Just in Time for a Highlander

by Gwyn Cready

  Cursing Rosston from the depths of her soul, she unlocked the door and opened it a crack. She could feel MacHarg’s exasperation at her back. “Aye?”

  “I hoped we could talk.” Rosston held out a bottle of old brandy.

  “It’s late. I’m tired.”

  “Jock said you missed your meeting with him. I was worried.”

  The meeting in which he’ll tell me I have no choice but to marry you, she thought. “Aye, my father was causing a wee stir.”

  Rosston sighed. “I’m sorry, Abby. I know ye struggle.”

  “It’s done now.”

  “I have something that might set your mind at ease. I have brought to Castle Kerr—”

  “I know what you brought,” she said. “I had to order new chain for it from the blacksmith. What sort of mad man parades a king’s ransom through the borderlands like that? Ye of all people should know better.”

  “I did it for you, Abby. I dinna want you to worry anymore.”

  His chestnut eyes reflected the fire’s flickering gold. She knew he cared for her. But that just made it worse.

  She gave him a heartfelt hug. “I know. And I thank ye for it.”

  “I burn for ye, Abby. Invite me in. Let my money save you.”

  She stepped back into the relative safety of her bedchamber. “Watch your words, Rosston. A less agreeable woman might think ye intended to buy your way between her legs.”

  “And a less prideful one might recognize such an offer as a generous and fair one.” He swept her into a kiss that was urgent and brief. “I willna wait forever.”

  She had no interest in being forced into anything, including a kiss, and she gave him a firm push. He shook his head, disappointed, and disappeared into the darkness of the hall, bottle at his side.

  She steeled herself for MacHarg’s reaction.

  He stood slouched against the wall, arms crossed, staring moodily at the floor. “Ye seem to have an abundance of suitors this evening.”

  She held her breath, terrified he’d walk out.

  “I’m not going to leave,” he said, “because I want to hear the truth about the two of you. Even if it kills me, I think.”

  She tugged his arm, and he followed her reluctantly, but when he saw she was leading him toward the bed he stopped.

  “I cannot.”

  “Lay with me. Or sit at least. When I was a girl, my friend Eleanor used to say ’tis impossible to tell a lie when you hold hands with another.” She wove her fingers into his. “See? No lies.”

  “No lies?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are ye free to fall in love as ye choose?” he said.

  She inhaled sharply. “Have I not taught ye to engage an opponent more craftily? Ye dinna start with the coup de grâce.”

  She pulled him onto the bed and lay beside him, so that they both looked up into the plum velvet folds of her canopy, clasped hands between them.

  “I’ve been promised the truth,” he said, “and yet ye dinna answer.”

  She took a deep breath. “Who is ever free to love as they choose?”

  He wrenched himself out of her grasp, but she caught him again before he stood. “MacHarg, please. Who is free? Have you chosen the girls you’ve come to love? It’s not as if we stroll through the stalls in Covent Garden and point to ripe peach and say, ‘This is it. This is the one.’ We may be offered a gleaming peach, yet for a reason we canna explain we willna be talked out of a bruised pear.”

  The muscle in his jaw flexed. She had gained a foothold.

  “Sit,” she said. “Please.”

  He laced his fingers back into hers and lay back on the bed.

  She let go of his hand only for an instant as she stood, transferring the constancy of touch to their knees. He watched her, uncertain. With a deep breath for courage, she slipped off her chemise. Those sea blue eyes widened and grew more guarded. She crawled beside him again, taking his hand.

  His silence lasted so long she nearly reached for the chemise again. His eyes remained fixed on the canopy ceiling.

  “Ye have put me in an awkward position,” he said at last.

  “More awkward than mine?”

  He chuckled, and she felt him relax a bit.

  “Eleanor said ye canna lie holding hands. But I want to show you I can tell you the truth in the most natural position in the world to lie—in bed with a man, lying naked. Why, the words themselves prove it! ‘Lying naked’!”

  He made a small laugh but did not turn his head.

  “I will tell ye the truth,” she said, “and if I dinna, ye may do as ye wish with me.”

  “If ye dinna, I will leave.”

  “I know. And what bigger blow could a woman suffer than have the man she courts leave her naked on a bed after she has thrown herself at him? I have given you the weapon with which to eviscerate me.”

  “I hope not to use it.” He stroked her palm with his thumb. “Is he in love with you?”

  Love? An irrelevance for a clan chief. Yet the idea, once so elusive, seemed to glimmer in her mind’s eye as a possibility for the first time in her life. “If he does,” she said, “it is the love of a child for a toy he does not wish to share.”

  “Will ye wed him?”

  “I believe I will, MacHarg. Not out of some windswept emotion. Out of necessity. I wish it were not true, but it is, and there we are.” His hand did not loosen, and she let out a quiet sigh of relief.

  “How much money stands between you and the altar?”

  “Five thousand pounds. Though it might as well be fifty.”

  “And if you dinna get it?”

  “I willna be able to pay my bills. My clansmen will go hungry. Children will die. Eventually the families will be forced to go begging to Rosston anyway. At least if I marry him, I will be able to maintain a nominal place as head of the clan.”

  “What if I can help you?”

  “Are you a wealthy man, MacHarg?”

  “In another time and place I am.”

  “That other time and place—”

  “It’s my time to ask questions, aye? Rosston says ye are to be married on Thursday—at least that’s what Nab told me. Is it true?”

  “Rosston said that? Scoundrel. No, ’tis not true. He may wish it. But he needs to learn that wishing does not make it so. Not with me. I havena even accepted his proposal.”

  “But you will marry soon?”

  If only MacHarg could understand she had no choice. “Aye.”

  He sat up abruptly and her heart skipped a beat, but he did not release her hand. Turning on the bed, he brought the full weight of his gaze on her. “The next question will be harder for you to answer,” he said, “and if I should have to leave…well, I should like to have the memory of you like this safely tucked into my heart.”

  “You are a cheat, MacHarg.”

  The corner of his mouth rose, and his eyes traveled over her slowly. She knew her breasts were too small and her skin too ruddy to be a real beauty. But her hips were round and welcoming, and her legs, though brown, were firm and lithe.

  His gaze was investigative, referencing a sizable volume of past experience. She knew him to be well practiced. She recognized him now as connoisseur as well. With a less consequential man, she might have felt violated by such scrutiny. Instead, MacHarg raised her to a pedestal beside the most expertly sculpted Diana. She wished, however, her body did not quite respond so plainly to his appreciation.

  “In my land,” he said, voice low, “women shave their mons.”

  “Have they lice?” she said with horror.

  He laughed. “I dinna think so. Personally, I think they’re mad. I hope they seek to please themselves, because they dinna please me—not that they should, of course. But I find your hair enchanting.”

  Abby had never t
hought of her hair as enchanting. She had never thought of her hair there at all. But she knew how much she was looking forward to drawing her palms across MacHarg’s stubbled cheeks and braiding her fingers in the silk of his auburn waves, and wondered, in a Samson-like rumination, why anyone would give up even a scant inch of hair if they could help it.

  “Touch it,” she said, hoping to distract him from the question he intended to ask, which she was certain she already knew and had no wish to answer.

  “Ye are a siren.”

  He lifted his hand, still holding hers, and drew his knuckles slowly across her mons.

  “God help me,” he whispered. “My grand-da had a beaver hat when I was a kid. It couldna touch this for softness.”

  Any other man would climb instantly between her legs. But MacHarg would not rest until he had learned what he needed to know. He laid his hand—and hers—on her belly.

  “If ye marry him,” he said flatly, “will ye still take me to your bed?”

  The question was hard, not because she didn’t know the answer, but because she knew the answer would hurt him.

  “I am not a great clan chief, ye ken, nor daughter, nor friend, nor even child of God. However, it isn’t because I dinna try. If I marry Rosston, I should like to be a good wife. I should rather try and do it miserably than take my oath with the intent of breaking it.”

  MacHarg stared, unseeing, at the place their hands met. He looked so handsome in her brother’s plaid, the dark crimson a striking contrast to the copper of his hair and gold of his cheeks. Her words had hurt him, and she was sorry to have brought him pain.

  He said, “It’s for the best. I dinna think I could bear to have you in one way and be shut out of the others.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I could convince you, I think, even if ye were not inclined. But ye would hate me for it.”

  And that was that, she thought. The truth of the situation. She couldn’t be with him, nor he with her. She wondered if male clan chiefs had to sacrifice even half as much.

  He let go of her and stood. She reached for the discarded wrap, her nakedness now odd and uncomfortable, and lay motionless with it in her hand. She had no interest in watching him go.

  When she lifted her head and turned, he had taken off his clothes.

  “Then ye shall have to put off this wedding as long as ye are able.” He lay beside her. “I willna be done with ye for a while.”

  He kissed her gently as he entered her. His rocking was so slow and her body so wracked with anticipation, she thought she might die for lack of air. The heat oozed through her body—belly, knees, the breasts he stroked—till it reached her toes, which stretched into the cool night air like a dancer’s. This was a different MacHarg. Not the morning’s warrior claiming his prize, but a man in the desert, savoring his last sip of water.

  She memorized each part of him—his muscled shoulders and long crevasse on each side of his collarbone; the musky, salty scent of his neck; the wiry brush of chest hair; and of course the gold and russet curls around his thick, ivory cock.

  Would she be able to hold on to the memories after she bedded a new husband? She closed her eyes and gave entrée to Rosston’s shade, feeling his thumping thrusts, tasting his ale-soaked lips, yielding to that insistent gaze.

  “A leannan?”

  Her eyes flew open, though the word had been barely audible. MacHarg stared down worriedly.

  “Have I done something?”

  “No. Aye. Something wonderful.” She smiled. He had called her “darling.” She shooed away the ghost with no regret.

  “Oh, good. I was afraid there was something else I should be doing—moving faster or slower, perhaps, or applying some wee spanks.”

  Her eyes popped wide. “Spanks?!”

  “Och, I keep forgetting!” He flushed a deep red. “Ignore me, please. I am ungovernable—or so my grand-da says.”

  She held up her hand. “Are ye saying the women in your land—the wee lousy ones—like to be spanked?”

  “I dinna…It isn’t that I…I mean, they do ask for it sometimes, ye ken.”

  She blinked. “’Tis part of bringing a woman to climax?”

  “Ye make it sound so vulgar.”

  “Make it sound less so.”

  He chewed his lip. “A spanking can, well, heighten the arousal. Some women like it—some men too.”

  She sat up so quickly they slipped apart. “Ye have spanked a man!”

  He waved his hands wildly. “No, no, no. I havena spanked a man. And, please, no more questions. I should like this discussion to be over. I should like all discussion to be over.”

  Not being a fool, she laid down immediately, and he entered her again.

  “But…”

  He paused.

  “Oh, dinna stop,” she said, feeling somewhat foolish. “It’s just…I dinna understand how a woman might enjoy such a thing.”

  He climbed to his knees, still lodged within her, and lifted her ankles over his shoulders. Cupping a buttock, he said, “Imagine I told you to count up all the wicked things you’ve done with your lovers—tempting them when they couldna possess you—”

  “I have never—”

  “—taking them in a kirkyard, under God’s own midday sun—”

  She clamped her mouth shut.

  “—or pleasuring them like a wanton, with those fine, full lips.”

  Fire spread across her cheeks, and with an amused groan, he brought her hips more tightly against him.

  “Then,” he said, “after ye’d finished your counting, imagine I told ye that you would endure one hard crack for each transgression?”

  Her belly contracted so hard around him, she felt light-headed. “Oh.”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  If he brushes my bud now, even the barest touch, I will ignite.

  He read her thoughts and didn’t move.

  After a moment, the danger passed, but the warm, hard hand on her arse still twitched in anticipation.

  “I dinna think I’m quite ready for such a thing,” her voice choked.

  “That’s fine.” He brought his hand instead to the thick, dark curls below her waist, weaving in his fingers till they were as tight as a comb. Tucking his thumb against her bud, he lowered her to the bed and bent to his work.

  She arched, the exquisite intersection of pressure and pleasure sending waves of warmth over her. His thrusts slowed or quickened as necessary to hold her in the searing flame tips of heat, and she writhed wantonly. He seemed to savor the pleasure of her groans as much as if she were a succubus and he the one being ravished.

  She clasped his shoulders as the wave began to crash, and kissed him hungrily. He held her tight, as if she might disappear, and rode the wave with her though he was nowhere near his own peak.

  “Oh,” she cried. “Oh!”

  When her breathing slowed and she opened her eyes, he was gazing at her, smiling.

  “God, you’re beautiful, Abby. I canna believe I’m holding you in my arms. Did I please ye?”

  “Aye, ye did. I believe I might never enjoy a man again as much—even if I tried every one between here and the gates of York.”

  He clapped his forehead and she laughed.

  “Ye heard?”

  “Oh, aye. And I had to wonder how long you’d been imagining that particular scene.”

  “Well, just the one day.”

  She licked the salty-sweet skin of his shoulder and sighed. “Ye taste of goodness and badness both—honor and avarice, loyalty and lust. Does everything on you taste as good?”

  His cock swelled inside her. “What are ye offering, lass?”

  “Exactly what you think. I want to try every inch of you.”

  “Every inch is flattered. Deeply flattered,” he said, adjusting his hips. “Though from my point of view,
he is exceedingly well placed where he is.”

  “Ah, but ye cannot finish there, MacHarg.”

  “Oh?” Eyes glinting, he said, “Why is that?”

  “Ye know perfectly well. No man of chivalry would even ask.”

  “I tend to be more chivalrous when I am not firmly planted between the legs of the most captivating woman for a thousand miles.”

  She giggled, thoroughly surprising herself. She swore she hadn’t giggled since she was besotted with her first beau at thirteen.

  He bestowed a series of kisses on her neck and cheek. “Tell me then where I might finish,” he said. “And paint a pretty picture, for I am quite at home here.”

  “Well,” she offered, stifling a smile, “you seemed to be most happily served by your hand earlier today.”

  He coaxed a nipple into a tiny ruby. “Alas, my hand seems to have found a place more to its liking.”

  “I have never known a man’s hand to find a place more to its liking than around his cock. Nonetheless, I will take you at your word.”

  He bowed. “Perhaps you have another idea?”

  “Well, I am reminded of the story of Lady MacTavish.”

  “Is it a long one?” He thrust himself once again into her depths. “I find I am growing less interested in fending off the inevitable.”

  She pushed him out of her and onto his back. “Gather your fortitude, sir. You will need it for this story. Lady MacTavish was the most famous of the clan chieftesses—or perhaps I should say the most infamous. She was one of Robert the Bruce’s most powerful supporters. Many men vied to lead her clansmen on her behalf. This was back when a woman could not be expected to lead her own clan. Not like now.”

  She rolled her eyes, and MacHarg gave her a charming smile.

  “It is said she brought each candidate to her bedchamber to personally measure his worthiness.”

  “And was this worth measured with a ruler or an hourglass?”

  “Probably both. But the important part of the story is Lady MacTavish was not one to take any unnecessary risks. Legend has it she had her two prettiest lady’s maids put the men through a number of, well, I suppose you might call them exercises, before she did her own judging. The exercises were conducted in a way that brought no risk to the maids’ carefully preserved maidenheads but still managed to force the candidate to thoroughly exhaust his reserves. This was done as quickly as possible, in the full view of Lady MacTavish, apparently to satisfy her that it had been done properly.”