“There is one advantage to keeping my beasts chained, you know,” he murmured, his lips brushing hers. He straightened, drawing her with him into her bedroom. “It means I can take my time.”
Slowly, he eased down the zipper of her dress. Her breath caught as he ran his hands up her exposed back, tracing the gentle dip of her spine. He worked the soft, clinging fabric of the dress down, uncovering first her plump, enticing shoulders, then the delicious swells of her breasts. He couldn’t resist nuzzling between them, nipping gently at her creamy skin as he pushed her dress off completely, letting it puddle on the floor around her feet.
“Hayley,” he breathed, tasting her, inhaling her, trying to memorize every glorious inch of her body. “Mine.”
He wanted to kneel to unpeel her tights from her gorgeous thighs, but pain screamed through his bad leg when he tried to bend it. The long walk back to the house from the pub had made the joint seize up.
Evidently noticing his wince, Hayley stretched up on her toes to kiss him. “I’ll do it.” Peeking up at him a little shyly through her lowered eyelashes, she slipped the tights off, leaving her standing in only a lacy bra and matching panties.
At the sight of her, all the breath left his lungs, as if he’d been punched in the stomach. His cock strained, desperate for her. “I’ve changed my mind. I can’t take my time.”
Her lips curved in a naughty smile.
“Tough, because now I want to take my time.” She ran her fingers under the looped fabric of his plaid, tracing the lines of his chest. “I’ve never seen you naked. And I’ve always wondered what a Scotsman wears under his kilt…”
Griff couldn’t help chuckling as she tried to slide the plaid off his shoulder, only to be baffled by the way it was tied. A traditional great kilt really wasn’t something a novice could dismantle. “Ah, you do realize that I’m wearing eighteen feet of fabric?”
She cast him a half-exasperated, half-amused glare, still wrestling with the mysteries of the garment. “Then I guess I’ll really be taking my time.”
“Here.” He undid the outer belt, then guided her hands to the thinner, hidden belt that held the kilt pleated. He grinned at her as the heavy folds of fabric fell away. “Fortunately, my ancestors were very impatient men.”
“Well you can just be patient a bit longer,” Hayley retorted tartly. With teasing slowness, she started to undo the buttons of his shirt.
A growl rose in his throat as she worked her way down. Even with his beasts tightly restrained, every slight brush of her fingertips against his bare skin made his cock throb with need.
“Okay, now I am a little disappointed.” Hayley had encountered his briefs. “So the rumors aren’t true?”
“Actually, they are,” he gasped as she knelt to slide them down over his hips. The cool air was almost agonizing on his freed cock. “Don’t tell anyone I was bringing shame on my forefathers.”
Still on her knees as she stripped him of his last few garments, Hayley’s eyes gleamed slyly up at him. “My lips,” she murmured, sliding her hands up the backs of his legs, “are sealed.”
He groaned as her warm, soft lips enfolded the head of his cock. He wound his fingers into her silky hair, fighting for control as she took him deeper. Her tongue curled around the underside, flicking exquisitely over his most sensitive areas.
“Hayley,” he growled, every muscle in his abdomen tight and rigid as he desperately tried to restrain himself. “Stop. I can’t—can’t wait.”
In answer, she closed her mouth tight around him, sucking hard. His hips bucked as she milked him urgently, her fingers digging into his thighs. He couldn’t hold himself back any longer. Hands clenching around her head, he yanked her closer, his thrusting cock entirely filling her welcoming mouth.
White-hot sparks burst in his vision as he came hard, emptying himself into her. She took every drop, her tongue teasing and flicking in encouragement until he was utterly, completely spent.
Shuddering with the aftershocks of pleasure, he relaxed his grip on her head. She came up gasping for air, but with an expression of intense, smug satisfaction. She gave his cock one last parting kiss—it burned like a brand on his oversensitive, still-engorged head—before allowing him to lift her to her feet again.
“I don’t have condoms,” she admitted. “And I was fairly certain you wouldn’t have restocked either.”
He kissed her, deep and lingering, tasting the faint traces of his own salt on her tongue. At the back of his mind, his lion and eagle flung themselves against the walls of his control, intensely aroused by that intoxicating mingling of their scents. Walled off from his consciousness, his beasts hadn’t partaken of his own release. From the ominous pain gathering inside his skull, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold them much longer.
“Lion or eagle?” he murmured against her lips. “I have to let them one of them out now, or risk them both breaking free of their own accord.”
Hayley leaned back a little to look at him curiously. “Does it make a difference? Which one you release, I mean.”
“Very much so.” He trailed his finger over the curve of her breast, savoring her sharp intake of breath. “And since you’re right—I don’t have condoms—it had best be my eagle. My lion can be a bit…dominant.”
From the way her pupils went wide and dark, he thought she rather liked the sound of that. His senses sharpened as he allowed his eagle to soar free, and he abruptly knew just how much she would like that. He knew other things too—how the nape of her neck begged to be seized in his teeth, how her thighs trembled to feel his caress, exactly where he should be gentle and where he should be rough…
“Oh,” she gasped, as he started to put his observations into practice. “I—I think I’m going to like your eagle. The lion will have to wait for another time.” She looked up at him with sudden fierceness, her determined expression at odds with the obedience of her body as he pushed her down onto the bed. “Because there are going to be other times, Griff. Lots and lots of them. Promise me that.”
“Aye,” he said softly, before he covered her mouth with his own. “I promise.”
And in that moment, he made his decision. He knew that he would do whatever was necessary to keep that promise.