A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [408]
“Claire?” There was a stirring in the dark beside the bed, and Jamie’s head rose up, a presence more sensed than seen, so dark was the shadow there by contrast with the moonlight.
A large dark hand groped across the quilt, touched my hip.
“Are ye well, a nighean?” he whispered. “D’ye need anything?”
He was tired; his head lay on the bed beside me, his breath warm through my shift. If he hadn’t been warm, his touch, his breath, perhaps I wouldn’t have had the courage, but I felt cold and bodiless as the moonlight itself, and so I closed my spectral hand on his and whispered, “I need you.”
He was quite still for a moment, slowly making sense of what I’d said.
“I’ll not trouble your sleep?” he said, sounding doubtful. I pulled on his wrist in answer, and he came, rising up from the pool of dark on the floor, the thin lines of moonlight rippling over him like water.
“Kelpie,” I said softly.
He snorted briefly in answer, and awkwardly, gingerly, eased himself beneath the quilt, the mattress giving under his weight.
We lay very shyly together, barely touching. He was breathing shallowly, clearly trying to make as little obtrusion of his presence as possible. Aside from a faint rustling of sheets, the house was silent.
Finally, I felt one large finger nudge gently against my thigh.
“I missed ye, Sassenach,” he whispered.
I rolled onto my side facing him, and kissed his arm in answer. I wanted to move closer, lay my head in the curve of his shoulder, and lie in the circle of his arm—but the idea of my short, bristly hair against his skin kept me from it.
“I missed you, too,” I said, into the dark solidness of his arm.
“Will I take ye, then?” he said softly. “D’ye want it, truly?” One hand caressed my arm; the other went downward, starting the slow, steady rhythm to ready himself.
“Let me,” I whispered, stilling his hand with my own. “Lie still.”
I made love to him at first like a sneak thief, hasty strokes and tiny kisses, stealing scent and touch and warmth and salty taste. Then he put a hand on the back of my neck, pressing me closer, deeper.
“Dinna hurry yourself, lass,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I’m no going anywhere.”
I let a quiver of silent amusement pass through me and he drew in a deep, deep breath as I closed my teeth very gently round him and slid my hand up under the warm, musky weight of his balls.
Then I rose up over him, light-headed at the sudden movement, needing urgently. We both sighed deeply as it happened, and I felt the breath of his laughter on my breasts as I bent over him.
“I missed ye, Sassenach,” he whispered again.
I was shy of his touching me, changed as I was, and leaned with my hands on his shoulders, keeping him from pulling me down to him. He didn’t try, but slid his hand curled between us.
I felt a brief pang at the thought that the hair on my privates was longer than that on my head—but the thought was driven out by the slow pressure of the big knuckle pressing deep between my legs, rocking gently back and forth.
I seized his other hand and brought it to my mouth, sucked his fingers hard, one by one, and shuddered, gripping his hand with all my strength.
I was still gripping it sometime later, as I lay beside him. Or rather, holding it, admiring the unseen shapes of it, complex and graceful in the dark, and the hard, smooth layer of callus on palms and knuckles.
“I’ve the hands of a bricklayer,” he said, laughing a little as I passed my lips lightly over the roughened knuckles and the still-sensitive tips of his long fingers.
“Calluses on a man’s hands are deeply erotic,” I assured him.
“Are they, so?” His free hand passed lightly over my shorn head and down the length of my back. I shivered and pressed closer to him, self-consciousness beginning to be forgotten. My own free hand roamed down the length of his body, toying with the soft, wiry bush of his