A man I pray to God isn’t you!
“Nay, lady, you cannot,” came his cold reply, scattering her cares as swiftly as if a chill, black wind had swept through the chamber. “You cannot force me to wed you by swelling with my get. Think you—”
“It is the babe I want, not marriage. Ne’er di—”
“Think you,” he overrode her protestations, “think you I would see my child, my firstborn, spring from you? A MacInnes? The MacInnes? An inveterate liar? A wench so cold-hearted she has me tortured by day yet would spread her bonnie legs for me come nightfall?”
Isolde flinched beneath his blazing wrath. “Nay, you are wrong. You misunder—”
“Nay, woman, ’tis you who are wrong,” he seethed, his face dark with fury. “And sorely unenlightened.” He tossed back his mane of thick, black hair. “Or were you truly not aware a man can pleasure a woman, even take his own ease, and leave nary a drop of his seed behind?”
Isolde opened her mouth, only to promptly close it. She’d almost blurted that, aye, she did know of such impediments to her plan.
Her pulse jumping, her discomfiture high, the tops of her ears burned at the memory of Evelina’s warning, her calm assurances a skilled seductress could persuade a man to spill his lust whether he cared to or not.
“Shall I prove it to you?” the MacLean drawled, his deep voice low, smooth, and frightfully . . . compelling.
Another of his slow smiles began to spread across his bonnie face, tugging at the corners of his sinfully appealing mouth. Isolde’s heart flip-flopped at the sight of it.
At the sight of him, saints preserve her.
Darkly handsome, so like her dream man, his bold glare and crackling anger made him seem larger than life, more brazenly masculine than e’er before. His daunting presence filled her bedchamber, claiming mastery of all within its tapestried walls with such ease she could do naught but stand and stare at him.
Wholly captivated.
Wholly his.
“Aye, I believe I shall,” he said, pure wickedness glinting in his eyes.
“Shall what?” Isolde blurted, her voice little more than a squeak.
“Enlighten you,” he said, and had the audacity to wink at her.
Then his expression went cold and heated at the same time and he advanced on her. His confident air of pure, unbridled maleness filled her with an odd rush of exhilaration even as whirling panic careened through her.
“You are a knight,” she squeaked again, holding up his ennobled status as a shield. “A champion renowned for—”
“I am many things and renowned for much,” he said, stopping at the table’s edge, halted by his chain. Something dark and far too stirring flashed in his eyes, but then they warmed, turning a rich, liquid brown. As he looked at her, the hard line of his jaw relaxed, and his lips curved in a disarming smile.
The first of its kind he’d turned on her. A smile so devastating in its power, its impact surged through her. An unrestrained cascade of sensation spilling from the crown of her head clear to the soles of her feet, and warming every place between.
Half-afraid to breathe, she began inching her hand toward Devorgilla’s little flask of anti-attraction elixir. The flagon still rested near the table’s edge, and she needed it.
Badly.
“You are honorbound to be chivalrous,” she argued, hoping to distract him as she curled her fingers around the flask. “A knight—”
With lightning speed, he lunged to the side and snatched the potion from her fingers with one hand, while seizing her wrist in an iron grip with the other.
“I am a man,” he said, holding the flagon high above his head. “And I am about to show you how very unknightly a man can be.”
She stared at him, her heart thundering. His raven-black hair, lustrous and wild, just skimmed the wide set of his shoulders. A pagan god, untamed, lusty, and more breathtakingly handsome than any mortal man should be.
As if the devil himself meant to tempt her, an overwhelming urge to run her fingers through his hair’s glossed thickness beset her. A strange and disturbing quickening deep inside her. Faith and mercy, but she needed the crone’s tincture.
Now.
And more than one wee flask.
She peered at the flagon he still held out of her reach. “Sir Donall, please. . . .”
“And I shall, sweeting,” he said, his voice dark and husky. “Do not doubt it.”
Isolde blinked. “I am not your sweeting.”
She wouldn’t have believed it, but his smile grew a shade warmer, a touch more . . . intimate.
“Not yet,” came his drawled reply.
In a bold display of self-confidence, he released her wrist and stepped away from the table’s edge. “Nay, Isolde of Dunmuir, you are not yet mine.” A new look entered his magnificent dark eyes. A knowing one. “Nor are you running.”
Isolde expelled a furious breath at his arrogance. Equally aggravating, she couldn’t have fled if the table before her turned itself into a fire-spewing sea dragon.
Her fool feet seemed nailed to the floor!
So she stood where she was, gaping at him, her white-knuckled hands clutching the top of her chair, frozen in place as if the old gods had cast her to stone.
Her brow knitted at the MacLean’s self-satisfied countenance. Not taking his dark gaze off her, he pulled out the flagon’s stopper and sniffed.
His nose wrinkled in a clear display of distaste, and in truth, her own nostrils twitched in reaction to the potion’s reek. He gave her an arch look that said more than any words could have, then upturned the flask and poured its contents onto the floor rushes.
“An astounding concoction,” he said, dropping the empty flagon and its stopper onto the oaken table. “Vanquishes freckles and purges wee dogs of fleas.”
Tensing, Isolde held her breath and waited, afraid of what he’d next say . . . or do.
He didn’t leave her in suspense long. “What other miracles does your sharp-smelling wonder potion procure?” he asked, his tone a clear warning the worst was yet to come. “Mayhap save you from being kissed by stealing the sweetness of your breath?”
A gasp escaped her at how close he’d come to guessing the elixir’s true purpose. The implication behind his guess made her pulse race and set her heart to hammering.
Surely he didn’t mean to kiss her?
Not yet.
She wasn’t ready for such intimacies. But the lazy beginnings of another of his languorous smiles, and the devilish gleam in his dark brown eyes, indicated he was.
As if fully aware she would not bolt, he took up his favored stance at the foot of her bed. With one shoulder resting against the intricately carved bedpost, he folded his arms across his well-muscled chest and simply watched her.
Nay, not simply.
Isolde wet her lips and her fingers clutched the chairback tighter. Far from simply, he watched her with a slow burning fire in his eyes. A smoldering gaze of such intensity it wrested a choked gasp from her. His thick-lashed eyelids lowered in frank appraisal, he slid his gaze possessively up and down the length of her.
His heated perusal warmed her inside and out, searing her flesh with tiny little flames wherever his gaze lighted, breathing to life a fire of her own somewhere deep inside the lowest, most intimate part of her belly.
“Come here,” he said, his eyes darkening to a shade close to peat.
Isolde shook her head.
He raised one black brow. “Afraid, Isolde of Dunmuir?”
She stared at him, scarce hearing his silkily spoken words for the rush of her own pulse pumping loudly in her ears.
“Come here.”
That, she heard. It was a command. Irrefutable, assertive, and so compelling her feet began to shift on the rush flooring as if they sought to carry her toward him, acting on their own volition, heedless of her will.
“Well?” he prompted when she didn’t budge.
Isolde swallowed thickly. Her mouth had gone unbearab
ly dry, her throat so tight she could scarce breathe, and her heart thudded painfully against her ribs.
Worse, her fingers had somehow relinquished their firm grip on the chairback, defiantly joining her feet in their brazen betrayal of her determination to stay rooted to the spot. Panicked by the strange witchery he lorded over her, she dug her heels into the rushes and hugged her midriff.
Donall the Bold tilted his dark head to the side, one corner of his mouth lifting in an amused half smile. “I would have but one kiss,” he said, his amusement apparent. “A lesson in enlightenment, if you will.”
“No,” she finally found her voice. “Not now, not this night.”
“Nay?” His gaze flicked briefly to her lips before he lifted a hand to carefully rub the side of his jaw. “Sweeting, am I so pursued by ill luck of late that I have not only lost my freedom but also my wits?”
“Sir?” The instant the word passed her lips, Isolde realized she’d once more taken his cleverly tendered bait. Her heart sinking, she watched the look of feigned confusion settle across his handsome face.
“Aye, my wits seem to have scattered,” he said, idly scratching his chin. “Or did you, with your vast knowledge of men, think to have me sire a babe on you by sharing the air in this chamber with you?”
Heat burst onto her cheeks. “I am well aware how bairns are made.”
He raised a brow. “Truth tell?”
“Aye.” She fixed him with a peppered glare. “I’ve told you so.”
“Then you surely know a mere kiss is innocent?” he drawled, extending a hand toward her. “Come, Isolde of Dunmuir, prove to yourself you are bold.”
“You, sirrah, would incite a piece of wood to be bold!” she said hotly, striding forward to slap her hand into his.
“Ah, but you please me,” he fair purred, the firm press of his strong, warm fingers closing around hers heating more than just her hand. “And now, my sweet, I shall please you.”
Something indefinable in the low, huskily spoken words sank into her, exciting her, while the oddly soothing feel of his large, well-formed hand encircling hers cooled her ire and sent pure languid heat spooling through her.
A wondrous warmth that threatened to melt every shred of resistance she held against him.
“I am not desirous of being . . . pleased,” she managed, struggling to ignore the fluttery feeling his nearness touched off inside her.
Keenly aware of the way he looked at her, truly looked at her, deep, deep into her soul it seemed, Isolde let her own gaze flit from the sensual curve of his triumphant smile to the discarded little flask lying on the table. Saints, but she needed a swallow.
“Be that so, why do you tremble when I touch you?” he whispered above her ear, and smoothed his knuckles along the curve of her cheek.
Isolde leaned away from the contact, even though, true to his word, a flurry of pleasant shivers had cascaded down her back the instant he’d touched her.
“’Tis shaking from vexation I am, not quivering with pleasure.” She purposely kept her head angled away from him.
“Indeed?” He captured her chin with one hand and turned her face back to his. The look in his remarkable dark eyes made her heart skitter a beat. “Most beautiful lady,” he said, “I do not believe you.”
She looked right back at him, straight into his all-seeing brown eyes. “You vex me mightily, that is all.”
Releasing her, Donall lifted his hands, holding them palm outward. “Then retreat to your safe corner behind the chair . . . if you so desire.”
She didn’t move. “What I desire—”
“I ken what you desire.” He circled his hands around her upper arms, holding her gently but firmly in place by letting his hands glide smoothly from her elbows up to and over her shoulders, then back down again. “There is a very fine line betwixt passion and ire,” he said. “Sometimes it blurs.”
“And you think to show me the difference?”
“Not think to, I will,” he murmured, his fingers lightly kneading her upper arms. “With a kiss.”
Unsmiling now, but with a heat smoldering in his eyes that she instinctively recognized as pure, untamed passion, he slid his arms around her back and pulled her flush against him. “A thorough and leisurely kiss,” he said, looking deep into her eyes.
The warmth Isolde saw there chased her rising whimpers of protest right back down her throat, and stilled the hands she’d been about to press frantically against the hard wall of his chest.
“Must you?” she gasped, already losing the battle to conquer the heart-stealing sensations spinning through her at being held thus.
Held thus by him.
“Must I what, lass? Kiss you?” He lowered his head until their very breaths mingled. “Aye, I must,” he said, and did.
He touched his mouth to hers with such sublime tenderness, the sheer power of his kiss rivaled the iron-hard strength of the arms he’d curved around her back.
A tiny sigh escaped her as he moved his lips over hers with exquisite gentleness. A soft, smooth warmth, headier than she’d e’er dreamed a kiss would be.
Her pulse quickened, her blood thickening, even as a heavy languor settled over her, pooling deep in her lower belly. A mindless, swirling, pulsing ache.
An ache for more.
A deeper yearning her body understood better than she. Easing her hands from between them, she cupped her palms over his broad shoulders, reveling in the warm, solid feel of his warrior’s strength beneath the soft linen of the lenicroich.
“Holy saints,” Donall breathed against her lips when she tilted her head to the side, parting her lips in an instinctive invitation for him to deepen the kiss.
He obliged at once, slanting his mouth over hers, claiming her lips with a firmer, more commanding kiss, its heated fervor stealing her breath and unraveling her very senses.
Another little moan rose in her throat, and he caught it with his tongue, masterfully blending her gasp of pleasure with his own until both sighs were indistinguishable from the sweet sighing of their mingled breaths.
Somewhere deep inside her something broke free, setting loose a wash of torrid, liquid pleasure that spilled down the length of her to pool around her feet in a rushing, soul-stirring torrent.
A sea of sensation swirled ’round and ’round her, tantalizing and powerful enough to sweep her into a wild, frenzied abyss of pure bliss.
His arms tightened around her, his hands moving over her back, caressing her, molding her to him. He deepened the kiss, and cupped her lower bottom, splaying his fingers over her curves, drawing her so close she could not deny his arousal, the unbridled might of his need.
A delicious haze engulfed her, and she opened her mouth wider, accepting his passion with an increasing need of her own. Letting herself melt into him, she slipped her hands around his neck and twined her fingers in the silken thickness of his hair, losing herself in the wondrous maelstrom of yearning.
Losing herself so completely naught else mattered.
Not his name.
Not why he was there.
Nothing.
As if he sensed her capitulation, he gentled his embrace and eased the kiss to an end by degrees until, as he’d begun, he simply grazed the soft warmth of his own mouth tenderly over hers, then finally pulled away.
He looked at her, his head angled so near his breath caressed her cheek. “Lady,” he said, and naught else. But the softly spoken word held enough awe to kindle anew the raging fire he’d ignited in her blood.
With great gentleness, he brushed the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. “Ne’er compare me to lecherous graybeards and mating dogs again,” he said, and a spark of his rare yet oh-so-fine humor flashed across his handsome face.
Though fleeting, the wee glimpse of genuine amusement warmed her, melting her heart with the same mastery his kiss and embrace had melted her resistance.
Feeling much the enchantress she’d professed to be, she gave in to the irresistible urge to touch h
er fingers to his mouth. Firm, yet smooth and warm, the feel of his lips fascinated her. Her breath caught on a captivated sigh as he curved his mouth into one of his slow, disarming smiles right beneath her fingertips.
“Now you know how a knight kisses,” he said, the low, silky words causing a shower of light, fluttery shivers to ripple down her spine.
Holding her captive with the heat of his gaze, he captured her wrist, upturned her hand, and planted a searingly soft kiss on her palm. “One to dream on,” he murmured, folding her fingers over the kiss.
Isolde blinked, too shaken to speak.
He offered her his palm. “Will you grace me with one, too?”
“One, too?” she echoed, full aware of what he wanted her to do.
“A simple hand kiss,” he said, ardor still simmering in his warm brown eyes. “To see me through the long, lonely hours in your dungeon.”
His last few words doused the fire in her blood in one fell swoop, at once reminding her of the constraints of her plight and smashing his expertly spun illusion of gallantry and dashing knights with all the finesse of a mailed fist crashing down on a goose egg.
“You said one kiss,” came her rebuff, edgier than she would’ve liked, but at least her fool lips had ceased quivering. “It’s now been two.”
He closed his hand over her shoulder. “I would have more,” he said, an indefinable undercurrent in his deep-timbered voice. “And you, most desirable maid, should have more . . . if you seek to further enlighten yourself.”
“You are a shameless imposter, Donall MacLean,” she accused, trying to wrest herself free of his iron clamp hold on her shoulder. “An arrogant boorish blackguard with nary a knightly bone in your body.”
“Think you?” He arched a brow.
“Aye, I do!” she cried, anger scorching her cheeks. An acute and shameful awareness of the wild abandon she’d so easily succumbed to filled her with enough fury to ignite ten roaring fires.
Afraid traces of that abandon might still be blazing in her eyes, she whipped her head around, turning her face away from him. Unthinkable, should he be able to tell her lips yet tingled, aching to be kissed again.
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