by Karen Ranney
He lifted his eyes, and the strength of his gaze was startling. How could he convey so much in a simple look? “Does it need to be seduction, Mary? I’ve found that shared passion is more powerful.”
Not seduction, perhaps, but it would most certainly be surrender.
She let her skirt fall to the floor. Removing the bodice and stays, she stood before him as she had the night before, clad only in her shift and stockings. Last night, there had been concealing shadows, and flickering candles that shielded and enhanced. Now there was the glare of the sun streaming in through the window. No artifice was allowed, no maidenly shyness, no reserve.
Slowly, she gripped the hem of her shift and pulled it over her head until she was clad only in her stockings and garters. She bent and untied her shoes, stepping out of them and standing before him almost naked.
His hand reached out and cupped her breast, his thumb playing with the tip of it. A small smile hovered over his lips as he watched it become tightly erect.
She closed her eyes, captured in the moment, feeling abandoned and wicked and adrift in a dozen emotions she couldn’t describe.
“And you dared to call yourself ordinary,” he murmured. “Nothing about you is ordinary, Mary. Not your smile or your body.” His hand left her breast to spear through her hair.
He pulled her close. His kiss was openly carnal, and demanding. She stood on tiptoe again and wrapped her hands and arms around his neck. Impatient, she pulled the material of his shirt open until her breasts pressed against the wiry hair on his chest.
He turned her until his back was to the window, shielding her from the sun’s glare.
Her eyes blinked open. There, beyond the land bridge even now being partially submerged by the incoming tide, was Brendan. Beside him stood Micah and Hester, all of them looking toward Castle Gloom, to where she and Hamish stood framed in the window.
“Did you want them to see us like this?” The choked whisper didn’t sound like her voice.
He glanced over his shoulder. “No, but I’m not sorry for it. Are you?”
“No,” she said, an indication of her wantonness, that she could so easily forget herself. He’d shielded her from their gaze, but they should have stepped away from the window. Instead, he bent to kiss her again, and she allowed it, or welcomed it, as well as the passion that swept through her at his touch.
She shivered as his hand swept down her body, his talented fingers searching out the heat of her.
“You’re ready for me,” he said, sounding too smug and pleased with himself.
“Yes,” she admitted, conciliation in a single word. All he had to do was smile at her, and her body warmed. Or kiss her, and she was eager for him.
He led her to the bed, but this time she would not easily acquiesce to his plans for her.
Slowly, she began to undress him, uncovering every inch of his skin with great deliberation. When his shirt was removed, she bent and kissed his chest. His boots were next, and she was grateful they slipped easily from his feet.
Her hands reached down to his trousers and unbuttoned three of the buttons, feeling the mound of hard male flesh that strained against the material. It burst free and she cradled his erection between her hands. It was as hot as she felt inside. Heat seeking heat.
He’d not looked quite so large last night.
A few tiny shocks traveled through her at the sight of this magnificent erection, and the memory of last night. Slowly, she trailed a path from the head to the base. A noise emerged from Hamish that was half groan, half laugh, and warned her that he might well stop this game before it began.
She was not, evidently, the only one ready at a moment’s notice.
The rest of his clothing was soon stripped from him, and she pushed him until he sat. Standing over him, she felt both powerful and weak at the same time.
Lifting one foot, she planted it on the side of the bed, uncaring that the pose revealed the dampness on her inner thighs. She removed her garter and rolled down her stocking, being deliberately slow in the task. She did the same with the other leg, tossing the second stocking after the first.
Standing in front of him, one hand flat against her abdomen, the other fisted between her breasts, she studied him as he had her. “Are you certain you didn’t mean for them to see me?”
He looked surprised, a point in his favor. Yet she would not have left this room even if he had admitted to the act. That confession made secretly and silently was an indication of how fascinated she was with him and her own response to him.
“No,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t have done that to you. Your body is mine alone to see.”
There, a type of arrogance or selfishness she was coming to associate with him. Perhaps at its root was a supreme form of assurance, or maybe he simply knew his limits because they’d been breached time and time again. He was a complex man to understand, but she wanted to try, an even more dangerous impulse than friendship.
She moved closer to him until her knee touched his thigh. He reached out his hand, placing it on her inner thigh, moving upward until his thumb brushed the intimate curls.
“You’re very responsive,” he said, addressing the comment to her abdomen. He bent forward to brush a kiss across her knuckles where her hand still rested on her stomach. Her fingers curled into a fist, and then rubbed against his cheek. “Have you always been so?”
“Yes,” she admitted. Passion was nothing new to her, but it was different with him.
His finger slipped past her intimate folds and inserted itself into her. She closed her eyes at the gentle stroking rhythm he began. She wanted him inside her, but she said nothing, only stood in front of him enduring the delicious torture for as long as he wanted to inflict it.
“Do you always make those little sounds at the back of your throat when you find your pleasure?”
She smiled, feeling heat travel through her. Her hand between her breasts spread out, her palm covered one nipple simply because it needed to be touched.
“No,” she said smiling. “I’ve been known to scream, but only when I’m feeling abandoned.”
He pressed the palm of his hand hard against her in a sudden upward movement that had her almost sinking to her knees. The pleasure was so intense that for a long moment she couldn’t hear or feel anything else. She closed her eyes to savor it more intently.
“I’ve promised to take you back to Inverness when you’re ready, Mary.”
“Have you?” she said, feeling as if her blood was heavy and her heart was beating in a languid rhythm.
“However long or short a time that may be.”
At the moment, she couldn’t imagine ever leaving him. Not as long as his breath was against her stomach and his tongue licked out and traced a path from her navel to her hipbone. Not when his fingers were doing decadent and delicious things to her.
She needed this. She wanted it. She wanted him.
He inserted another finger into her, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. She was being drugged with pleasure, and it was thrumming through her limbs, touching the tips of her toes and her fingers.
“I want be kissed,” she demanded softly.
“You’ll have to wait,” he said.
“I don’t want to wait,” she said.
“Do you always get what you want, Mary?” he asked.
She opened her eyes to find his look intent, his eyes heated. There was a flush on his cheekbones, and his smile had disappeared.
“Yes,” she admitted. “But I’m very good, and I should be rewarded for my patience.”
He slowly inserted three fingers into her. But his fingers were no match for his erection, and she was suddenly nearly desperate for it.
She stepped back. Gently, she pushed him until he lay back on the cot. He swung his legs over, reaching up with one hand to draw her down atop him.
Slowly, she went, teasing them both. With her knees on either side of him, she kissed him. Moments later, her mouth left his, as she tr
ailed tiny kisses along his jaw, delicately saluting one scar and then another. She kissed her way to his chin and then down his neck, where her teeth made a mark of their own at the base of his throat.
“Now,” she said, her breath hot against his skin.
In a swift gesture, she was lowering herself on him, so crazed that she was certain if she didn’t have him now, her life would end.
He entered her, stretching and filling her, so hard and large that she felt deliciously impaled. Her hand reached down to touch the base of his erection, marveling at his size.
His fingers touched her intimately, and she pressed them against her as she rose up slightly and then lowered herself again, feeling the friction with each subtle movement. She wanted it to last, but was afraid it would not. All she could do was close her eyes and concentrate on the feeling of him buried deeply inside her.
She heard a sound, an oath, a strangled laugh, an imploration, she wasn’t sure which, but she ignored him, so enthralled with what she was feeling that pleasure suddenly became a singular and selfish thing.
Abruptly, his knees rose up, and he pulled her down even more firmly atop him. That was all she needed, just that little nudge of movement to send her catapulting somewhere, where pieces of her body splintered in the air. Her breath, harnessed by delight in these last moments, was finally released on a deep sigh. She thought she screamed, or whimpered, or cried, and then he was moving beneath her, pressing up and then surging down again and again and again.
She could feel the heat of his eruption inside her. Even that seemed to prolong the pleasure, deepen the sensation of losing herself.
Long moments later, she sank down atop him, her cheek pressed against his sweaty chest, her arms lying weakly on either side of him. His heartbeat was like a furious drum. Inside, her body echoed that rhythm, clenching repeatedly around him like a faint echo.
Stay with me. For how long? Would she survive it?
Brendan turned away from his view of the castle, deliberately not looking at either Micah or Hester where they sat on the wagon seat. The board of the empty wagon bed vibrated as it moved, sounding like thunder as the wheels struck the ruts on the road.
Part of him was glad that Hamish had an interest in something, even if it was only pleasure. The other part was feeling guilty. If he hadn’t brought Mary there, she wouldn’t be staying now. Nor would the three of them have been summarily banished from Castle Gloom because Hamish wanted to be alone with her.
The least he could do was protect her reputation. Brendan didn’t intend to tell anyone what he’d seen, and before they reached Inverness, he’d convey the need for silence and discretion to both Micah and Hester.
Still, the vision of the two of them framed in the window remained in his mind. Brendan knew exactly what Hamish felt at that moment. His body had stirred in response, reminding him that he had been too long without a little feminine comfort of his own.
He pressed his hand against his chest where the letters rested. He’d first go to the goldsmith’s shop, before seeing Mary’s friend.
After that? He’d go back to Gilmuir, and rejoin his ship. He didn’t anticipate seeing Alisdair, however. His oldest brother had a way of seeing through any tale.
It had been hard enough to get away from Gilmuir without Alisdair following him. The only thing that had stopped him from doing just that had been Brendan’s honesty.
“He didn’t come to Gilmuir because of you. He doesn’t want to see anyone, Alisdair.”
His older brother had frowned at him, and a moment later he’d nodded.
“You’ll let me know how he is?”
Brendan had agreed.
What would he tell Alisdair? That he wouldn’t recognize Hamish? He’d changed, not simply in appearance, but in temperament. His easygoing brother had been transformed to a man who was curt and detached.
Sometimes, Brendan got the feeling that he hadn’t heard the whole story, only bits and pieces that Hamish reluctantly divulged. He suspected that something terrible had happened to Hamish in India. But until Hamish wanted to tell him, there was nothing he could do.
Brendan had understood, ever since he was a boy, that there were certain things he couldn’t change. He’d never be as tall as Alisdair or Hamish, or as handsome as James. He probably was the most affable of the MacRae brothers, but not the one that people remembered. He had little ambition other than to be a good man and a credit to his family. That, he reasoned, was a fair enough goal for any man.
The farther he got from Castle Gloom, the more relaxed he felt, a thought that propelled him to turn back and stare at the castle, now no more than a shadow on the landscape.
“It’s a dour place,” Hester said from her seat on the wagon.
He nodded.
“We can make good time to Inverness, without a full wagon,” Micah said.
“That we will,” Brendan agreed.
He glanced back at the castle once more, wondering if he were a fool to leave Mary behind. It was her choice, and one she’d made freely. He couldn’t help but think, however, that it was a mistake.
Chapter 12
“A re you certain I’m not hurting you?” Mary asked, dabbing at the deepest lines on Hamish’s back. Even though there were ingredients in the salve that might prove caustic to his scarred skin, he didn’t flinch. She regretted the fact that she might be causing him pain, or replicating, in any way, the actions of his captors.
“I can barely feel what you’re doing.”
They sat in the middle of the courtyard on a bench that they’d moved from the kitchen. She’d persuaded him to take off his shirt, and now the sunlight revealed a tracery of lines deeper than the pattern of Shiva carved on his flesh.
“What are these?” she asked, following the lines with her fingers.
“Lash marks,” he said casually, as if he discussed the weather, or something equally mundane.
“Did they beat you, too?”
“It’s over, Mary,” he said gently, glancing over his shoulder at her. “Someone recently told me that I needn’t remember it again.”
It was annoying to have her words turned around and used as weapons.
“The sun will help you heal further,” she said, feeling a surge of protectiveness. “I wish that I were as talented as those in Inverness believe me to be,” she said, placing both hands flat on his shoulders. “If so, I would erase these marks from your body.”
“If you were indeed an angel from Inverness, I wouldn’t be able to touch you,” he said, turning and smiling at her. “I wouldn’t want to trade that pleasure for anything.”
“Not even being unscarred?”
“Does it matter so much to you, Mary?”
She shook her head, realizing it was true. The tattoos were a part of him, as much as his brown eyes or his hair.
“Why doesn’t it matter more to you?” she asked him.
“Perhaps I deserve it,” he said, a cryptic remark that he didn’t explain.
She continued rubbing in the salve. When she finished, she wiped her hands and gently blotted the excess from his skin.
“It’s a beautiful day,” she said glancing up at the clear sky. The hint of winter was back in the air, but the warmth of the sun offset the cool breeze.
“That it is,” he said. When he spoke conversationally, his voice sounded almost like a whisper. Only when he spoke louder, what might have been for another man a shout, did his voice seem to regain a normal pitch. She didn’t ask why that was, preferring ignorance in certain things between them.
She sat on the edge of the well and watched him, sitting there with his face tilted back to the sun, that small half smile playing around his lips. She knew now that he used the expression as a shield, less amusement than simply a way of hiding whatever emotion he was experiencing.
“Will you play a game of shatranj with me this evening?” she said, capping the vial and placing it back in her medicine chest resting on the edge of the well.
&n
bsp; He glanced over at her, his gaze intent and somber.
“What wager shall we make this time?”
“Must we make one?” she asked. “Isn’t it enough to simply play for the joy of the game?”
He smiled again, his expression altering to become teasing. “I would much rather win something from you.”
“You’ll do the laundry if you lose, then.”
He laughed, surprising her.
“I agree that that’s a wager I’d prefer to win, but I have more interesting stakes in mind.”
He winked at her, a slow and taunting gesture, one that shouldn’t have escalated her heartbeat.
She carefully closed her medicine chest before moving it from the rim of the well. Once it was at her feet, she looked at him again.
“What, exactly, did you have in mind?”
“If I win, I will teach you something I learned in the Orient.”
“A healing technique?”
“If you prefer to think of it as that,” he said, smiling.
“Or is it something to do with cobras?”
He laughed.
It really was a strange occurrence, losing her breath around him. Still, it seemed wicked to discuss such things, and even twice as decadent to do so in the bright light of the sun. She could hear the waves lap up on the rocks, and the seabirds calling as if the sheer joy of life was too much to restrain.
She’d already betrayed herself as being a woman who was led by her impulses rather than her logic. If not, she would have left with Brendan, been in Inverness now, congratulating herself on her fortuitous escape. But what Hamish didn’t know was that she’d never before acted in such a fashion. Only with him had she been so foolish. And brazen.
Instead of telling him that, she smiled back at him as he sat there, a satyr with his shirt unbuttoned and the pattern of a godless deity cavorting upon his chest.
Had he always been a man of wild wants? Someone who explored the world with a reckless disregard for what other people might say or think? Had he always done exactly as he wished and been an adventurer with a wicked gleam in his eye?