Her persistence about tying him up gave him pause. “Ye’re not planning to bind me and leave me here for the maids to find in the morning, are you?”
“Lachlan!” she said with a pretty pout. “I could never do such a thing!” She rose from his lap with a disappointed sigh. “You don’t trust me, that’s what it is. I only wanted to have a bit of fun, but—”
“I do trust you, lass, I do!” He grabbed her hand before she could walk away, then pulled her to stand between his legs. “If tying me up is what you want, then I’m willing to oblige.” Especially if that was the only way to share her bed tonight.
“And you’ll let me do as I please with you once I’ve got you tied up?” she said with a kittenish glance. “Anything I want, no matter how wicked?”
God help him, yes. “Whatever you want.”
Her blazing smile sucked the breath right out of him. “Good,” she said, then untied her robe and dangled the tie in front of him. “I’ll use this.”
As she circled behind him, he quickly shed his waistcoat and shirt, leaving him naked from the waist up, then tugged off his boots. He would let her do the rest. A smile touched his lips. He wouldn’t mind that a bit.
The smile vanished when he felt her tying his hands. She was tying them tighter than he’d expect of a lass who’d never tied anybody up before. When she then secured them to the chair, he felt a twinge of unease. He’d counted on being able to leave the chair if he wanted.
By the time she returned to stand before him with a dark, sly smile, his heart was thumping madly in his chest. Her robe gapped open just enough to show her translucent shift and the curves it teasingly hid. But to his annoyance, she didn’t remove it.
She just stood there surveying him—her eyes scouring his shoulders and chest and belly until they fixed upon his splayed legs with the bulge between them. The bulge that swelled beneath her gaze.
“Your robe,” he rasped, so aroused he thought he might explode. “Take it off. You promised.”
She planted her hands on her waist and cast him a glance that was right devilish. “All in good time, husband, all in good time.”
He’d already opened his mouth to protest when the word “husband” registered. “Husband?”
Her laugh was most wicked. “Come now, Lachlan, you know perfectly well that we spoke our marriage vows earlier this evening. In Gaelic, no less. How could you forget, after you worked so hard to trick me into saying them?”
Holy Christ, she knew the truth. And he was done for, if he didn’t play this very carefully. “Trick you?” he said, trying to sound innocent when he felt oh-so-guilty. “How did I trick you? You said you knew Gaelic.”
“And you knew I was lying.”
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t correct me a while ago when I said we weren’t married, did you?” Her eyes glittered at him. “I said it three times.”
She’d set a trap for him, and he’d stumbled right into it. “How did you…”
“Your mother told me. Imagine my shock upon hearing that we were married without my realizing it.” She sidled up close, then leaned down to whisper in his ear, “And without my having the opportunity to refuse, either.”
With a light nip of his earlobe, she drew back again, and he groaned. Mo chreach, he was in trouble now. He tried to rise, but she’d not only tied his hands to the chair, she’d tied the chair to the table.
“Don’t bother to get up, husband,” she said in a silky voice. “You’re going to be sitting there a while yet. At least until I have what I want from you.”
He fell back into the chair, cursing himself for not seeing the trap until it was sprung. “And what might that be, lassie?” he rasped, though he feared he knew.
“Everything, my dear.” She bent to run one long finger up his inner thigh, slowly, sensuously, rising to just short of his ballocks before she took her hand back, leaving him hard and heavy and aching. “I mean to have you offering me everything I want.”
Then she flashed him a merciless smile. “Because you won’t get what you want until you do.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dear Cousin Michael,
If you have a wife, I feel vastly sorry for her. In my experience, men only prefer their privacy when they want to use it for devious purposes.
Sincerely,
Charlotte Harris
Now this was more like it, Venetia thought, savoring the moment. It was thrilling to have the arrogant wretch bound and at her mercy. Trick her into marriage, would he? She’d make sure he never tried anything like that again.
Though Lord knew he looked too delicious for words like this—the well-crafted chest with its smattering of curls, the lean waist whose scars appeared markedly improved…the strong thighs parted just enough to display a very obvious arousal beneath his trousers. She could barely resist the urge to smooth her fingers over those finely hewn shoulders, gleaming in the firelight.
But she dared not do so yet, or she might find herself sucked into the sensual pull he exerted on her whenever they were alone. As it was, the longer she stared at him, the more he lost his alarm and regained his arrogance.
“Can I assume from what you just said that I will eventually get what I want out of this?” he asked with a taunting lift of his eyebrow.
“Depends on what you want.”
A scowl darkened his brow. “You know what I want, damn it.” He scoured her body with a hungry gaze that told her exactly what he meant to do to her if she ever got close enough for it. “I want you in my bed. I want my wedding night.”
“Then you’ll have to meet my demands.”
She slid off her robe, delighting in how his eyes drank her up. Dangling the threadbare cotton wrap from one finger, she strolled over to trail it up between his legs, right over the aroused flesh swelling his trousers to breaking point. Thank heaven for those harem tales and her friend Amelia’s descriptive letters about houri dances in Morocco, where she lived with her American husband.
“It appears you were right about me,” she said in a throaty murmur as he moaned. “I do have a wicked bent.”
He swore foully. “I won’t be tied up forever, ye ken?” His gaze burned into her. “Once I’m free, there’s naught to stop me from taking my wife over my knee.”
“I wouldn’t be making cocky threats just now, if I were you.” She dragged the flimsy fabric of her wrap up and down over his arousal, knowing it couldn’t possibly be enough to satisfy him. “Besides, all it would take is for me to explain that I don’t understand Gaelic, and you won’t have a wife.”
His eyes narrowed. “My clan will protest that you claimed to know exactly what we were saying.”
“And I will protest otherwise. Then there will be a nasty dispute in court.” She threaded her fingers through his hair and drew his head back until he was glaring up at her. “Tell me, Lachlan, who do you think the magistrate will believe? An earl’s daughter? Or the rough Highlander who kidnapped that earl’s daughter? After pretending to be dead for six months?”
He closed his eyes with a groan. “Very well, lassie, ye’ve made yer point. So what are yer demands?”
Releasing him, she started with a small one to lower his guard. “First, I want a real wedding, one performed in the church before a minister and witnesses. I shan’t risk anyone disputing our marriage once our children are born.”
His eyes lit up at her mention of children. “Of course, a real wedding. Yer father and aunt will want the same, anyway. I have no quarrel with that.”
“Good.” Now came the important things. “Second, I want information that no one else seems willing to tell me.”
“About what?”
“What McKinley was talking about today, what you referred to once before. That Papa had you punished years ago for something. I want to know why and how and for what.”
A flush touched his cheeks as he squirmed in the chair. “I can’t imagine why you’d need to know such a thing.”
“Because once Papa arrives and I go to speak to him, I need to have all the facts before me. I need to know what I’m dealing with.”
He glowered at her. “I already told you I’m not letting you speak to yer father for me, so if you’re thinking to keep me tied up until I promise—”
“I’m thinking that by the time I’m through with you, Lachlan Ross, you’ll promise me anything,” she said, feeling a wild surge of power at being in control of him for once. She pulled loose the ties of her chemise, then opened it just enough to expose the swells of her breasts and the dark valley between.
His gaze shot there like an arrow to a target.“Mo chreach,” he said hoarsely.
“Tell me what McKinley meant, and I’ll not only remove the chemise, but I’ll let you taste what’s underneath.”
The bulge between his legs swelled. “You’re a more devious female than I gave you credit for.”
“I learned it from you.”
He gave a choked laugh. “Aye, that’s probably true.”
She dropped the chemise off one shoulder. “So will you tell me?”
“Take off yer shift,” he ground out. “Then I’ll tell you.”
“No, you’ll tell me first.” She came up close and bent to rub her clothed breast over his cheek.
Quickly he turned his head and seized it in his mouth, sucking it through the fabric. She let him…for just a moment. Then she drew back. “Tell me, Lachlan.”
A muscle worked in his jaw as he glared up at her. “I’d never have let you tie me if I’d known you could be so cruel.”
“But you did, and this is what I want from you. The truth. All of it.”
“And you won’t stop plaguing me till I tell you, will you?”
“No.”
He sighed. “Fine.” Squaring his shoulders, he glanced away into the flames of the candles. “When I was sixteen, a groundskeeper at Braidmuir saw a pack of boys running off from the orchard with bags full of apples. Since they were my friends, he told yer father that he thought I was among them.”
Anger flared in his eyes as they swung to her. “It was na true. Back then, I’d never have stolen apples or anything else from yer father. I was wild, not a thief.”
His brogue had turned heavier, thicker, as if the past years of travel and soldiering in the British army had melted away to leave him just a Highland lad again. “But yer father seized on the idea I had a part in it and stormed over to demand of my father that something be done, that I be brought before the magistrate and made an example of.”
She shook her head, incredulous. “Because of apples?”
“He said ’twas the principle of the thing. He was sure I’d persuaded the other boys to do it. And even after my friends said I wasn’t with them, he believed they were just protecting ‘the laird’s son.’ ”
A rough sigh escaped him. “So my father called me in. I swore I had naught to do with it—I thought he believed me, too. But instead of taking my side, he proposed to yer father a punishment. He said it was to keep me from being brought before the magistrate, but…” He looked away again, shame spreading over his features. “I would rather have said my piece in court than endure what Father suggested; a public caning.”
She stared at him, shocked. “My father didn’t agree to it, surely.”
“Ah, but he did, lass. The earl was furious about the thieving, and my father wanted to appease him, God only knows why.” He tensed. “So Father brought me before the entire clan and yer father’s people, made me pull down my trews, then gave me the twenty strokes he and yer father had agreed upon.”
“Oh, Lachlan,” she whispered, her stomach roiling to think of the humiliation he must have suffered. For a boy as proud and defiant as Lachlan had been, even at sixteen…
“He caned me like a dog. Or a thief.” His voice grew belligerent. “I was na a thief, no matter what yer father said.”
Then it dawned on her. Sixteen. “That’s why you left the Highlands.” She came up to lay her hand on his shoulder. “That’s why you joined the regiment.”
“Aye.” He swallowed convulsively. “After that, I couldn’t…face anyone. I couldn’t stand how they looked at me, whether with contempt or pity.”
“It was a horrible thing for your father to do,” she said hotly. “And a horrible thing for my father to agree to.”
“It wasn’t the strokes that bothered me,” he said, his face aflame. “God knows Father caned the devil out of me often enough when I was a boy, and he honestly thought he was saving me from a worse time with the magistrate. But that was what made it so awful—him thinking my only choices were jail or a caning. Him thinking I would actually—”
“Do such a thing. It hurt that he didn’t believe you,” she said, stroking his hair to soothe him. “It hurt because you didn’t deserve it.”
He nodded grimly, then shot her a startled glance. “How do you know I didn’t deserve it?”
“You just said you didn’t do it.”
“Aye.” He thrust out his chin. “But my own father didn’t believe me. Why should you?”
“Because I know what kind of man you really are,” she said tenderly.
“You mean, the kind who would ride the roads to steal from yer father and his friends, and kidnap a young innocent—”
“You did those things on behalf of your clan, something I well understand.”
He snorted. “If you did, I wouldn’t be tied up here so you could make yer demands on me. Why do you think I never told you about the caning? Because I knew it would make you distrust me even more. Because I knew you could never understand.”
The words tore at her. He was right—she hadn’t understood. When she’d asked that he give up his right to confront her father, she hadn’t known how much she was expecting him to give up. He’d waited sixteen years to get his due, to learn why his father had bowed to Papa’s will even though Papa had owed him money. To find out why Papa never paid, and why Alasdair Ross hadn’t made him.
He’d waited sixteen years for his justice, and she’d expected him to throw it aside for her. That wasn’t fair.
“So what’s yer next demand?” he said dully. “I suppose it’s that I do what you please with yer father. Ye’re going to prance about driving me insane, trying to make me say—”
“No.” She pressed her finger to his lips. “Not anymore.” This game had taken an ugly turn she’d never intended. “You win. Do as you please with Papa, though I hope you’ll remember that I prefer a live husband to a dead one.”
He gazed up at her, relief showing in his face. Then his eyes darkened and he caught her finger in his mouth to suck it. Her breath quickened. She drew out the finger and bent to replace it with her mouth, kissing him slowly, deeply. He tasted of smoke and malt, the bittersweet tang of whisky adding to the growing fog of need and desire overtaking her brain. As his tongue delved and stroked, toying with hers, she felt her heart fill with love.
Love? Yes, love. She loved him. It probably wasn’t wise, but she couldn’t help that. She loved that he cared so fiercely for the land and its people, she loved his stubborn pride, she loved that he had come to treat her like one of his clan.
Did she dare to tell him? Dare to give him that much power over her when he already had more than was wise? She would die if he didn’t feel the same.
Unsure and vulnerable, she drew back only to hear him murmur, “Take off the shift, lass. I told you what you wanted, so now I get to see you. And taste you.”
She would show him instead. For now, she would simply show him how she felt. She shimmied out of her chemise, then leaned on his good leg to thrust her breast against his mouth. With a hungry growl, he caught the nipple between his teeth, then sucked it in so he could flick his tongue over it repeatedly.
Throwing her head back, she uttered a sigh of sheer delight. Lord, he did that so well. Eager for more, she sat down across his lap and pushed the other breast in his face so he could pleasure that one, too. Greedily he took it, lickin
g and nipping it until she thought she’d go mad.
She spread her hands over his chest, reveling in his slick skin, his flexing muscle, the heat coming off him like that off a thoroughbred after a race.
“Lower,” he said hoarsely. “Please, lass…touch me lower, I beg you. Touch my cock…”
The coarse word startled her, but she’d been acting less than a lady, so she could hardly expect him to act like a gentleman. In keeping with her newfound pleasure in wickedness, she not only unbuttoned his trousers and his drawers to allow his “cock” to spring free, she left his lap to kneel on the floor between his legs.
When he caught his breath, his shaft thrusting forward like an impudent rogue, she smiled up at him. “I did promise to lick you everywhere, didn’t I?”
“Lass!” he said, looking shocked as she closed her mouth around him. Then a sigh of pure pleasure slid out of him. “Lass…”
Remembering how he’d liked her to stroke him that night in Kingussie, she tried to do it with her lips and tongue. And she must have done it partly right, for he was muttering, “Oh yes…Holy Christ, yes…like that…yes…”
But it was awkward, and her mouth didn’t seem large enough to hold him.
“Come here, princess,” he rasped, confirming her fears.
She released his flesh to shoot him a pained glance. “I…I’m doing it badly, aren’t I?”
He choked out a laugh. “If that’s how badly you do it with no knowledge whatsoever, I shudder to think what you’d be like with experience.” His voice lowered to a heavy thrum. “I want to see you while you make love to me, all of you, your pretty breasts, your fine mouth. Come ride me, wife. Before I go mad.”
Drunk from the sweet liquor of his words, she rose. “Shall I untie you first?”
He arched one eyebrow. “Only if you think I’ve atoned for having tricked you. I couldn’t survive another night like this.”
“You know perfectly well you’d never let me tie you up again, anyway.” With a laugh, she stood between his legs and stretched over his head to reach the carving knife she’d left on the table while tying him. It put her breast in close proximity to his mouth, and he seized it, sucking it with eager fervor.
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