After the Storm

by Tia Isabella

  Thomas frowned at Maya. A prisoner? His wife felt like a prisoner? “Nay wife, I would no’ want ye tae feel like that. I –”

  “You’ve a funny way of showing it.”

  “And you ha’ a verra bad habit of questioning my motives.”

  “Perhaps if you tried explaining them to me beforehand I wouldn’t question them.”

  Thomas grunted. Why could his woman not accept his word without wanting to know the why of it? Why could she not be like other Highlander women, blindly accepting his decisions as law? Future women were a frustration to no end. “I am yer lord and master. I should no’ ha’ tae explain myself tae ye.”

  Maya glared at her husband as she turned around to face him. She threw the animal pelt off from around her belly. “I cannot accept that. Surely you are aware of that by now.”

  Thomas sighed. She was right. He was aware of it and he knew that she was unlikely to bend from her way of thinking. And when she was naked like this, he didn’t care much for correcting her gainsaying anyway. “Maya, I –”

  Maya held up her hand to silence him. “Thomas, I do not care to fight with you on this. If I felt I was in the wrong, I would concede to your wishes as I’ve done a lot of lately, but I’m growing weary of conceding when I’m right. If you want me unhappy, then keep up with this. Keep forcing your will on me without justification. Keep barking and growling at me. Keep making me resent the fact that I married you. Destroy our marriage. You’re doing a fine job of it anyway.”

  Thomas sucked in his breath, his eyes widening in pain. “Ye will take that back,” he said hoarsely, “I willna ever destroy our marriage.”

  Maya dropped her gaze guiltily to her husband’s feet. Her words had upset him, hurt him even. She hadn’t meant to do that. She was just so damn tired of fighting with him. “Thomas,” she sighed, uncertain as to how she should go about setting this situation to rights, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I love you with all of my heart. But this must stop.

  “I’m tired of being given orders without knowing the reasoning behind them. I’m tired of being treated as though I am a lowly criminal who you fear will try to run from you at the first opportunity. I wouldn’t have married you were it my intent to leave you. I…” Maya sighed. “There’s no making you understand,” she mumbled to herself.

  Thomas reached for his wife’s hand and stroked it soothingly as he spoke. “Ach lassie, but I dinna ken I was making ye so unhappy. I canna be happy when ye are no’. Never did I want ye tae feel like a prisoner. I had my reasons.” He said the last with a frown, looking away from his wife while he muttered it.

  Her brow furrowed. “What reasons?”

  Thomas shrugged and sighed. He felt a strange burning sensation behind his eyes and prayed to the saints that he wasn’t about to cry. He clasped his wife’s hand tighter, piercing her with his worried look. “I canna live do ye leave me, Maya mine. I canna.”

  His voice was despondent, making Maya feel guilty. He was too strong a man to see in this state. She slowly climbed off of the bed and snuggled herself onto his lap. “Thomas, I will never leave you. Why do you doubt that?”

  “Ye ha’ spoke repeatedly of returning to yer future. Ye–”

  “No.” Maya reassured him with a shake of her head. “I changed my mind after I thought on it awhile. If I went back, I could get stuck there, never able to return home to you. I could not bear that.”

  Thomas drew his wife closer, kissing her roughly on the lips. “Do ye swear tae it, Maya?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why are ye still angry with me? Why do ye no’ come tae my arms willingly anymore? Why do ye no’ fight me anymore?”

  Maya grinned. He missed her temper, did he? “Thomas,” she said softly, as she reached up and took a plaited braid from either side of his face between her fingers, “I’ve come to you now, have I not?”

  He smiled, a boyish gleam in his eyes. “Aye. And although I will take advantage of that fact in a moment, I still need tae know why ye dinna argue any longer. Ha’ I broken yer spirit so badly, wife?”

  Maya smiled warmheartedly at her husband. Evidently, he had worried himself over this issue for days. It was time to take her courage in hand and tell him the truth. “I’ve been too tired to argue my feelings as of late. That’s all there is to it. Believe me, when the fatigue leaves me, my tongue will lash out again.”

  Thomas grinned. He lowered his head and nipped at Maya’s ear with his teeth, rubbing her back as he held her. He probed with his tongue at the outer recesses of her ear, causing goose bumps to spring to life.

  She sucked in her breath. “Thomas,” she whimpered in a husky voice, her eyes fluttering shut.

  “Why ha’ ye been so tired?” he asked lazily, stroking her flesh into erotic submission. He ran his fingers over her soft belly, whispering to her in a fiercely aroused burr. “Do ye carry my bairn, love?”

  Maya opened her eyes and gasped, her mind struggling with the conflicting emotions of worried surprise and pleasant arousal. Arousal won. “Yes,” she whispered thickly, closing her eyes and throwing her head back so her husband could trail his hot kisses down her throat. “For two months.”

  “Why dinna ye tell me, love?”

  Maya was too turned on to think up a quick lie. She told him the truth. “I was afraid you would put more guards on me.”

  Thomas threw his head back and laughed, inducing his wife to break out of her languid spell. “Mayhap I still will. Though no’ tae make ye feel a prisoner. Never that.”

  “Then why?”

  Thomas grabbed Maya gently by the chin. He looked deeply into her eyes, searching their depths. “Do ye no’ ken, lass?” At Maya’s hesitant shrug, he took a deep breath then kissed her softly on the mouth. “Because I love ye with all of my heart. Because I love my bairn already. Because I canna live without either one of ye and I canna allow something tae happen tae my family.”

  Maya’s heart soared. He said he loved her! “Oh Thomas, I love you too. Do you not understand that I will never leave you? You do not have to post guards around me to keep me here. I am content. Even when we argue I am more content here than I ever was in the future. I wouldn’t leave even if I had the chance to.”

  “’Tis no’ that anymore, my love. ‘Tis another matter entirely.”

  Maya narrowed her eyes. Another matter entirely? She sat up in her husband’s lap and ran a soothing hand across his chest. “Tell me.”

  “Nay. I will no’ worry ye.”

  “Thomas, I’m more worried not knowing than I could ever be with all the facts. Please. Tell me.”

  Thomas sighed then nodded his head in resignation. If it took telling all to make his wife happy again, then that’s precisely what he’d do. “’Tis a rival clan, love. The MacAllisters. Their laird did see ye on the hillside the morn that I found ye and he wants tae take ye fer his own.”

  Maya’s eyes widened. “My God—he didn’t see me appear from nowhere did he? Does he know I’m from the future?”

  Thomas shook his head, denying that question emphatically. “Nay, love. I’m certain he saw ye after the fact. His want fer ye is purely lust. He tried tae take ye from my keep the night we spotted MacAllisters on our land, but we cut him off. His men are dead, but Robert MacAllister still lives. Until he is dead ye will no’ leave these walls without me.”

  Maya drew in a breath, clutching her hand to her heart. “Why did you not tell me this? I would have understood why I had all the guards on me had I known.”

  “I told ye, wife, I dinna want tae worry ye.”

  Maya stared at her husband in amazement for a long moment then threw her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry, Thomas. And all this time I thought you were just being a dickhead!”

  Thomas grunted. “Dickhead? What is dickhead?”

  Maya blushed. “Never mind.”

  Thomas arched an eyebrow as he searched his wife’s face. “I suspect a dickhead is a bad thing in yer Tampa English.”

  Maya g
rinned as she lifted her husband’s plaid to his waist and settled herself astride him. “Sometimes it’s a bad word, but sometimes,” she said as she reached down and guided his flesh toward her tight opening, “it’s a very good word.”

  Maya slid her buttocks down onto her husband’s thighs, enveloping his shaft within her sticky heat in the process. Thomas moaned and sucked in his breath. He placed his hands on either of her hips, guiding her body’s movements atop him.

  “Yes,” she groaned in a husky whisper as she began to ride him, “sometimes it’s a very good word.”

  She rode him hard and wantonly, her breasts jiggling with her movements. Closing her eyes, she allowed the sensations to overpower her as she pumped up and down on top of him, over and over, again and again.

  “Faster Maya,” he growled, meeting her thrusts with deep strokes of his own. “Ride me harder.”

  “God yes.”

  Wrapping her arms about Thomas’ neck, she used the support of his body to jiggle faster on top of him.

  “Mmmmm,” he burred into her ear as he grabbed the flesh of her buttocks with his hands, “who does this wee body belong tae?”

  “To you,” she cried. “Oh god Thomas you feel so good.”

  “Then fuck me harder, wife. Milk my rod.”

  Maya clung to him then, her eyes closed and her neck bared to him as though her body was an offering. Thomas bit down on her neck, guttural sounds emitting from his throat as she pumped his cock faster and faster.

  And then they were coming, holding onto each other as they climaxed, neither of them letting go of their hold on the other.

  Maya smiled into Thomas’ hair, hugging him tightly against her. It felt good to be back home in his arms again, right where she belonged.

  * * * * *

  Maya smiled contentedly as she lay silently next to her husband. She stroked his chest, playing with the black hairs that covered it. He was such a finely made man, physically beyond perfection. His overall musculature was huge and sleek, yet oddly comfortable. In point of fact, Thomas’s bulging left bicept had become Maya’s favorite pillow. She could spend hour upon hour with her head cushioned against his arm, staring up into his handsome face.

  His face was dreamy, like a warrior angel, boasting sensuous lips, an uncompromisingly stern nose, and black as sackcloth eyes. His eyes matched his dark hair flawlessly, the shoulder length thick waves swept out of his line of vision by a Celtic braid plaited at either temple.

  Maya’s eyes drifted downward, taking in the rest of his endowments. His chest was powerful. His stomach taut, flat, and rippled with muscle. His navel, devilishly lickable. And his cock, a category unto itself. Her husband’s shaft would have been the envy of any male porn star in the twenty-first century, Maya admitted with amusement and pride. It was thick, long, and much to her delight, generally swollen. He was a lusty man, her husband.

  The evening was the best they’d spent together since marrying. Thomas had ordered the meal of fish, grouse, cheese, spiced apples, and bread sent to their chamber. They spent quite a few hours making love, eating, drinking wine—watered wine in Maya’s case—and making love again. He’d taken her four times…four lusty, carnal, orgasmic, mind-shattering times. She’d never known any man with a sexual appetite as demanding as her husband’s. Not that she was complaining.

  Being with Thomas made any inconvenience of the rugged Highlands more than worth the trouble of it. She didn’t have running water or electricity, but she had love and passion. She didn’t have the convenience of an automobile or the internet, but she knew peace and contentment. For every singular luxury of the future she had given up, Maya could think of three treasures she’d gained.

  Still, there was one thing from her time that she did covet, and that was medicinal knowledge. Tylenol. Penicillin. Antibiotics. Epidurals. Maya groaned inwardly. Thank god the pain of childbirth was something she wouldn’t have to worry about for another seven months or so.

  If only she could convince Thomas to send Argyle and Harold to the future, then they could collect Sara’s father. Besides being a man whom both she and Sara adored to distraction, the good doctor was also an obstetrician who delivered babies for a living. The man knew how to give an epidermal with the same skill that Maya had for unearthing old bones.

  She sighed. She simply had to get Dr. Chance to Castle MacGregor. The pain of labor not withstanding, there was also the risk of a complicated delivery. A delivery that could kill her baby, or herself. The more she thought on it, the more frightened she became. Her voice shook slightly as she spoke. “Thomas, we have to talk about the future. Someone must go forward to it.”

  Thomas breathed deeply, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. “I thought ye were asleep.”

  “No.”

  “I see.”

  Maya sat up in bed and stared down at her reclining husband. “I know you don’t like talking of it, but we must. I’m frightened.” She shook her head, refusing to allow the building waterfall of tears behind her eyes to fall. Her pregnancy was not only making her tired, but overly emotional as well. “I’m so frightened.”

  Thomas sat up and drew his wife’s face to his chest. He stroked her back soothingly, crooning tender words to her softly. “Is it the MacAllister ye fear?” He sighed in self-loathing as he continued to cradle Maya in his embrace. “Damme, but I knew what I was aboot! I should never ha’ told ye aboot his plan in the first. Love, I willna ever let the man near ye, ye ken?”

  Maya smiled as she looked her husband in the eyes. “I’ve total faith in your ability to protect me.”

  He grunted, pleased with her reply.

  “My fear is something else altogether, Thomas.”

  “What is it, lass?”

  “It’s the baby, Thomas. I fear the pain of birthing. And more than that, I fear the chance of losing our baby. It’s possible in your world that both me and your baby might die.”

  Thomas gathered Maya forcefully to him, demanding her to not talk of such things. “Maya please, I canna bear the thought of it.”

  Maya drew in a breath. She prayed to the heavens, begging to be forgiven beforehand for the amount of manipulation she was about to unleash on her husband. “Thomas, if you love me and you love our child, then you will do all within your power to keep us from harm.”

  “Of course.”

  Maya nodded, then grabbed her husband’s chin, burning her gaze into his own. “Argyle and Harold are willing to go forward to bring Sara’s father to us. Let them. I beg you.”

  Thomas said nothing for a long moment. He studied the horrified look in his wife’s eyes and knew in that instant he’d do anything reasonable to calm her. But send his own kinsmen into an unknown world? That was asking a bit much of his graciousness. “Maya, I dinna like the worry yer feelin’, but I canna allow them tae go intae the future. What does bringing Sara’s father tae this time ha’ tae do with easing yer fears?”

  “Everything!” she cried as she swung around and took to her feet. She quickly donned the silk chemise she found laying on the floor of the chamber and began pacing the room frantically.

  “Maya!” Thomas commanded as he got out of bed to join her in the middle of the chamber, “what in the name of God is wrong with ye?”

  “Sara needs her father! I need her father! Our baby needs her father!”

  “Ye think this future mon can protect this keep better than I?” he demanded in a rage. His nostrils were flaring, his face reddening.

  “No!” Maya yelled, trying to calm her husband before he worked himself into one of his fits. “It’s not that, I assure you!”

  “Then what precisely is it, wife?”

  Maya flinched. She didn’t care for the menacing way he had spewed out the word wife. She took her husband’s hands and smiled up at him in a placating way. “Her father is a healer, a very good healer.”

  He shrugged. “We’ve healers aplenty here.”

  Maya released Thomas’s hands and waved them tersely
through the air. “Compared to a twenty-first century healer, your healers are like babes let loose in battle. They know nothing of caring for themselves let alone being responsible for tending to another.”

  “I think I know a few MacGregor healers that would take offense tae that thinking.”

  Maya shook her head and glared at her husband. She balled her hands into fists and thrust them haughtily to either hip. “And I think I could care less! I’m not saying these things to make friends! I’m saying them because I don’t want to die. I want to live! I want our child to live! And we both have a far greater chance of it if Sara’s father oversees the delivery!

  “And forget about my own selfish reasons for a moment and think of poor Sara. I am lucky in that I had no family to speak of to be left behind. They are all dead. But what of Sara? Do you know how much she grieves for her father? Can you imagine how much he grieves for her, not knowing what became of either of us?

  “Can you imagine how much even I grieve for him? He thought of me as his own daughter!” Maya grabbed Thomas’s hands and clutched them firmly in her own. She had to make him understand, had to make him see things from her perspective. “Please, husband. Please. Sara’s father can keep me and the baby from death. He can take all the pain out of childbirth so I feel almost nothing. He can—”

  “What? He can take the pain from birthing? ‘Tis nigh unto impossible. Pain is ordained by God. ‘Tis yer duty by Eve’s sin tae feel it.”

  Maya ground her teeth in frustration. “Thomas, you are not even religious. Why then would you choose to believe such drivel? I took you for a smarter man than that!”

  Thomas stood to his full height and peered down at his wife. And to think he had missed this wench’s saucy temper! “Ye question my intelligence, woman?”

  Maya frowned. His use of the word woman was as contemptuous as his use of the word wife had been a moment prior. Anger overpowered her, knocking away at any hesitation she should have felt from having a man close to six and a half feet and god only knows how many pounds glowering at her. “Yes! I question it! Obviously I must if you insist I suffer in needless agony so you can uphold the primitive notions of your savage world!”