The Lass Defied the Laird (Explosive Highlanders Book 1)

by Lisa Torquay

  She started unbuttoning the dress. “Yes, for Sam.” She reminded him, unfastening the first.

  His nostrils flared with a fierce intake of air. “Of course.” He growled.

  “And wine, for the mulled wine.” The second undone.

  “Wine.” An octave lower. Lost.

  Her full breasts spilled from the clothes.

  Unwavering, he ogled those majestic globes. “Aileen.” Barely a sound in it.

  The appropriate effect achieved, she knelt on the carpet. Her hands found his knees and snuck under the soft woollen tartan. A tented tartan, she must point out.

  Her mouth followed, tantalising. The hairs on his thighs teased her lips, his earthen scent gifted her nose.

  Her hands advanced. His breath disorganised. “You cannot be thinking— “ He began.

  Her lips kissed the inner skin, inhaling him. His arousal. Her hand reached far, deep under the plaid. His sensuous mouth emitted something akin torturous sensation.

  She bared his thighs. “Shh, Taran.” She uncovered his impressive manhood. “I have been desiring to do this for days.”

  As she found his hard, veined shaft, she put out the index to trace the prominent organ in a feather caress that seemed to take him to desperation. He was magnificent silky, hard and hot.

  Ruddy colour came to his sculpted cheekbones. “You have been—oh!” Her mouth found its goal. Hungry.

  “Damn you, Aileen!” His head fell back.

  One hand closed around his base while her mouth covered the engorged tip of him, restless tongue doing its job.

  She probed his knees wider, his big hand came to her head.

  She savoured him with such gusto, his breath hitched. The salty tang of him caused her centre to flood.

  “I should have done this that day.” As she held it, her tongue traced the under part.

  Devouring him, she lowered further and further, only to go back to the beginning and do it again. The hairs on his leg tickled her nipples as she advanced and retreated.

  “Which one.” He wore a tormented expression on him.

  Air serrated in and out of his lips. He could hardly keep his eyes open.

  Her hand moved up and down his length. He groaned. “When you tried to convince me to…” the hand snuggled the tip. “Marry you.” Her mouth covered him again.

  He must have gone bigger for she could take less of him. She gratified her lips with that hot granite sculpture.

  He grunted. “Had you done it,” he panted, “I would have…” his pelvis moved towards her, “dragged you…” she took more of him, “to the remotest cottage…” her tongue caressed the slit, “never to come back.”

  Her hand and her mouth accelerated. His features contorted. The mouth hungrier. His head fell back. Tongue restless. Then he screamed as he filled her mouth with his passion. And she did not let go until she got the last drop.

  While she buttoned her clothes up, she observed his relaxed features, his tall body sprawled on the chair.

  “Expect a payback.” He warned, lax.

  A side smile came to her lips. “I am counting it.”

  ~.~.~

  On the next day, Aileen rode to the village to order those cakes for Christmas. As she left the baker’s, she ran into Gracie.

  The village consisted of one street with shops and the church where the gathering to present her to the clan took place.

  “My lady.” She greeted cheerful.

  “Gracie.” She devolved. “Please, we need no formality. Call me Aileen.”

  The crisp weather came with a chilli wind blowing through the naked trees as the sun struggled to peer through thick clouds.

  “Yes, my—Aileen.” She and Seamus were Taran’s closest friends and kin. “I have got news.” She started. “My Nora has just given birth to Bonnie.”

  Nora, her daughter in her late twenties and Bonnie the granddaughter.

  “Oh, Gracie!” Aileen answered. “I am so happy for her.”

  “So am I, my—oh, Aileen.” Her smile stretched from one end to the other of her round face. “My first grandchild.”

  Nora lived on the borders of the state with her husband Clyde, and their milking cows.

  “Is she well?” With a cottage so far off, it would have been difficult with midwives and the such.

  “Soon she will be.” Came Gracie. “But it was a difficult one, poor lass. Her labour lasted three days. We thought she would not make it.”

  “Sad to hear it.” Condoled Aileen. She wished she had the time and the means to use her healing skills to help those who became now her people.

  “Say, Aileen.” Gracie’s expression became hesitant. “I believe a visit from you would make her recover doubly as fast.”

  Such expectation lay on the older woman’s face, Aileen took pause. Seamus and Gracie had always been so loyal to Taran. And they never mentioned what they had witnessed in Taran’s chambers when she snuck in it to fake a scandal. One that never happened, thanks to these kin. It would not hurt to return the favour.

  “Of course, I would be happy to visit them.” Aileen acquiesced.

  “Oh, you will make their day!” A broader smile came to the woman’s face. “Seamus and I will ride to their cottage tomorrow, if you care to join us.”

  Aileen had piles of work to do, but this was certainly more important. The housekeeper, Anne, could undertake most of the chores. A visit form The Lady McDougal would be regarded as a rare honour and the idea of regaling those new kin with it felt like the right thing to do.

  “That is very kind of you.” They settled the details of the trip and Aileen rode back to the manor.

  ~.~.~

  Aileen’s mare entered the stables area as she nearly bumped into Taran, who came from the sheep barn. Both left their mounts with the stable hand and walked together to the manor.

  “I met Gracie at the village.” Aileen made conversation.

  “How is she?” He took off his riding gloves.

  “She is fine, but her daughter had a difficult labour.” Her brows pleated.

  In tartan and riding boots, his steps echoed on the dry ground.

  “I learned Nora was with child, yes.” He listened to her, gaze in the horizon, steam puffs coming from his ever-tempting lips.

  “Gracie asked me to accompany them to her daughter’s to visit with Nora and the baby girl, Bonnie.”

  His feet stanched as if they had morphed into stone and he directed her a steely stare. “No.”

  Aileen stopped, too astonished with his reaction. “What do you mean by no?”

  “Exactly what I said.” Legs braced, his jaw ticked. “You have much to do here.”

  “I am not asking for your permission.” Her firm voice and stance took him fully.

  “You are not getting it, anyway.” Dictatorial and obstinate.

  “We owe a lot to them and there was no way I could deny her.” She argued. “You know it.”

  "I am aware of this.” He replied hard. “But I will not change my answer.”

  Fury erupted in her at his overbearing attitude. “The Lady McDougal has obligations towards the clan and I will not skip them.”

  “Come spring, you may go.” Irreducible, his rugged face sculpted in cold marble.

  “May?” Did he think he was a kind of mediaeval lord? “I am not a doll for you to place and displace as you please.”

  Those green eyes narrowed on her. “In case you have not noticed, I am your husband and I have the right to decide your comings and goings.”

  The insufferable troglodyte! “I gave my word.” She hissed, her insides fermenting with anger.

  “Un-give it.” The order in a low voice.

  “Sorry, but no.” She countered, chin tilted up to him. “I will leave at dawn.”

  His scowl expressed his vexation with minute precision. “You leave, you do not come back.”

  That hit her like a splash of boiling oil. She would not give him this kind of power. If she did, he would demand mo
re and more of her personal space and rights. In the end, she would become a shell of herself.

  But it hurt. Damn, it hurt!

  Mahogany eyes darting fire, fists on her waist. “Fine.” Turning, she walked briskly to the manor.

  She did not fathom what she would do when she came back. Another place to go inexistent. She would figure something out.

  To turn into a puppet of this infernal man? Never!

  Taran watched her strut away. The woman backed at nothing! The legendary McKendrick stubbornness had nothing on her.

  Something heavy lodged in his guts. He took mere minutes to identify it. Guilt.

  He went too far threatening her with eviction.

  Bluidy hell!

  The old fear of being abandoned got the best of him again.

  What he should do is run after her and apologise.

  To do that, he would have to explain his reasons. And give her the power to demolish him by using this fear against him. Even a generous woman as she would not resist it, he was sure.

  The stupid attitude brought him exactly what he dreaded. Abandonment. A self-fulfilling prophecy, to be sure.

  He put his foot in it yet again. There seemed to be no turning back.

  Isolated in his study, fears and unshared feelings made for deadly cold bed companions.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Three days later, Aileen jostled on the middle-aged couple’s cart trailing the way back from Nora’s. The visit had been cosy and amusing, despite Aileen’s heavy hurt heart.

  The weather did not offer challenges, though it maintained low temperatures

  It took nearly all day to reach the younger couple’s cottage. Nora lay on a sturdy bed, too weak to stand. Pale, the woman’s face lit up with the lady’s entrance. And said lady concluded she made the right choice.

  She used the opportunity to check on Nora’s and the baby’s health as the healer she learned to be. Mother and baby received the care they needed, everyone’s gratitude and admiration shining through their smiles.

  It afforded Aileen minutes when she forgot what awaited her when she came back. At that moment on the trip back, with Seamus and Gracie chatting gladly about their new grandchild, Aileen’s mind drifted away.

  A pungent sadness spread in her threatening to morph into tears in a matter of seconds. She pondered she might spend the first weeks in a vacant cottage in the estate until she contacted her brothers and tried for a solution. She kept an amount of pin money which would allow her several months’ supply.

  The idea of living without Taran cut like a sabre in a battle. The reason too obvious to hide.

  Love.

  How she came into love for the implacable giant would forever be a mystery. Fact being she did, without the possibility of undoing it. It seemed she would have to live without him because with him would be impossible. She would not become that meek, tame woman he wanted her to be. If she could not be herself with him, love him freely, totally, it was better nothing at all. Crumbs of love in a gilded cage did not satisfy her intense, deep feelings for her husband. A life of hunger for love not a deal she might accept.

  “Here we are.” Seamus alerted, hauling her off her grim reveries.

  The manor’s front door loomed ahead. She would pack her things and go on her way.

  A smile extracted from her rigid lips, she thanked them and headed to her lady’s chambers.

  From his study’s window, Taran watched as Aileen entered the manor. She came back. For the second time. She had no intention of abandoning him. An intelligent man would have got the message by now. She was Aileen, not Fiona.

  Taran? He must be a pea-head for not understanding it.

  He soured everything, did he not? The anguish he would cause at her departure and his own isolation flipped his guts and turned them to knots.

  His rebellious feet took him upstairs without him making a conscious decision to do so.

  Shoving the connecting door, her chambers greeted him with a trunk open on her bed. The view of her filling the travel gear attacked him like a flaming canon ball. The expression on her beautiful face would be burned in his memory for eternity. Serious, concentrated, yes. Also, pale. And sad. Like the sadness of nature when summer ended. Profound and resigned.

  He did it.

  His guilt seared down his guts as non-matured whisky.

  Why would a man hurt the woman he loved?

  Yes, loved. So acutely, the idea alone perforated his heart with a thousand daggers. He adored the whole of her stubborn, uncompliant self. The woman that did not back down from him, who gave him exactly what he needed, put boundaries, elicited respect, consideration. Fascination.

  She turned to him blankly. “I will leave after packing.” She took him on his word, then. She had no reason to believe otherwise, did she? Her attention on the trunk anew.

  “I am sorry.” Bluidy arduous to eat down his despicable pride. “I did not mean what I said.”

  Mahogany flashlights on him, the sadness being replaced by something he did not identify. “Why would that be?”

  One hand raked his already ruffled hair. The time came to clear it. “In my experience, a wife who leaves is a wife who abandons me.” Lips pressed, his jaw ticked.

  Stare fiery and wide, fists on her trim waist, the hurricane reared. “Do you think I would leave a man like you for no reason?” She shouted unconstrained.

  It was his turn to glare at her, completely thunderstruck. No reason? What was the diminutive witch about here? “You have reasons.” He asserted bluntly.

  “Do I?” Her pleated brows defied his statement.

  “I am an overbearing troglodyte, remember?” He stepped further into the room.

  “Yes, one I will take on any time.” She devolved firmly.

  No doubt, to infuriate and arouse him to a point he did not reckon which prevailed.

  “I cannot— “ He inhaled heavily. “I cannot leave you… alone.” Not a chance to keep his hands—and other pieces of his anatomy—off her.

  More steps towards her.

  Vivid colour suffused her adorable skin. “If you do, I swear I will throttle you!”

  Hell! The answer and the glint in her eyes made him hotter. “Even after I abducted you?”

  She breathed a secret laugh. “I escaped, if memory serves.” Oh, yes! How would he forget? “And I accepted your marriage proposal of my free will.”

  “When I stormed the McKendrick’s manor and affirmed I compromised you.” Which narrowed a woman’s choices.

  He posted himself right before her. Amazing she did not back up from him. “And you think I married you because of a piece of meaningless skin?”

  The woman followed no sensible rules. No dictatorial men’s rules, that is. A piece of skin which altered her status dramatically, for devil’s sake! One this troglodyte was proud had been his alone. A piece of skin which she had given him of her own will. Of course! It downed on his hard head like a stone column had fallen on it. This was the magic word. Free. She chose him, not the other way around; poor him if he thought differently.

  He did not even want to, in fact.

  “Yes.” He rumbled nevertheless.

  “Pitiful men.” She sighed exaggeratedly.

  He gave no answer, for his eyes drank her in with desert-ridden thirst. The woman that chose him.

  She did not finish though. “That blasted Fiona must have been a stupid woman, lucky me.” Emphatic, his hurricane. “She did not realise what she had in her hands and threw it away.”

  He came so close he could feel her words fanning his bristle jaw. “You are saying…?”

  “That I love you, you pig-headed giant!” Her stare so hot it elevated his already soaring temperature.

  “You love me, buidseach?” He put his large palms on her dainty shoulders, hardly giving any credit to his ears.

  “Despite your pre-historical notions.” Her head tilted back to meet his scrutiny.

  “Goddammit, Aileen.” He pulled her to
him. “I love you like a savage!” His ragged breath mingled with hers as their stares merged bottomless.

  And then she was on the tip of her toes, her arms banding him. “Time to act as one, I would suggest.”

  He did. Completely, irrevocably. Unmistakably.

  ~.~.~

  It was definitely the best Christmas of his adult life, Taran marvelled as he sat at supper with Aileen and Sam in lively conversation.

  Sam, encouraged by his wife, recounted about his academic routines, friends and professors with an enthusiasm Taran had seldom seen in him.

  “A person has been helping me with my assignments.” He added.

  The boy became a man overnight. Taller than when he left, he rivalled his father though in a lankier way.

  “Who is that?” Aileen asked.

  Also, his red hair darkened a shade giving him a more mature air.

  “Miss Stratham.” He adjusted his new glasses, fancier than the ones with which he left. “Miss Harriet Stratham.”

  Taran and Aileen exchanged a glance at his son’s enthusiastic tone. Could it be the young man found a romantic interest?

  “She is not a student, I daresay.” Aileen probed.

  Women struggled to be allowed in universities only later in the century.

  “No.” He answered. “But she is as learned as if she was.” He complemented with no small amount of admiration.

  “A bluestocking!” Taran interjected, deserving a reproving glare from his wife.

  “You will find many as her in Oxford, Father.” The student defended. “She is the governess of Professor Chadwick’s’ children, to tell the truth.”

  “Governesses are learned women by definition.” Aileen said. “Not so strange an occurrence.”

  “How exactly has she been helping you?” He did not care for his son talking about a possible… amorous prowess in front of his wife.

  His son, a boy who left here inexperienced. There happened a first time for everything as they said. Though the young man displayed no sign he already acquired such… experience in fact.

  “Oh, writing papers, lending books and the likes.” He dismissed, eyes lowering. Hiding something, the lad, he was.