by Jackie Ivie
She’d known she was in trouble, but not the extent of it.
Aidan looked wild. He was in a semi sit-up with her astride him. He hadn’t bound his hair back and it was in severe need of a grooming. Strands went everywhere, across his face, all over his shoulders. Some strands even went straight up. His eyes were slit, his nostrils flared for breath, his mouth was a thin line, sharpening his jawline and narrowing his cheeks, and everything on him was bunched up and tight, making ropes and bumps of muscle her hands were gripping and her upper thighs were sitting atop. And since he was breathing hard, she was rising and falling with it.
Then something changed. She could only hope it wasn’t something in her face.
Aidan opened his eyes from the slits they’d been in, showing their amber color through the mesh of lash. Then he cocked that one eyebrow, drawing her gaze to it before she looked quickly at the horse legs behind his head.
“What?” he asked in a soft voice that didn’t match anything else on him.
Juliana forced her slack lips back together and gulped. Glanced over at him before shying away and gulping again, although it was dry and scratchy-feeling the second time. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t! And she’d never admit why! Even to herself. If this was a feeling, it wasn’t a good one. It was harsh, real, raw. Huge. So vast, she started shaking with it. That slackened parts of him, starting with the legs at her back and moving through his belly, and dropping her slightly as he did so.
“Lass?”
He had a confused tone to the word. She didn’t dare see what might be on his face.
She did not love him. Oh no. Not him. Never.
“You called a rest?” A voice spoke from behind her, sending a shadow onto the top of Aidan’s head from a weak morning sun.
“God’s—”
Aidan cut off his curse and moved his attention to the speaker behind her. His move made the mass of muscle beneath her apex contract, and shift . . . and connect. Juliana reacted instantly to lift away, but was gripped at her waist by hands that weren’t gentle. Or slack.
“Alpin?”
Aidan asked it of the man behind her, and looked to be giving him full attention. As if the way she was pinned to his belly experiencing a worse sensation than when the horse had rolled beneath her wasn’t affecting anything.
“At your service . . . and hers.”
Alpin was probably bowing. Juliana didn’t turn her head to check. She was concentrating on ignoring everything about the man holding her, what he was making her experience physically, as well as the tumultuous beating of her heart.
“Where’s Arran?” Aidan asked.
“In the bushes. He . . . uh . . . overimbibed last eve.”
He wasn’t the only one, Juliana added silently.
“Ill?”
“You should ha’ stopped the serving of Killoran’s stock. That ale has a bite to it. A large one. Serpent large.”
“Kerr,” Aidan answered.
Juliana closed her eyes to it but that made it all worse. And harder to ignore. She knew she was turning pink, and then passing that to red. The sweat at her scalp told her of it. She opened her eyes again and looked over Aidan’s shoulder at his horse’s legs. It was safer.
“Aye.”
“Why is everyone standing about, taking in the morn?”
“Well . . . you did call a rest.”
That was Kerr again. Sarcastic. Amused. She recalled that from when they’d first met. Juliana silently cursed the fates. God. Aidan MacKetryck. She still didn’t want to know them or recognize them. Now, more than ever.
“Go rest then,” Aidan replied in a growl of voice.
“And eat?” Alpin asked.
“The lad’s an empty hole. Needs filling,” someone explained.
“Verra well. Go. Eat. And do it far from me.”
“We came to check . . . on your safety.” That voice she didn’t recognize.
“Verra well, you checked. I’m safe,” Aidan replied.
“How about the lass?” Kerr asked. Then he snorted what was probably withheld laughter. They all sounded fairly amused.
Aidan swore again.
“I believe that’s Aidan’s way of saying the lass is also . . . perfectly safe.” One of the men answered in a teasing tone she also recognized. It had to be Ewan.
“We have time for oat mash?” That was Alpin.
“My laird?” one of the men asked.
Aidan sighed, lifting her with it, before lowering her on the exhalation. “We near a burn?” he asked finally.
“Beyond the thicket. Stefan has a great nose for that.”
“Then aye. We’ve time.” Aidan wasn’t paying much attention to the men behind Juliana. She didn’t have to see his steady regard. She knew it. She could feel it. Sense it. Nearly touch it.
“Fetch the kettle, Gregor. Tavish, the kindling. And Alpin! See how you are at starting a cook fire. We’ll cook up a pot of gruel that’ll fill even you.”
“Can we have more Killoran ale?”
They were starting to leave if the voices were any indication.
“You can mix it in if you like.”
“But . . . what about the laird . . . and her?”
Someone had to ask it. Juliana shut her eyes for a moment before opening them and finding Aidan’s. He still had his eyelids lowered partway and one eyebrow cocked, and the moment she locked gazes with him, she gave the most appalling, wild, uncontrollable full-body pulse. And before it ceased, it got repeated by him.
Her eyes went wide. He lost his half-lidded look as well. He looked stunned and shocked and bewildered. Juliana only hoped it was mirrored, but already knew it wasn’t. The blush stealing over her features told her of it.
“You heard the laird.” His men hadn’t waited. They were definitely walking away. “He’s safe. The lass is safe. Everyone’s safe.”
“Except your bairn brother, Arran. That one is na’ safe.”
“Poor lad.”
“Give him more of that keg. That’ll cure him.”
Laughter followed that announcement, there was some more banter that got indistinct with distance, and then more hooting and calling and laughter. Then there was silence, broken only by the sound of her own breathing.
“You ready?” Aidan asked.
To get up, seek the bushes herself, and then get fed? Juliana was more than ready. She nodded.
“Good.”
Nothing like that happened. He stayed in the half-sit position, taut muscles against her nether region and his attention fully on her.
“Start speaking.”
“A-A-A-bout what?” She wasn’t feigning the confusion. The slight lift of his lips on one side wasn’t helping either. She had to look away if she wanted her tongue to work at making words.
“This.”
He added to the word by moving every bit of him against her, in a continuum of sensation, making a shiver that rippled over and through her before finding a center at each nipple, making them darts of awareness and sinful itch.
“Do you need to . . . visit . . . the bushes?” she asked, gapping the sentence with gasps of air.
“I did prior to the hurting you gave me,” he replied. “Now? I believe it can wait.”
Juliana wrinkled her brow. Hurting?
“And you’ll wait with me until you explain.”
“Ex . . . plain?” she stammered.
He sighed again. She moved up and down with it. She truly wished he’d cease that.
“You slept in my arms,” he informed her.
Oh . . . Lord! She swore the words for him. Silently.
“Slept. All night. And you went there willing. Of your own accord.”
“No . . . I . . . It was . . .”
“Look to me,” he commanded.
Look to him? Now? She shook her head.
“Why na’? So you can keep lying?”
“I am not lying!”
Juliana turned back to him before she could think it through. It
wouldn’t have changed it, because he was right. Avoidance didn’t do any good. It wasn’t anything she wanted to deal with, but she might as well face it and get past it. She only had one thing left—her betrothal to Sir Percy Dane. She had a large worth to the man, once the king restored her property, and if she could get back to it.
And if she remained untouched.
Betrothal to Sir Percy Dane had been a large coup for her father. Sir Percy was a knight of great renown and distinction. He claimed powerful blood links to the crowns of Normandy, Saxony, Sicily, and England. If he hadn’t been away, crusading for the noblest of causes, none of this would have happened. Castle Fyfen would never have been taken and she’d have been wed already. She wouldn’t have even met a Highlander, especially not Aidan MacKetryck. And she would never have been astride the man with nothing covering her woman place while he looked at her with such an honest expression on his handsome face that the fates decided to shame her again with another nonrhythmic lurch of her frame against his.
There was nothing to hide behind, so she didn’t even try. She met his look without flinching, enduring the shivers it gave her and then the flutter within her rib cage as her heart decided to join in.
“I’m going to kiss you, lass,” he whispered.
“No—”
He stopped her with his move, made so swiftly his lips were filming hers before the sound left them, and her denial ended up sliding against his skin instead of being voiced with disapproval and strength. He’d moved to a sit and moved his hands, too, releasing her waist so he could slide both arms about and across her back, latching her right against his chest and making her experience the short huffs of breath he made, the increasing thud of his heart, and the damp heat his skin was exuding.
Every thought just disappeared, granting Juliana the freedom just to feel, experience . . . enjoy. Light filled her, gaining in strength and volume and luminosity. It was accompanied with song, light and joy-filled and melodic. And that was covered over by vast vistas of clear sky, large fields . . . wide oceans. And that changed to the wonder of water. Clear, fresh, open running falls of water, filling her consciousness as it rushed through her, engulfing her with the magnitude and intensity of it. An entire realm so filled with ecstasy opened for her that she nearly wept at the beauty and scope and grandeur of it.
And then it slowed . . . faded. Disappeared. Shut off. Ended.
The groan that released his lips paralleled her moan in length and timbre and meaning. Exactly. Aidan pulled his head up, releasing her, before looking down at her with such a tender expression her heart stopped. Restarted. Went into a ragged beat.
He licked his lips. “Deny that,” he whispered, and then he smiled in that cocky motion that only lifted one side of his mouth.
“No . . . I—”
“You serious?” His smile dropped.
“It’s not . . . I’m not—”
“You truly . . . deny . . . what you feel?”
He didn’t have to put a description to it. She’d rarely experienced something so precious. And wrong. Her throat was closing off and her eyes were filling with useless stupid weak tears before she nodded. She was always going to deny it. And she couldn’t tell him why.
“Doona’ cry again.” He had a pleading tone to the words. He’d also opened his arms and set her atop one of his legs, at the prone bent knee. Or thereabouts. She couldn’t feel for certain and didn’t look to check. She couldn’t. Her eyes were hooked, watching him yank up on his shirt, pulling it from beneath his belt in order to offer the end to her.
Juliana smiled slightly, and then it widened. He was so sweet . . . and so rough-hewn. Coarse. Uncouth. Only a Highlander would offer up cloth that had been right next to his skin for days. But only this Highlander put naked flesh right where she had no choice but to see it and be bothered immensely by it. Juliana dropped her eyes to his lower chest and belly and then looked aside as she colored. She could appreciate why he’d do such a move now.
“I am a beast,” he said, and from a side glance, she watched his hand drop.
She shook her head.
“It . . . is still too soon. I ken.”
Too soon? Oh no. It was not ever. That was what it was.
“Your husband has been but fresh buried—”
“Husband?” she asked.
“The woodcutter,” he answered.
Juliana stiffened and then she giggled. And then she was snorting through her nose to keep the laughter at bay. The release was akin to being filled with ale foam, and about as frothy and unsubstantial.
“What?” he asked.
He thought her wed to the D’Aubenville steward, with his airs and pontificating and complaining and pinched-nose features?
“The woodcutter . . . was na’ your spouse?”
She shook her head.
“Then who is?”
“No one.”
“Face me when you lie,” he answered.
“I am not lying.” She was grinding her teeth, however. And regretting every single moment of the morning. Almost.
“You’re na’ lying? Truly?”
“I am not lying and I am not wed.”
“Widowed?” he asked.
“I am not a widow and I am not a wife. I have never been wed. Listen closer.”
“At your age? What is wrong with them?”
Juliana was sucking in air at the insult and then losing it at the confusion. “With whom?” she asked frostily.
“The men . . . in that village. Doona’ they have eyes?”
His men weren’t the only ones with a teasing tone. They’d obviously picked it up from him, she decided.
“I’m getting up. I’ve nature to see to.”
“Tell me why you’re unwed,” he replied, snatching her upper arm with a move that was invisibly quick.
“Now, MacKetryck,” she ordered and pushed on him with her free arm. It was foolish and did nothing other than prove how warm he was and how stout and heavy.
“Was it your . . . argumentative tongue?”
He was going to get a good dose of her argumentative tongue if he said one more word. He was also going to get the cook pot against the side of his head the moment his younger brother had emptied it. And the moment he wasn’t looking.
“Or perhaps it’s . . . your prickly . . . wit?”
“Have you finished?” she asked.
He sobered suddenly, oddly, and completely. “Please doona’ tell me you’re a maid.”
Juliana debated every option in a matter of two heartbeats. If she claimed a lover or two, he’d probably want to join them. But if she claimed the pox, he might not. If she told him the truth, he might be even more curious about her. And probably more amorous. Trouble. It just kept getting deeper and wider.
“Jesu’!”
Aidan swore and stared at her, ending her quandary. She didn’t have to say anything after all. He’d read it in her face.
Chapter 9
The lass was a virgin.
A maiden.
Untouched.
Every step of the horse beneath him echoed the words through his head and his nether region, making the sway of the animal erotic and stimulating. Strands of unkempt hair he should have tied back were slapped across his mouth wetly. That was erotic and stimulating. The scratch of woolen plaid against his skin was rough and itchy, and even more erotic and stimulating. Hellfire. And damnation. Even the windblown spurts of rain wetting his chest, right shoulder, and arm were erotic and stimulating.
A virgin . . .
Aidan cursed the fates again and lifted his face to the gray low hang of cloud. He opened his mouth, pulling in fresh, cool, wet air, and licking at the hair strands as well as drops on his upper lip. Even that started feeling erotic and stimulating. And forbidden. He lowered his head and went back to looking ahead.
This problem was without reason and against all logic.
Juliana had been unsettling and bothersome since he’d rescued her. He could fee
l and sense her about . . . and that was just wrong. There wasn’t a charm to ward off unsettling women with bottomless eyes, lush lips, beautiful features, hair that demanded a touch . . . and nice-sized woman curves. He was already alert and aware of her enough, without the added fact that she’d never been touched by a man.
Except him.
Aidan wasn’t an untried whelp, whose every waking thought was filled with women. He smirked slightly at the untruth. Near all his dreams had been spent in the same fashion. Arran was a prime example of that age. The lad reddened, danced with nervousness, and stammered worse if any lass looked his way. And if one approached, he’d probably faint. Aidan wished his brother well of it.
Nor was Aidan a young prospect like his brother Alpin, whose every move seemed accompanied by giggling lasses from the moment he arrived anywhere. They’d yet to pick a suitable wife for the lad. Aidan was waiting for him to do it. He huffed the amusement out. Alpin usually looked to be on the run from his admirers, looking for contests of skill, challenges of strength, or game to hunt. The lad had discovered the best ways of dealing with urges and hungers and lusts, all of them manly and accepted and useful. Aidan wished his brother well of that, too.
All of that was proof. Aidan was too old for any such awkward yearnings and desires. Where the love act was concerned, his body was fully his. If he needed or wanted a woman, it wasn’t a difficult thing to gain. But it was under his control. His. He no longer suffered wild cravings and aches and hard hunger from just a glance at a girl. Or the thought of one.
She’s a virgin.
An immediate blast of heat filled him, sliding through his belly to encase and torment his loins. The rush of sensation fisted his hand about the reins, pulling his horse’s head up and halting the line. Belatedly, he put a hand in the air, signaling the rest. He sensed the line behind him coming to a halt, and he also sensed their interest. It was the third halt he’d called, and it was not yet eve. Aidan whistled and waited for Arran to come for his horse. He used the time to send unspoken commands, and then curses, and then pleas, to cease the hardening and engorging and preparing . . . for her.
Jesu’! He was cursed. Beset. Spelled.
Aidan sat his horse to give Arran instruction, ignoring the curiosity on the lad’s face. Then he waited for the others, all the while sending unspoken demands and orders. Useless. All of it. His body had a mind of its own and it wasn’t interested in obeying. This angst was for lads the ages of his brothers. Not him.