I quivered and moaned then, my flesh clutching in spasms at the invading, battering presence. The movement went on, disregarding, on and on for minutes, striking me over and over with an impact on the edge between pleasure and pain. I felt dissolved, as though I existed only at the point of the assault, being forced to the edge of some total surrender.
"No!" I gasped. "Stop, please, you're hurting me!" Beads of sweat ran down his face and dropped on the pillow and on my breasts. Our flesh met now with the smack of a blow that was fast crossing the edge into pain. My thighs were bruising with the repeated impact, and my wrists felt as though they would break, but his grip was inexorable.
"Aye, beg me for mercy, Sassenach. Ye shallna have it, though; not yet." His breath came hot and fast, but he showed no signs of tiring. My entire body convulsed, legs rising to wrap around him, seeking to contain the sensation.
I could feel the jolt of each stroke deep in my belly, and cringed from it, even as my hips rose traitorously to welcome it. He felt my response, and redoubled his assault, pressing now on my shoulders to keep me pinned under him.
There was no beginning and no end to my response, only a continuous shudder that rose to a peak with each thrust. The hammering was a question, repeated over and over in my flesh, demanding my answer. He pushed my legs flat again, and bore me down past pain and into pure sensation, over the edge of surrender.
"Yes!" I cried. "Oh God, Jamie, yes!" He gripped my hair and forced my head back to meet his eyes, glowing with furious triumph.
"Aye, Sassenach," he muttered, answering my movements rather than my words. "Ride ye I will!" His hands dropped to my breasts, squeezing and stroking, then slid down my sides. His whole weight rested on me now as he cupped and raised me for still greater penetration. I screamed then and he stopped my mouth with his, not a kiss, but another attack, forcing my mouth open, bruising my lips and rasping my face with bearded stubble. He thrust harder and faster, as though he would force my soul as he forced my body. In body or soul, somewhere he struck a spark, and an answering fury of passion and need sprang from the ashes of surrender. I arched upward to meet him, blow for blow. I bit his lip and tasted blood.
I felt his teeth then on my neck and dug my nails into his back. I raked him from nape to buttocks, spurring him to rear and scream in his turn. We savaged each other in desperate need, biting and clawing, trying to draw blood, trying each to pull the other into ourselves, tearing each other's flesh in the consuming desire to be one. My cry mingled with his, and we lost ourselves finally in each other in that last moment of dissolution and completion.
I returned only slowly to myself, lying half on Jamie's breast, sweated bodies still glued together, thigh to thigh. He breathed heavily, eyes closed. I could hear his heart under my ear, beating with the preternaturally slow and powerful rhythm that follows climax.
He felt me wake, and drew me close, as though to preserve a moment longer the union we had reached in those last seconds of our perilous joining. I curled beside him, putting my arms around him.
He opened his eyes then and sighed, the long mouth curling in a faint smile as his glance met mine. I raised my brows in silent question.
"Oh, aye, Sassenach," he answered a bit ruefully. "I am your master… and you're mine. Seems I canna possess your soul without losing my own." He turned me on my side and curled his body around me. The room was cooling in the evening breeze from the window, and he reached to draw a quilt over us. You're too quick by half, lad, I thought drowsily to myself. Frank never did find that out. I fell asleep with his arms locked hard around me and his breathing warm in my ear.
I was lame and sore in every muscle when I woke next morning. I shuffled to the privy closet, then to the wash basin. My innards felt like churned butter. It felt as though I had been beaten with a blunt object, I reflected, then thought that that was very near the truth. The blunt object in question was visible as I came back to bed, looking now relatively harmless. Its possessor woke as I sat down next to him, and examined me with something that looked very much like male smugness.
"Looks as though it was a hard ride, Sassenach," he said, lightly touching a blue bruise on my inner thigh. "A bit saddle-sore, are ye?"
I narrowed my eyes and traced a deep bite-mark on his, shoulder with my finger.
"You look a bit ragged around the edges yourself, my lad."
"Ah, weel," he said in broad Scots, "if ye bed wi' a vixen, ye must expect to get bit." He reached up and grasped me behind the neck, pulling me down to him. "Come here to me, vixen. Bite me some more.".