A wicked smirk curved his lips. “You know what they say about a man’s feet.”
“Aye, I have eyes, ye ken,” she tossed back. “And I can attest that that’s well true in yer case. But dunnae let that go to yer head.”
“Everything you say goes to my head.” He canted his chin downward.
Taking his lewd meaning, Makenna swallowed a snort of laughter. “Ye are incorrigible.”
“True.” Julien gathered her in his arms and kissed her nose. “What now, my lady?”
“Lie down,” she ordered. “I want ye at my mercy.”
“As my lady commands.”
Julien arranged himself on the bed, lying on his side, and Makenna had the strangest urge to remember him like this. Dear Lord, he was beautiful. Like a lazy demigod, a half-glazed look of pleasure in those limpid green eyes, his body beautiful and erect as if awaiting his lover’s arrival. Golden curls hung into his brow, his lips bent into that provocative half smirk that she loved so well. She could never forget the way he was looking at her…as if she was everything.
Makenna joined him on the bed and before she could lose her nerve, she ran her palms over his hot chest, her fingers exploring all the rises and scooped hollows of his muscles. Her fingernail scraped gently over one flat male nipple and he inhaled a hiss of a breath. Venturing lower, she followed the path of golden hair that led to the part of him that she couldn’t help sneaking glances at.
Like the rest of him, Julien’s male organ didn’t disappoint. And it seemed rather interested in her, a fact that made her own body even more aroused. Wetness gathered between her legs as her hands found the warm, velvet-covered steel length of him. He made a pained, raw sound in his throat when she wrapped her fingers around his girth. She glanced upward. Jaw rigid and eyes squeezed shut, he looked like he was experiencing the worst kind of agony.
“Do ye like this?” she said, frowning.
He gasped. “Yes.”
Taking courage from his affirmation, she stroked him along his length from root to tip, her thumb brushing over the broad head of him. A groan broke from his lips at her touch, but he still didn’t move to mount her or take control.
“And this?”
She leaned over to lick him slowly, as he had done to her. A strangled noise was his only response, but his fingers fisted in the bedsheets when she did it again, licking over the top of him and tasting the salty bite of his essence. When she took him fully in her mouth, he moved so quickly that she didn’t have time to breathe, much less register that he’d hauled her up over his chest, and was claiming her mouth with his. His tongue teased and tangled, devouring her as if he couldn’t get enough. With a growl, he levered her upward and feasted on her breasts until she was the one making unintelligible noises.
“What do you want now, Makenna?” he asked, his voice sounding like he was holding on to his control by a thread. It made her feel powerful that she could push him to such lengths.
“I want ye,” she cried out. “So, so badly.”
He lowered her to straddle his hips, echoing her earlier words. “Then take me.”
Makenna blinked her confusion. She’d never made love in such a position before, but the deliberate roll of his pelvis left no doubt in her mind as to what he intended. She supposed it was possible, given the scorching look Julien was giving her, and the design of their bodies. It didn’t matter who was on top or below—that was all a matter of control. And he was offering it to her.
She took it. Took him. Positioning him at her entrance and sliding down until he filled her. They both gasped at the sweet friction. She nearly swooned at the sensation of fullness, but her body had a crushing desire to move. Makenna’s eyes found Julien’s and held them as she rose to her knees and then eased down.
“That’s it, find your pace, chérie,” he whispered. “Ride me.”
It didn’t take long for her to find a rhythm, and never once did he take his gaze from hers. It felt as if he were making love to her soul, even as her body impaled itself on his. Branding him with every downward thrust, while he claimed her body and spirit and everything in between with each upward stroke. When pleasure took them both over the edge, Julien drew her lips down to his and kissed her softly, even as her body shook and convulsed around his.
“Tu vas me détruire pour quelqu’un d’autre,” he whispered against her neck.
Spent, Makenna collapsed against him, translating the French words. His confession was only fair, after all. He’d already destroyed her for anyone else.
Chapter Seventeen
The bright swatches of color weren’t helping. Julien stood in the center of his sitting room while Monsieur Martin draped him with rough cuts of deep purple, baize green, lurid crimson, and sunset orange, his expert fingers marking the fabrics with white chalk and pins. Usually, a visit from his exclusive Parisian tailor, who presented bolts of fabric in all manner of vivid colors, would cheer him.
He didn’t mind the bold colors as much as he loved the feel of luxurious fabric. Julien supposed his love of expensive clothing grew out of wearing threadbare and ill-fitting secondhand clothing for years. This visit especially, having brought Martin all the way up from Paris to Scotland for the fitting and creation of several new pieces, should have pleased him. At least, distracted him. He should have been running his hands over the velvets and silks, the finely spun wools, the patterns of small, delicately embroidered olive branches, chevron, and fleur-de-lis.
But he had not. He wasn’t happy standing like a statue in his sitting room while the talented tailor worked in precise silence around him. Julien only felt restlessness and, dare he say it, dread. He was off. He felt the imbalance in his whole body. In his very soul. And not just today. The last two days had been the same, the daylight hours passing in a blur of activity, while the nights stretched long and agonizing.
Makenna had not come to his room again, and he had not gone to hers, not even when his veins had been on fire with wanting her. His need had compounded and thickened as he lay in bed, thinking of her, so much so that Julien had been hard pressed not to expedite his own lust, all the while remembering what it had been to be with her, inside of her, as he’d wanted for so long. Since he’d laid eyes on her that first time at Maclaren. And especially when she turned up in his foyer at Duncraigh.
That night, when she’d taken command of him and her own burning desire and want, had lingered in the forefront of Julien’s mind. The grip of her thighs as she’d ridden him to release, the bounce and sway of her breasts, her head thrown back. God, she’d been so free. Free and magnificent and powerful, as if she’d discovered herself anew in the hours stretching well past midnight, while Julien slowly, reverently, made love to her.
Dawn had been coming through the window panes when they had finally drifted to sleep in each other’s arms, their bodies spent, their hearts still pounding in their chests. He’d felt hers, throbbing as he’d held her close. However, the sunrise brought with it the reality of what they’d both kept at bay all night: Makenna would not stay. She was leaving, running to a much safer distance than what Duncraigh could provide. Than what Julien could provide.
It lived in the back of his head as he’d made the necessary arrangements the following day at her request. That for all his wealth, his holdings, his power, for all the work he’d done the past decade to build his own empire, it was still not enough. He couldn’t keep her safe from the man who wanted to harm her.
“My lord?” Julien blinked and looked at his tailor.
“Yes, Martin?”
The man gestured toward the sky-blue fabric tucked and pinned around Julien’s chest. “I asked if you were pleased with the fit, my lord. You have filled out a bit more in the torso and shoulders since we last met. This Scottish air has given you a stone of new muscle, my lord.”
More like fending off the blows of a Scottish footman instead of the Scottish air.
Julien gave a faint smile as he patted the blue silk, the color reminding h
im of the Mediterranean Sea. “It’s perfect, Martin. As always.”
Julien glanced toward the window, impatient to be finished here. He’d have much rather been outside with his claymore in the courtyard, exhausting himself, draining his energy, making it so he didn’t go mad with the urge to spend it in other, more satisfying ways. With Makenna.
He looked away from the window to find his tailor staring at him. “My lord?”
Julien sighed. “What is it, Martin?”
The man appeared flummoxed. “It is only that you usually have suggestions. Many of them.”
It was true. Julien was never fully content with Martin’s first fitting. This time, however, he could have cared less.
“You’ve always done a remarkable job, Martin. I will leave you to it.”
The tailor, still taken aback by Julien’s lack of ideas for alterations, swiftly unwrapped him from the draped fabric.
He left the sitting room and crossed into his bedchamber, a room he had not been able to so much as enter without imagining traces of her sweet, lingering scent still hanging in the air. One night. They’d had that one night, and when she’d kissed him the next morning, her lips trembling, before she rose from the bed and dressed, he’d known there would not be another. It would be too much of a risk. Not only for the obvious reason of conception. Makenna believed herself to be barren, though Julien had wondered more than once if her late husband had been the one responsible for the lack of a child. He’d believed Malcolm to be his, when in fact the boy was Colin’s. Had the former laird ever produced a child with one of his many mistresses?
No, Julien had known Makenna would not come to his bed again, because neither of them would be able to bear it when she finally stepped aboard the ship and departed Scotland. Julien glanced at the mantle clock as he pulled on last season’s waistcoat his valet had lain out in preparation for him. Three hours. That’s when the ship was scheduled to depart.
An irritating voice in his head could not be silenced as he donned a tailcoat and made his way into the corridor. It accused him of giving up, of not fighting hard enough for Makenna to stay. Though, deep down, he knew that it wasn’t as simple as that. What he wanted didn’t matter half as much as what she needed. And what she needed was to be safe, out of the reach of Colin Brodie. He could not force her to stay—she’d been forced against her will her entire life. Her future had to be her choice. If that meant leaving Duncraigh, then he had to accept that.
And she was right: He was rich. He had a castle and ships and influence in many parts of the world, but he was no one of consequence in the Highlands. A minor English lord, no matter how wealthy, had no sway. He had no power to keep her from her accusers, should the accusation that she’d murdered her husband stand, or defend her in a clan feud, if it didn’t.
All he could do was help her, and that’s what he’d done the last two days, arranging for her and Tildy’s and Malcolm’s passage to France. Makenna had busied herself around the estate, seeing to the projects she and the farmhands had started, including the irrigation of one field, which was more like a basin that filled with water whenever it rained. She did have work to see to, packing to do, and various other tasks, Julien was sure, but he also knew without a doubt that she was trying to fill her hours to the brim in order to ignore the emotions roiling inside of her. He knew because he was doing the same thing, busying himself with details pertaining to their passage to France.
Things would be better once she left. Once she was out of sight, it would be easier to put her out of mind, just as he’d done a year ago. He’d get his head straight again, and there would be nothing and no one to distract him from the piles of things he’d been neglecting lately. He hadn’t done more than take a passing glance at the quarterly accounts his secretaries had messengered to him via Jobson a handful of weeks ago. He had property, investments, and businesses in multiple countries, from the Americas to China, and where before, he’d have poured himself a whisky and sat down to slowly page through the accounts, practically salivating in anticipation and interest, he had stacked the folios one on top of the other on his desk and left them to collect dust.
He’d wanted nothing to do with them, not while Makenna was under his roof. Before they’d made love, he’d confessed to her that she’d done something to him, and it was the stark truth. She’d gotten under his skin and engrained herself into his thoughts, like no woman ever had. Perhaps even to the detriment of his own financial security. But for the first time in his life, Julien did not care. Because by the end of this day, he would have nothing more to occupy his time or his thoughts than the ledgers waiting for him on his desk. A future that felt strangely empty. And lonely.
Odd that he’d always loved solitude, and now he resented it.
He walked down the corridor and knocked upon a door before pushing it open and peering in. Malcolm sat on the floor, at the foot of his giant bed—a bed that seemed to gobble him up at night when he jumped onto it and dove beneath the blankets, shouting that he needed to take cover from attacking enemy pirates or cannibalistic Scottish kelpies. He shook his head. He’d miss the lad’s excitable imaginings.
Now, however, the boy sat in a sullen slump, a carved French soldier in each of his hands. He played listlessly, and didn’t glance up to see Julien entering the room.
“Good morning, Malcolm,” Julien said, his chest inexplicably tight. He’d thought to come and invite the boy to visit the stables with him one last time, to see how the colt, Wiley, was doing. He’d grown out of his gangly legs, building sleek muscle and a more confident gait. Malcolm had taken to the horse, and he to him. In truth, he was surprised to see him here in his room instead of already in the stables, especially with so little time left to spend with the colt. Then again, perhaps that was the problem. It was difficult at any age to say goodbye.
“Morning, Lord Julien,” he said without what had become his usual enthusiasm. He knocked the bases of the two soldiers together. The regiment was sprawled out on the floor, the collection far too large in size to pack and bring with him to France. His trunk was in the center of the room, the top propped open. Inside, there were mostly clothes and shoes, a few hats, a hornbook, a stack of books, and the boxed game of spillikins.
Julien picked up the box. “Care to see if you can best me at last?”
He had won every game yet, never allowing the boy to win just to make him happy. Malcolm did not deserve to be patronized; the boy would eventually win, and when he did he would know, in his heart, that it had been earned. However, seeing him so morose, Julien was tempted to go against his own rules. He had looked forward to the time when Malcolm would win and leap up, whooping for joy. He longed to see a smile like that right now.
But Malcolm shook his head. “Nae, thank ye.”
Julien set the game back in the trunk. “You’re nearly ready to set sail. Are you excited for your trip?”
His eyes swept the room, taking in all the things Malcolm would need to leave behind. He blinked away the wave of regret and bleakness threatening to swamp him.
“Lady Makenna says I’m to be a pirate captain,” he said, perking up a bit. “I’m to see her and Tildy safely to the shores of France.”
“Indeed,” he replied, lowering himself onto the rug next to Malcolm. “Though I have it on good authority, the waters between here and France have recently been cleared of any enemy ships.”
Malcolm sighed. “That sounds boring.”
“Perhaps, but it is also much safer,” Julien said with a laugh, then turning more serious. “And that is why you will be in France, you and Lady Makenna and Tildy.”
He turned his pale blue eyes to Julien’s. “Why cannae we stay with ye? We’re safe here, arenae we? The laird’s men havenae found us.”
Julien took a long breath, fighting the instinct to assure the boy that yes, they were safe here, thus protecting him from any fears he still held in regards to what he’d already experienced at the hands of the Brodies. But he couldn’t.<
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“Lady Makenna doesn’t want to risk that changing. I don’t want to risk it,” he answered. “Besides, you’re going to love France. Don’t tell André, but you’re sure to find better pastries there than in my kitchens.”
The mention of pastries lit his eyes, stripping them of the sorrow that had clouded them moments ago, and Julien felt a grin breaking over his mouth. He hadn’t smiled much beyond the small, knowing glances he and Makenna had shared at the dinner table the evening before with his mother. Yet, even those were restrained.
“Did I just hear my son disparaging my beloved pâtissier?”
Julien turned to see his mother crossing into Malcolm’s room. She was wearing a gown of cornflower-blue silk, which offset her rosy cheeks.
“I was telling Malcolm what he has to look forward to in France.”
The playful smile bowing his mother’s lips slipped, and Julien saw the heartache she was valiantly trying to mask. It was difficult for her. She had always worn her heart on her sleeve, and it was no secret how attached she had become to Malcolm these last months. His presence, his need, had given her a purpose beyond improving her own health. She had improved much more than either of them had ever anticipated. His mother offered to return to France with them, of course. But Makenna had batted that offer away as quickly as it had been made.
Malcolm shot up from his seat on the carpet and went to Lady Haverille. “Lady H, will ye tell me about the gargoyles again? The ones on the big church?”
She wrapped her arm around the boy and gave him an indulgent squeeze. Her grip looked tight to Julien’s eyes, as if she didn’t wish to let go. He feared she would be inconsolable once they were gone, and that her renewed health would suffer a setback, but he only had room enough for so many worries in his mind at once. He’d take care of her, like he always had.
If only it could be so simple with Makenna. But no amount of money could protect her from Colin. It was as she’d already said before: He’d need the backing of the King of England to make a worthwhile stand against the new Brodie laird. Something he would have, if he were the Marquess of Riverley. Not for the first time, the traitorous thought ricocheted in his mind, both turning his stomach and filling it with possibility. The pairing was unsettling to say the least. There was nothing on earth that would make him go crawling to his grandfather.
A Lord for the Lass (Tartans and Titans) Page 22