A faint pink colored her cheeks and she looked up at him from under her lashes. For a long moment they regarded each other, and Thomas was visited with a distinct sensation of time running out, of matters outside this island rushing headlong toward some culmination that would tear them forever apart.
How could he lose her? But how could he keep her?
There was too much history between them, other people’s history, and for all that he’d spent so much time with her these last weeks, there was still so much he did not know. She was like the bud of some never-before-seen flower slowly, petal by petal, unfolding.
He needed to be careful, he adjured himself, not for his own sake but for the sake of the others who’d returned here … many illegally. So much, so many, depended on him.
Unless … What if he was to leave Scotland? If Fia was to come with him?
“I won’t be staying in Scotland much longer,” he said.
She nodded, unsurprised. “How much longer?”
“I don’t know. There are people who will send word as soon as I am in danger, as soon as Carr reveals my identity to the Crown. I can’t imagine he will be duped by my absence much longer,” he said.
She frowned. “Why would Carr choose now of all times to expose you?”
There was no reason not to tell her now. She’d learn soon enough. “Your father came to me several weeks ago, just before I abducted you,” he said, watching her carefully. “He had a proposition.” He smiled bitterly. “Or rather, he had a threat. He wanted me to purchase some merchandise for him, a great deal of expensive merchandise, which he would then insure and hire me to ship to”—he lifted his hand and let drop—“nowhere.”
“Oh, no,” she whispered in a stricken voice. “Oh, please. Tell me he didn’t come to you to—Dear God.”
“I see you understand,” he said curtly. He’d known she was involved, but this incontrovertible proof that she’d connived at James’s corruption still cut. Even hearing her all but admit it, he still couldn’t quite believe she was capable of such a thing. She would have pressured James into such a scheme only if she’d been desperate. “Carr wanted me to take James’s place in an insurance fraud. If I refused he threatened to inform the necessary authorities of my identity.”
She covered her eyes with her hand. Her fingers trembled. Abruptly he became conscious that she was hearing the ruination of her plans.
“I couldn’t let James take such a risk,” he said. “There is no blemish against his name, as there is against mine. So I agreed to Carr’s demands. I never intended to carry through the plan, though. I just wanted to buy time until James was well away from the country.”
“And away from me,” she said.
“And you,” he agreed.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. A tear fell from the corner of one eye. One tear for all her plans and hopes. And that was all. Gently, he brushed it away.
“James was never going to scuttle the ship, you know,” she said.
Relief swept through him. “No?”
“We wanted Carr to think he would, so we spread rumors. Rumors Carr could neither prove nor disprove. Because by the time the company supposedly involved issued a repudiation, Carr would have had to either take the bait or let pass potentially huge profits.”
“You and James put forth those rumors?”
“Yes,” she answered. “But in truth James was going to purchase and then deliver Carr’s merchandise according to their contract.”
In exchange for what? Bramble House. Kay’s inheritance. The relief he’d so shortly felt slipped away.
He did not blame her for having wanted Bramble House. It represented to her home, security, and freedom from Carr. But part of him regretted her willingness to take her stepson’s home from him—even though he did not doubt for a moment that she would do well by the lad.
“Carr couldn’t very well go to the authorities and complain that his merchandise had arrived, could he? And he had no other leverage over James.” She raked her hair back from her temples, her mouth set in an angry line. “I should have known Carr would never deal with a man he could not blackmail. But I was sure he would consider it only a matter of time before he did have something on James.”
“He might have agreed to your plan, if he hadn’t had a far easier victim to blackmail in me,” Thomas said.
She shook her head. “I didn’t know. I thought it might work. I’d hoped so.…”
“Fia …”
She gave him a tremulous smile. “It’s all over, then. There’s nothing more to do.”
She wouldn’t need Bramble House if she came with him. The thought slipped beneath his guard, taunting him with potential.
“But Thomas,” she said, a new worry causing her brow to furrow, “it’s all over for you, too. Because you are correct, Carr will come after you as soon as he discovers he’s been deceived.
“I am so sorry, Thomas. Sorry for your involvement. Sorry we did not know …” Whatever she’d been about to say, she thought better of and instead looked around her. “Oh, Thomas. However can you leave the castle unfinished?” she asked.
“I’ll find a way back home now and again,” he said, aware that in this they were kindred, in losing what they wanted and finding they would still make do. “The coast is filled with secret harbors and Scotsmen with no particular liking of the excise men.”
She nodded sadly and began moving slowly from the rubble-strewn corridor into the renovated portion of the castle, peeking in here, pausing to study something there. He followed, content to watch her explore, note, and approve the various changes he’d had made to the original plan. After a while they found themselves in the new north end, where their footsteps echoed on the newly polished flagstones.
She entered what had once been a receiving room but now was used as a dining hall of sorts. A long battered trestle stood against a bank of tall windows overlooking the sea.
Fia moved to a window and pressed her palm against the glass. The sun shimmered around her, bathing her in warm honeyed light. “It’s marvelous, isn’t it?”
“I am glad you approve.”
She smiled. He looked out at the sea. The sun had dropped past its zenith. He should get back to Jamie and the others. There was so much more he wanted to complete before he left. There was so much undone. He feared he did not have time to make a satisfactory end.
“We never ate,” Fia said, following his gaze.
“No, we didn’t.” He forced himself to give up the absurd notion tantalizing him. How could he ask her to go with him? He had nothing. Everything he owned he’d invested in this place, in these people. She wanted autonomy and freedom, and all he could offer her was the life of a convicted traitor.
“We should be getting back.”
“Yes.” She moved within arm’s reach, foolish wench. He could not resist touching her. What harm would it do? One brief caress. He brushed her delicate jaw-line with his fingertips, lifting her face into the sun. The light attached itself like gold leaf to the curve of her cheek, sparkled in her eyes, and glistened on her lips.
“We’ve been here so long I fear I’ve compromised your reputation.” He smiled and let his hand drop.
“Yes.” She ducked her head and began to turn, to leave him—He reached out and clasped her wrist, stopping her. For one heart-shattering moment she stood frozen in place, her gaze as naked and helpless as he knew his own to be.
And then she was in his arms, wrapping her own around his neck and pulling his head down to meet her lips. He swept her up against his chest, all the hunger and anguish and need erupting in a conflagration that burned all conscious thought to cinders. His mouth swooped hungrily down on hers; he pulled her higher, tighter, as though seeking to draw her into him, to make her part of him so that she could never leave him, never go away. “Oh, Fia! Sweet Fia!” he muttered. “Kiss me. Dear Lord, kiss me.”
She lifted her hands, holding his jaw between her palms, and pressed her open mouth to
receive his tongue. She wanted him as much as he wanted her and he needed to feel himself buried deep within her.
He lifted her easily, his mouth still seeking hers in passionate, deep, wet kisses, and walked her forward, dangling in his arms, until he felt the table stop them. He clasped her to him with one arm as he swept his other arm across the table’s surface. Bowls and platters and mugs flew off its surface, clattering to the floor. One hand cupping the back of her head, he rained kisses on her mouth, her eyes, her throat, and lay her down on the tabletop.
He began to rise, but she clutched handfuls of his shirt. “Don’t. Don’t leave me for an instant.”
Her words shattered his self-restraint.
Pulling her slight body up against his chest, he planted one knee on the table, and scooted her to the center of the table and straddled her. He followed her, pinning her beneath his body.
She tore at his shirt, her movement impeded by his weight, so he rolled over, carrying her atop him, his hands bunching her skirts up around her waist. He cupped her bottom, sweet handfuls of luscious female flesh, and settled her against him, nudging his cock high against her. She gasped.
Silently, he cursed his clumsy eagerness. “I’m sorry.” Her lips were bright and wet with his kisses, soft and pliant and—He pulled her down. “The hell I’m sorry.”
She pushed him away, her hand flat on his chest. Her breath was ragged, her hair tumbling in glorious disarray. “No.”
“No,” he repeated numbly. His head fell against the table with a bang. His hands dropped to his side. “No.” He closed his eyes, swearing violently in a soft, harsh underbreath, but he made no attempt to touch her.
Bemused, uncertain what had happened, why he’d suddenly stopped … everything, Fia waited for him to open his eyes. When he didn’t she bent over him in concern. Her unbound hair brushed his face and throat and she reached down to flick it away. Her wrist was suddenly clamped in a viselike grip, startling her. His eyes were still closed tight, his features racked by some powerful experience.
“What?” she whispered, aroused and confused and a little afraid. “What is it?”
“If ‘no’ it’s to be, then for the love of God, Fia, get off me!”
He didn’t understand. She hadn’t framed the words right. Desire had made her stupid. “No. I meant, ‘No, let me kiss you.’”
The violence vanished from his visage. A smile began at the corners of his mouth. “Oh,” he said faintly, and then, “By all means, milady, have at it.”
Given permission, a thrill ran through her. She might do what she wanted, explore and touch and caress each magnificent inch of him. He’d said so. But she wanted most of all to see him.
She had never known sex could be something so powerful, so wondrous. For once, her upbringing stood her in good stead. For, never having heard allegations against the sexual act from other girls or a mother’s strait-laced views on women who enjoyed the bed, and never knowing a woman who evinced the slightest shock at any sexual exploit, Fia came to the act free of either expectation or fear.
Thus she reveled in the sensations Thomas taught her. She was innocent and healthy and passionate in her abandonment in a way no other woman of her age and class could ever be, meeting his desire with a matching one, aggressively seeking her own fulfillment, and in doing so spurring Thomas’s ardor to untold heights.
She grasped the loosened sides of his shirt and wrenched it open. His chest was broad, hard, and chiseled like Scottish rock. Her gaze roved hungrily over every inch of it. Big, masculine, and powerful, he lay beneath her, quiescent, at least for the moment, and except for the heavy, thick presence between her legs.
Tentatively she caressed the silky hair covering his chest. He made a sound deep in his throat. His lips parted in a grimace of carnal pleasure.
“You’re beautiful, Thomas McClairen.” He laughed until she stroked him again, lower down over the rippling contours of his belly, where the furring narrowed to a dark channel that disappeared beneath her skirts. Then he growled.
He grasped her hips and pulled her tighter to him so that his erection lay fully against her, separated only by the material of his trousers. He angled his hips upward, deepening the contact and bucking lightly.
Sparks of pleasure flickered around the periphery of her vision. Her head swam with the promise she now knew was there to be fulfilled. She braced herself as he pitched his hips again, feeling him moving along the cleft of her body.
She shifted with the next buck of his body, seating him deeper yet, dampening the soft wool of his trousers with moisture from her body, stroking him with her body, stroking herself with his. Beneath her palms, his skin was afire, his muscles bunched and shifted. She closed her eyes, arching her back, seeking more of the delicious, amazing sensation.
“If your plan is to kill me, yer on yer way to doin’ a fair job of it, lady.” The whiskey-smooth burr stroked her with heady empowerment. She looked down at him. His face was dusky, his chest moving in powerful rhythm to his ragged breath. But there was a glint in his eye, a shred of teasing that was not all in jest, and to this she answered.
“Oh, I don’t want you dead, Thomas McClairen. I’ve other plans for you.”
“Then by all that’s sacred, lady, I pray ye deliver me quickly before I succumb from want.”
“I’ll deliver you,” she promised, and fumbled with inelegant haste, loosening his trouser closings and slipping her hand beneath the material. Her hand closed about him. He was hot and smooth, downy skin slipping over a hard, thick shaft—
“Nay,” he said, reading her slight hesitation and grasping her wrist. “Learn me. Touch me.”
There was no lightness in him now, only a dark and heated want that hung heavy in the air, enveloping her with need. She moved her hand experimentally. His hips jerked, his teeth clenched, his eyes narrowed to pewter-colored slits. She pushed her hand down. The warm thin layer of heated flesh moved silkily over the hard rod it contained. She pulled—
He bolted upright, in one movement his forearm snaking beneath her bottom, while his other hand wrapped around the back of her neck and pulled her mouth to his. He kissed her, deeply and richly, as he tugged her knees wider. He shifted and lifted her. A small movement, a quick guiding touch, and he thrust deep inside of her.
She cried out, startled by the fullness in her. Immediately he stilled, his breath laboring. He rested his forehead against hers. His breath fanned her collarbone. “Are you all right?” he panted. “Is it too—”
“No! No. It’s not … you feel … I can feel so much of you,” she tried to explain.
“Too much?” he queried breathlessly and slowly began to withdraw.
“No! I would …” Her courage almost failed her. She fumbled for a way to make him understand. “I would like—”
“Thank God, lass,” he interrupted her, his mouth once more on hers. He thrust upward, the hardness of him filling her, destroying thought, making her cry out. “Because I would ‘like,’ too.”
She twined her arms around his heated torso and felt his sweat-slick muscles flex as he thrust again, vigorous and potent. Shudders surged through her, a wave of intense, driving need started at their jointure, spreading out, building with each thrust of hips, flowing molten and creamy and rich and … Oh!
“Now show me what it is you want, Fia,” he rumbled into her ear, “and I’ll do it or die trying.”
So she did.
Chapter 23
A booming crash outside brought Thomas bolt upright from where he’d lain kissing Fia in a nest of skirt, bodice, and petticoats. With a curse, Thomas uncoiled from the bed of his and Fia’s clothing they’d made on the floor and strode to the window, throwing open the casement.
“What the bloody hell is going on!”
“The scaffolding on the east facade fell!” a man shouted up as he and another man ran toward the front of the castle.
“Bloody hell.” Thomas glanced out at the sky as he swept up his trousers. They�
�d been in the castle three hours? Impossible.
He turned to Fia. She’d sat up, a ruffled petticoat covering her breasts, her lips swollen with his kisses, her hair mussed, her expression dazed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The scaffolding collapsed.”
“Was anyone hurt?” Her gaze sharpened with alarm.
“I don’t know.” He dragged on his trousers and then his boots. “I have to go and find out.” He picked up his shirt and pulled it on, stuffing the ends into his breeches. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He bent, tipping her chin up, and only after his lips had met hers in a soft, lingering kiss did he realize how natural, how easily the idea of returning to her was.
Even though they’d spent an afternoon making passionate, intemperate love, devouring each moment with unparalleled rapacity, he wanted more. He shouldn’t have taken her like this, here, but there had been no gainsaying the desire that drove him, or their hunger for each other’s touch. Her desire for him still amazed him. Still, he wouldn’t ask her to wait. There was no telling how long he’d be.
“I have to go,” he said.
She smiled. “I’ll wait for you.”
The offer was a gift. Still, he shook his head regretfully. “I don’t know what has happened or how severe the matter, or how long it will take to rectify.”
“Aye.” She wasn’t piqued, as one would expect of a lover whose offer had been turned down; instead, her somber eyes held understanding and approval. “Aye.”
He could find no words for what he wanted to say, so he said nothing, leaving her and heading down the corridor. From there he ducked beneath an archway and emerged on the north end of the castle. Already a few men were returning, their looks of disgust and relief telling its own tale.
He caught the sleeve of a stonemason. “No one’s been injured?”
“Nay,” the man said. “Though Arthur and Niall have a few scrapes fer their troubles.”
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