Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

by Ann Jacobs

  Rising on weary legs, she went to the armoire and grabbed the thin bracelet her mother had given her many years before. She crossed to Mary and tucked the strand of emerald and silver into the other woman’s palm. Her throat constricted as she said, “I want you to have this, to remember me by.”

  Mary’s eyes flew wide and she shot to her feet. “Kristi, I cannot!”

  “Aye, you can. You will keep it and you will wear it, and you will think of me.”

  “Think o’ ye? Why would I need to think o’ ye? What are ye sayin’?”

  Kristiana pulled in a deep breath, letting it out on a rush. “I’m leaving, Mary. Laird MacBain won’t stay so long as I am here. I won’t let the clan suffer the loss of yet another master for my error.”

  “Yer error? What have ye done?”

  “I…” Her voice cracked as Tavish’s words from the previous night rolled through her mind. I once made a promise to myself to never take a wife I cared for. I planned to break that promise for you, but no longer. She pressed her fingers against her eyelids to stop yet another course of tears. “I hurt him. I didn’t try to do so, but I did all the same.”

  “And ye cannot make it up to him?”

  “Nay, I don’t think I can. I have tried to make him understand, but he won’t listen. And I…I love him too much to allow him to suffer any longer.” She pulled her hand away and met Mary’s worried gaze. “Your laird is a good man, he will do right by the people of Landon. He will do all the better with me gone.”

  From his vantage point just past the slightly ajar chamber door, Tavish drew in a hasty breath. Was it possible she spoke the truth? Had her coming to him, offering her body, her innocence not been for her people at all, not even that first time? Could she have loved him from the first, want to be with him always as she had claimed?

  Bloody hell, had her tears been real?

  The accusations he’d thrown at her chased through his mind, and he swallowed hard the lump of regret that formed in his throat. Kristiana’s sobs reached him and his heart turned over as what felt to be a thousand daggers ripped into his soul.

  He had been wrong, he knew in that moment. He had allowed the lessons of his past to corrupt his thoughts, to make him imagine things that could be no farther from the truth, and, in doing so, he had hurt her beyond comparison. Words of regret, of apology, of hope all sprang to his lips. He shook them away and pushed open the door. Somehow he would make this up to her. He would erase the ache that wrenched his gut with every one of her tears.

  “Leave us, Mary.”

  Kristiana’s head snapped up from where she buried it in her hands and she looked upon him through red, puffy eyes. She looked far more miserable then she had the day before. Then he’d been glad for her suffering, now he could barely tolerate gazing upon her without dropping to his knees and begging her forgiveness.

  Mary looked to Kristiana, and she nodded her assent. “’Tis all right, Mary. Go on.”

  The young woman went to Kristiana and gave her a quick hug, before heading toward the door. She cast Tavish a disapproving look and then left them in silence.

  Closing the door behind him, he walked into the bedchamber and sat in the chair Mary had just vacated. The same chair, he noted, where he had found Kristiana masturbating the day before. His cock thrummed to life at the memory of her sweet pussy open and glistening. He couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Why would you pleasure yourself instead of allowing me to do so?”

  Confusion swam through her eyes. “I wanted to learn my body so I could better use it to please you. ‘Tis the truth,” she added on a hasty breath.

  He scowled at her remark. She thought she had to verify each of her words, and it was his fault, he knew. He made her doubt herself, and for that he owed her so very much. “I know it’s the truth, Kristi. Just as I know I was wrong.”

  She shrank back with his words, her eyes flaring wide. “Sir?”

  “I should have believed you when you said you loved me, that you came to me for your own reasons and not that of the villagers, but…” He stared at his feet, shame unlike anything he’d ever known racked through him. His rationale seemed selfish now, selfish and trivial. Still, he spoke it. “I was deserted by the man I respected most when I was a child, sent to live in a foreign land where all but my mother rejected me. Until I earned my way into society that is, and then ladies and gentleman alike fell at my feet to please me. Not because they cared for me, but because they cared for my name—my mother’s name—and, more, for my pocketbook.”

  He paused to look at her. She worried her lip in the way that drove him to complete and utter distraction. His shaft throbbed violently with the innocent action, and Tavish had to look away to stop from rising and carrying her to the bed.

  “I have given my heart away twice to have it tossed back in my face. I promised myself there would be no third time. You made me want that third time, Kristiana. And just when I finally accepted it, you did the same as the others, telling me you cared for me, that you loved me, when in truth your actions were for the villagers—to see that their laird stayed on MacBain land. I know that isn’t what happened, but that is how it seemed.”

  “Perhaps if you had listened,” she said so softly he had to strain to hear.

  And what he heard was the trace of hope. The grief he’d known since hearing her tell Mary she loved him too much to see him suffer grew less, and once more he met her eyes. “I’m not known for my listening skills. Least of all when I think I am right.”

  Kristiana’s mouth twitched at the corners and he knew she fought a smile. Still, he wasn’t in the clear yet. Praying she wouldn’t reject him, he stood and went to her. He knelt before her and took her hands into his own. After brushing his lips over the back of each, he raised his gaze to hers. “I’ve made a mess of things, Kristi. I’ve hurt you, and I‘m sorry. I can’t allow you to leave for me. I don’t deserve it.”

  She hesitated for several seconds—several, long, gut wrenching seconds—then said, “And what if I were to stay?”

  “I’d be your friend and no more. I’ll never again touch you, nor taunt you with cruel words. We’ll be as family, the brother and sister we’d have been had your marriage to Tomas been consummated.”

  Frown lines marred her forehead and her lips fell flat. Tavish thought she would release his hands and push him away. She did, in fact, release his hands, but instead of pushing him away she brought her fingers to his jaw and lightly traced its contours. Her gaze fell upon his mouth and he bit back a groan of need.

  Her voice was thick with lust when she spoke. “What if I don’t wish to be your sister? What if I wish for you to touch me, to taunt me not with cruel words but with clever hands and skilled fingers?”

  He gulped back a breath as his desire to do just that grew to a nearly painful level. Once more he fought the urge to rise and carry her to the bed. “Then I would do so.”

  Kristiana’s fingers moved from his jaw to his mouth, rimming the soft skin and bringing his internal fire to a boiling point. Her eyes grew dark with passion, and he knew she felt the same warmth, the same hunger burning deep in her soul.

  “What if I wished for you to lay your mouth upon me?” she breathed.

  “Then I would do so,” he rasped.

  She lifted her gaze to meet his and the softest of smiles lit her face. “And what if I wish for you to carry me to my bed and make love to me?”

  His heart turned over with her words. The emotions he was certain he was immune to burst forth and he hugged her knees and rested his head in her lap. “Then I will do so. I will do anything for you, Kristiana. I am yours. Always.”

  “Tavish?”

  He raised his head and looked into her eyes, eyes that spoke of hope and promise and secrets yet to be discovered. “Yes, my lady.”

  Her lips curved higher and her eyes gleamed a brilliant blue. “I wish for you to carry me to my bed and make love to me. I find my Christmas thus far has been dreary and I can’t help b
ut think your services might remedy the situation.”

  His grip on her legs increased, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand and do her bidding. Not just yet. Not until he knew where their future lay, intertwined or as lovers merely by night. “My services? I’m to be your paramour then?”

  “Nay, you’re to be my husband, for though you might not see it, you do love me, and without me in your life, you wouldn’t feel complete.”

  In that moment, with her confidently spoken words, the happiness that had eluded Tavish the better part of his life was found. He caught her chin in his hand and caressed the soft rise of her cheek. The love that shone in her eyes was almost tangible. “There you’re wrong, my lady. I do see it. I have seen it nearly from the start, but chose to ignore it. I love you and I have missed you so very much.”

  She laughed, the lilting sound a balm to his heart. “I have not been gone yet.”

  Finally, he allowed himself to rise, to pull her into his arms and brush a tender kiss across her mouth. She parted her lips against his touch and he swept his tongue inside, licking at her sweetness as he strode to the bed on the opposite side of the chamber. “I haven’t seen you in many hours and, for my liking, that is too long already.”

  Kristiana laughed again, this time low and throatily, as he set her back on the rich green coverlet, then covered the softness of her body with his own hot, hard one. “Does this mean, sir, that you accept my proposal?”

  Grinning, he brushed her hair free of her neck and suckled on the delicate skin there until she writhed beneath him. She arched up, grinding her pussy against his aching cock and he growled his want as he began to strip her clothes away.

  “What it means, Lady MacBain…” He relieved her of her gown and underskirts in one deft move, and his breath dragged in on a gasp. She was naked beneath those layers, her body warm and flushed with anticipation for what was to come. He slipped his fingers between her parted thighs and her juices drenched his skin. He worked his fingers past the cleft of her pussy and petted her swollen clit.

  With a restless mewl, she tugged his shirt open and splayed her palms against the hard, defined muscles. He thrust his fingers into her core, stroking her hot, trembling cunt, and her nails sank into his flesh.

  “You were saying, my laird?” she breathed.

  “What it means, Lady MacBain,” Tavish started again, his voice thick with appetite and his balls bursting with tension, “is that unlike my brother, who was too addled to realize what a gift he’d received, I plan to consummate our marriage every day and every night until we’re too exhausted to continue. What say you we start right now?”

  Kristiana pressed against his chest and he rolled onto his back. Straddling his thighs with her damp body, she pulled his shirt from his breeches and lowered her head to lick at his flat nipples. Her hair teased over his chest as her rough tongue flicked again and again at his nipples. They grew taut and she pulled one into her mouth, biting down roughly on it the way he‘d done to her the day before. He’d done it to punish her, but at the wicked sensations that chased through his body, demanding he free his cock of his breeches this very moment, he knew he hadn’t punished her at all. No, he had brought her the same mind-numbing pleasure she now gave to him.

  She drew free of his nipple and sat back, her high breasts tipped with hard, rosy buds and a lazy smile gracing her beautiful face. She scooted lower on his body, until her damp pussy ground against his upper thighs and then she made haste in releasing his shaft from his breeches.

  Grasping his rock hard cock in her hand, she finally answered his question, “I say, Laird MacBain, that you had better be well rested for I plan to give you the longest-lasting and finest Christmas gift ever.”

  He lifted his hands to palm her breasts, remembering how they tasted that night he‘d found her perched on his windowsill. That night he had truly been given the finest Christmas gift ever—the gift of pleasure at the hands of the woman he loved. “The finest gift, eh, my love, even better than a gift of myrrh?”

  Her impish smile spoke to his heart, his soul, and his mind as she scooted lower still, away from his grasp. She bent her head and flicked her tongue over the moisture beaded at the head of his cock. He arched up at her exquisite touch, pumping his shaft against her seeking lips.

  She pulled back and laughed at his greedy actions. “Aye, sir, even better than that.”

  About the author:

  Jodi Lynn Copeland resides on 30-acres of recreational woodland and farmland, minutes from Michigan's state capital. She has been writing since her junior year in college when she began a romantic suspense novel. Since then she has written numerous books, which range from single title mystery to erotic romance, and has won various writing awards. While not writing, she enjoys time in the outdoors--hunting, fishing, playing ball, or just spending time with her family and pets. Weekdays are spent on her day job as a technical writer, graphic designer, and web programmer for a national engineering firm, and evenings and weekends bringing tales of passion, romance, and adventure to life.

  Jodi is a member of Romance Writers of America (RWA), Greater Detroit Romance Writers of America (GDRWA), Mid-Michigan Romance Writers of America (MMRWA), Cata-Romance, and a dedicated critique group.

  Jodi Lynn welcomes mail from readers. You can write to her c/o Ellora’s Cave Publishing at P.O. Box 787, Hudson, Ohio 44236-0787.

  Also by Jodi Lynn Copeland:

  · Uncharted Waters

  Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer e-books or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.

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