by Paula Quinn
Asher gagged and turned a deep shade of crimson when Rob used the wall to anchor him off the ground. The captain kicked his feet and clutched at the steely fingers crushing his pipes. “Yes, I… did it, and I have had to live… with… MacGregor, please I beg you, let me… let me seek her forgiveness first.”
“Ye dinna’ deserve it!” Rob roared in his face, now level with his own.
“Rob! Let him go!”
The order came from Davina, standing at the now open door, both arms stiff at her sides, a pool of unshed tears shimmering against the firelight. Finn was behind her and stepped around her to enter the chambers first, his eyes fixed on the man losing consciousness in Rob’s hand.
“Let him go, Rob,” she demanded again, but still she did not move from the entrance.
Rob didn’t know how much she’d heard, but seeing her, seeing the anguish in her innocent face, tempted him to snatch the last breath from Asher’s body. Nae, he would not have her see him do it. As much as he wanted to, he knew she would never forget such a sight.
Releasing the captain, he turned to her. Hell, he didn’t want her to find out this way. “Davina, listen to me—”
But when she finally moved away from the door, she went directly to Asher. “Seek my forgiveness for what, Edward?”
Though he’d just faced death at the hands of an enraged warrior, ’twas a slight, trembling lass who caused the captain to come undone. “It was my fault,” he confessed, holding one hand around his throat and the other over his face. “I told them where to find you.” He sobbed, unable to look at her.
Rob couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. He wanted to go to her, to pull her away from the truth he knew was rending her heart in two. The only man ever to win her trust had betrayed her.
“You told them where to find me?” she echoed on a broken breath and sank to her knees in front of her closest friend. “Why?”
“It was before I knew you.” Asher’s hand fell away from his face and his rueful gaze met hers. “I hadn’t fallen in love with you yet. I—”
Her palm cracked across his face with enough force to split his lip. “Everyone died because of you!” she screamed, her voice so ridden with sorrow that Finn almost reached her before Rob did.
“Come away with ye, now, my love,” Rob whispered against her temple as he scooped her up in his arms. She did not weep against him, but continued to stare at Asher with disbelieving eyes as Rob carried her to the door. Somehow, her silence tore at his heart more than her tears. He wondered how she would ever trust anyone again.
“He’s no’ to be let oot of this room,” Rob told Finn before he left the chambers. “I will return in the mornin’.”
“You can put me down,” Davina said quietly when they stepped into the hall and Finn shut the door after them.
“Nae, lass, I want to hold ye.” Rob pulled her closer and closed his eyes when her tears began.
They did not end when, alerted by Davina’s scream a few moments earlier, Will, Jamie, and Maggie came running up the stairs.
“What happened?” Maggie rushed forward when she saw Davina cradled in her nephew’s arms.
“Finn will tell ye. He’s in Asher’s chambers.” Rob’s jaw grew tight while Davina did her best to muffle her heartrending sobs in his plaid.
“Poor gel,” his aunt cooed, stretching her arm to stroke Davina’s head. “Whatever ’tis cannot be that terrible.” When Davina did not look up, Maggie gave Rob a concerned look. “Ye’ll tell me later what happened. Bring her to her room now. I’ll follow ye and stay with her tonight.”
“Nae, she’s stayin’ with me.” The flat pitch of Rob’s voice left no room for argument. He didn’t wait for one either way, but turned his smoldering gaze to Will. “Asher is yers fer the evenin’. Do what ye will. I’ll finish it on the morrow.”
Will’s eyes lingered on Davina’s face buried in Rob’s shoulder. His features hardened and he nodded before he left them, furious with the man who made her weep and fixing to punish him for it.
Maggie’s small hand on Rob’s arm stopped him when he moved to leave. “Robbie, she is the king’s daughter.”
’Twas easy to ignore the warning plea in her soft gaze. Rob had decided before he’d brought Davina here what he thought of her father. His mind was set, and now more than ever, he knew he would never let the king take her from him.
“The king gave up his claim on her long ago. She is mine now.”
He didn’t care what his aunt said next. He didn’t care what his father would say when he returned home or how many armies came against him. He would fight for her. He would die for her.
He carried her to his room, his bed, where he wanted her to sleep each night and wake up safely in his arms.
“Don’t leave me,” she wept, clinging to his neck when he bent to lay her on the mattress.
“I never will,” he promised, lying down beside her and pulling her into his embrace.
Her tears came hard and long into the night, tugging at the deepest fibers of Rob’s heart. He didn’t know what to say to comfort her, so he remained silent, stroking her hair and keeping her close. She’d lost everything in the massacre at St. Christopher’s, but she’d kept her pain within, along with her secrets. Tonight though, the arrow of grief finally punctured her armor and all he could do was hold her as the river spilled forth.
“They were my family,” she whispered, finally pausing, her voice barely audible against his neck. She shook her head at the memories that were too painful to remember, but were always there nonetheless. “I could hear the sisters’ screams coming from the chapel and I could not get outside to save them.”
Rob kissed the top of her head and felt his own eyes sting from the torment brought upon her by a man who claimed to love her.
“I prayed for Edward to live. I prayed so hard. I loved him and his men as if they were my brothers. How could he have done this terrible thing?”
“I dinna’ know, my love.”
Her body relaxed in his arms and she nuzzled her face deeper into his neck. His muscles reacted, tightening with the need to taste her mouth, her tears, her pain, and take it upon himself. God help him, he had never loved anyone or anything as much as he loved her. The realization did not shock him, for he’d known for some time that she had claimed his heart. But it frightened him to think what he was willing to give up for her. And how could he tell her now that Asher had proven that love could not be trusted?
She shifted slightly, molding her soft curves to his hard ones and muddling his thoughts until only desire remained. He kissed her temple, murmuring soothing promises he prayed she could believe. When she angled her face, he traced kisses along her brow, her wet eyelids, her cheeks. Her lips parted and her warm breath fell upon his chin.
“Rob,” she whispered, her voice aching with a longing as strong as his own. He dipped his mouth to hers and met the sweet ardor of her waiting lips.
He did not crush her to him to satisfy the physical need raging within him, though it cost him every ounce of self-control he possessed, but spread his fingers over her face, then behind her nape, softly, slowly, drawing her to him as his tongue stole inside her mouth. She tasted like fine wine and warm tears, and he kissed her like a parched wanderer who had discovered his oasis.
He wanted to taste every inch of her, to quench his hunger on the firm tips of her breasts, the quivering velvet of her belly, and beyond. He wanted to look down at her beautiful face while he claimed her body, and more, her heart.
But he could not do it this way, not when her heart was so broken. Not when the trust she had guarded so diligently had just been tossed at her feet, used and forsaken. He would do whatever it took to bring it back to life, and prove, however he had to, that he would treasure it. So he withdrew from the sweet, hungry lips that thirsted for him, as well.
“D’ye know how much ye mean to me, Davina?” he asked her, and looking deeply into her eyes, he couldn’t help smiling.
Their
arms entangled, touching each other’s faces, she smiled back at him. “Yes, I do.”
How could she not doubt him after the man she’d believed in for four years proved false? But this was who she was, a forgiving, guileless angel spun from the harp strings of heaven.
“Ye have the kind of courage men pray fer on the battlefield. Yer cousin Claire is goin’ to love ye.”
“Tell me what kind of man is he who loves her?” she asked him, her tears finally ceasing.
“Graham Grant is a patient man,” he told her, washed in her warm breath, completely lost in the glimmering blue of her eyes. “He’s clever and convincin’, and has nae trouble at all bendin’ his wife’s strong will to his.”
“And him?” Her smile softened while she traced her fingertips over his lips. “Is he stubborn, as well?”
“No’ with her. With her, he bends like the heather on the hills.”
“I think I’m going to like him.”
“Ye will no’ be alone. Most of the lasses here do. But he is loyal to his wife and loves her alone.”
“It is what I have always wanted,” she said on a wistful, hollow sigh. “Claire’s life… Maggie’s… and, if your father is anything at all like you, your mother’s.”
Rob wanted it too. He hadn’t before, not with any of the lasses at Camlochlin. “’Tis a good life. A complete one.” he said, thinking of his father. “But ye could be queen.”
“I think I would rather be a servant.”
Rob thought of the veil that had covered her glorious mantle at Courlochcraig. Rather than enter a battle he was doomed to lose, he’d let himself forget God’s claim on her. But now, knowing who she really was, he questioned if there was any true claim at all.
“Would ye have defied yer faither fer God?”
“I would defy the world for God,” she told him. “But I would not have had to defy my father. I’ve always known who I was and what was to become of me. My father left documents with the Reverend Mother at the time of my delivery, decreeing that should he produce a son after me, I was to be given to God. What no one else in the world knows, save for myself, the Abbess who raised me, and now you, is that if he ever became king with no male heirs, he would openly appoint that title to me. He would wait a full year after his coronation, and if after that time, he still had no sons, I was to be returned to him and prepared for marriage to a man of his choosing.” She looked up into Rob’s solemn gaze and laid bare her heart for his eyes alone. “I don’t want to be surrounded by people who smile at me while they plan my demise. I don’t even know my true sisters, Mary and Anne, but I know we will have nothing in common, save for loveless marriages.” Fresh tears spilled over her lashes and she swiped them away. “Now that my father is king, my destiny looms before my eyes, Rob. If only I had known him… if, for even one day, I had felt his love for me I don’t think my duty to him would feel so bleak.”
Rob’s heart twisted in his chest. Her duty. How could he of all people blame her for doing what she was born to do? How would he ever let her go if she chose her duty over him?
“There is still time to pray that his young wife bears him a son.” She smiled, seeing the anguish in his eyes. He could not bring himself to smile back at her.
And what of her duty to God? ’Twas her faith that molded her, not some stately English court. ’Twas God she knew and trusted. He didn’t want to ask her. He didn’t want to hear her answer, but he had to know. “And if the king does have a son, would ye defy God fer me, Davina?”
“I would not have to,” she answered softly, tilting her mouth to his. “Remember, it was God who assigned you to me.”
Chapter Twenty-four
No man in the three kingdoms or beyond would ever compare to the one in Davina’s arms. If she was married and widowed a hundred different times, and each of her husbands loved her, it would always remain that her heart belonged to Rob alone.
Ah, God, You sent him to me knowing that I would love him beyond reason.
Her heart beat at a frantic pace as she closed her eyes to kiss him, praying that God would not have sent him only to ask her to give him up.
Molding her lips to Rob’s fine ones, she knew her heart never would. She knew what she meant to him—not because of land or her name, but simply because of her. He told her every time their eyes met. Rob was an intimidating man even when he wasn’t brooding, but not with her. Never with her. She couldn’t recall a single time when he didn’t seem to melt at the sight of her. He made her feel cherished, adored, and alive. Oh yes, she knew what she meant to him. He proved it when he brought her to Camlochlin.
As she ran her palms down his sculpted arms, she marveled that a waif dressed in loose robes had won the affection of such a magnificent man. When she dragged her fingertips over the belt at his hips, his body went rigid, his kiss, more passionate.
Only he could have picked the pieces of her heart off the floor and handed them back to her whole again. Only he could make her forget everything and everyone in her life, becoming the most vital thing in it. She was his, and she wanted to give him everything; her love, her trust, her body.
She lost her breath when his shaky fingers slipped beneath her earasaid and slid it off her shoulder. She did not think about what they were doing, or would be doing shortly. She reacted to his hungry mouth, to the silky demand of his tongue, and the raw need in his touch purely on instinct. She loved him and she wanted to share this deeper, sacred intimacy with him. Consumed in his heathery scent, she let him intoxicate her further when he rolled her on her back—her bottom lip captured between his teeth—and cupped his hand around her breast. Her nipple tightened between his thumb and forefinger and sent a fiery charge to the crux between her thighs.
“Rob, I—” She squirmed beneath him as strange, titillating heat coursed through her blood.
“I want ye to be mine, Davina.”
She wanted it too. She wanted to watch his restraint fall away, the discipline he’d practiced every day at her side come undone. She wasn’t afraid of what lay beneath Rob’s iron control. She wasn’t afraid of anything with him.
With a groan that snapped his muscles taut, she pulled his belt free and dropped it to the floor. He broke their kiss only long enough to curl his mouth into a sinuous, sensual snarl that made her insides ache and her face grow warm.
But clearly, he liked her boldness.
The remainder of their clothes came off in a tangle of arms and legs that left them both panting, but when Rob took her nipple into his mouth and sucked, she realized she had gone beyond the point of returning. He was going to take her. His hot, heavy arousal pressed against her belly attested to it. A part of her that she did not understand quivered for it, even as her mind began to protest. She didn’t care about laws—being with him felt too right, as if she was born to love him. She was frightened, though, of his size and suddenly ashamed of her inadequacies.
“I don’t know what to do.”
His voice was a tight moan along her breast. “I will teach ye.”
“What if I don’t like it?” she queried with a bit more panic in her voice.
“Ye will,” he promised and he spread his tongue over her nipple, a slow, languid caress that made her spread her legs wider before she could stop them. He didn’t mount her, though the sight of him, dark and wild for her, riddled her thoughts with stallions ready for mating.
His eyes gleamed on her like blue-gold flames, basking in what he saw. Rising over her, his shaft hard and long poised over her moist flesh, he lowered only his face to her mouth, her throat, kissing and licking down between the swell of her breasts until he reached her belly.
Her body jerked at the intimacy of his kiss. She gasped at the forbidden touch of his fingers and then of his tongue as he spread her and stroked her until she writhed beneath him. Fleetingly, she wondered if what he was doing was sinful, or if winding her fingers through his hair and pulling his dark curls free was an acceptable part of nature’s dance. But even Solom
on from the Good Book delighted in his beloved. With each salacious lick of Rob’s tongue, he drove all conscious thought from her head and left her trembling with a need that burned her to her very core. The gentle scrape of his teeth over her bud sent waves of scalding spasms through her muscles, and when he sucked her into his mouth, flicking his tongue over her engorged passion, she cried out on the brink of pleasure’s pinnacle.
They could both be killed for what they were doing, but Davina didn’t let herself think about that now, just as she didn’t think about falling off the ship or over the jagged cliffs of Elgol. She was done with being a coward. She loved Rob and she wanted more of him, all of him. Her heart would be forever bound to his and if she had but one night, this night only, to give herself to him freely, fully, she was going to take it.
“Come here to me,” she whispered, her voice ragged and unfamiliar to her ears.
He went, lowering himself onto her and enfolding her in his arms. “I dinna’ want to hurt ye, my love.”
“I would forgive you a thousand times if you did.”
“Och, lass, but ye slay my soul with yer smile. I will become a pitiful blossom-wieldin’ slave to yer happiness.”
“But you will be happy too.” She smiled and opened her mouth to his.
He made love to her slowly, taking his time to ready her untried body to receive him. When she flicked her tongue over her lips and arched her back, just slightly enough to rub herself over his swollen shaft, his patience left him. Snaking his arm beneath her waist, he hefted her hips upward with a grunt of pure male demand. Spreading her wide beneath him, he surged against her, from the tip of his glistening head to the thick, throbbing base, harder than steel.
She shuddered, afraid of what he was about to do, but she reached for him as anticipation blended with trepidation and searing, shameless desire. She clung to him while he broke through her barrier with slow, tender persistence. Pain speared through her like a burst of flame and she cried out, certain that he’d torn her open.
“Davina.” He was there, above her, his breath hot against her mouth. She opened her eyes to him, ashamed of her tears, and then astounded to see them in his eyes as well. “I love ye, lass,” he whispered deeply, running his fingers over her cheek. “Ye will always be first and foremost to me.”