The Intended

by May McGoldrick

  They reached the door.

  “Well, perhaps these guards are accustomed to seeing you so late.” With unexpected suddenness, Malcolm tore at the shoulder of her dress, exposing the ivory skin at the tops of her breasts. “Maybe this is more the way they know you!”

  “Malcolm, don’t!” she pleaded, clutching at his hand as he reached for the latch. “Please don’t shame me before them!”

  No longer able to hold back her tears, she threw her arms wildly around his neck and chest, and buried her face against him. “Please, Malcolm! Please don’t.”

  Her sobs tore at him. His hand froze on the latch, and he closed his eyes, trying to shut out the sound of her pleading voice.

  “Malcolm, you are the only man that I have ever loved. You are the only man I’ve ever cared for. Don’t trample me under like this. Don’t throw me away!”

  His skin was wet with her tears. She raised her face, still clinging tightly to him, and pressed her lips against his chest. He felt the desire, strong and lusty, stirring forcefully in his loins.

  “Edward is nothing to me,” she whispered, the skin of her cheek hot against his flesh. “I’ve never...”

  He grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her head back. She looked up and shuddered as she gazed into the depths of his eyes. He knew what she could see—passion, desire, and hunger—and he made no attempt to hide any of it.

  “Never,” he said, his words no more than a low rumble, an animal growl in his throat. “Never mention his name while I hold you in my arms.”

  Jaime stared at him a moment, and then, rising to her full height, moved to press her lips against his. But his movement was quicker, rougher, and his mouth closed over her lips like a vise, his tongue plunging into the soft recesses, conquering with a bruising passion. But it was a passion that Jaime accepted readily, a passion that filled her with a wild and stormy joy.

  Malcolm’s arms wound tightly about her, their bodies entwined, intimately pressed together to the point that it seemed to Jaime that the floor had fallen away beneath them, that they now floated in a place unbound by the laws of nature. A place where lovers joined, and one knew not where her body ended and his began. All at once Jaime felt her body begin to quake, to shudder with that same delicious and terrifying joy.

  And then the air, warm and sweet around her, began to stir and whirl, and she knew that they were moving. Vaguely, she felt herself being lifted in his arms, and she simply nestled her head into the crook of his neck, knowing that she was safe with him. She trusted Malcolm MacLeod, and she loved him, and she knew that he must love her. Once she could make him see the truth of what they were to each other, he would cherish their love as dearly as she did. And if making love to him was what would make him see, then so be it, she thought happily. She waited for no other. When or where she should surrender her innocence held no significance to her, so long as she surrendered it to him.

  When he put her down on her feet beside the bed, she swayed a bit, focusing her eyes on his face as he stepped away. She shivered and stared at him, uncomprehending. The warmth and comfort that came with his strong embrace quieted her nerves, soothed her fears. But now, without his powerful arms about her, Jaime felt alone and strangely cold.

  His eyes swept over her. “Undress!” he ordered, his voice husky and raw.

  Malcolm stood before her. The look in her eyes cried out for words of love. He could see plainly that she yearned to reach for him, to make him take her into his arms again. But instead, he simply clenched his fists and watched as she reached behind her neck for the laces that held her dress in place. He could see plainly the trembling hands that struggled to undo the ties.

  Malcolm avoided looking into her tear-rimmed eyes, but instead focused his gaze on her full lips, on the softness of her neck, on the soft ivory skin showing through the rend he’d made in the dress. When she’d unlaced the garment as far as she could, Jaime began to pulling at the wide sleeves, and Malcolm’s breath caught in his throat as the torn bodice of the dress slipped downward. Her breasts, high and round, pressed against the thin silk of her chemise. He could feel her eyes riveted to his face, but he forced himself to keep his own gaze averted, and as she pushed the skirts down and bent down to step out of them, the sight of her breasts swinging free of her undergarment jolted him with the power of a lightning bolt. His breathing stopped, and had still not resumed by the time she straightened, her hair cascading forward, the ebony locks concealing and accentuating the exquisite curves of her womanly form.

  “Remove them,” he growled softly, concentrating on her hands clasped before her. “The rest of your clothes—remove them.”

  When she hesitated, he glanced up at her, and the flash of her eyes toward the burning wick lamp. She wished to continue without the light.

  “You will hide nothing more from me, lass.” Malcolm’s angry voice cut through the air like the blade of a dirk. “And you will look into my eyes when I make love to you. I want you to remember. I want you to see my eyes as clear as the winter peaks of the Black Cuillins, and I want you to think of my face...nay, I want you to see it looming above you the next time you’re bedding that English lover of yours.”

  Slowly brushing away a runaway tear with the back of her hand, Jaime silently reached for the shoulder straps of her chemise and pulled them down, one at a time. The material tightened against her breasts and then released them. His throat went dry and he felt himself hardening at this sight of perfection, and as she slowly lowered the smooth fabric over the curves of her hips, Malcolm found he had to consciously force the air into his lungs. The chemise dropped to the floor, pooling at her feet.

  The Highlander’s eyes studied every bit of her stunningly beautiful body, trying to shut out the thought that this was Jaime. He looked at her—flawless in her form, her skin—trying to think of her as if she were some wrought image—a painting, a statue. Feelings tore through him so completely contrary to what he wished to feel.

  He wanted to feel—nothing.

  Malcolm stared at her. She stood erect, hiding nothing. His eyes possessed her, but that was all. She wasn’t his. His gaze traveled along the sensuous curves. The light of the lamp flickered on the soft planes of her belly, created shadows along her arms, the undersides of her breasts, the inside of her thigh.

  He looked up into her face. Her cheeks and her eyes glistened with tears.

  It had to be this way. He fought the weakness in his heart that screamed to show her affection. Longing...nay, lust was all that could bind them now. She had to be treated this way, he argued silently. She’d come to him with one thing in mind, and that was all he would allow himself to give. He took a step and reached the side of the bed, then threw back the bedcovers with a violence that made Jaime jump. But as she began to edge toward the bed, he grabbed her fiercely by the wrist.

  “Nay, lass!” he growled. “Not so quick!”

  There was surprise in her face as she stared up at him. Malcolm knew deep in his heart that this would be the last time he would ever have her. Her beauty represented in his mind a splendor unmatched this side of paradise. But he now knew all too well the workings of her fraudulent heart, and he also knew no other woman would ever hurt him as she had.

  She wasn’t his. She belonged to another.

  Her touch—Malcolm wanted to feel the touch of her fingers on his skin. Then he would carry that memory for whatever time he had left in this life.

  And he would force her if he needed to...because she would never belong to him.

  “Come to me.” His command, hoarse even to his own ear, echoed in the room. “Undress me.”

  Jaime hesitated for an instant. Then, slowly, she reached out her hand. With the speed of lightning, Malcolm clamped his hand on her wrist and jerked her toward him. Her body fell against his, her warm breasts pressing against him. She stared up at him, surprise and expectation mixed in her eyes. Deliberately, he took one of her small hands and drew it to his manhood. With an audible intake of bre
ath, she turned her smooth, damp cheek to his chest, and Malcolm rested his mouth against her hair, breathing in her sweet scent. Her soft ivory body, close now, melded in the lamplight with his darker skin, creating havoc with his senses.

  He was losing control, and he knew it. Of their own accord, his lips brushed against the satin softness of her hair. Without planning it, without considering it, he found his mouth moving downward to kiss and suckle the velvet skin of her earlobe. But when she tilted her head to the side, when she let out a low moan as he trailed his warm kisses over her flesh, Malcolm’s brain cleared, telling him her actions were premeditated, the moment completely planned. He drew back sharply.

  “Undress me, I said.”

  Her hands were clumsy and shaking as they drew down his breeches and his close hose. But before she could withdraw, he grasped her hand and pulled it to him. For a moment she resisted slightly. Such coyness, he thought. But then, as he held her wrist, her fingers slowly uncoiled and gently wrapped themselves around his hardened shaft. And then the Highlander ceased to breathe at all as he felt her running thumb and fingers over the skin, exploring the length and the thickness of him, feeling the texture, caressing him, teasing him.

  Malcolm’s control snapped.

  One moment they were standing beside the bed, the next she was stretched across it with her legs spread apart by his body. Malcolm pinned Jaime’s hands above her head with one hand as he suckled her breasts with a hunger that he had never known. Her body writhed against him, and her soft moans bespoke her own desires. Shifting his weight slightly, he used his fingers to stroke the folds of her womanhood, releasing in her the moist fluids that would open her to him.

  Jaime’s soft cries brought on a new, raw passion that filled Malcolm and threatened to push him over the edge. Every muscle in his frame taut as wire, he drew himself up and looked into her face. As he watched, he could see her expression change as the waves of desire poured through her. She kept her eyes pressed shut, but her hands reached up to pull him back down upon her.

  This was more than Malcolm could take. Sliding his hands under Jaime’s firm buttocks, he lifted her and found the place. With one thrust he entered, burying himself deep within her.

  And then came the awful revelation, as swift and as powerful as lightning. And Malcolm wished he were dead!

  Chapter 22

  Malcolm stood with his back to the hearth, his gaze transfixed on the open window. With the heavy curtains drawn back, the gentle predawn breeze blew freely through the room. The air was cool and damp, but the Highlander felt nothing. For over an hour he had been standing thus, and the lightning gray of the eastern sky meant nothing to him.

  She had left him. Silently, her eyes averted, she had slipped into her clothes and started for the window. And he had watched her wordlessly. She had paused only once by the curtains, turning her head as if to speak. But no sound had emerged, and then, like a night bird taking flight, Jaime had gone, disappearing into the darkness and never looking back.

  A deep sigh racked his powerful frame, and Malcolm turned his gaze toward the bed. The room was still very dark, but the whiteness of the bedclothes stood out in the emptiness. He could see in his mind’s eye the space where she’d been. He could see the proof of her love, of her constancy, staining the whiteness of the sheet, burning into his soul a black and bloody guilt. A guilt that was his and his alone.

  Malcolm looked away and squeezed his eyes shut. For a moment he thought of going back to his bed, but he never moved. After all, what relief could he find there? As if, he thought bitterly, by caressing the coarse sheets he could find some solace for his foul and tortured soul. As if he could return the warmth that she had taken with her when she had slipped out into the night. He covered his eyes with one hand and glared into the darkness of his mind. How wrong he’d been to treat her so unjustly, and how brave she’d been to endure what he’d done to her without a single word of complaint.

  She had never belonged to another. He had been Jaime’s first. And to take her as brutally as he had... By the Rood! To think that moments before she had told him how she loved him. But he, blinded by his own stupidity and anger, had not believed her. He, Malcolm MacLeod, the falsest of all men, had not believed her! He, the man who had tried to marry, not for love, but for the well-being of his bloody clan!

  The Highlander raked his hand over his face, but he knew he could not wipe away his guilt. An ugly and terrible thought struck at him—he had become his father’s son. Like Torquil MacLeod, his brutal and lust-driven father, Malcolm had become a vicious defiler of trusting women, a cruel and ruthless ravager of the defenseless.

  With an anguished roar, Malcolm charged across the chamber and tore the bed apart. Wild with grief, he threw the bedclothes to the floor and struck the high mattress with the palms of his hands. To think that she’d trusted him and come here, so late in the night. She’d wanted to explain, she said. But she had never suspected him to be capable of such evil—and how could she suspect such foulness?

  Dropping his head into his hands, Malcolm began to pray. For forgiveness. For her forgiveness!

  The sun would be well above the mist-covered fields before he would raise his head, determined, defiant, his way finally clear.

  Jaime coiled up beneath the bedclothes, her knees drawn tightly to her stomach. Lying still, she listened intently to the rhythmic sounds of her cousin’s deep and peaceful sleep.

  She had been so fortunate that Mary had not been awakened when she’d entered a few moments earlier. It would have been extremely difficult explaining the condition of her clothes. Moving quietly, almost mechanically, about the bedchamber they shared, Jaime had taken off her torn dress, folding the garment carefully and hiding it deep in the cavernous spaces of her great traveling chest.

  As she had prepared herself for bed—washing herself, pulling the soft, cotton shift over her head, drawing back the bedclothes—Jaime had found herself performing each action as if in a dream. Unable to shake the feeling, she was glad that she’d had to answer none of Mary’s usual questions. What had taken place tonight, Jaime had no desire to discuss with anyone.

  Lying there in the secure confines of her bed, thinking of what she had done, Jaime suddenly found herself crying. The tears began without warning, trickling from the corners of her eyes, over the bridge of her nose, silently disappearing into the soft sheets. She only realized she’d been crying when her breaths began to shorten into sobs that wracked her body. The thought of awakening Mary, the thought of discovery jolted Jaime into awareness, and she buried her face into the billows of the mattress, only then allowing all of her raw emotions to spring forth and give muffled voice to her wretchedness.

  Some time later, as her tears spent themselves, she thought back wearily over the events of this night. She had always considered herself a woman able to care for herself. In many ways independent, even. But since becoming an adult, she’d never acted with unrestrained freedom before—not before tonight. But it wasn’t the price of this independence that hurt her so—the loss of her innocence, her maidenhead—it was Malcolm! She wrapped her arms even more tightly about her knees and pressed her forehead into them. Though making love to him had not been what she’d expected it to be, the truth was that she’d never really known what to expect.

  What bothered her most was the confusion that she could see in his face, in his eyes—the fact that she’d not been able to reach him, to make him know the truth. The truth about her—the truth about the two of them. He had been so angry when she arrived, and she’d not known how to ease his hurt other than being amenable to his wishes. Though that had cut roughly against her nature, it hadn’t been the worst. Nay, it was the determination that he could give her up that hurt her most. For she had seen the fire of desire in his eyes, felt the overwhelming power of his passion. With the exception of the instant when he’d driven his shaft into her—that devastating moment that had made her scream inwardly at the shock as much as the pain—she knew
she’d been as crazed with desire as he.

  But then, suddenly, everything had changed. She realized now that this change only added to her misery. The change in him had been as clear and distinct as the coming of night, as sudden as the passing of a summer storm in the Highlands. After his wild and powerful lunge, Malcolm had simply stopped as if struck dead.

  Jaime had not moved. As she waited for him to stir, to continue, to do anything, the tearing pain had suddenly disappeared into the vagueness of a kind of stunned memory. The moment had hung in time like a dewdrop on a leaf. As if life itself were holding its breath, the air around them, the fire in the hearth, the lamplight, the very stars themselves, Jaime remembered thinking, had stopped, awaiting his next act. Then, with a low, anguished moan, Malcolm had withdrawn from her. Silently, with excruciating slowness—certainly with no hint of joy—he had lifted himself from her and moved carefully onto the bed beside her.

  Manners, she remembered thinking. So it is manners that reward the act of loving. And extreme gentleness in manners, at that! Kindness, solace, and the utmost care in the handling of the woman. But no passion. Gone in a single thrust. Gone in a moment. Gone with a single low and anguished moan. Gone.

  Malcolm had spoken no words to her, but he had gathered her into his arms like a bairn whom he’d just trampled. And she, confused with the suddenness of it all—the pain, the hurt of not knowing the reason for the change, for the obvious disappointment that she’d wrought in him—had simply waited for a few moments, and then had slipped quietly from his bed. Without a word from him, she had gone out the way she had come. He hadn’t stopped her from going. He hadn’t called after her. He hadn’t even spoken her name.