He ran a caress up her thigh and settled his touch at the heart of her. His fingertips slid easily up and down her crease. She was ready for him, just as he’d known she would be.

She gasped and clutched his arms with both hands. “Logan . . .”

“Just this, mo chridhe. Just touching.”

In acquiescence, she let her head fall forward to rest on his shoulder. Her breathing had grown rough, needy.

He parted her folds with a gentle touch, slipping a finger into her heat. God, she was tight. So tight, and so wet. She gave delicious little gasps of pleasure as he slowly worked his finger in and out, delving deeper by incremental degrees. When he slid fully inside and the heel of his hand made contact with her mound, her hips bucked. He kept still, giving her a moment to adjust to the sensation, grinding his palm against her most sensitive place.

And then he went still, waiting.

Come along, then. You’re a clever lass. You know what your body wants.

Soon enough, she began to roll her hips. Riding his finger. Rubbing her mound against the heel of his hand. Chasing the sensation, just as he’d known she would.

Her shameless pursuit of pleasure made him wild. His cock pushed against the rough weave of his plaid. Every whisper of friction sent a thrill to the base of his spine. He’d never craved release so desperately in all his life. Not even as a randy youth.

Small puffs of her breath caressed his neck. She lifted her head and looked up at him with those dark, sleepy, enticing-­as-­anything eyes. Her shy, pink tongue darted out to moisten her lips.

He couldn’t keep silent any longer. Words started to tumble from his lips. Tender words, crude words. Words he would disclaim when he recalled them in the morning. All in Gaelic, thankfully.

She would have laughed to hear him confessing how often he’d thought of her in his absence. She would have doubted when he said no other woman had made him this achingly hard. And if she ever heard him comparing her dewy lips to the first blush of heather on a Highland summer morn, it would ruin everything.

But he couldn’t help himself.

She made his blood catch fire.

“Maddie a ghràdh. Mo chridhe. Mo bean.”

She lifted her arms and laced her fingers at the back of his neck. And then she drew him forward, drowning him in her kiss.

Her hips rolled, and he moved with her, adding a second finger as he plunged into her eager body again and again. Her tongue tangled with his, searching and desperate. Her fingernails bit into his neck.

Logan thought he might spend right then and there.

No sooner had he thought it than she shifted her weight, leaning back on the table. Her thigh came in contact with the aching curve of his cock. And even with the layers of velvet, linen, and wool between them—­that, plus the pulsing heat enveloping his fingers, was enough to send him right to the edge.

He fought the urge to grind against her until he reached climax. He hadn’t come into the folds of his kilt since he was a lad of fifteen, and he wasn’t about to do it now. To lose control that way . . . it would be too much like surrender.

He was in command here.

“Come, mo chridhe,” he whispered. “I need to feel you come for me.”

Her body went rigid, save for a delicious tremor in her thigh that let him know her peak was near. He kept his rhythm steady, ignoring the soreness in his wrist and the ache of unspent need in his groin.

She bit her lip, and her eyes squeezed shut.

“That’s it. Let it happen.”

And then he felt it. Her body seizing around his fingers, shuddering with the bliss of orgasm. The cries of pleasure she made were timid and subdued, but no less arousing for it.

When she slumped against him, limp with pleasure and damp with sweat, he told himself the balance of power had been restored.

He slipped his fingers free of her body and pulled her shift back down over her knees.

“The other day,” he said, caressing her back, “you told me Becky had made up a bedchamber for me.”

She nodded drowsily against his chest.

“I’ll sleep there tonight.”

“No, no.” She lifted her head. “Logan, you needn’t be alone.”

“You just told me you still wanted time.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Her hand pressed against his chest. “There’s more than one way to share pleasure, and there’s more than one way to share a heart.”

“I’ve told you—­”

“And you lied. You loved someone once. Enough to want to marry her. Enough to carry a memento of her with you for years, through battle and worse.” She pounded his chest with the flat side of her fist. “I know there’s something in there, you stubborn creature. That beneath that hard exterior, you’re nothing but squish. You’re not fooling me.”