Outlander (Outlander, #1)

by Diana Gabaldon

I love you so. Nothing you ever did could stop my loving you.”

“Well, that’s the point,” he said slowly. “Ye might. And it’s because ye dinna take things as serious as they are. Ye come from a place where things are easier, I think. ’Tis not a matter of life or death where ye come from, to disobey orders or take matters into your own hands. At worst, ye might cause someone discomfort, or be a bit of a nuisance, but it isna likely to get someone killed.”

Jamie. Jamie was real, all right, more real than anything had ever been to me, even Frank and my life in 1945. Jamie, tender lover and perfidious black-guard.

“I will be damned if I’ll have you, you bullying swine! You think you can order me to your bed? Use me like a whore when you feel like it? Well, you can’t you fucking bastard! Do that, and you’re no better than your precious Captain Randall!”

“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.”

“And in the last month or so, the milk begins to come in. You feel yourself filling, just a wee bit at a time, a little each time the child moves. And then suddenly, everything comes up hard and round.” She cupped her stomach again. “There’s no pain, then, just a breathless feeling, and then your breasts tingle as though they’ll explode if they’re not suckled.” She closed her eyes and leaned back, stroking her massive belly, over and over, with a rhythm like the invocation of a spell. It came to me, watching her, that if ever there were such a thing as a witch, then Janet Fraser was one. The smoky air was filled with the trance over the room; the feeling that lies at the root of lust, the terrible yearning need to join, and create. I could have counted every hair on Jamie’s body without looking at him, and knew each one stood erect.

“I was born for you,” I said simply, and held out my arms to him. “Ye know,” he observed, letting go at last, “you’ve never said it.” “Neither have you.” “I have. The day after we came. I said I wanted you more than anything.” “And I said that loving and wanting weren’t necessarily the same thing,” I countered. He laughed. “Perhaps you’re right, Sassenach.” He smoothed the hair from my face and kissed my brow. “I wanted ye from the first I saw ye—but I loved ye when you wept in my arms and let me comfort you, that first time at Leoch.”

For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary. It is all. It is undying. And it is enough.

“I said I like it. And I do. It’s one of the things I like the best about bedding ye, Sassenach, the small noises that ye make.”

“That’s what I thought most about,” he said, drawing his hands slowly up and down my back, cupping, curving, tracing the swell of my hips. “In prison at night, chained in a room with a dozen other men, listening to the snoring and farting and groaning. I thought of those small tender sounds that ye make when I love you, and I could feel ye there next to me in the dark, breathing soft and then faster, and the little grunt that ye give when I first take you, as though ye were settling yourself to your job.”

“Even better,” his voice was a hot murmur in my ear, “when I come to ye fierce and wanting, and ye whimper under me, and struggle as though you wanted to get away, and I know it’s only that you’re struggling to come closer, and I’m fighting the same fight.”

“Or when I come to you needing, and ye take me into you with a sigh and that quiet hum like a hive of bees in the sun, and ye carry me wi’ you into peace with a little moaning sound.”

“Not yet. We’ve time. And I mean to hear ye groan like that again. And to moan and sob, even though you dinna wish to, for ye canna help it. I mean to make you sigh as though your heart would break, and scream with the wanting, and at last to cry out in my arms, and I shall know that I’ve served ye well.”