by Dayna Quince
She still couldn’t believe all they’d done. In her head, she pictured herself back at his cottage, sitting over him as he’d done such wicked things with his mouth to her most private of places.
She abruptly set her fork down. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t an expert secret keeper, and just sitting here in the company of her family was too much to bear. She may as well announce what she and Lachy had done with the assistance of trumpeters and a mimed show.
“I’m worried about Heather,” Prim said hurriedly and set her napkin down. “I think I will go check on her.”
“She’s only tired, dear,” her mother assured her. “These last weeks, she will need to rest more than she likes to admit.”
“I wish I could return to bed,” Violet muttered.
“You need only say so, and I will happily carry you off to our chamber,” Weirick returned.
Prim stood mute, recalling a time when she’d been disgusted by Violet and Weirick’s displays, but not this morning. At last, she understood something she would have never known had she married Peverel. Desire and passion went hand in hand with love.
If Lachy stepped into the room and demanded Prim return to his cottage with him this very minute, she would happily do so. But he wasn’t going to. Somehow, she would have to make her family accept their love, because there was no other choice. She’d almost married the wrong man with her family’s lackluster approval, but now she’d marry the right one, no matter how they felt on the matter.
Lachy was the reason for every beat of her heart now. To her, it felt as though he was controlling the drum himself.
I’m in love.
She almost choked on a sob. She coughed instead, touching her brow. “You know, I don’t think I feel well.” She stepped away from the table. “If you will excuse me, I think I will return to bed, as well.”
“Are you all right?” her mother asked, brow knitted with concern.
“I’m sure it’s nothing a bit of rest won’t cure,” Prim replied.
“You do look odd,” Violet said, her gaze penetrating. “I wonder what it could be?”
“Hush, Violet,” Lady Everly scolded.
The rest of her mother’s comment faded from Prim’s hearing as she made her way to her room, her heart heavy and drumming an uncomfortable rhythm. How am I going to do this? She needed to see Lachy urgently. He’d surely have something to say on the matter of revealing their relationship to her family. It wasn’t as though they’d spoken about it; in fact, he had been adamant that their shared feelings could not exist outside the two of them.
But surely after last night, he’d changed his mind now?
He was not a fickle man. He’d worked so hard for the good of his people, and Prim knew he would not toy with her unless his affections were true.
It was time to put the matter to rest. She’d wasted enough of her time with Peverel on a two-year engagement that had led to nothing. This time she was going to grab love with both hands and never let go. They had a future together, she knew it in her heart, and the time had come to embrace it. Whatever stood in their way they would overcome together.
Chapter 13
After a brief rest and more rumination, Prim went in search of Lachy. The dairy was quiet, the two new employees out in the field tending the cattle. Not seeing him anywhere, she ventured into the barn, pausing in the doorway at the sight of him, jacket and waistcoat off, sleeves rolled up, shoveling hay into a stall.
She closed the barn door stall, and he didn’t take notice of her as she entered. She walked slowly toward him, through beams of sunlight shining from the roof line windows, and then paused to lean on a stall door.
“What would a bonny lass like yourself be doing in a place like this?” he asked, his back still to her as he shoveled in a steady rhythm.
Prim didn’t answer, admiring the view of the shifting muscles of his back and the tight globes of his derriere. She’d never seen a man built so beautifully as he was. She licked her lips, trying to think of something clever to say, when he suddenly turned around, wiping his brow with a handkerchief.
Prim couldn’t find the words to express any of the emotions thrashing around inside her. Lust, trepidation, and courage—they all crashed together. So she closed the distance between them and threw her arms around him, pressing her lips to his in what she hoped was an adequate and sane response, though she couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t sure of anything right now, and she craved certainty as much as she craved his kiss.
His arms came around her, the pitchfork falling to the ground with a startling clatter. But he was kissing her back, and that was all that mattered. Then he picked her up and twirled her, setting her back against the stall wall he was working in, all without breaking their kiss. Their tongues tangled and stroked, their breaths clashing between them.
Prim grabbed him by the shoulders, and switched their positions. He’d taken control last night, but there was something she’d thought about since, and she wanted to explore it. To make him as weak with desire as he’d made her. To bring him to his knees.
She raked her nails down his linen shirt, stopping at his waistband to pull the fabric free. He didn’t protest, but his hands stilled, his movements growing passive, as if deciding to let her do whatever it was she was trying to do.
Prim stroked the ridge of his arousal, which was tenting the front of his breeches, and tore a groan of need from him. Encouraged, she gripped him tightly, rubbing his length again.
This time, he shuddered.
She undid the buttons, sliding her hand inside to take his hot flesh in her fist. Guided by his moans, and the catches in his breathing, she explored her hold of him, moving her hand back and forth, squeezing him from head to base with the ease of the pearly white liquid that beaded from the top of his manhood.
Feeling fearless now, she knelt before him. His hands tensed on her shoulders, as if hesitant to let her go, but he did, and he watched her with heavy lids, his breathing ragged as she held his gaze. Then she examined her prize, the silky and firm appendage in her hands. She was flushed from head to toe, wet between her thighs, as she’d been last night. He’d feasted on her body, giving her unexplainable pleasure, and she wanted to do the same to him.
Their lovemaking had unlocked something inside her, a fierce woman warrior who was ready to conquer and claim her mate as much—if not more—than he’d claimed her. She licked her lips, and then kissed the head of his engorged flesh. Then she lightly licked the smooth tip, tasting him, and her body reacted as though she was the one being touched so intimately. She pressed her thighs together to ease the growing ache there, and took him into her mouth.
He groaned her name, adding words in Gaelic she didn’t understand. She assumed they were good, because he did not ask her to stop. His fingers slid into her hair, and he guided her mouth further, showing her the rhythm. Prim took over, his panting breaths, gasps, and moans becoming an intimate symphony for her alone.
Her heart pounded, and she could feel his pulse with her tongue. She moaned, shifting her hips to appease her own need for release, though it wasn’t nearly enough.
Then Lachy jerked with surprise, and swiftly eased her away, tucking himself back in his breeches. “We’re not alone,” he whispered urgently.
Prim’s heart stopped with a painful lurch. The barn door closed with a slam.
She wiped her mouth and stood.
Erick was just inside the door, and surprise flashed across his face before a stony mask fell in its place.
“Prim,” he said, his tone not even questioning her presence there.
She couldn’t slow her breathing, but she had to say something. “Yes?”
She knotted her hands together, Lachy leaned one arm casually on the stall wall, half turning to face Erick.
“Your Grace,” he nodded in greeting.
Erick looked back and forth between them before focusing on Prim again. “Lord Peverel has arrived unexpectedly. Your presence is required.”
“What the devil—”
Her brother-in-law pivoted and left the barn before she could finish the sentence.
“Bloody hell,” Lachy said, bent over and panting. “He’s going to murder me.”
Prim stood motionless, stunned and numb, and then she bolted after Erick, her thoughts and feelings crashing against her like waves on the bluffs: violent, and undecipherable from each other.
Lachy stared after her, astonished beyond words or actions. She’d just left him there, semihard, running to her errant, former fiancé—the same bloody bastard who’d jilted her!
She was actually running toward the man who’d tossed her aside in the most humiliating fashion.
A slithering slimy feeling wriggled around his insides, and Lachy didn’t like it one bit.
It reeked of shame.
Shame.
He had nothing to be ashamed about; he was a soldier, a man of honor, a—a—his mind seized. He was her secret lover. He snarled at the door, then, feeling ridiculous on top of shameful, he picked up the pitchfork and threw it across the barn into the next stall. He needed to cool down. His blood simmered with unspent lust, and his face burned with degradation.
He’d been looked down on by English nobility for most his life, being the son of a drunken and impoverished laird. But never had he been treated like this, like a secondhand rag, tossed aside when silk cloth was presented.
Used, and then discarded.
A new rage clawed at him.
Prim, his Prim, would not only be taken from him by a feckless lord, as his castle had been, but she’d willingly run to him at the first utterance of his arrival.
Lachy stalked to the barn door, his face set in stone as he bid his new employees, Mr. Wilson and Mr. O’Brian, to take over for the day. He drove his cart to his cottage, his movements slow and deliberate as he unharnessed Bethany and fed and watered her. Control was all he had left. He was afraid that if he moved too quickly, then the violent ideas running through his head would come to life, like dragging a feckless lord behind his cart, or charging at the castle and demanding Prim’s hand in marriage, just as his ancestors may have done.
Lachy laughed, shaking his head at Bethany. Imagine, the one thing to get him back on a horse would be to fight another battle. But he already felt like his horse had been shot out from under him. Every fiber of his body hurt after watching her run away from him, without a word said. Without a backward glance.
Without acknowledging him at all, or the tether of desire that had bound them since the moment they’d met.
She’d run from him as though he meant nothing, and as Lachy stood there, holding Bethany’s pitying gaze, the realization set in that he might, indeed, mean nothing to her.
A coldness, stark and heavy, moved through him. His hands tingled as he left Bethany to her food and retreated to his cottage, the image of Prim running from him replaying in his mind like a terrible accident. And he was helpless, as helpless as he’d been for months in his hospital cot, fighting back death with prayers, immobilized by a shattered bone.
He muttered Gaelic curses as he looked around the bare bones of his cottage, at last focusing on the bed they’d shared, quelling the urge to break it into a pile of kindling. He flexed his hands instead, reining in the rage that coursed through him.
He ripped off his shirt, splashing cold water into a bowl and rinsing his face. His anger ebbed, but sorrow swiftly replaced it. He’d never felt a wound like this, so deep and twisting in his chest. And he’d faced death, and the possibility of losing his leg.
I love her.
He was determined to fight for a future with her, but he couldn’t do that unless his feelings were returned. He couldn’t fight for a woman who clearly didn’t love him back. The weight of it, facing her family, taking the castle back, it all felt so much bigger than he could manage, but last night he had been determined to do it. This morning, even more so, and when Prim had arrived in the barn, the haze of desire in her eyes, Lachy felt as if that whole weight had simply disappeared. Her smile made him stronger, and her touch made him invincible to all who would stand in the way of their love and happiness.
And then she’d ripped it all away at the first arrival of Lord Peverel, as easily as the Earl of Cassel had swindled his grandfather out of a castle.
Now Prim had swindled him out of his heart.
But not the castle.
A renewed wave of anger crashed over him.
She can keep my heart; there is very little worth to it now, but the castle?
It would be his again, no matter who stood in his way.
He was a damn fool. He’d known they were too different, not only in station. They were separate stars stretched across an inky black sky, and destined to never touch. But touch they did, and it had been too perfect to be real. She’d been too perfect, too giving. His father had always told him that glass was just as pretty as a diamond if seen in the right light.
Maybe he hadn’t really seen her at all. Perhaps he’d been blinded by her light, and her passionate embrace.
Lachy pulled on a fresh shirt, smirking at the cloudy reflection of himself in the cheap mirror.
He was what he was, but he was more than a common man and a broken soldier. Reading the journal had proven that. He was the legacy of his clan. It was time to waken the warrior spirit of the Dennehy clansmen and take back what was rightfully theirs.
There was nothing to stop him now.
Chapter 14
Prim gasped for breath as she caught up to Eric, snatching hold of his sleeve to halt his rigid march toward the castle.
“Stop!” she panted. “Please let me explain.”
He turned to face her. “Dear God, I don’t need an explanation. You’re a grown woman, and I—I know what leads to such reckless occasions, but please spare me the details. I’m trying to rid my mind of it before I’m forced to gouge out my eyes.”
“Erick, you don’t understand!”
“I don’t. You’re right about that, and I don’t want to. I’m disappointed, Prim. I thought you knew better than to fall victim to the whims of a careless rogue.”
“I love him,” she blurted. “I have since the moment I saw him after Violet’s wedding, or something close to it. The moment I set eyes on him, something changed in me. I think Peverel knew it, too.”
Her brother-in-law’s mouth went slack. “Are you telling me this affair has been happening since Violet’s wedding? Before you were even jilted?”
“No! What I mean is that was when my feelings started to change toward Peverel and I recognized there was something missing in our relationship, that Lachy could give me.”
Erick pressed his hands to his face. “This—this is beyond me. Heather needs to hear this, and then she can tell—”
“No!” Prim grabbed the lapels of his jacket. “Swear to me you won’t tell her. I’m not ready for everyone else to know. Lachy isn’t ready, either. I love him, and I don’t want him to be frightened away by my family.”
Erick scowled at her. “You’re in over your head, do you know that? Lachy is… He’s much older than you.”
“He is not.”
“Far more experienced than you—”
“You mean wiser.”
The ripples in Erick’s forehead deepened. “It’s a matter of perspective, and from where I stand, you and Lachy together do not equal lasting happiness.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I am also older and wiser than you, and I know things about Lachy that you don’t.”
“Like what?”
Prim fisted her hands on her hips. She might not know everything about him yet, but whatever more there was to know, she would happily discover during their time together. She was not a child, and she would no longer tolerate anyone treating her as such. She knew her heart, and Lachy was the reason it beat so fiercely.
“He’s using you.”
She flinched. Not because the words startled her, but
because her initial reaction had been to slap Erick for uttering such a lie. But she’d stopped herself, because the man before her wasn’t just a brother to her. For many years, he’d been like a father, the steady hand of confidence she’d needed to enter Society.
“You lie.”
He inched closer to her. “I would never lie to you about this. He’s after the castle, Prim. He wants to take the only home I’ve ever known, the birthplace of my children. He’ll take it any way he can.”
She frowned and then stumbled back. “Because it should have belonged to him,” she whispered.
Suddenly, flashes of the night before—Lachy’s questions, and his stoic expression when he’d asked her what home meant to her—filled her mind.
Her lungs screamed for air, but she couldn’t remember how to breathe. Tears pricked her eyes, and suddenly Erick’s arms came around her, patting her back.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She wiggled out of his hold, sucking in a breath, her mind working rapidly. “The castle has nothing to do with me. It’s not part of my dowry, so why would he use me?”
“You really believe you know him that well?”
“Yes,” she said adamantly. “He cares for me, and he cares for his people. I know him well enough to be certain of that.”
But she couldn’t say he loved her, because they hadn’t said the words to each other yet. And he probably wasn’t pleased about her leaving him in the barn, or the fact that her former fiancé was here.
“I won’t marry Peverel.”
“Good,” Erick said, with a stiff nod. “I don’t expect you to. However, you can tell him yourself. Show him what bravery is with a face-to-face conversation like the one he should have had with you before the wedding.”