For a few precious moments, no one stood in the softly-lit chamber but the two of them and the sizzling anticipation snapping between them. A keen sense of deepest intimacy so thick on the cold, rain-tinged air, Magnus would’ve sworn he could have cut it with his dirk.
But his were not the only eyes fastened to the heavy folds of rich blue linen yet shielding his lady’s sweetest charms.
Countless others stared, too. Some in a most annoyingly penetrating manner.
His hands clenching, he tossed a quelling glance at the circle of waiting kinsmen. “Come you, lass, have off with the gown,” he urged his bride. “The whole of it.”
And she complied—her rich brown eyes sparking, the look in them flooding him with sensual heat as she let the gown slide the rest of the way down her naked body to form a billowing pool at her feet.
“Saints a mercy!” a deep voice groaned—one Magnus recognized too late as his own. At once, his shaft swelled and lengthened to full-stretch, and at a speed that astounded him.
Garbed in naught but candle glow and her own MacLean steel, his lady stood full naked in all her glory, the gleaming white opulence of her breasts stealing his breath, the wealth of glossy black curls at the vee of her thighs unmanning him.
Not that anyone would dare call the raging hardness riding hot and proud against his belly . . . man-less.
Swallowing, he tossed a glance at his brothers—Hugh, e’er the sensitive soul, with his back to the proceedings, and Dugan already coming long-strided toward him.
“Say-the-words,” Magnus snarled at Dugan, half-afraid he’d lose his seed any moment—and equally afeared he’d ram his fist into his brother’s nose if the blackguard dared cast a glance at the tangle of raven curls springing at the top of his wife’s shapely thighs!
“The words!” Magnus growled when Dugan’s gaze indeed began to waver.
Flushing bright red, Dugan snapped his attention back to Magnus’s dark-frowning face. “Sir Magnus!” Dugan began, if with a somewhat over-thick voice. “Are you satisfied with the lady’s . . . good health?”
“I am more than satisfied,” Magnus rapped out, his own voice rough. “I am well-content.”
He knew even greater contentment when, the words spoken, Colin moved with all haste to swirl Magnus’s plaid around Amicia’s nakedness.
“And you, Lady Amicia?” Dugan turned to her. “Is Sir Magnus to your . . . pleasure?”
Clutching the plaid tight about her shoulders, she slid the briefest of glances over Magnus’s jutting phallus.
“He is more than pleasing to me. I would want no other,” she said, lifting her gaze, her voice strong, almost defiant.
Then Colin was thrusting his own plaid into Magnus’s hands, thus ending an ordeal Magnus didn’t ever care to repeat. His emotions high, he slung the plaid around his nakedness and opened his mouth to thank Colin, but the other man spoke first.
“I trust you will honor your word?” he wanted to know, not quite able to keep an I-knew-it gleam from twinkling in his dark eyes.
“My word?” Magnus held fast to the borrowed plaid, his fingers having proved too clumsy to knot the fool thing.
Stepping back a bit so the clansmen streaming from the chamber had unhindered access to the door, he shook his head.
“I’ve no idea what you mean, my friend,” he said, truly puzzled.
“The boon,” Colin supplied. He gave an imperceptible nod in Amicia’s direction. “Your promise to bed her—you will keep it?”
At once, memory returned.
And Magnus’s pride—even if its roar held all the ferocity of a newly born wolf cub not yet able to open its eyes or even stand on its feet.
“Well?” Colin persisted.
“Well, indeed,” Magnus answered, letting a decidedly wolfish grin spread across his face. “It would seem you have bested me yet again.”
“How so?” Colin angled his head, waited.
“Simply . . .” Magnus began, planting a firm hand to his friend’s lower back and propelling him toward the door, “. . . that I intend to bed her very, very well—unless I’ve lost the art, that is.”
Colin paused on the threshold, shook his dark head. “And I vow, in the tasting of yon lass’s bounteous charms, you will discover the art, my friend,” he predicted, his face lit with mirth.
Mirth that Magnus did not share.
Not a shred of it.
He only knew he wanted his bride.
And in ways that would shake every heathery hill in the land.
Chapter Thirteen
“A GOD’S NAME, but they dragged their feet about leaving us!” Magnus stood on the threshold, fingers clenched around the door latch, Colin’s plaid still clutched about his middle. Truly, he was willing his kinsmen’s ankles to sprout wings as they made their bumbling way down the shadow-hung corridor.
If such faltering progress could be called movement.
Hot irritation and another, deeper heat made his pulse pound. He breathed a silent prayer of relief that the louts were heading away from the bedchamber and toward the winding turnpike stair that would lead them back down to the great hall.
“Ne’er has anyone been plagued by such slow-moving buffoons, I vow it!” He frowned after them, the beginnings of a tic just beneath his left eye fueling his annoyance.
Enough was enough.
By the Mass, the corridor’s odor alone would have had him striding along with the greatest of speed. The stone-vaulted passage smelled of damp cold and torch-smoke on the best of nights. Damp cold, torch-smoke, and mold on the worst of nights.
This night, it reeked of all those things plus the miasmic cloud of ale fumes trailing in his kinsmen’s unsteady wake.
But at last, even the stragglers vanished into the yawning dark of the stair-head, the lingering echo of their bawdy ditties and trudging footfalls all that remained to mark their passage.
Their departure left him feeling more naked than naked—his last excuse for not turning to face the hot-driving lust charging the air behind him. He knew she’d see his need stamped all over him the instant he faced her.
Faced her, and delivered up his soul.
“Do you not want to shut the door?”
Her voice came from just behind him—and said so much more than the simple words.
Magnus froze, his barriers smashed, but his pride still digging sharp claws into his limbs, holding fast in one last bitter battle before defeat.
“I thought you wanted them to go?”
“Och, but I did, lass,” he said, surrendering, his final defenses clearing the field. “I wished to be alone with you more than you would guess.”
“Truly?” The hope in her voice grabbed hold of him, a victor seizing the spoils. “More than I would guess?”
“Much more.”
“And will you tell me the ways?”
She’d stepped closer, clearly testing her win, and the soft whisper of her breath feathered across the bared skin of his back. Its sweetness sent waves of sensual heat surging into his groin until he’d run so hot and tight the intense, pulsing pleasure proved almost painful.
The kind of pain that made the heavens sing.
He turned, accepting the deep, searing need. No longer able to hide or deny its strength. “I will show you,” he promised, tremors of anticipation rippling across every inch of him—in especial his hardest inches.
She glowed with her triumph. She looked down for a moment to adjust the plaid still wound tight around her lush-curved form, and a strange flicker of doubt flitted across her beautiful face.
“Then you are wholly consigned to what we must do here?” She slid a look at the waiting bed, left the question hanging between them.
The fool kind of query he would have made—were she of a less bold-eyed and daring nature.
“Consigned?” He blinked, coloring like a squire, he was sure, but, saints, ne’er could anything be farther from the truth.
Not that his fool tongue could string together
what was the truth. Not just now. Not with her scent sneaking beneath his shattered guard and stealing his wits.
Clean and heathery, the scent floated around him, seducing his senses. It was every bit as intoxicating as the most potent heather ale.
A thousand times headier.
“The door . . . ?” She touched a hand to his arm. “Do you not want—”
“I want—” he broke off, the warmth of her fingers on the bare flesh of his arm making him ragingly conscious of his state of undress—and hers.
Most especially hers.
Saints, his wants were lodged so fast in his throat he could scarce draw breath around them! But he knew what she meant—in his besottedness, he’d forgotten to close the door. So he yanked it tight and slid home the drawbar, locking out any wretch who’d dare seek to return.
Cheeky, long-nosed wretches in particular, but also any regrets or hesitations that might dare try to discolor the bliss he’d determined to give her this night.
The joy he meant to allow himself.
“You want . . . ?” She was peering at him, the softest of smiles curving her lips. “I am thinking I would like to hear what it is that you desire. Aye, I wish to hear the words.”
Magnus swallowed, his tongue suddenly as clumsy as his clansmen’s stomping feet.
Jesu, he could still hear their awkward progress—boom, boom, boom, came the echo of many pairs of shuffling, stumbling feet.
Just a faint echo, but persistent enough to drift back along the darkened passage and . . . disturb him.
Bedevil him.
For the echoing footfalls had some vague something dancing along the periphery of his memory, and he couldn’t quite grasp its significance.
He only knew it unsettled him.
“Shall I tell you what I want?” his minx of a wife suggested, taking bold advantage of his momentary confusion by letting Colin’s borrowed plaid dip low enough for the merest top slivers of her areolae to peek from above the edge of the tartan cloth. “What I have always wanted? Desired?”
Magnus swallowed, swirling heat squeezing his innards, snaking round the hard length of him. “Sweeting, I’ll grant you my best sword that we share the same wants this night,” he vowed, careful to keep one hand fisted in his own plaid lest it fall and expose his readiness too soon.
This was to be a night of slowest pleasures, each moment stretched and savored to the fullest.
“Aye, the very same wants and desires, to be sure. Merely to different purposes.”
“Say you?” She let the plaid’s edge slip down a bit more—only on one side this time, but enough for the hardened peak of one fine-thrusting nipple to pop free and wink at him.
She glanced down at the exposed nipple, then looked back up to stare him full in the eye as she slowly—very slowly—readjusted the plaid until he could see no more. Not even the sweet-puckered rims of those tantalizingly large areolae.
Magnus frowned, the hard length of him throbbing with almost blinding urgency.
She smiled.
Moving to the table, she began pulling the pins from her coiled braids. A dangerous move, for the table stood not far from the peat fire and in its reddish-gold glow, the creamy top swells of her breasts and her bared shoulders shone like finest mother-of-pearl.
A feast for a man’s eyes, and one that made him burn to see the rest of her luscious body’s curves and hollows gilded and limned by the soft, flickering firelight.
Her face glowed, too, and a rapid pulsing beat in the dip between her collarbones. It was a clear hint that her flush had more to do with excitement or agitation than the cozy warmth spooling out from the hearth fire.
“And what are those cross-purposes you mentioned?” she wanted to know, the slight strain in her voice knocking out the possibility of excitement.
She’d gone very still, not moving at all except to nudge her toes at the furred skins spread upon the chamber floor.
“Aye, I think I should like to hear them,” she said into the uncomfortable silence. “What purposes do you mean? Save the obvious? That we must—couple—so a bloodied bedsheet can be carried about the hall on the morrow?”
“That is part of it, aye, the bedsheet. . . .” Magnus spoke true, and regretted the words the moment they left his mouth.
In especial, when her mouth tightened upon hearing them.
She gave him a vexed look. “You are duty-bound to make me your wife in truth, yet you do not find the task . . . displeasing.” She flicked a telling gaze at the tent-like protuberance beneath his plaid. “Nay, sir, even a less enlightened lass would ken without doubt that you do not find the task at hand in any way onerous.”
Magnus cleared his throat, tried to swallow the tightness threatening to strangle him. “Rest assured I view our conjugal union as neither a burden nor a task,” he said, casting a significant glance of his own at his arousal. “As you have well noted, my lady.”
“Aye. So I have.” She slipped the last of the pins from her hair. Her thick, shining braids tumbled to just below her waist. “So what did you wish to imply?” she asked, her fingers undoing the plaits, tugging at the glossy blue ribbons she’d used to cross-garter them. “I truly want to know.”
Magnus blew out a frustrated breath. “God kens, I am not blessed with Hugh’s silvered tongue, lass.” He sought to excuse himself. “By different purposes, I but meant that while I am betting neither of us will deny a certain physical need, it is my wish to give you pleasure this night. It is the night of our wedding feast and I would know it special for you.”
He paused, made a conscious effort to stop the wretched flow of words but couldn’t. “And you, precious lass, will be wanting such closeness all nights,” he said, near choking on the words. “I can see it in your eyes.”
And it terrifies me more than the thought of the earth opening up beneath my feet.
“I see.” She tightened the plaid around her, gathering it higher until the voluminous folds reached to clear beneath her chin.
“Nay, you do not see at all,” Magnus argued, feeling as if he were sinking ever deeper into a bog patch.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, damning his fool stubborn pride. He cursed his honor for not allowing him to ply her with sweet golden untruths to smooth the furrowing of her brow.
“Will it make what must happen between us more . . . er . . . palatable if I swear to you that”—he flicked a hand in the direction of his loins—“my desire for you is genuine?”
To his dismay, the words he’d hoped would soothe her only seemed to upset her all the more. The sparking challenge that had been simmering in her eyes now flared to snapping anger, and the sweet flush on her cheeks deepened to the bright shining red of a woman riled.
“Ach, sir, I know well enough that your physical lust is not contrived.” She trailed a slow finger along the table edge—almost as if the white half-moons of her well-kept nails were a dagger’s edge drawn across a rival’s throat.
Magnus swallowed uncomfortably.
Something was sorely amiss.
She reached up to tuck a silky curl of inky-black hair behind her ear. “I am dark enough, am I not?” The soft-spoken words were barely audible above the wind and rain lashing at the window shutters.
A cold dread spread through his gut as Magnus stared at her. “Why do I think we are speaking past each other?”
She shrugged a mite too casually. “I think not.” Looking down, she flicked at something invisible on her bare arm. “How can we be . . . when I only meant that all and sundry are aware of your wenching tastes.”
“My wenching tastes?”
Her gaze snapped back to his. “Your voracious appetite for well-fleshed light skirts with skeins of raven-black hair.” She set her jaw, her flashing eyes daring him to deny it.
And he couldn’t.
It was more than true—he’d just never told anyone why.
And he’d be damned if he’d tell her. Doing so would be selling his soul to the Devil.
Giving away the last shreds of his dignity.
So he simply stared at her, hoped the truth wasn’t writ all over his astonished face. “Who told you that?”
She looked down again, this time to trace the table’s wood grain swirls with her fingertips. “Everyone,” she said, her gaze fixed on the table. “Janet, your brother Dugan . . . and others,” she added, making larger swirls with her fingers for each spoken name.
Magnus blew out a breath, rubbed the back of his neck. Saints, the weight of an unseen iron yoke seemed to settle heavier onto his shoulders with each indrawn breath.
“Can you deny it?”
He shook his head, felt the yoke’s weight increase a thousandfold. “I will not lie to you,” he said, running rough fingers through his hair. “I have indeed favored well-formed maids with dark, flowing tresses.”
“So it is said,” she acknowledged, still not looking at him. “And that, sir, is exactly what I meant—the reason I ken you are not adverse to . . . taking me.”
She glanced up then, smoothed one hand provocatively across the fullness of her plaid-draped breasts. “I must surely resemble the tourney whores you are rumored to have been so fond of?”
Nay, lass, they resembled you! That was the way of it! Magnus’s heart roared the truth at her.
Years of it.
He stood dumbfounded, his tongue weighted by the strictures of his own fool pride.
“That is by with, I swear you,” he jerked, keeping a careful check on his words lest the whole of it pour out like an eddy of free-flowing water. “Sakes, lass, do you not know that the true way of things often runs far deeper than that which lies on the surface?”
It was the closest he could come to spilling his heart to her.
Wishing he could, he turned half away from her, fixed his gaze on the windows. Hard rain hammered against the closed shutters, rattling them, and each new clap of thunder released another blinding flash of bright silvery-white light that sharpened the outlines of everything in the chamber in a quick wash of startling black and white.
Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] Page 22