Heat of the Knight

by Jackie Ivie

  Lisle shook her head. She suspected what Monteith was doing. He was putting more of his gold into more hands, but he’d probably be better off building storerooms for the items he kept purchasing and didn’t have placement for, than hanging them about in his rooms.

  “’Tis a good thing you have such high ceilings, my lord,” she commented aloud, although her voice had dropped to a whisper before she finished. The words had echoed back at her, and that had the back of her neck feeling like someone had brushed against it, and that had her jumping and looking over her shoulder and making her feel a bigger fool than she already did.

  Her wedding gown hadn’t been made to conquer dragons and demons and other imaginary, but very real-feeling, creatures, and it wasn’t doing a thing to keep her from shivering. She held the bed jacket closer to her and wished the weave hadn’t been made as loosely, letting the draft feel like it was going right through her. She should also have found her slippers again, since the sheer stockings weren’t any protection against the cold of his floor. It was a good thing she was used to going barefoot, she told herself.

  She gathered her skirt in a hand that was visibly trembling, despite her telling it not to, and looked up at the towering height of the main foyer ceiling, nearly four stories above her. Her heart was hammering and her breaths were coming swift and hard. It would have been impossible to disguise.

  There was a thump above her, and then a curse, or what sounded like a curse. Whatever it was, it sounded like it had come from a real person, and not her imagination. It also sounded like it had come from the side that held her bed chamber, and that of the Monteith laird. The only thing it hadn’t sounded like was him.

  The sounds of a scuffle grew louder, blocking out the hammering of her own heart, as she reached the door that had to lead to his chambers. Another curse came; another thump. She turned the handle.

  “My…lord?” she asked, biting on her lip and wishing she’d slapped a hand to her mouth instead. She’d sounded like a little girl, and little girls didn’t investigate possible attacks on their husbands in their own chambers!

  She waited a few moments, with her head against the door, before daring to push on it. She was almost afraid of what she might find on the other side, and she’d yet to come to terms with what she’d say, or how she’d let him know that she knew what he was doing, or any slew of other things. She opened the door and listened. There wasn’t a sound, except maybe that of rustling material, and her own heartbeat.

  The door didn’t open directly to his chamber, and Lisle stood in the small antechamber room, wondering what sense this made. There was a small bench-thing on one side, a large painting on the wall behind it, a marble-topped table with a vase of flowers on it, and, on the opposing wall, another door. Chieftains needed antechambers before reaching their beds?

  She cleared her throat before trying again as she went to the inner door and opened it. “My lord?”

  No chambermaids had been in to steal his drapes or his bedding, or even the thick, green canopy that fell all the way from the very top of the ceiling, splitting midway down to reveal the gold brocade–embroidered interior of it, before ending by wrapping about both sides of his headboard.

  The opulence and magnificence, even seen with the hazed, rain-cast light, was amazing, and like nothing she’d ever seen, and if she’d thought her own bed large, it was nothing in comparison to his. She could barely tell where his feet probably were, and that was more near the middle of his mattress than the end. If that weren’t enough, they’d placed that bed on a three-step-high pedestal, in order to make it look even more overwhelming and larger, almost deifying the being that got to sleep there.

  Lisle shook her head, tossing that imagining away, before forcing her feet to move. She had to climb the three steps of the pedestal, and then she was moving along the side of it, following where his legs and feet were, until she forced her eyes to move to him. It didn’t matter what she’d been thinking, or how rampant she’d allowed her imagination to roam, for there wasn’t a thought left to her the moment her eyes touched his.

  It was definitely Monteith, for none other could have such black hair, perfect features, or take every bit of sense left to her and toss it up to where the ceiling beams had better catch and hold it and hang onto it before giving it back to her. Lisle’s eyes widened, for he was all-over large, from the heaving strength of his naked shoulders, to the sweat and muscle smell of him, and he was soaking wet.

  “What’s happened to you?” she asked, reaching a hand to his forehead, and then having to crawl up onto her knees on the bed to reach it since he moved away.

  “Are you ill?” She crawled after him and finally reached him, but only because he hadn’t anywhere else to go, unless he wanted to fall from the mattress. That would have brought a smile to her lips, for it looked to be a powerfully long fall, and he didn’t appear to be wearing much, but she was too worried for smiling.

  “It’s all right. I’ve been around illness a-fore. At school, they had an outbreak of ague, and I’ve been raising daughters, and—and my aunts were never well…much. Good heavens—you’re burning up. And sweaty.”

  Her hand told her the truth of it, and she frowned. She wondered if he realized just how ill he was, and then told herself that he didn’t. He couldn’t. He probably wasn’t even lucid. “Now, cease that, and let me have a look at you.”

  His eyes grew wide and Lisle nearly giggled as she moved closer and pushed the sheet down to his belly, revealing what appeared to be an amazing amount of muscled abdomen and chest, with only the slightest dusting of hair to mute it. He’d been deep in the throes of his fever, too, for he was heaving for breath, and that movement on such a span of him had her moving her gaze to look at him wide-eyed.

  He licked his lips, and that made her gasp.

  “I—I…I’ve tended fever a-fore,” she stammered.

  His eyebrows rose. That was somehow worse, for she didn’t want to be mesmerized by those dark, amber-colored eyes, even if they were shadowed by lush lashes, the drape of his canopy, and what little daylight managed to penetrate the enclosure of his room. Her heartbeat wasn’t the only thing filling her ears. Her breathing was vying for volume and space with it.

  “And—and…we’ve got to get you sponged. The chill’s good for the heat. It takes a fever away quicker.”

  His eyes went wider, and then he was sucking in on both cheeks, narrowing his face, and making her heart do antics in her very own breast. Then he smiled, and it had everything wolfish and enticing, and not one thing about it that was weak or sickly looking.

  “You are…fevered, aren’t you?” she asked.

  His brows lowered; he nodded. Lisle let her breath out slowly, and she hadn’t even known she held it. She’d been right. He was barely lucid. The entire morning had been senseless, but this was something solid, something stable, and something she knew all about. She’d tended Aunt Fanny through the worst of last winter, and in early March, when they’d almost lost Aunt Grace. She’d learned it at the convent school. You needed to wrap a fever when shivers took a body, but sponge away the worst when sweat and heat took over. If you did that, the fever wouldn’t get worse and start cooking a body from within.

  She checked his forehead again, and then knelt forward to put her lips to it. He wasn’t as hot and wet-feeling. That was a good sign. In fact, it felt like a pulse was throbbing at the skin her lips were touching, a pulse that seemed to speed up.

  She was frowning as she went back onto her knees and looked him over. He didn’t appear as agitated as before, or maybe it was the same, but in a different fashion. And his continued silence was unnerving…as was the glitter of his eyes on her; unblinking, watching, waiting.

  Lisle forced herself not to look at the amount of man right beside her, but it was nearly impossible, especially since he raised one leg, crooking his knee, and that made it look like he was making an enclave for her to fit into. She told herself she was being ridiculous, and then ha
d to make herself believe it as he turned onto his side to face her, showing that the muscles in that chest were large and well defined, and moved easily beneath the skin. Then he was making it worse, by supporting his head onto one uplifted hand. That movement only made bulging sinew come out everywhere on his arm, and it looked like he was preening for her. She told herself she was being silly, and it could just as easily have been he was studying her, as anything else.

  She watched as he moved the sheet upward with his free arm, covering himself, until he had it to the bottom of his breastbone, and for some insane reason, she almost told him to stop.

  One thing was certain. She didn’t have to worry over what she’d say when she next saw him, or if she could look him in the eye. She couldn’t. But there wasn’t much left that she could look at. She tried looking at the wall behind him, where light from the high windows was just making a shadow of itself known. She tried looking at the door over by his armoire, which probably went to her own chamber; she tried looking at her hands where she’d put them in her lap. That was very dangerous. He was right next to those.

  “Did you pick up one of those jungle fevers while you were in Persia?” she asked, stretching her knowledge a bit, since she hadn’t paid that much attention at lessons, and she couldn’t even remember where Persia was at the moment, or even if there was a jungle attached to it, or not.

  He didn’t answer. Lisle didn’t know what else to ask, or even if he understood. She didn’t know what she was doing, and began heartily wishing she’d just stayed in her maroon and white bed chamber and awaited the seamstresses like she’d been told to do. The gold weave of his bedspread wavered for a moment, and then what had to be his free hand blocked her view of it. She flinched, but he adjusted for the movement, moving to put a finger beneath her chin to raise it, making her face him. Lisle found herself looking into very solemn eyes in a very unfeverished-looking face.

  “You should na’ be in here,” he whispered.

  Her eyes couldn’t get any wider. She could feel the air on them from the extent she had them opened. He didn’t look remotely ill, and his black hair was drying, curling slightly where it reached to his shoulders. He moved up onto his haunches, making an angle of his body as his lower arm straightened out to support him, while the sheet made it impossible to look elsewhere as it dropped to pool in his lap, and all he did was pull her closer with the hook of one finger beneath her jaw.

  Lisle begged her own body to stop acting like a fish caught on a lure, but nothing was working. She rose, almost to her knees, while her thighs took the brunt of the thrust. The bodice of her wedding gown had definitely been measured too tightly. Either that, or her breasts were supposed to feel weightier, heavier, and like they ached for something she hadn’t the expertise to know of, but was totally certain that he did.

  She was also certain he was going to kiss her again, and there was nothing she wanted more. She wondered how he knew.

  “You really should na’ be in here,” he repeated, this time from a distance that had his breath feathering across her nose.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because we’re wed.”

  “True,” she answered.

  “And I’ll na’ take any woman paid for the chore.”

  Paid. The word went through her consciousness, and parts of her told herself to stiffen and start spitting invectives, and act like it was momentous and insulting, while other parts of her weakened, became even more pliant. Her lips parted, her body started relaxing, her tissues opened, softening, dampening….

  “Unless she’s here of her own free will,” he continued.

  He was speaking of free will, and she didn’t have any left. He had all of it. Was he too obtuse to know that much? “Are you going to kiss me?” she asked.

  His eyelids lowered and he shuddered, the motion transferring to where he held to her until her head felt like it shook with it.

  “You’re a very enticing woman, Lisle Monteith,” he said.

  “I am?”

  “Aye. So enticing a man forgets—” He cut his own words off, and they didn’t make a bit of sense.

  “Forgets?” she offered.

  “Time. Space. Sense. Duty.”

  He was speaking of sense, yet was making none. “There’s nae wine anywhere about.” She whispered it.

  “Your meaning?” he asked the bedding.

  She had to say it aloud? Lisle didn’t think the words could get out of her throat. She was there—in his bed—and it wasn’t with any wine to make him more enticing for her. He’d chosen a good word, she decided, a good, strong descriptive word. It was very enticing, and she wanted more of it.

  She licked her lips, gathered every bit of her bravery, and asked it again, before she tossed herself into his arms and made him give her a kiss, and everything else her senses were tempting her with, and being denied.

  “Monteith, are you going to kiss me, or not?”

  “Nae,” he finally replied, although he was speaking to the bed.

  “Why not?” she asked, absolutely disgusted and appalled at herself for not just taking his rejection for what it was and moving from his bed, and never, ever going there again.

  “Because there’s na’ time enough.”

  Lisle stopped the movement before she made it, to yank her chin out of his grasp and stomp from there, and it was at the strangeness of that statement. Then, she just wished herself anywhere else as her own mouth betrayed her again. “For one kiss?” she asked in a small voice.

  This time, she heard the groan, and it had to be as deep and earthy and full of anger and denial as it sounded like it was. “Damn you, Lisle! One kiss will na’ be enough! Never! I won’t be able to stop myself, and I’ve got parts to play, and murderous bastards to fool, and I swore I’d never say a word about any of it to any other soul on earth! And here you are making me lose sight of my vow, and my goal…and just about everything else…that matters…”

  He had her pulled into his arms before he finished, and was not only kissing her through the words, but was sending needles of sensation shooting through every nerve ending. He put both hands through her hair, pulling it back and holding her in place so he could suck on her lips and breathe heavily onto her nose and hold her so tightly, the beading was probably putting small pocklike dents in a large portion of his chest.

  Lisle wasn’t letting him get the best of it, either. She didn’t know where the primitive urges were coming from, or what it meant, but anger and energy flowed through her, making her arms beat at his sides, her fingernails rake down every ridge, and then back up again, sliding over the bare span of chest and around his shoulders, and then she was entwining them about the ends of his thick, shiny, black hair. It was all to make certain there wasn’t a whiff of space allowed between them. She’d never felt anything like it, and her body knew it.

  He must have known it, too, for the groan that tore through them came with even more depth and timbre to it, almost enough to make the beams laced above his room rattle with it. It was accompanied by his fingers, moving from her hair to the fastening of pearl loops up her spine, and he was flipping each one from its mooring without benefit of anything except touch. He was very adept, but that didn’t occur to her until later. Now there was just the smell of freshened rain, sweat, heat, and flesh. Then there were three more of those piped notes, filtering through her senses and adding to the rhythm of emotion her body had been in its own creation of making, before it was making him go completely and utterly still and solid and unmoving.

  She didn’t know what was wrong with him, but the next moment he was yanking himself from the embrace of her lips with a spate of cursing that was so different than the emotion he’d spun about her that she didn’t actually hear it, at first. She thought she heard her name, and some damning to it, and more cursing of devil’s spawn and blood, and something about hellfire. She clung to him throughout it, although it had to hurt him, because he pulled her fingers awry where they were still gr
ipped in his hair.

  Lisle forced her eyelids open, although they felt too heavy to move, and watched the enormous chest heaving before her eyes, while everything else on him looked taut, angry, pulsatingly large and heavy and absolutely fascinating, and that was just the part she could see above the bedding.

  She licked her lips, and he bit at them, stunning her into flinging her eyes wide open to stare.

  “Nae! Not now, I tell you!”

  He was pushing her onto her back, and there wasn’t any problem with pearls anymore, because they weren’t there. And then he was lifting his head to send his voice to the rafters, making cords bulge from his throat with the effort, and he didn’t stop until he ran out of breath, although his face and neck and shoulders went bright red with the effect of it.

  His howl had one other effect, too. It made every bit of her senses that had left her earlier, and were balanced up there on those beams, fall, and then they were filtering back into her, turning her into a proper Highland lass, who’d never be enticing and begging and clinging to any man who so clearly didn’t want her. Her fingers opened, releasing him.

  “Go to your chamber, Lisle. Stay there. Posture for whoever comes in. You hear me?”

  She nodded. Her voice wasn’t available for her use, and if she dared open her mouth, pain was going to come out. It was better to be silent.

  “This dinna’ happen between us. You ken?”

  She nodded again at such nonsensical words, and then he flung the covers aside and stood up, showing her the rain-dampened, green-plaid kilt he was wearing, as well as the gold-tasseled socks, and the one shoe he still had on, as well. Lisle gasped, and had a hand to her mouth to hold it in.

  “Go. Now.”

  He turned from her and had his hands on his hips, his fingers defining a cord of strength that wrapped about his waist, and broadening the span of his back that she already knew was large and muscled and nothing like a gentleman of leisure should ever own. He kept his back to her as she left. She only wished she’d had the sense to turn away before she had the image emblazoned on her eyelids even when she did close them.