Chapter Thirty-seven

Maddy was certain she couldn't take any more of him. But when she saw him visibly struggling to control himself - the lines around his eyes were tight and his jaw was clenched - she wanted to try for him.

"Ethan, I don't know what to do." It was one thing to see others in this position, but another to try it. She felt awkward and unsure.

"Pull up and go down, deeper," he said, his voice husky and breaking.

"Show me how."

"If I touch you, I'm goin' tae lose control." His hands clutched the headboard behind him, the muscles in his arms bulging with strain. His breaths were ragged, his chest rippling with power. "I'm burnin' tae wrench you down my length...." His dark eyes met hers. "Bury it in you so deep..."

"You won't. I trust you. Just please show me." Even to herself, she sounded panicked.

"Ah, lass. This is supposed tae be enjoyable," he said in a tone incongruous to his straining body.

She reached for his hands, shocked at how badly they shook when she placed them on her bottom. He groaned and gave a seemingly involuntary buck of his hips. His fingers splayed out, clutching her as he drew her up...then back farther down.

Pleasure rocked through her. "Oh! That feels...nice."

Once more up and down farther still. She kept expecting pain, but there was none. The stretching sensation was rapturous, a fullness that felt so necessary. He was right - she did need this.

"I'm going tae make you come first if it kills me," he said, his words hoarse. "Work your knees wider open."

When she did, he pressed deeper, but there was no pain - just the opposite. "Ethan...it feels so good inside me," she whispered in a wondering tone.

He could only grunt in answer, shuddering beneath her.

Maddy rose up and leaned forward, her hands clutching his shoulders, taking as much of his length as she could.

Her shining hair curled about her face and her brilliant eyes were free of fear - and full of trust. She was so lovely that she awed him.

Catching her gaze, he rasped a vow to her in Gaelic, a promise of self in the old language, binding them together forever. Though she couldn't understand the words, she seemed to grasp the meaning - she cupped his face with her wee hands, leaning down to kiss him tenderly.

When she rose up once more, she said in a throaty voice, "I want more of you, Ethan." She reached behind her, making him hiss a breath as she drew her nails up his inner thighs before cupping his sack. She slid him a satisfied grin, and he knew she'd felt his cock pulsing inside her.

"I want tae give it tae you." He put his knees up behind her, reaching his hands to her exquisite breasts, covering them as he pinned her against his bent legs. Holding her sides, he thumbed her jutting nipples over and over. Once she was helplessly wriggling on his shaft, he dug his heels into the bed and gently bounced her body. She cried out and threw back her head, her hair cascading over his legs.

Forcing himself to slow their explosive joining, he eased her down. As he caressed her clitoris with the pads of two of his fingers, she rocked her hips on him gingerly, as if testing the sensations. When his fingers slid back and forth with her wetness, she began to undulate atop him, her movements growing faster and faster. Moaning, wanting to come, working for it, she rode him with quick snaps of her hips, shocking him until he could barely grate in amazement, "Ah, you clever lass."

Only half his shaft was inside her, and he knew she could take more - but...have to be good...better than before...

Yet he didn't know how much longer he could last against this kind of pleasure. "Come for me," he commanded, rubbing her fast.

When she did, the force of her contractions gripped him, instantly robbing him of his seed. He exploded inside her, bathing her womb in heat. Over and over, he pumped into her.

She went boneless on top of him, her heart pounding against his. Even as after-shudders wracked him, he continued to thrust up into her, still hard.

Unwilling to give this up, he turned her to her back, still driving into her body. "Can I take you again?" Somehow the need was building, growing worse than it'd been before.

She gazed up at him not with disgust, not even with mere desire. Somehow he'd gotten a woman like her to fall in love with him. "I'm yours, Ethan...anything you want is yours."

The need to take her furiously, to brand her forever, lashed him like a whip. The urges were about to rule him. "Doona want tae hurt you. But...I need it...I need tae do it hard."

She rolled her hips up to him. "Whatever you need."

Maddy almost took the words back when she saw his eyes darken, burning with lust.

He cupped his hand around her nape and drew her up. "I'll never let you go," he grated, leaning down to take her lips. "Never..."He was losing control - she could sense it, could feel it. His massive body loomed over her, his muscles tight and slick, from his corded neck all the way to the sharp indentations leading from his waist to his groin.

He pressed one of her knees to her chest, leaning his torso against the back of that leg, wrapping his arm around it, clutching it as he thrust. He placed his other hand low on her belly to thumb her clitoris, making her writhe in bliss.

Whenever he rocked into her, he pushed against her leg, spreading her wide. He seemed to crave the feeling of his chest rubbing against it.

But soon, his rhythm turned furious. Every time she thought he couldn't go deeper, he'd plunge more powerfully, making her cry out in surprise and pleasure.

This was even more than what she'd dreamed it would be like with him. She was captivated by the wild look in his eyes and the feel of his body working against her clutching nails or rippling under her sweeping palms. When he didn't have his firm lips on her neck or breasts or mouth, they were parted with ragged breaths.

This was worth the wait a thousand times over....

Hands clamped to the backs of her knees, he bucked hard between her parted thighs, again and again until her head thrashed on the pillow. She fought the pleasure, wanting this to last forever. But under the steady onslaught of his body, she waged a losing battle.

Just as she realized she was going to climax once more, he bit out, "Want tae feel you comin' again."

When she did, crying his name, a desperate, guttural sound broke from his chest. His eyes met hers as he poured himself hotly inside her. His voice a rasp, he declared, "Mine." And then he collapsed atop her.

Breaths harsh against her neck, arms wrapped around her, he held her too tightly, but he was shaken by what had occurred between them.

I never knew.

As she ran her nails up and down his damp back, she whispered in an awed tone, "Oh, Scot, you've redeemed yourself completely." He clutched her tighter, wondering if he was ever going to be able to release her.

This is what it's all about.

He'd been so ignorant before, scorning what he could never comprehend without giving himself up to it.

Ethan understood that what he'd experienced in the past had been so lacking compared to what Maddy gave him - it was as if he'd been eating all his life without ever having been hungry or ever having tasted a morsel.

Now he starved. And feasted.

And he never wanted to go back.

Chapter Thirty-eight

When men like us change, it's profoundly....

Hugh had been right, Ethan thought as he lay in bed, holding Maddy as she slept. Rain poured outside in a black winter's night, but they were warm in their bed in front of a fire.

The peculiar thing was that Ethan didn't feel like he was changing so much as reverting to normal - even though he'd never been considerate or amiable. He just found it easy with her.

When Ethan was with her, hefelt like a husband. Maybe even...maybe even agood one.

After their wedding, Maddy had asked him if they could postpone journeying to the Highlands until the spring. She'd told him she liked it at Carillon and wanted to stay for the winter. Easy enough.

For the last two months here, she'd filled his life with excitement, zest. He still didn't understand how those traits hadn't been trampled from her, beaten down by years of hardship, but he was thankful they hadn't. She truly seemed to have shucked off the mantle of La Marais, and rarely had nightmares any longer.

Each night, she slept in his arms, and oftentimes she would stretch out her little body over him and fall asleepon him. Which he especially liked because he could hold her in place and enter her so easily.

Whenever he had to leave for an afternoon to work on the estate, she always ran out to greet him when he returned, flying into his arms, hitting his chest hard, her face beaming. "I missed you," she would breathe against his neck as he caught her to him, even if he'd only been gone a few hours.

Last week, he'd said, "Maddy, do you know what it's like, seeing you run to me?"

She'd drawn back and given him a wry half grin. "Do you know what it's like not being able to wait for you to finish the short walk to the door...?"

Ethan was always thought to be bitter and cold - so why did he find himself chasing his wee wife around the house at least once a day as she squealed with laughter?

In fact, their home was filled with laughter. She'd made it inviting. She'd even made friends with all the neighbors. It seemed as if invitations arrived every day.

She was like a bridge for him to others. He figured people assumed he was like her - affable and fun-loving. He had no doubt that when he brought her to his clan, she'd affect how he was viewed there as well.

Maddy especially liked a widow named Agnes Hallee, who lived down the coast with a brood of six mischievous bairns. Maddy enjoyed playing with the children - flying kites, taming and collecting stray pets, outrunning the most ornery peacock - reminding Ethan of how her own childhood had been cut short....

Sometimes he doubted his decision to hide the past from her and was plagued with the need to confess. But she was so damned happy, telling him daily how much. Why ruin this?

Sometimes, he fooled himself, forgetting that all this could end.

When he forgot, he was happier than he'd ever been in his entire life. There'd been another time he'd done this. The week before his father died, his da had promised Ethan he'd take him hunting in the Hebrides for his fourteenth birthday, just two weeks away.

Even after he'd seen his father's body, Ethan had kept forgetting. For days, he'd awakened each morning, bounding out of bed with a grin on his face, because it was one day closer to their trip. Then everything would return in a rush, and he'd be shamed to have forgotten it, to have felt happiness in the wake of such a tragic loss.

Now Ethan stared at the ceiling, squeezing Maddy closer to him. Those were the last times he'd ever been content before now.

But he couldn't imagine any way that she might find out. All the people involved that night were either long gone from England or dead. As an extra precaution, Ethan had fired the land agent at Iveley - who, predictably, wasn't enterprising or particularly hardworking. Then Ethan had instructed his attorney to deed Iveley to Maddy and do whatever he could to obscure the chain of ownership. Only after the new deed was in place had Ethan hired another steward - a young man with limited experience, but who was by all accounts exceptionally dedicated and hardworking.

In any case, no one with any connection to his past knew where he and Maddy were. Few knew at all. Corrine did, but only because Maddy had sent her and Bea money. He'd insisted on that. If Maddy hadn't had Corrine to look out for her in the beginning, she could have...died. The two were her family, and he was ready to support them as he would a wife's blood kin.

Now that Madeleine was his, he was determined that he would spoil her so terribly he might begin to make up for all he'd done to her in the past. He bought her delicacies, constantly plying her with food, and every day here she grew even more stunning, gaining flesh in all the right places. She'd beamed with pride once her ring finally fit.

When he allowed himself to think that his wife had been starving in a slum because of him, he took the rage that clawed at him - rage at himself - and suffered it as his penance. Then he would redouble his efforts to make her content.

"You know what I miss?" she'd told him a few weeks ago. "My horse at Iveley. She was so striking with her sorrel coat and expressive eyes. I swear she loved me as much as I did her."

So, naturally, he'd bought Maddy a sorrel mare, because he was like all those other besotted bastards out there, ready to slay dragons for their wives for even a hint of a smile. He took her riding every day.

His new horse, bought from the same stable as hers, was yet another stalwart gelding - which had taken a strong and unwavering dislike to Ethan. As ever, animals either loved him or hated him. Though Maddy had avowed, "I think all animals hate you - except cats." At his expression, she'd hastily added, "but feline approval is important."

At every opportunity, that sodding gelding strove to throw him, buck him, or scrape him from the saddle by slicing against a tree. Which made Maddy howl with laughter so hard, she had to hang onto her horse's mane to keep from falling out of her saddle. She laughed until even he would crack a grin.

Though he feared he was buying Maddytoo much, he couldn't seem to stop. He could easily afford it, and there were so many things that she'd needed and had been forced to go without. She should own such a collection of clothing and jewels that he would have to wait for her to get ready as she chose among them. If there was one thing Ethan knew husbands did, it was to wait on wives to get ready.

When he'd bought her a pearl choker a couple of weeks earlier, she'd said, "Ethan, this is all a tad...overwhelming." Her smile had been wan.

"I thought you wanted a rich husband," he'd said. "This is what rich husbands do."

"I didn't particularly want a man with money to get jewelry and trappings of wealth. I only wanted security and stability. For myself, and, well, for the children I want to have...."

Bairns.What if I canna give them to her? he thought yet again, tensing beside her.

Ethan had had that bloody curse hanging over him for so long that he'd begun to worry that he hadn't gotten Madeleine pregnant yet. And Ethan was somewhat annoyed by the fact that Court had been able to accomplish something in three weeks that Ethan hadn't managed in months.

Not that Ethan had ever expected to have bairns before. He hadn't - but for some reason, he'd begun tofeel that he would with her. Some thought would flash in his mind as though this were a foregone conclusion.

While Maddy still slept, he eased her to her back. Tugging the cover from her, he studied her naked body. He rubbed her flat belly and pictured her big with his child, lush and full, andlooked forward to it.

Ethan grew hard as rock at that image of her his mind conjured up. It was so primal - so stirring - that he felt possessive to a killing degree and aroused to an undeniable one.

The idea of planting his seed in her, then protecting her, keeping her happy and nurturing her as she grew it...

She woke to him pinning her wrists above her, entering her as she gasped. She moaned as he took her harder and harder, until he was plunging into her in a frenzy,trying .