Another hour flew by as she relaxed into his chest, watching the winter landscape darken as twilight grew the shadows around them. “We will camp here for the night,” Nathaniel said as he stopped. “I hear a stream nearby.” His large hands set the reins before her, and the saddle shifted as he dismounted.
She looked through the trees where she heard a gurgling off to the right. “Have we entered England?”
Reaching up, he wrapped his hands around her waist to lower her. She liked how he easily held her weight. She was not some spindly girl but strong and tall.
“I believe so.” He glanced up at a patch of open sky through the bare trees and pines. “Riding at this speed, we may reach Hollings Estate in another four days.”
“Ye were riding slow for me before,” she said, her frown easily heard. She absently rubbed the ache in her thigh from holding her leg higher on the horse and adjusted the wrapping around her ankle above the line of her untied boot.
“I did not want you to fall off your horse,” he said, pulling the tarps and blankets from Stella’s back.
She snorted on a half laugh. Nathaniel shook out the tarp to lay upon the cold ground, and she hobbled around, looking for rocks to make a fire circle. Stopping at a thick birch tree, she glanced upward. Would she be able to climb with her twisted foot?
“Do not even think about it,” Nathaniel said, and she lowered her gaze to meet his, opening her eyes wide in innocence. “We will sleep together from now on,” he said, “so I can make sure you do not fall from anything. It will keep us warm for we will not have a fire tonight.”
“So, no warm food tonight, or brewed tea?” Cat limped over to a tall oak, her foot hurting much worse without the comfort that would come with tea. Before the Worthingtons had arrived in Killin, Cat had never known tea. Now she looked forward to it. “Ye are punishing me for not leaving Stella in the village.”
“With you injured, I would rather not call thieves to us tonight,” he said, and spread the tarp out under a sturdy tree limb.
He erected the single tent in no time while she unloaded the bags from the horses, dropping them to the scuffed snow. Every movement hurt, making her feel weaker. She stopped, leaning into Stella’s chest, her head under the horse’s soft chin. The mare was strong and held her upright. She heard Nathaniel lead Gaspar away to the stream, coming back moments later. His hand fell gently on her shoulder. “Let us get you into the tent to unpack some of the food, and I will settle the mare for the night.”
She pushed away from the comfort of the animal. “She is so warm and strong.” She turned to find Nathaniel standing within reach. Looking down in the last vestiges of the twilight, he seemed to hover too close, yet she didn’t want him to step away.
“You are in pain,” he said.
“Pain is part of life.” She swallowed, looking away, and hobbled a step forward. Her breath caught as he swooped under her legs, catching her to him to carry her across to the tent.
They ate bannocks and dried, salted beef bought from the kind man in the village. Darkness engulfed the tent, and she heard Nathaniel bite into an apple, chewing softly. He pushed it into her hand. “We will share,” he said.
“Thank ye,” she murmured, taking a bite of the juicy fruit from last autumn’s harvest. She chewed, trying unsuccessfully to ignore the throbbing in her ankle. It radiated up nearly to her thigh and down to her toes. “Do ye have any of that whisky?”
He shifted in the darkness, and she heard the swish of liquid. “Here.” The leather bladder pressed along her arm, and she reached for it. “It must really be hurting for you to want a drink.”
She’d sworn off spirits years ago after finding her da several times, sleeping off his drunkenness on the road through Killin or propped up in Craig’s smithy, trying to stay warm next to the large fires. She took a large swig of the smooth, burning drink, and exhaled. “Lord,” she murmured.
“You should try to sleep,” he said. “Lie next to me, and I will cover us both.”
She took one more drink, hoping the strong spirits would numb her some, and handed it back to him to cork. “If we switch places, we can sleep back to back without my leg being caught under me.”
Nathaniel’s bulk took up all the space in the tent as he slowly moved over top of her to shift to her other side. She laid back, lowering to her left, propping the foot gently on her other one.
Perhaps it was the whisky, but she felt warmer and safe with Nathaniel against her back. Like she could close her eyes and rest without worry of anyone harming her. The pain in her foot ebbed, and she sighed deeply.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
“As best I can be,” she said.
“Once we get to Hollings, you can have a bath, clean clothes, a soft bed, and a physician to check your foot.”
“I do not need all that,” she whispered, feeling the liquor relax her muscles. The line that touched between their bodies was warm like sunbaked clay, as if she were melting into him, fusing into a solid being together. The blanket moved over her as Nathaniel tucked it in, keeping out the cold. She was enveloped against him, with him.
“At least you will be warm there,” he said softly. “How does your head feel?”
“I am warm right here,” she murmured. “And my head stopped hurting hours ago.” Hopefully the whisky wouldn’t make the headache return. She inhaled, shifting, her backside sliding against his. Instant sensation shot through her body, like a blade delivered with mortal force, but instead of pain, a dull ache of want grew in its wake. It made her shift again, and she pressed even closer into him, her left leg tangling with his. They remained in their clothes, but since she wore trousers, she could feel the strength in his lower half.
He pulled away to turn his body toward her so that his chest lay against her back, and his cod against her backside. It was hard, but he didn’t move. The wind blew outside, sending the tree limbs scratching against one another, but she was safe and warm in Nathaniel’s arms. The heat within Cat began to swell. They lay unmoving for several minutes, but she could tell he wasn’t asleep yet, and she was far from it.
“There is a fire between us,” she whispered, her eyes opening to the darkness inside the tent, shadows that hid them from the realities and prejudices of life and society. Only the heat building between them mattered to her. If her sore foot would allow it, she would turn into him and demand another kiss. Instead she pressed her backside against him again.
For a moment, she felt him press back, and he groaned. “Dammit, Cat, I am trying to be an honorable man, but you are making it blasted difficult.”
“Perhaps I do not want ye to be so bloody honorable,” she said, still facing away from him.
He paused for several heartbeats. “I think the whisky might be affecting you.” His lips brushed across the hair at her ear. Was it a brush or a kiss? She could imagine it as a kiss.
“I am not drunk,” she said. His hand rested atop her hip, and she wished that he would slide it down to her abdomen where the ache continued to grow. She huffed. Being careful to keep her right foot from tangling, she rolled onto her back to stare up at the shadow that was Nathaniel as he pushed up onto his elbow to gaze down at her.
“I am tired of this ache ye make me feel,” she said. Perhaps the whisky was loosening her tongue, but she didn’t care. There were words that needed to be said. “Ye started it when ye kissed me months ago.” She longed to touch his face but kept her fingers against his chest. “Yet ye will not finish it.”
He leaned in to her, his hand coming up to the side of her head where some of her curls had escaped her braid. “Not when you are in pain and have had whisky when you do not normally drink.”
Her breath caught as her heart thumped. Did that mean he would finish it when she wasn’t in pain? “What exactly does that mean?” She wished she could see him clearly, but the deep shadows hid his features.
Nathaniel shifted, and he seemed to scrub at his hair with one hand. “Hell if I kno
w,” he said. “Things are complicated.”
Irritation helped to quell some of the fire within her. Anger. She embraced its familiar strength. “I am not asking ye to wed me and make me a Viscountess, English,” she said. “I am just saying that ye should finish what ye started.”
He leaned closer over her. “What exactly do you mean by finish?” His voice was rough and deep, like a wild caress, and her body thrummed again. Damn.
“I may not plan to ever marry or love, but that does not mean I don’t ache like any warm-blooded lass,” she said.
He paused, staring down at her, and she wondered if he could see her any better than she could see him. “Have you ever been with a man before, Cat?”
“Nay.” A flush rose in her face, but he couldn’t see it in the darkness.
“And you want me to be the one to take your maidenhood away?” His words were low, hesitant.
“If it will rid me of this bloody ache,” she said, her words terse as frustration ate at her. “And I have seen ye washing with snow and felt ye against me. I know ye want me,” she ended on a whisper, the whisky bolstering her.
He leaned into her, his arms coming down on either side of her head, his chest touching the sensitive peaks of her breasts. His voice was so close she could feel his breath brush her lips. “Of course I bloody want you. You think that it’s been easy keeping you close and not being able to strip you down and make you moan?”
His words were like the strongest whisky mixed with fire, racing along with her blood. The ache became a whirlwind, whipping through her. “Then make me moan.” She reached to lay her palm against his bristled cheek.
Nathaniel’s mouth swooped down to capture hers in a fierce kiss as if a dam had been destroyed. Their lips slid against each other’s, their heads tilting. A deep groan seemed to vibrate down in his chest. She stroked the side of his face, and his hand slid along her side, following the curve of her waist and over her hip to her abdomen. She pressed upward against his hand, urging him to find the core of her ache. There in the darkness, wrapped alone in the middle of the forest, she breathed in their body heat, their joined essence. It was more intoxicating than anything she’d ever encountered. “Touch me,” she whispered, her breath coming fast and full against his lips.
His strong fingers seemed to know exactly where to go, where her ache centered. They moved to the juncture of her legs, and he pressed against her through her doe-skin trousers. She bucked upward as he ravished her mouth, opening and tasting him, breathing him in as he strummed against her. Cat rolled into him to caress a path down his chest, down his taut abdomen to the hardness there. Plucking at the ties of his trousers, Cat’s fingers moved inside to wrap around his length. Huge, heavy, and hot.
Nathaniel groaned into her mouth and tugged the shirt from her trousers. His warm hand slid up under her jacket and shirt, against her sensitive skin to where she’d wrapped her breasts. He loosened the bindings by stretching them until her sensitive breasts were free, spilling out over the top. Her skin felt alive, chill bumps popping up across her as he stroked up to her breasts, palming one, plucking at her peaked nipple until she moaned.
Pressing her body closer, the passion numbing the pain in her foot, she tangled her good leg with his as she stroked him. She slid her hand out and untied her own trousers.
Nathaniel rucked her shirt up all the way, pulling it off over her head, and kissed a trail down her neck, making her shiver against him. His mouth replaced his fingers on her nipple, sucking it in until a shot of hot lightning raced down from it to the juncture of her legs. It was as if all the carnal aches in her body were linking and building together.
“Och,” she breathed and moved her hips to push her trousers downward, exposing her heat.
“God. Cat,” Nathaniel said, rising in the darkness, his hand sliding down her bare hip as he kissed her again. He pulled back from her lips, his words a whisper. “You are all soft woman but also full of fire. Wildfire.” His lips found hers again in a frantic kiss, his fingers stroking her thighs until coming to the throbbing at her center. Pressing forward, she moaned into his mouth. Then, as if knowing exactly where she must be touched, he pressed inside. “Hot, wet fire,” he whispered against her ear as she widened her legs, silently begging for more.
He stroked a rhythm inside, touching all the intimate parts of her. “Bloody hell, Nathaniel,” she called out, the pressure rising higher and higher as he played her body, making her ignite.
Her fingers slid back to the parting in his trousers where his member rose out of them. Hot skin over steel. She stroked up and down, marveling in the building power she felt within him. She followed the rhythm that he’d set. They both moved against each other’s hands, their mouths slanting with hot kisses and shallow breathing.
She was lost in the flow of passion. Never before had she felt these intense sensations, pleasure mixed with such need that it nearly became pain. “Damn Nathaniel, I want ye inside me,” she said, tugging faster on his length.
He groaned. “That’s it, Cat, let the fire burn higher.”
He increased the beat of their frenzy, slaking deeply inside her with his strong fingers while also pressing against her most sensitive spot.
“Aye!” She was bloody going to fly apart. Only her trousers, bound around her legs, were preventing her from throwing him back and impaling herself on the thickness of his hot length. “Nathaniel!” she yelled as her want exploded, and waves of fire infused her body, scorching through her.
He grabbed his length away from her hand to turn as he, too, reached his peak, groaning deeply. Though she couldn’t see him in the dark, the sounds of his pleasure filled her with bold excitement. She reached down to continue to rub herself, the pleasure of the aftermath of her explosion still radiating through her.
He shifted to lay upon his back next to her, the two of them panting, the smell of their passion tinging the air inside the tent. Heartbeats and breath slowing, Cat wiggled to inch her trousers back up. “I can help,” Nathaniel said. The strong fingers that had plied her so well tugged as she raised her backside from the tarp. He arranged the wool blankets back over them. She left the bindings for her breasts where they lay loose, her shirt crumple beside her head.
Cat stared upward, listening to them breathe. “Ye could have taken me,” she said.
He moved, his face leaning over her, a shadow in the darkness. His hand stroked her cheek, fingers raking slowly down through her hair that had come undone. “No,” he said. “Not here on the ground. Not with you injured and with whisky in you.”
“I told ye—”
He stopped her with a finger on her lips. She almost bit him. “I know you are not drunk, or I would not have touched you at all.” His hand moved away from her face as he lowered back to the ground next to her. “We have been thrust together on this trip. You might feel differently about giving yourself to me in the light of day…when you get to know who I really am.”
“Really are?” she asked, but he didn’t respond. “Nathaniel Worthington, that is who ye are.”
She heard him exhale. “Yes, but you do not know me as Lord Worthington, fifth Viscount of Lincolnshire, courtier and possible parliamentary member. You do not know…my past.”
She turned her head toward his voice. It was rough and more formal. “You and the Viscount are the same, and we all have pasts.”
A low grunt came from him. It held no warmth and sent a shiver tickling down Cat’s spine, a very different shiver than the one she’d just experienced. “I would have you decide after you meet him,” he said.
Chapter Eight
The blade sung as it sliced against the morning air. Nathaniel turned, bringing the sword across as if to carve through an imaginary foe.
During his months at Finlarig, he’d been able to train with the Campbell warriors, adding to his English lessons in combat and swordplay. The Highland style focused more on defense and unexpected offense, using non-traditional moves like rolling across the
ground and using one’s boots to kick an opponent to throw them off balance in the fight.
After a third night of discomfort, lying next to the soft, warm Cat without giving in to his raging want, he had a definite need to burn off some damned energy. He’d refused to take her completely that first night after her fall because she might have still been in shock. After his passion had erupted and his brain and body had time to cool, he’d vowed not to take what he’d so desperately wanted to take until… Until when? Until Cat offered herself again once she could see who he was as an English aristocrat and, more importantly, who he’d been before.
You are not Father. Evelyn’s kind words wafted through his mind, and he sliced again through the dawn light. You might have the look of him, but your heart was never in King Charles’s war.
Nathaniel turned and thrust, a grunt coming from his lips as his imagined foe became the cruel man who’d demanded he become a lieutenant in the king’s army. He’d been trained with muskets but preferred the feel of the sword. With a glance toward the path he’d take, Nathaniel rolled along the ground, pushing up with a spin to thrust as if impaling his opponent. Yanking his arm back, he turned, slashing again through the air. But this time, instead of his gaze sliding past the tent, it caught on the woman standing silently before it, watching him.
Rays of dawn sun cut through the leafless birches to streak her red curls in gold. They fell around her straight shoulders, her full breasts loosely bound under the shirt.
Cat nodded to him. “Did not mean to interrupt,” she said and began to limp toward the horses. Even with her leg injured, her body moved with an innate type of grace. Long legs, built with sleek muscles, compensated for the shift she took with each step. Damn how he’d dreamt about those legs wrapped around him. With two long strides, he came to her side, lifting her.
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