by Jackie Ivie
A virgin . . .
Aidan sucked in a breath. Held it. This lass he’d rescued upended everything. Again. Everything.
Aidan let the breath back out. She was changing his plans now. They weren’t riding through to Castle Ketryck. He didn’t dare. She couldn’t sit a horse while asleep and he wasn’t tying her, although if this got much worse, he was fully considering it. But that would require getting near her . . . touching her . . .
God blast and damn . . . everything!
Aidan lurched against the saddle with an instantaneous uncontrollable flash of pure hunger. Craving. Need. He pulled in another breath and looked heavenward again. Then he shifted his shoulders and rolled them as if to stretch away soreness. His men were gathering on his orders as given through Arran, standing about, awaiting further instruction. None of them would believe this. He didn’t even believe it.
Aidan . . . she’s a virgin . . .
Aidan looked up again at the answerless sky before he lowered his head back. Nothing worked. Nothing stopped the litany of thought that struck him without warning, and nothing muted it. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t just and it wasn’t right. It just was. He cleared his throat in the event his voice came out high-pitched or shaky. Then he sent Stefan and Gregor ahead with the tent horses to set up camp and get a fire started. If they had sense, they’d use the one left a fortnight ago, at the beginning of this accursed foray. Then he sent Alpin and Tavish for what they did best: hunt game.
Aidan licked his lips and grimaced at how shaky that minor act was. His hands were shaking, too. This was not happening. He tightened every muscle he still controlled before the tremor reached them. Before God and His Mother Mary, Aidan was not going to let this happen . . . he couldn’t. And his youngest brother was watching! He concentrated and felt the response in his chest. Arms. Lower legs. Back. Neck. Belly. He dared try lower. His upper thighs . . . buttocks. He forced the image of a large fire with a roast slowly turning atop it on a spit, sending heavenly smells into the air.
She’s a virgin.
“Oh . . . blast!”
“Wh-Wh-What did I do?” Arran burst out.
Aidan scrunched his eyes shut, took another deep breath that did little except make the tight knot of muscle in his belly pound, and then opened them to regard his brother. The lad appeared to have jumped back at his outburst.
“Why are you na’ in the bushes?” he asked.
“I’ve no n-n-need.”
“Nae?”
“W-W-We but st-st-s-stopped an hour a-a-a-ago.”
“Oh.”
“D-D-Do you ail?” Arran asked, lifting a hand to protect his eyes as he looked up. Aidan hadn’t noticed it before but his brother had the same one-eyebrow lift. It was cocked up to meet his hair as he asked it.
Aidan tipped his head in consideration. It might be better to look weak due to illness. “Perhaps,” he replied.
“Oh. I-I-I’ll ask Juliana—”
“Nae!” Aidan interrupted his brother with a shout that made the younger man stumble backward and nearly fall. He felt like a bear. Nothing was going as it should. Nothing. “Can you just go back? Get on your horse. And cease delaying us?”
Arran nodded and then spun. And took off at his usual run.
Aidan was twisted slightly without thinking. He watched Arran, and that just put the center of his torment right in eyesight. Juliana sat one horse behind him. She had a quizzical expression on her lovely face, and calmness everywhere else. And that just wasn’t right. Aidan swiveled back around, lifted one half of his lip and cheek in a grimace at the hard contact of his saddle, and started up again.
Things had better improve, and quickly.
It was a forlorn order. He smelled camp before he saw it, proving not only their expertise at erecting tents that protected and hid a fire even in another day of rain, but that Alpin and Tavish were successful at the hunt as well. The aroma of roast venison pricked his nose and would probably have started his mouth to salivating and the pit of his belly to growling, if there was any sensation that broke through the other.
The need. Want. Absolute lust.
Aidan avoided everything to do with her once they filed through the trees. He lifted his arm and stopped the line without looking at her. He sat for a few moments, practicing at ignoring her and trying for control over his frame. And then he planted both hands, palms down, against the horse’s neck. That gave him a fulcrum to push up and out of the saddle using upper body strength. Then, he rotated using his shoulders, moving his body the exact amount he needed so he could drop in an arched fashion onto the ground beside the horse. It was the best he could manage and he didn’t care what anyone thought. A glance in her direction showed Arran jogging toward him, but he’d stopped at her side, his mouth dropped with the awe. The object of all this torment, Juliana, just sat atop her horse and looked at him. Without one expression on her beauteous face.
“See to her!”
Aidan pointed in their direction before he turned away. They were near MacKetryck land. They’d camped near Loch Erind. He knew it was fed by melted snows and emptied into Buchyn Loch before draining into the North Sea. It was bottomless, white-capped with the weather, and heavy with fish. And cold. He was at a full run before he got to the shoreline and dove.
“Beast.”
Juliana said it beneath her breath after Arran had given her a hand to assist her down. Once he had some substance to him, he could lift both hands up and accept a lady’s hands against his. That way he could bear a woman’s weight as she stiffened her arms and he assisted the drop from a horse. Done correctly, that was the only portion of a lady’s form he’d need to touch. Or if they had proper acquaintance and the lady allowed it, he could put both hands about her waist and lift her down safely to the ground beside him. It certainly wasn’t done by reaching one hand for hers, and using it to pull her down against him where he stumbled, making them both nearly fall.
The lad needed some training but he had a great sense of where to start. At least he knew to try and treat her differently and a bit gently. She could work with it.
“F-F-Forgive m-m-me,” he stammered, releasing her almost instantly.
“I meant your brother. He’s the beast.”
Arran’s face cleared. “Oh. Him.”
“Aye. Him.”
“Doona’ b-b-blame him. He’s ill.”
“Ill?”
Arran nodded.
“How ill?”
“Uh . . .”
Juliana watched him look about furtively, as if telling was a great crime. Then she realized it might be construed as such. He was their laird, and Aidan told her that his word was law. In an English household, that meant charges and trials and punishments. She didn’t need to ask about a Highlander. She’d already been the victim of it. Juliana forced the thoughts away. She already had her justice. MacDonal no longer held her castle. He was dead. Perhaps his body was hanging from the rampart right now . . . without a trial.
Men. It was all the fault of men and their lusts for power and property and victory, and then more of the same.
“Will I get the little tent again?” she asked, releasing Arran from the worry of answering.
He nodded. He did it often. Probably to avoid the chore of speaking through the stutter, she decided. She hoped he’d outgrow it. Then again, with his resemblance to Aidan MacKetryck, the lad didn’t need to do much talking anyway. His brother didn’t.
“Oh. Well and good,” she continued, walking in the direction of the smaller tent. Arran was trailing behind her as if seeing to her meant allowing her to do whatever she liked. Juliana stopped. Aidan had put her in Arran’s care? The least decisive and youngest member of his band? And she’d balked?
“Once there . . . you’ll fetch my sup?”
He nodded.
“I’m hungry. Could you bring me . . . a large sup?” For packing.
“If-If Alpin has na’ eaten it all,” he teased.
Juliana smiled s
lightly to herself as he lost more of his stuttering. That happened the last time he was with her. She’d wondered if it could be repeated until he lost it entirely. She almost wished she’d be around to try and test it.
“And perhaps water?”
“I’ll bring ale,” he replied without a hint of stutter.
“Not to drink. I need a pail. To wash with. I’ve not bathed in . . .”
Juliana stopped. Had it been four days since the attack? She wrinkled her forehead. Five? Being near that Aidan MacKetryck was affecting her wits. Her heart stumbled slightly before a heavy, painful beat restarted it. She tamped it down, ignoring it. However long, she’d guess at twice that time to get back. She wouldn’t be riding through the night, she wasn’t sure of the direction, and she’d have to be careful. She’d be an easy target.
She looked about as if unsure which way to go, although they were at the tents and their cook fire. The small tent was behind and to the right of the large one, with the overhang and fire in front of it. A small deer carcass was impaled on a pole, and she recognized Gregor as the man watching over it by turning it every so often. He’d stood at their approach, and then he pulled the bonnet from his head and nodded. Juliana’s heart pinged slightly within her breast, but she had it covered over before returning the nod.
They were putting the horses on the downwind side of the large tent. On the left. Just past the first bit of tree line. They’d probably post a guard. They always did. She’d face that if she got that far. She’d get a palm-sized rock before attempting it, since that was how she’d learned. Hitting a man didn’t do much unless he was surprised and the fist she hit him with contained a rock. Or she aimed for the groin. Juliana swallowed. She hoped it wouldn’t be Tavish.
Aidan was ill. That was all she needed.
His wife hadn’t been a maid.
Aidan lay on his back, his muscles and lungs spent and aching with the effort of continuing the fight against the loch. So he’d ended up floating and watching the rain above him as it pummeled the waves rocking him about. She’d played at virginity and thought to fool a younger lad that she was being forced to wed. Afraid if he suspected, Aidan would beat her, as would her father afterward. So he’d allowed it, acting untried and new to the act, and listened to her complaints of how he pained when he’d taken her. She’d been slender—he remembered that—but well aware of her charms. And how to use them. He’d acted like an innocent fool.
Because otherwise he’d have had to beat her.
He instinctively knew she wouldn’t survive the beating he’d felt like giving. She’d been too frail. Too slight. Too full of her own beauty and what it did to the men about her to care that she crushed her new husband’s dream.
It hadn’t even been his child she’d died birthing.
A wave crested over him, bringing a choking volume of water, and Aidan flipped to renew the swim. It had gone dark while he swum, mercilessly pumping his limbs through the water until his arms and legs ceased responding. Then he’d stopped, near the center, rotated onto his back, and just floated. And existed. And remembered.
Fighting the elements had a certain power. The quest for survival made a man forget old hurts and new frustrations. Aidan rolled over and started back. The water had grown colder while he’d tarried. The force of each wave carried the same effect of parrying an attacker’s claymore. The challenger always going for the head so a good upward thrust could take off a man’s lower jaw. Or they’d swing up for his groin, for any hit there put a man on his knees. Or a slice across the inside thigh, making a wound so deadly a man could watch his lifeblood race out with each heartbeat. Or they’d take off an arm, so a man could bleed to death unless he knew to tie it off and stayed conscious enough to do it. The waves had the power of an attacking horde and the force of a hundred claymores, pounding into him and pummeling him into the depths, making him fight for the surface over and over again.
He was flagging. Tiring.
Each breath burned with the quantity of water he was also inhaling. Each stroke of his arms had the weight of a fifteenstone boulder attached. Each pump of his legs was hampered by an opposing force of bog-thick mass. He didn’t stop, though. He fought it . . . but it wasn’t enough. He was going to sink beneath the waves, tossed about by an ocean of fury, and not a soul would guess what had happened.
Not even the girl who’d caused it: Juliana.
If she hadn’t been a maid, she’d have no question of what he’d been fighting, but she’d never know why. And never for certain. He went beneath another wave and fought for the surface while his heart pounded loud in his ears and his chest thudded with withheld air, until he broke the surface again, floundering weakly and ineffectually against wave after wave of assault.
He’d put her in Arran’s care.
Juliana? His mind was playing tricks. The lass that so unsettled and disrupted him that he’d chosen to play with death rather than take her maidenhood and make her his . . . he’d put her in his brother’s care? The youngest MacKetryck? The unsure, untried, untested Arran?
Aidan spit out water and coughed on it until it burned. He’d been a fool! Arran was no match for Uncle Dugald if he took a fancy to Juliana . . .
Just as he had Aidan’s wife.
Anger shoved through Aidan then, pushing for air and making him take it. And that was followed by rage, a rage so severe his fists went to hammers of fury that slammed into the water, launching him up from the waves to his knees. And that made it possible to give his most gruesome battle cry. He hadn’t finished the yell before he attacked the waves.
Aidan’s shoulders went to a perfect rhythm, sending his arms in stroke after stroke of power and intent, making a motion that churned its own waves. And his feet kicked, feeling renewed strength and vigor against the bog-like consistency of the water, until it foamed and frothed behind him in surrender.
Heat pumped through him, sent from every beat of his heart and intensified by every breath he managed to gasp from beneath his arm with every other stroke. Over and over, and again and again, pushing and shoving and churning and gaining, his motions fed by a pain and ache and anger so intense, everything about him looked red.
He touched sand. Earth. Rocks. Shrubs. Aidan kept moving and stroking and pumping and then turned it to crawling, pulling plants out by the roots as he used them for his climb, until the ground leveled out, the world about him started changing from heavy red-dipped hate to a softer rose shade . . . and then altering altogether . . .
And then it turned to Juliana’s concerned face.
“Aidan?”
He reached up with arms that were still shuddering with the effort, gripped both her arms that were wrapped tightly in her cloak, and pulled her down to him, smashed his face against her in a kiss that had no rebuttal, and kissed her until she returned it. And then he flung the vision aside, ignoring it completely, and started laughing.
The Red MacKetryck had won this time.
Chapter 10
Juliana sat cross-legged on the pallet and watched Aidan sleeping. It was easier to see him in the predawn light, but that hadn’t stopped her from watching through most of what should have been a night spent in escaping them, but instead had been this—restless, sleepless, thought-filled, thrilling, exciting . . . frightening. She’d been unable to sleep whether she covered herself with the blanket they’d given her or not. It hadn’t mattered. Sleep had eluded her regardless of how many times or in what position she tried on the pallet. It hadn’t mattered how often she berated or counseled herself, or sprawled on her back looking at the darkness that was tent weave above her, doing her best to obliterate every thought of it. The reason behind her failure wasn’t going away. It wasn’t faltering. It wasn’t muting. It wasn’t fading.
It wasn’t doing anything except breathing in heavy slumber on his cot.
Aidan was the handsomest male Juliana had ever seen. He had a wealth of dark hair that was usually pulled back, putting a sculptor’s touch to his features.
Since he’d been in the water last night, it had been plastered to him at first. Now it was just fanning out all over his cot, wild and untamed . . . like the man. He’d been blessed with dark eyelashes the match to his hair, and if he allowed the shadow of beard that was darkening his cheeks time to grow, it looked to be just as dark. He’d probably been blessed with that healthy, brawny, muscle-filled frame, but then he’d added to it, working it into jaw-dropping ability and mass.
Most of that she’d accepted from the first time she’d seen him. She didn’t have a choice. It was too blatant to ignore.
But then she had to factor in the man himself. The indefinable portion he wielded with such ease: the pumping, heated, thrilling, rousing, inspiring . . . sensual essence . . . that came with the promise of so much more. He changed the elements, stirring awareness of him with every look he gave, every gesture . . . every word. The man had an incalculable effect on everyone. Not just women. Not just her.
Juliana went to her knees and scooted closer to the cot where Aidan rested, rhythmically pushing air in and out of his frame as if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he hadn’t come crawling from the lake like a creature hatched from the mists hovering on the water’s surface. Grabbing her to a full-body hug against chilled naked flesh, altering her plan, changing her purpose, and stirring every emotion she’d been fighting right into her consciousness. That was before he’d collapsed into a laughing buffoon on the shore beside her, the noise bringing all his men, and putting her in such a shocked state, she hadn’t even used that small bit of confused time for the perfect escape opportunity it presented.
Now it was lost. Gone. Whisked away and changed. Completely.
In the torchlight they’d brought, it hadn’t been possible to hide a naked and exhausted and wet Aidan lying on the ground, nor why she was outside the tent, swathed completely in a tartan atop her cloak, a stone still gripped in her hand, and near the horses, while the bundle of dry venison strips and oat cakes she’d dropped told the same tale.