“What d’ye think ye’re doing?” she asked in the dark.
“Building a fire.” The peat was already laid. His hand closed over the flint she kept on the crude stone mantel.
“Methinks we’ve had enough fires for a while. Get out of my house.”
He ignored her. One spark and the loamy peat crackled to life, tiny flames dancing amidst thin curls of smoke. Christ, he was iced to the bone and dripping all over the hearth. He pulled at the knot between his legs and his sopping shirt hung free.
“I said get out.”
Finally he looked at her. She might have covered herself with one of the plaids or furs on the pallet behind her. But she did not. She just stood there, glaring at him, her wet shift clinging to the lithe curves of her body. ’Twas a challenge if e’er he’d seen one, and everyone knew Conall Mackintosh loved a challenge.
“Take off your clothes,” he said.
Mairi snorted. “Ye’d like that, wouldn’t ye?”
He’d like nothing better. God’s truth, he couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman as much as he wanted her. Here, now. His loins burned fire and ice.
“Suit yourself,” he said with as much nonchalance as he could muster. “But I’ll not stand here and freeze to death.”
He shrugged out of his soaking shirt, spraying droplets of water, hissing and spitting, onto the fire. He rubbed his legs and arms vigorously and felt the life return to them. All the while her eyes were on him, widening just a bit as he turned to face her.
Her cheeks blazed against her will, and he knew she’d rather cut out her tongue than show the slightest bit of shock or fear. She tipped her chin higher and looked him in the eye. God, she was beautiful, and his body responded.
“Here,” she said, and tossed him a dry plaid, never taking her eyes from his. The woman was pure Scot, but damned if she didn’t have nerves of Spanish steel.
He wrapped the plaid ‘round his waist and couldn’t help the smile curling at the edges of his mouth. “Now you,” he said.
Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “In your dreams, perhaps.”
He did laugh, then, and turned his back on her to afford her some privacy. “I was merely concerned for your health.”
“Aye, my health, is it?”
He heard her struggling with her wet shift and was tempted to turn ‘round and offer his assistance.
“All right,” she said after a moment. “We’re both dry and in fine—what was it? Health? Ye can go now.”
He turned and was mildly startled to find her dressed neither in gown nor shift, but wrapped in a plaid the same as he. She’d told him to go, twice now, yet her actions begged him to stay.
He moved toward her, fascinated by the play of firelight in her hair and the challenge in her eyes. Eyes as deep and as blue as Loch Drurie in autumn.
“Why didn’t you come to me, Mairi?” he asked her again. He admired her courage, her independence, yet her lone journey to Symon hurt his pride in a way he couldn’t explain. “Why didn’t you trust me?”
“Trust you? To do what? Murder a whole people for one man’s actions? The Symons are gentle, good.”
“Not all of them.” A vision of Mairi lashed to Symon’s bed still burned in his mind’s eye.
“Besides, I trust no one. Especially men like you.” She pulled the plaid tighter around herself. “What good are they, tell me? Look ‘round the village. Where are our men when most we need them?”
He couldn’t argue with that. Nor could he promote his own loyalty. He’d drifted for years from place to place and from woman to woman. The places, the women—they were all alike to him.
Until now.
The thought unsettled him, and he pushed it from his mind.
“Take my father, for example,” she said. “Now there was a man.” She grunted mockingly. “A man a woman could depend on.”
“Mairi,” he whispered, and reached for her.
She slapped his hand away. “Have ye heard the tale? Have ye?” Her eyes blazed with a hatred he’d not seen in her before. “He left my mother to be butchered before my eyes. Didna lift a single weapon in her defense.”
A film of tears glassed her eyes, yet she continued to glare at him, clutching the plaid until her knuckles turned white. Her pain was raw, palpable, and cut him to the quick as if he, himself, was the guilty one, and not Alwin Dunbar.
“Mairi, please let me—”
“Dinna touch me!” She backed away from him. “Ye’re all alike, the lot o’ ye.”
“Nay. Nay, we are not.” He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to him. “I came for you, did I not? Did you think I’d let Symon keep you?”
She was trembling, and he knew it wasn’t from the cold.
“Wouldn’t you?” she breathed.
“Nay.” He kissed her forehead. “Never.”
She looked into his eyes, and he felt himself—the man he knew—slipping away.
“Why did ye come for me?” she whispered against his lips, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Why?”
Somewhere deep inside of him he knew why, though he didn’t want to believe it.
He kissed her and hot tears spilled across her cheeks, searing his lips as he possessed her mouth again and again. She threw her arms around him and in that moment of shared, unguarded passion, he knew his life would never be the same.
“Conall,” she breathed.
Her plaid slipped to the floor and she felt his hands rove her bare skin. He crushed her to him, kneading her buttocks, and she gave up her weight to him, reveling in his strength.
“I want you, lass,” he whispered between kisses, then whisked her off her feet and bore her back onto the pallet.
He ripped the plaid from his own body and settled atop her, naked. She gasped at the weight of him, the intense heat shimmering through the coolness of his damp skin. Oh, she wanted him, too. She’d deny it no longer.
“Conall,” she breathed again, and instinctively opened her legs to him. He groaned and thrust against her. “Nay, wait. Dinna—”
“Shh, ’tis all right,” he whispered against her lips. “We’ve all the time in the world.” He kissed her, gently this time, and pushed a few damp tendrils of hair from her forehead.
Mairi ran a finger over his lips, and he smiled. His eyes flashed green-gold in the fire’s coppery glow. There was something in his expression she’d ne’er seen before. Not lust or even desire.
’Twas…joy.
“Kiss me,” she breathed, and closed her eyes as his mouth devoured hers.
His hands moved over her body with skilled precision, touching her in places no one had touched her, places even she had rarely touched herself.
“Ah!” Her hips rose involuntarily as his fingers grazed her most intimate of places.
“Do you like that?” he whispered, willing her gaze to his.
“Aye.” She trembled under his touch.
He stroked her there again, and again she gasped in wonder. “W-what are ye doin’?”
“You’ll see,” he said, and kissed her again.
His tongue mated with hers in hot, glassy inquisition as his fingers worked some secret magic driving her to a near desperation she couldn’t comprehend.
Her body stiffened and she clutched at him, frantic for…for what? His mouth moved to her breast and, as he began to suckle, she came off the bed in a jolt of pure sensation. Another, and another. And then she was gasping for breath, begging him to stop.
He was sweating now, and his slick, heated body settled again over hers. She nuzzled his face, his neck, reveling in his scent. He lifted her buttocks, and she instinctively wrapped her legs ‘round his hips.
“Look at me,” he breathed.
She opened her eyes, washed ashore in a near dream-state. New emotions, sharp yet unfathomable, swept her into a vortex. He entered her in one powerful thrust. The shock of it knocked the breath from her.
“Ah, Mairi!”
She clung to him, trembling, battling an e
lemental urge to push him away.
“Hold me,” he said, and tightened his grip on her. “Dinna move.” He trembled, as well, and it eased her brief moment of fear.
She kissed him and he responded with a slow caution, as if he worked to control his passion. She didn’t want him to control it. Nor would she be controlled. Not now. Not ever.
She moved against him and he groaned in an exquisite pleasure that shimmered in his face and glassed his eyes. Firelight danced in his hair. Gazes locked, they began to move together, and her own passion surged.
They kissed with a fierceness she’d felt all along in his presence. His thrusts grew more powerful, and her own increasingly wild. Her anger, her fear, all the confusion of the past weeks sought vengeance in the frenzy of their lovemaking.
This was what she wanted, what she needed. To be possessed, consumed, driven to the brink of madness. Aye, she was nearly there.
He moved his hand between their bodies. She cried his name, and he pushed her over the edge. In the bliss that followed, she heard him cry hers as he found his own release.
They lay there entwined, bathed in a silk of perspiration, and he whispered words of sweet affection in her ear. When she could finally make a coherent thought, only one came to mind.
What had she done?
The pearly light of dawn seeped under the door of the lake house and played at the edges of the deerskin window-covering.
“Are you awake?” Conall whispered, though he was half-asleep himself.
Mairi did not stir.
He kissed her lightly on the temple and drew the fur bedclothes up around them. She was warm and soft, and he could not get close enough to her. He burrowed deeper into the furs and fitted the curves of her body tightly against his.
She let out a tiny, catlike groan and undulated against him. ’Twas all the encouragement he needed. They made love again, slowly this time, drifting somewhere between sleep and awareness.
Touching, tasting, he moved over every inch of her body, taking pleasure in her ardent whispers and dreamy, passionate response.
When he slid inside her, she jolted awake.
“Nay,” she breathed, and pushed against his chest.
“Do I hurt you?”
“Nay, but—” He kissed her and thrust again. “Conall, I—” And again. “But—” And again. “Ohh,” she breathed, and moved against him.
“Aye, that’s it. Let me pleasure you, Mairi.”
And pleasure her he did.
Afterward, she drifted back to sleep, and he lay there looking at her face in the growing light. She’d wanted him again, as he’d wanted her, yet she’d resisted. Her battle, he knew, was not with him, but inside herself, and raged on for reasons he was just beginning to fully comprehend.
For he was at war, as well. He’d wanted her, desperately. Now he’d had her and should be sated.
But he was not.
He told himself he could enjoy her, if she agreed, until the time came for him to leave. ’Twould not be long now. A fortnight at most. He smiled bitterly in the half-light.
He didn’t want to leave.
He entwined his fingers in a long curl of her hair and wondered what would happen if he didn’t. ’Twas foolish, unthinkable.
She’d grow tired of him, or he of her. It had always been like that with him. He raised the red-gold lock to his nose and breathed in the scent of her. Nay, he’d never grow tired of her. He knew it as surely as he knew the sun would rise and set each day. For him, the sun now rose and set with her.
“Saint Columba,” he breathed, and let the silken tendril slip from his fingers.
And what of Kip? He must consider the boy as well. Careening toward manhood with naught but women and old men to guide him down that reckless path. Could he be father to a lad who was not his own? His uncle and his brothers had been as one to him after his own father had died so untimely young.
Father. Husband.
He swallowed hard and mouthed the words. Nay, ’twas not for him. He was not suited to it. One got too involved, too close. He smoothed the fur covering over Mairi’s shoulder and smiled at the freckles peeking out at him.
“Conall!” Rob’s urgent whisper sounded at the door, startling him.
Conall hadn’t even heard him approach. He slipped from the bed and padded to the door. Light blinded him as he cracked it open, narrowing his eyes at his diminutive friend.
“Harry’s back from Monadhliath with Gilchrist’s men,” Rob said.
“So soon?”
“Aye, they must have ridden like the devil himself.”
“And my brother?”
Rob shook his head. “Not with them. He’s away on some other business.”
He wiped the sleep from his eyes and squinted toward the beach. “All right. Give me a minute.”
Rob glanced at the pallet where Mairi still slept. “Take two,” he said, and grinned.
Conall shut the door quietly and hunted around for a suitable garment. His shirt lay in a wet heap on the floor. He kicked it aside and donned the plaid Mairi had given him last night. ’Twould do.
He sat on the bed lightly, careful not to wake her, and brushed a kiss across her lips. “If I could love,” he whispered, “’twould be you, Mairi Dunbar, who’d steal my heart.”
He gathered up his weapons and closed the door silently behind him as he left.
Splashing. Kip’s high-pitched yelp.
Mairi felt blindly for her pillow and pulled it over her head. What on earth was the boy doing up so early? Perhaps it wasn’t so early after all. She drew a breath.
Then she remembered.
“Conall?” Her eyes flew open, but she knew he was gone even before she glanced around the darkened room. A brilliant finger of light streamed from under the lake house door. She’d overslept, and for once she didn’t care.
Her hand moved over the place where Conall had slept. Still warm. She stretched out languidly on the furs and breathed in the scent of him still lingering on her pillow.
A thousand emotions welled inside her. Joy, disbelief, apprehension, regret. And something else. Something so powerful, so overwhelming, it shook the very fabric of her convictions.
“Nay,” she breathed. “’Tis folly.”
She scrambled to her feet and dressed quickly. The sunlight nearly blinded her when she opened the door on a chill autumn day. A light breeze eddied over the surface of the loch. She pulled a plaid ‘round her shoulders and looked back at the rumpled bedclothes.
Conall’s wet shirt lay on the floor near her pallet. A wave of tenderness washed over her. She smiled bitterly and stepped out onto the lake house pier.
Kip waved from the beach where he played fetch with Jupiter. The mastiff was soaking wet. That explained the splashing and gleeful shouts she’d heard earlier. Kip flung his stick into the water and Jupiter bounded after it.
Only then did she see them. Warriors.
Fifty at the least. Milling around the camp above the beach. Conall stood amidst a small group of men, most of whom she didn’t recognize.
Kip waved again. She hurried down the pier and joined him on the beach. “Who are they? Why did ye no’ wake me?”
“Conall said not to.” Kip patted Jupiter’s muscled shoulder and the dog shook, spraying them both with water.
“Go on,” she said to the mastiff, and thumped him on his soggy head. “Go drench someone else.”
“They’re Chattan warriors,” Kip said, and beamed a smile in their direction. “Davidsons and Mackintoshes. From Monadhliath, two days’ north.”
Conall’s brother’s men. She remembered he’d spoken briefly of Gilchrist Mackintosh, one of his two elder brothers. A tall, lean warrior with dark hair pulled Conall aside as if to speak to him in private.
“Is that his brother?” Mairi asked.
Kip shook his head. “I dinna think he’s here. That one’s called Hugh. He’s got a bonny horse, and said he’d let me ride her later.”
What in God�
�s name were they doing here? She took Kip by the arm and pointed him toward the village. “Ye’ll do no such thing, d’ye hear?”
“But he said I could.”
“Go on, now. Take Jupiter up to Dora’s and see if she needs any help. It seems we’ll be feeding an army tonight. Let’s hope they’ve brought some food.”
She stilled Kip’s protests with a hard look, and he ambled toward the village, dragging his bare feet in the sand, Jupiter dogging every step.
She eyed the warriors and a spark of fear ignited a wariness in her gut. She and Conall hadn’t spoken of Geoffrey’s involvement in the explosion. But he knew. The question was, what would he do?
Cool sand scrunched between her toes as she walked toward Conall and the warrior Kip had called Hugh. The other Chattan clansmen paused to look at her. She ignored them and fixed her eyes on Conall. Ten paces from where he stood in whispered conversation, she stopped and waited for him to notice her.
Hugh glanced in her direction and cast her a brief but warm smile, then turned his attention back to Conall. She continued to stand there, her patience waning, and after what seemed an eternity, Conall met her gaze.
He didn’t smile, nor did he speak. He merely looked at her, his eyes strangely cool, his expression blank.
She felt her cheeks warm and pulled her plaid tighter around herself. Then, as if he hadn’t even seen her, Conall took Hugh’s arm and led him up the hill into the camp.
She drew a breath and swallowed hard. What had she expected? That after their night of intimacy and lovemaking, the likes of which she could never have imagined, he’d rush into her arms and shower her with kisses and whispered endearments?
Aye, she had expected that. Had wanted it. Nay, craved it.
But he hadn’t.
Perhaps it meant nothing to him. Oh, he’d wanted her, that was clear. And she’d wanted him. But now ’twas over. What had he called it when they’d happened upon Rob and Dora together?
Sport.
The word stabbed at her, and she felt suddenly sick. Tears stung the corners of her eyes. She’d be damned if she’d cry. Over what? She wiped them away with a rough hand, turned on her heel, and made for the village.
Five minutes later she stood in Dora’s cottage, her teeth clenched.
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