“Hello,” she said groggily, pushing herself erect. “I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. I guess Smokey and I were both tired.”
Malcolm smiled gently as he tested the meat. “I’d have been muckle surprised an ye had been awake, lass. It has been a brutal time for ye, being raised as ye were in gentler climes and kinder days.”
“It hasn’t been all bad here,” Taffy answered, rearranging her skirts so that new folds were turned out to the fire. The activity also kept her from staring too long at Malcolm’s bared legs.
“No? I am glad tae hear it.”
Her eyes flicked up and then back down. Her fidgeting was ridiculous, considering what had passed between them, but she was feeling shy and tongue-tied now that the time to sleep had come again.
“Come have a bite tae eat. Then we’ll grab a bit o’ shut-eye. I doubt the Campbells will be out this morn. ‘Twould be a hard task to follow even a bleatin’ sheep through this godless storm.”
Taffy eagerly accepted the haunch Malcolm pulled from the carcass and began eating with dainty greed. Malcolm pulled off a hank for his own consumption, but seeing the hound’s plaintive eyes fixed on his face, tossed the bit of meat his way.
“Eat then, ye poor beast,” he said to the grateful hound. “Living wi’ that heartless woman cannae have been a life full wi’ pleasure and mirth.”
Malcolm took his knife and quartered the remainder of the rabbits, and the three of them set about a companionable but silent meal.
Taffy rose when she was done, murmuring an excuse to step outdoors alone. Malcolm stirred as though intending to accompany her, but a quelling look kept him seated by the fire.
“Take the hound with ye and keep a weathered eye out,” he said instead, jerking his head at Smokey, who rose immediately to follow his new mistress out into the cold.
Taffy was relieved that the rain had finally ceased, but found the thick mist boiling up from the stream to be slightly disorienting. The sound of the water battering against stone guided her to the stream’s edge where she was able to wash her hands and face in the punishingly cold spray. The liquid penance that was highland water left her face stinging, but she was slightly more alert.
“You keep watch,” she told the dog, while slipping back into the privacy of a gorse bush to attend to her other needs. “I don’t want to be surprised by Campbells or any wild creatures.”
The dog sighed, but sat obediently at the side of the stream, scanning its lonesome banks with careful attention. Taffy, amazed at his comprehension and obedience, began to wonder how—if Malcolm didn’t want him—she would manage to take this clever dog home with her. When she went home, which likely wouldn’t be for a long while, she assured herself.
The two of them returned to the cave to find Malcolm waiting impatiently.
“You needn’t have stayed up,” Taffy told him.
“Aye, I did. Ye took our pallet wi’ ye.”
“Our pallet?” Taffy willed herself not to color.
“The floor is hard, lass. Ye’ll be bruised an ye sleep on it wi’ out a bit o’ padding. Shuck yer skirts,” he directed, picking up his plaid, testing it for dryness. He showed no concern for performing tasks while clad only in his long sark.
“Of course.” Knowing that she was flushed crimson, Taffy nevertheless undid her skirts and arranged them on the floor. Never had she so regretted the loss of her shift or her disinclination to wear multiple petticoats.
Malcolm was quick to wrap his dried plaid around her bared legs, but she sensed his amusement at her rediscovered modesty.
It was silly, of course. She realized that. But somehow this was different from what had happened back in the glen. That had been—well—an act of necessity. Anything further was—this was embarrassing. Wanton. Her outraged father would say disgraceful. If anyone heard of her behavior, she would be ruined both for marriage and for polite society—and that was simply for the sin of sharing a cave with Malcolm, not…not…What else they had done.
“Relax, lass,” Malcolm told her gently. “We need the healing sleep. I’ll not be ravishing ye again for a while yet.”
With the ease of experience, he rolled them into the plaid and turned her so she faced the dwindling fire, her back fitted to his front as if they were spoons in a chest. His larger body blocked the worst of the draft creeping in from the mouth of the cavern.
“Ye’re redder than a rose, Taffy lass.”
“I hate blushing,” she grumbled. “I wish I could stop.”
Behind her, she felt Malcolm chuckle.
“Ye do give yerself away a mite. Still, a maiden’s blush is a bonnie thing. I’d not be wishin’ it away. Sleep now, lass. We’ve another long night ahead of us. Goodnight, a leannain.”
Goodnight, sweetheart. But those words didn’t necessarily mean anything, did they?
Goodnight, a ghaoil, she thought. Then, Taffy wondered in the last moments of wakefulness, if she had actually spoken the lover’s endearment aloud.
She didn’t stir until the sun was well over in the western sky and night was again settling its shadow over the land. The air carried with it a new scent, a blend of the wild flowers on the sunny stone machair, sea spume and the smell of burning pine trees. The wind was still aswirl with agitation in the topmost branches of the thick wood, but the hard rains of the previous night had ceased and the thick fog was gone.
There was another scent, too, this one particularly appealing in her half-conscious state. Looking down with sleepy eyes, Taffy could see that Malcolm’s darker locks had mingled with her own and rested on her breast. Their limbs, too, were intertwined in a confusing tangle.
Malcolm’s body was possessed of the male hardness that came with exercise, but the particular stretch of flesh pressed against her buttocks was not the result of hiking through the braes.
“Are you awake?” she whispered.
“Nay, that I am not. Are ye?” he whispered back.
“No.”
“Well, good. This way neither of us need ever ken what happens.” Malcolm gently shifted her onto her back.
“We needn’t?”
“Yer peekin’, lass,” he scolded gently when he saw her slitted gaze.
Taffy promptly closed her eyes.
The buttons of her blouse presented Malcolm with little challenge and soon the cool breath of evening air was mingling with the piper’s own exhalations and touching of her naked breasts. She made a soft, surprised sound. Feeling the now familiar stain mount her cheeks, Taffy decided that no power on earth could force her eyelids open.
The sensation of Malcolm’s legs shifting against her own made her poor heart lurch clumsily before stumbling to a gallop. The sight of his nudity would, she was certain, cause it to burst.
A hand molded over her left breast, cupping in the heat of a calloused palm. A hardened thumb rubbed lightly over the nipple. The taint of color traveled south, making the flushed flesh burn from within as well as from without. Taffy knotted her fists into their jean bed and pressed her lips together to prevent any unplanned words from escaping her lips. She was unprepared for the hunger that marched through her, leaving a wake of sensitized skin that longed for more of his touch.
“Such dreams we are having, Taffy lass,” Malcolm commented softly.
Taffy shivered as his warm hand traveled slowly down her ribs and over the valley of her waist to settle at the flair of hips. A blunt fingertip brushed lightly at the junction of her thighs and then was withdrawn.
“It must be something most wicked tae have ye chittering so hard,” he whispered. “Will ye no’ speak of yer dreams that brought ye here, Taffy lass?”
Taffy shook her head in refusal. Speak? Never! She couldn’t.
“I wonder what might unseal those lips and let them make their confession.” A finger touched softly on the bow of mouth.
Taffy’s muscles clenched painfully and she had to bite down on her lip to keep from answering.
“Stop that now!” Malcolm scolded.
“Ye’ll bruise that bonnie mouth and make it too sore for kissing.”
She risked opening one eye long enough to see Malcolm’s bewitching gaze glittering down at her, then hastily closed it again.
“Um…Malcolm?” she whispered, squirming involuntarily as the heat traveled down from her breast and flooded her loins.
“Hush.” Soft as snow his lips brushed over her own. “Go back tae yer dreams, lass. Pay me no mind. ‘Tis naught but a phantasm yer feeling now. A wee bit o’ the fever dream lingering in yer mind.”
Taffy shuddered and let go of her death grip on her skirts. Her freed hands came to rest on the plane of his chest, which was still half covered by his shirt. Distracted by the feel of flesh beneath her hands, she allowed him to take the kiss where he willed.
He was contented at first with a feathery touch, but soon the kiss was turned to one gleeful plunder that stopped just short of cannibalism.
Deprived of sight, Taffy’s other senses raced happily to their zenith, and at the fore was the hundred different touches that brushed at her skin: the rough wool, the smooth jean, the crisp hair on Malcolm’s legs as they pressed against her own restless limbs. His skin at the open neck of his linen shirt was smooth as finest kid and warmer than sunshine on a summer’s day.
Taste, too, was overwhelming, the mingling of breath and mouth with another. It was timeless oceans and soft peat smoke and the very essence of life that passed over her trembling lips.
Feeling a little bolder, Taffy allowed her hands to move around to Malcolm’s broad back and then rove down to the smooth skin of his flank. Her sensitive finger pads discovered the mark of hard living that marred his lightly scarred flesh. Bullets, knives, accident, or deliberate malice? Something had marked him. Her hands followed the line of his vertebrae until the cloth of his back interfered, and then she allowed her fingers to be redirected around his hips to his lightly furred belly.
She hardly noticed when Malcolm’s own hands stilled upon her torso, or when his breath was drawn in deep as a bellows and then failed to expel at the expected interval.
But Malcolm was aware. His head swam with dizziness. His frozen, unbreathing pose was broken only when she brought her right hand back around to the front of his body and began a sneaky catwalk past his rucked-up sark and down through the trail of curling hair to where his maleness assaulted her pale thighs. The exhalation that followed their meeting was a hurricane gust.
Taffy’s eyes might have remained firmly shut but Malcolm’s were wide open. He watched, somewhere between anticipation and agony, as Taffy’s pale fingers finally settled against the end of his aroused flesh. Torn between a groan and a howl, he shifted his weight back far enough then that she might explore further, if it was her will to do so.
It was her will—but with a touch so light and tentative he thought he would go mad. Slowly, deliberately, and delicately, she pushed back the skin there. He felt himself tighten. Her fingers as they went lower cupped him for a moment in a gentle grasp, had his body pulling up tight.
“Cruel, teasing woman,” he whispered, dragging his gaze up to the face of his tormenter. Her soft lips were curved in a dreamy half-smile. Her eyebrows, a softer, paler version of his own, were drawn slightly together in a passion of concentration.
Unable to endure any more teasing, Malcolm snared her hand and brought it to his lips to kiss. But another impulse overcame him and he found himself nipping gently at her smooth palm and biting at her fingers.
Recalling where he had been before Taffy’s unexpected diversion, Malcolm dropped his head onto her breast and laved the tiny nipple, which was no larger than the smallest coin.
So bonnie! And they were just the beginning of her feminine bounty. She lay before him as the promise of Spring after the dark of February winter.
Her busy hands, deprived of the front of his body, had found their way into his hair where they were burrowing for purchase among his tangled locks with nervous, tell-tale flexes.
There was no resistance in her limbs when his hands went on to explore her. Taffy’s legs shifted willingly at his stronger touch, allowing him to roam at will. It delighted him that she was already slick with desire, and he returned her earlier caresses with like gentleness.
Feeling a selfish cad, but knowing that a plateau had been reached and that he could delay no more, he shifted to his knees and pressed himself against her. He stroked his way inside, groaning happily at the smooth tightness that closed around him.
He rolled his hips against her in heavy surges, willing her to join him at the crest that was rapidly overtaking him. She was pure heat, pure sensation that blinded him to everything except their approaching ecstasy. She stopped his breath, consumed his thoughts.
And then she was gone from him. Physically she was there, but he could feel the moment when she retreated from the fire that burned between then.
“Taffy!” he pleaded, pulling back to look at her face. But her eyes were still closed, her head turned aside. He whispered: “Why do ye no’ want me now? Wha’ has happened tae ye?”
“I do want you,” she answered, wrapping arms about him. She said desperately: “Don’t leave.”
Malcolm fought with himself, to find the will to retreat long enough to catch Taffy back up again and bring her with him to ecstasy. But the tide of his passion had him locked into an unalterable course. Frustrated, but plunging toward the inevitable end, he was washed away by waters of rapture which were deeper than he had known existed or suspected could exist. He poured himself into her and became one with that sea.
Taffy stirred reluctantly. Embarrassment and frustration were vying for her attention. She did not know what to say to Malcolm—how to explain what had happened. She had been caught up in the moment, following instincts, and then of a sudden there had been a feeling that someone was there with them, watching. The thought had recalled her to her senses and made her feel ashamed.
Taffy curled her fingers into Malcolm’s hair and sighed wistfully. Physical awareness was returning to her as well, and the most intrusive of life’s sensations was the hard stone of the cavern floor pressing into her back. The second bit of unpleasantness was the heavy scent of canine breath puffing over her flushed cheeks in friendly, but pungent pants.
“Oh, go away do!” she pleaded, causing Malcolm to stiffen and then rise above her. His eyebrows swooped upward in a comical manner and his lips twitched.
“Well, and a good evening tae ye, mistress. Ugh!” Malcolm turned his face in disgust as Smokey shared his eventide greeting. The hound had obviously been out hunting and found some carrion.
Smokey retreated with a disgruntled look and plopped down by the cavern’s entrance with a melodramatic blast from his lungs that expressed his opinion of their continuing laziness.
Unable to help herself, Taffy began to giggle. The more she did so, the more she became aware of Malcolm still resting inside her. This led to even more giggling until finally, tears were leaking from her eyes.
Malcolm watched her worriedly, even as his flesh responded to her muscles’ soft contractions.
“I’m not over fond of yer laughter just now,” he told her. “But I’m right craven about seeing ye in tears. Yer no’ hurt are ye, lass?”
“No.” Taffy made an effort to rein in her near hysteria. She said practically: “But this ground is awfully hard with you atop me.”
“So it is,” he said remorsefully, reluctantly pulling away from her and rolling to his feet. His long sark quickly returned him to a nearly modest state.
Taffy pulled the fullness of her skirts over her bare legs and glared at Smokey. It was easier than looking at Malcolm.
“This isn’t my dream of true love,” she told the panting dog. “At no time did I think to sleep on a stone floor and share my bed with a mangy mutt.”
“It has no’ been a usual reiteach,” Malcolm agreed, either oblivious to her embarrassment, or kind enough to pretend to be. He reached down and pulled her out of her protective n
est. “We’ll away tae the stream for a swim. That’ll help yer back.”
Smokey, who apparently knew himself to be very well bred, simply ignored her complaints.
“Will it?” Although it was impossible to imagine, more heat surged into her cheeks until Taffy felt as red as a radish. Her naked state and the feeling of dampness between her legs so overtook her mind that she didn’t notice Malcolm’s casual mention of the reiteach, the traditional Scottish festivities that preceded a wedding.
“Aye, it’s nice and refreshing. Cu, make yerself useful and go down tae the stream and chase any bloody Campbells away. Yer breath alone should do the trick.”
The comment brought Taffy unintentional alarm, momentarily pushing away embarrassment or thought to the discomfort of bathing in a frigid stream.
“Campbells?” She pulled on her skirts with new haste and reached for her stockings and boots.
“Aye. I fear they are nearby.” Malcolm anchored his plaid securely and then pulled on his own brogues.
Taffy looked out the cavern’s narrow door as she tightened her laces. Night had fallen, but there was an ugly orange glow far in the distance and the smell of burning had grown stronger. It was now an acrid stench that crept into even the nose and mouth and coated the membranes with ash.
As she looked into the night, she thought she saw a shadow of something moving low to the ground. She started to draw Malcolm’s attention to it, but hesitated. Smokey was not making any alarm and she did want to appear overly timorous.
“And we’re going for a swim out there?”
“Aye.” Malcolm stooped and inserted his razor-sharp sgian dubh into his sock and then checked the dirk hanging at his side. The fact that he was dressing as though expecting to give battle or flee when they were supposed to be going for a swim was suggestive of the danger that surrounded them. “We’ve need o’ it after yesterday’s wallow through the mud. An I donnae want ye tae be so stiff ye cannae run if we have a need to.”
“But if the Campbells are out ransacking the neighborhood shouldn’t we try and help—”
Night Visitor Page 12