.
Instead, she surprised him yet again by blanketing the back of his hand with her smaller palm. Arching her back, she tugged his hand up, under the placket of her jack, until his fingers were splayed over the firm curve of her breast.
Their sighs came in unison, long and deep.
The bolt of sensation that shot through Connor was pure electricity. Och! but the woman was a bold one. Where most lasses hid their passion behind coy glances and subterfuge, Gabrielle Carelton bluntly let him know, in response if not words, exactly what she wanted.
The urge to strip away the material barriers between them became too great to resist. She wasn't going to stop him, Connor knew that for certain now. And, God help him, he was beyond stopping himself.
Grudgingly, he relinquished the intoxicating feel of her to go up on his knees and yank the tunic up and over his head. He tossed it aside and in an instant had spread himself on top of her again. The entire process took less time than for two heartbeats to melt together.
The damp night air should have been like a cold slap against his unprotected skin. If it was, Connor didn't notice. He had an uneasy feeling that the heat emanating from Gabrielle's full, lush curves could keep him warm for a lifetime. His left elbow levered the weight of his torso up, so as not to crush her. Pine needles and moss dug into his skin, but he barely noticed the nip of pain.
This time he grasped the folds of her tunic one by one in his fingers, then tugged upward. Inch by inch, her creamy skin was revealed to his appreciative eye.
"You're much too slow, m'lord," she said, her voice high and breathless.
His mouth went dry when Gabrielle batted his hand away, then, as he eased back to give her room, she sat up. After shrugging off the jack, she yanked her tunic up and off. Both garments joined his, forming shadowy heaps on the damp, pine needle-scattered ground. Her hair floated down over her shoulders like a silky black cloud; after a tantalizing, split-second view, the strands artfully arranged themselves to conceal the portions of her voluptuous body that Connor ached most to see and touch and taste.
He groaned low and deep, reaching for her, only to falter. Her skin was pale and tender and flawless in the muted moonlight; he had no desire to see such perfection marred by scratches and bruises, yet that was exactly what would happen if he surrendered to the almost irresistible urge to push her onto her back and cover her body with his own.
He went up on his knees, shifted until he was behind her. His finger trembled only a wee bit when he scooped the bulk of her hair up and draped it forward over her shoulder.
He leaned into her, gasping when his bare chest came into sizzling contact with her soft, naked back. A shudder rippled through Connor.
Like a rock being tossed into a summer-calm loch, tremors shivered through Gabrielle. His skin felt hotter than fire. His hands now flanked her hips, his fingers flexing tensely, digging into the woolen trews and the tender flesh beneath. Thick black hair coated his rock-hard chest; the strand tickled the skin between her shoulder blades and caused the most peculiar tingling sensation to burn all throughout her.
Her breasts felt heavy and full, the nipples rigid and overly sensitive from equal parts cold night air and sensuous anticipation. Gabrielle wanted to feel his hands on her there, feel the heat and pressure of his fingers and palms touching her. Her body ached for it so badly that she didn't think twice about seeking immediate satisfaction for the need. She reached down and loosened his hands from her hips, dragged them up over her waist. Higher.
The skin on his palms was battle-rough, but his touch was oh so very gentle. Gabrielle sighed her pleasure. The last thing she would have expected from The Black Douglas was gentleness. The hands that now cupped her breasts, the big palms that enticingly stroked her nipples, were rumored to have committed atrocious deeds. Feeling the way he touched her, she suddenly found that difficult to believe. Surely no man who could touch a woman with such tenderness could be as cruel as rumor said The Black Douglas was.
Rumor and truth. There was a difference. A large one.
While that difference had meant nothing to Gabrielle scarcely a month ago—she'd been as willing as anyone in London to believe the horrid ballads about this man; she'd had no reason not to—it meant a great deal to her now. For the first time, she wondered how much truth those Border ballads carried, and how much was pure exaggeration.
Connor's hands moved, and he began rubbing her nipples between his index finger and thumb, and Gabrielle abruptly lost the ability to wonder about anything at all. Anything, that is, except the white-hot excitement pumping through her. Anything except the way her mind was abruptly excruciatingly aware of every place where Connor's body touched hers, and every place his body wasn't touching hers—yet.
She was consumed by his touch; she couldn't think or feel beyond it. God help her, she did not want to!
Never the sort to throw caution to the wind, Gabrielle was astonished by her immediate, lusty response to this man. And exhilarated by it. More exhilarating still was the hungry, restless way his hands caressed her, as though he couldn't feel enough of her, wanted to feel more.
That the notorious Connor Douglas—heathen Scots Border reiver though he was—showed the obvious and intense desire to touch a woman whom Queen Elizabeth had likened to an "overstuffed goose" was heady knowledge indeed. It blotted out past pain—before now, an unimaginable feat—and filled Gabrielle with a warm, rich burst of satisfaction and pride. An undiluted surge of raw feminine confidence flooded through her.
The notorious reiver was kissing and nibbling the side of her neck, sucking patches of her flesh into his mouth and causing the most delicious pleasure-pain to sizzle inside her. Moaning softly, Gabrielle tipped her head to the side to give him better access, even as she tilted her chin up and cushioned the back of her head against the solid shelf of his right shoulder.
"How auld are ye, lass?"
His voice felt like a caress against her skin. "You don't know?" she asked.
"Should I?"
"Aye. You expended a great deal of effort, not to mention the risk you took, kidnapping me from your brother's hands. You've stated plainly that you intend to wed me in his place. Why you'd want to do that, I can't... nay, I don't want to know about. All things considered, I'd think you'd know all there is to know about me."