by Connie Mason
Lachlan shaded his eyes with his hand and followed the flight of the long shaft. The line attached to it coiled out with a whipping sound. The arrow found its mark in the big yew on the other side of the loch.
Calum gave the line a stout tug.
“Ye might pull it out!” Drummond warned.
“If it’s going to give, better to know now than when we’re trying to rescue Lady Elspeth.”
Drummond nodded his grudging approval. “This is shaping up to be a good plan. I thank ye.”
Calum glanced at him and tied the line off on a nearby boulder. “I didna do it for ye, Lord Drummond. I did it for the lady.”
***
Elspeth no longer felt like a lady. She knew enough about the business of losing a maidenhead to know she still possessed hers, but even so, she wasn’t the same.
Rob MacLaren had seen her naked.
Not just without her clothes. He’d glimpsed her soul at its neediest.
She had no language to describe what he’d done to her. She’d had no idea a mortal was capable of such shattering pleasure, no inkling that her body would so thoroughly become his willing ally.
She knew what they were doing was wicked, but she didn’t feel soiled till after. When he simply rolled over without saying a word.
Now, judging by his deep, rhythmic breathing, the smug brute was enjoying the sleep of the just.
Elspeth rolled onto her side, giving Rob her back, and pulled her knees up to her chest.
He’d been so tender and giving while he played her body, his touch as sure and exquisite as a bard plucking his harp. How could he be so cold when he was done?
His kisses had brought something to life in her. She no longer felt like a pawn, only one item in a long list of goods to be exchanged. When he touched her intimately, she felt as if he knew her.
And she mattered. Not for whatever cattle and agreements came with her. Just for herself.
How could what they’d done together mean so little to him?
She gnawed her lower lip. Maybe that was it. They hadn’t done anything together. He did something only to her.
She had certainly kissed him back. Merciful heaven, she’d even kissed him first. But aside from running her hand over his hair, she hadn’t touched him.
Maybe she should have reached beneath his kilt after all.
But he knew she was a maiden. How could she be expected to know what a man wants?
She drew a deep breath. When he first abducted her, she’d caught a few glimpses into his heart through the Sight. She’d felt his deep sadness, and it kept her from fearing him as much as she should have.
Now she sensed nothing from him.
Perhaps she’d been listening to her body so intently, it drowned out all the other, less-forceful voices. She’d never been able to call up her Gift at will, but if she concentrated mightily, maybe…
She rolled over and laid a hand lightly on Rob’s shoulder. He didn’t stir. She closed her eyes, matched the rhythm of his breathing, and tried to empty her mind of the riotous clamoring of her body.
Nothing came to her but the steady roll of the boat and the lap of water on the hull.
No vision flashed behind her eyes, but she remembered suddenly that she’d been given a brief impression when they were in the cave. In her glimpse into Rob’s mind she’d Seen a willowy, red-haired woman. Elspeth didn’t know who she was, but she was obviously important to him.
Perhaps that woman was why Rob turned away from her.
Elspeth pulled her hand from his shoulder and rolled over to face away from him again.
“I still hate ye verra, verra much, Rob MacLaren,” she whispered. “Dinna think otherwise.”
Chapter 13
Rob strained against the cords at his wrists, but he couldn’t free himself. His arms were outstretched, and for a moment, he wondered if he was being held in a cell beneath Drummond’s stronghold. Then he realized he was lying spread-eagled in the middle of a soft feather tick, bound at the wrists and ankles.
It was dark, but there was a storm brewing outside the castle. Occasional lightning flashes showed him that he was in his bedchamber, captive on his bed.
And he was naked.
The door creaked open, and light from the torch in the hall sent a shaft of gold spilling across the rushes on the floor. A woman was silhouetted by the doorway, but since she was lit from behind, her face was in shadow.
She walked in without a word, and the door closed behind her, plunging him into almost total darkness once more.
“Who are ye?” His question circled the room in sibilant echoes.
It also went unanswered for the space of several heartbeats.
Her footfalls rustled across the floor. Once she was beside the bed, she whispered his name.
“Ye dinna know me, Robin?” Her voice was hollow and bloodless, a reed whistling in the wind. “I am the last wisp of dream when ye first wake. A ghost in the corner of your eye that disappears when ye look at it direct. I am that space between one breath and the next, where all things are possible but none are required.”
She was no more than a dark shape, but her form was pleasing, and when lightning brightened the room like day for a blink, he caught a glimpse of her milk-white breasts. The bodice of her gown was cut so low, her taut nipples peeped above it. His cock rose of its own accord.
“Why am I bound?” he asked, struggling against the cords.
“Because ye dinna have the will to free yourself.”
“Will ye release me?”
“No,” she said softly. “Only ye can do that.”
He felt a hand on his shin. He’d expected her touch to be cold and wraithlike, but her palm was warm as a freshly baked bun. Now that he thought on it, she even smelled like fresh bread. His mouth watered. This strange woman wakened hungers of every kind.
Her hand slid up past his knee and circled his groin with maddening nearness.
“Ask what ye will, Robin.” Her fingertips teased the small hairs on his scrotum. “In this place, all questions are welcome, though not all are answered. All knots will be untied. One way or another.”
One question burned his brain hotter than the others. Even though he feared to ask, he heard himself say, “Am I mad?”
So many named him thus, he had to wonder if there wasn’t some truth to it.
“No, not as ye mean it. Ye’re only mad in the way all men are.”
She kneaded his balls, and his cock twitched in pleasurable agony. He heard the rustle of velvet. When lightning flashed again, he saw she’d shed her gown, but her long hair obscured her features. For a moment, he thought she might be Fiona, but the voice wasn’t right.
“Will ye show me your face?”
She laughed. “My face is the last thing most men ask to see when I come to them by night.”
Then she lowered her head, and her hair brushed over his cock, a thousand silken fingers. His hands bunched into fists, and every muscle in his body clenched. He was helpless before her. His eyes rolled back in his head as she ran her tongue along his length from base to tip.
Then she took him into her mouth.
The whole world went wet and warm. She lashed him with her tongue. She sucked. She rained kisses on him, drenching him, engulfing him.
He fought the downward pull of his groin.
“I. Must. See. Your. Face,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Think ye I canna please ye without that?”
She climbed on top of him and settled herself on his cock, rubbing her wet slit over its length. He fought to keep from spewing his seed over his belly.
He willed himself not to come.
“Your face,” he demanded.
Instead, she thrust her breasts toward him, her
hard nipples grazing his cheeks, his lips, his closed eyes. He steeled himself not to capture one of them with his mouth.
When she gave up and tilted back, she made sure he slid into her all the way. Bound as he was, he could no more stop that than he could stop breathing.
She was tighter than a fisted glove. And wetter than waterweed.
She began to move. Slowly at first, but then with increasing speed. The pressure on his balls mounted with each stroke. She meant to subdue him with pleasure, drive him to release. She goaded him along like an ox to slaughter.
“Robin,” she whispered. “Dinna fight so hard. Give yourself to me.”
He shook his head, too incoherent with need for speech.
“Ach, verra well. I see your heart is set on it, and when have I e’er given a man aught but what he most wished?”
She raised herself up on her knees, so only the tip of him remained within her tight grip. She squeezed him once with the tiny muscles of her inner walls, careful not to expel him.
“But which face is it to be, I wonder?” She stretched out a hand and sank her fingers deep into his chest.
Rob sucked a startled breath over his teeth.
Deeper and deeper, she probed. He expected agony as she brushed his beating heart, but he felt only warmth and acceptance in her questing touch.
“There it is,” she said softly and pulled her hand back. His flesh closed behind her hand without leaving a mark.
The room brightened, not from lightning but from the woman herself. She glowed like a candle. When she looked down at him, it was with Elspeth’s hazel eyes, Elspeth’s virginal lips curved in a sensual, knowing smile. The milk-white breasts were Elspeth’s, firm and high. The tender triangle of hair covering her sex was Elspeth’s rich chestnut.
“Is this the face ye wish for?”
She was everything he wished for. His body raced to the edge of release. He teetered on the precipice, waiting only for her to lower herself onto his cock once again.
“As I thought,” she said, the light fading as she leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “And now, Robin, my love, ye must wake.”
He felt himself tumbling into a deep well, but just before he struck the bottom…
Rob jerked himself awake. His cock throbbed beneath his kilt, still primed for release. The sun had long since set, so it was nearly as dark in the small cabin as the bedchamber in his dream. But Rob had always been cat-eyed at night. Strange that he hadn’t been in his dream. He could see Elspeth lying beside him right enough, close but not touching. Near enough for him to feel her warmth.
Her mouth was parted in the relaxation of slumber, and her closed eyes made him ache to plant a kiss on them. He willed his body to settle. He forced himself to think of a dog eating its own vomit, a corbie plucking the eye from a corpse on a field of battle, anything to keep from coming in a shuddering rush with her sleeping so innocently beside him.
What if she were to wake and catch his body bucking in release?
He’d been a heartless bastard to turn from her as he did after she’d trusted him to waken her to the joys of the flesh. But he was so confused, he didn’t trust himself to speak to her. Didn’t know what to say. Not after Fiona had danced in his head while he touched Elspeth.
Double-mindedness was worse than madness. A double-minded man couldn’t tell if he was afoot or horseback.
Then the succubus in his dreams! As if he needed a third woman to further muddle the question.
He wanted Elspeth, whether it was wise or not. He didn’t need his dream wraith to tell him that. The fact that she was his prisoner and another man’s bride didn’t bode well for anything but a fleeting tryst or two between them.
And despite the outcome of his dream, he still loved his wife and feared that he dishonored Fiona’s memory every time his eye followed Elspeth about.
The succubus in his dream said he was bound because he didn’t have the will to free himself. Even if he had the will, he didn’t see any way to break out of this web of his own weaving. Elspeth was still his enemy’s bride.
“Rob!” Angus called to him. “Are ye awake?”
Rob silently blessed his friend. A turn at the tiller would give his hands something to do and his head a chance to stop chasing these pointless questions.
“Aye,” he said, sitting up and stretching his arms as far as the cramped space allowed. “I’ll be there anon.”
Elspeth stirred beside him. She sat up and stretched catlike as well. Her breasts were unbound still and strained against the thin fabric of her chemise. He forced himself to look away from those luscious curves, but his gaze sneaked back to them. Her nipples stood out proud under the worn linen.
He started to crawl out of the cabin.
“Wait a moment,” Elspeth said. She pulled the leather bodice on over her head and turned her back to him. “I need your help with the laces.”
He tried not to think about the way the bodice lifted her breasts and pressed them together till a soft curve spilled over the top. He was totally unsuccessful. He pulled the laces tight and tied them off.
“There you are,” he said. Anything to fill the silence between them.
“Here I am.” She ran her fingers through her hair to smooth out the tangles.
It only served to remind him how that silken hair had brushed his cock in his dream and then her lips had followed with devastating effect. His body roused to her afresh.
“You’re staring at me,” she accused.
He looked away, but her image was still burned on the backs of his eyes.
“Ye drag me off with ye, and yet ye seem to be able to forget I exist with amazing speed,” she said. “Did it cross your mind that we might have aught to say to one another after what passed between us?”
He shouldn’t have turned away from her. He knew that. Not after she let him touch her so trustingly.
He should apologize. He should explain. He had no idea how to begin.
“Well?” she demanded. “Have ye naught to say to me?”
“Rob!”
Praise be to God for Angus Fletcher!
“No’ now, Elspeth.” Rob scrambled out of the cabin as if his kilt was afire.
***
Elspeth pulled on her cloak and followed Rob out, but she stayed near the prow. The moon had risen and scattered silver coins across the black water of the loch. Clouds scudded across the sky, so the night was warmer than it might have been for November. She still gathered Rob’s cloak at her neck and fastened it with the plain but serviceable brooch.
She pleased Angus by accepting one of his cold sausages wrapped in crumbling bread, and washed it down with some wine that was only days from turning to vinegar.
“The wind shifted whilst ye were resting,” he told her. “We’ve come about with nary a bit of trouble, slick as snot—ach!” He smacked a beefy palm on his forehead. “Ye must forgive me. I’m no’ accustomed to conversin’ with ladies.”
“That’s all well and good, Mr. Fletcher.”
“Angus,” he insisted. Then he leaned down to her and lowered his voice. “And a word in your ear. There’s folks as say that Rob MacLaren is balmy, but he’s as sane as ye or I, ye ken. O’ course, I love the lad like he was my own son. Now, I’m no’ saying I agree with everything he’s doing, mind, but I understand it.”
“I wish I did.”
“Reckon he’ll explain matters to ye, when he gets it straight in his own mind,” Angus said. “But if he ever lifts so much as a finger against ye, weel, the young pup will have to answer to me, ye hear?”
“I thank ye, Mr.…Angus,” she said as he headed toward the cabin. “Rest well.”
Elspeth expected Fletcher’s dog to accompany him, but Fingal remained at her side, his shaggy body warm where he leaned against her h
ip and thigh. She stood still as a figurehead for a few moments, wondering what to do. It was a small boat. She couldn’t very well join Mr. Fletcher in the cabin. There was no place to sit in the prow. The only other option was the bench near the stern.
Near Rob.
The deerhound nuzzled her hand and circled around it so she stroked him nose to tail.
Elspeth felt a tug in her heart toward the man at the boat’s tiller, but she resisted. He’d already shown her how susceptible she was to his enticements, and how little her surrender meant to him.
“What should I do, Fingal?” She fingered the dog’s wiry-haired ears.
The deerhound turned and walked toward the stern of the small vessel as if he understood her question. He plopped his bottom down near enough to Rob that the man could tousle his great shaggy head. Elspeth heard Fingal’s tale thumping on the hull.
“That’s what ye get when ye ask a dog for advice,” she muttered. The furry beast would take affection from anyone. A failing she didn’t intend to repeat.
Rob probably hadn’t eaten, so she gathered up the badger-skin pouch and the skin of deplorable wine and headed toward the stern. Her priest had always admonished her that treating an enemy with kindness would “heap fiery coals on his head.”
She intended to set Rob MacLaren ablaze.
Chapter 14
All the muscles in Rob’s body stiffened as Elspeth headed toward him. She stepped lightly around the cabin and past the mast. Her meek expression didn’t fool him a bit. If he’d been a dog, his ruff would’ve been standing on end in wariness. Fingal, however, stood and wagged his entire body in joy over her approach.
When he devised this plan, he wished he’d considered that Drummond’s bride was a living, breathing person. She’d been only a means to an end to him.
No matter what that succubus in his dream had said, perhaps he was mad. His friend Hamish had tried to tell him abducting the Stewart lass was a bad idea, but he wouldn’t listen.