by Emma Prince
She’d worried over him. And from the deepening color in her face, it wasn’t simply because she’d nearly lost her bodyguard yesterday.
Though he knew it was wrong, his heart swelled at the thought of gaining her trust, her affection. Aye, desire flared between them, as bright and undeniable as the sun. But a traitorous voice in the back of his mind whispered that he wanted so much more.
“Careful, lass,” he murmured, his lips quirking. “Else ye’ll make me think ye dinnae loathe me quite as much as ye’d have me believe.” When she opened her mouth for a retort, he quickly added, “Och, dinnae fash. Remember, I dinnae mind ye overmuch, either.”
Damn him, he was a bloody fool for teasing her. The bonny blush that stole over her face made her look all the more delectable. What was worse, in echoing the words he’d spoken to her at her father’s estate, he was coming dangerously close to confessing something he shouldn’t.
If he were honest with himself, he’d have to admit that the sweet ache in his heart had become stronger than the heat in his veins. He couldn’t deny it—he already cared deeply for her. But caring was complicated. And dangerous.
Lust, on the other hand, was simple. Straightforward. They’d already acknowledged their desire for one another—and acted on it. Surrendering to it again would be easy given the fire of need that was burning him from the inside out at the moment. Far better than admitting the truth in his heart.
Shoving aside all rational thought, he leaned forward and kissed her soft, petal-pink lips. She pulled in a surprised breath, giving him access to the warm recesses of her mouth.
When their tongues met, she melted back onto the plaid beneath them, one hand sliding around his neck to tangle in his hair.
Sensation shot through him at her touch—straight to his cock, which already stood painfully erect beneath his kilt. He growled, sinking his teeth into her bottom lip to show her how he hungered for her.
Damn all the layers of wool separating them. At least he was shirtless. Her dress rasped against his bare skin as she arched into him. Beneath, he could feel the soft swells of her breasts, needy for his touch, his kiss.
She sighed as he delved deeper into her mouth, their tongues tangling in an erotic preview of what he longed to do with the rest of their bodies.
He rolled on top of her, but when he took some of his weight onto his elbow, his injured shoulder barked in protest. He winced and sucked in a breath.
Vivienne froze beneath him, her eyes flying open.
“We cannot.”
“Och, aye, we can,” he countered, sending her a smoldering look. “There is naught wrong with my cock, I assure ye.”
“You are injured. You need to rest and heal.” To prove her point, she placed a single finger on his wounded shoulder and pressed lightly.
The dull ache there turned into a quick flash of pain. He rolled onto his side with a curse, bested by her delicate touch. She took the opportunity to scramble up, straightening her gown modestly.
In truth, she was right that he needed to let his shoulder mend and get his strength up, but the fact was, too much needed doing around the crumbling cottage for him to lie back at his leisure.
Kieran exhaled. “Rest may have to wait. I need to tend to the horse and see what can be done about the leaking roof. This is October in the Highlands, after all—rain isnae a question of if but when and how much.”
“But I’ve already done that.”
Confused, he propped himself up with his good arm and frowned at her.
“I saw to the horse last eve after you passed out,” she went on. “He is in the barn, though he will likely wish to be let out to graze in the clearing.” She tapped a finger to her lips in consideration, then moved to where her boots sat at the foot of the bed.
“But ye couldnae have fixed the roof,” he said, eyeing her incredulously.
She waved with one hand as she pulled on a boot. “Non, of course not, but I think my solution will have to do for now.”
The clever lass had put out a pot to collect the drip, allowing the puddle beneath it to dry.
“The food is just there,” she continued, pointing toward one of the cupboards. “And the rest of our things are below. I can help you get into a new shirt if you like, but first I think you had better drink and eat something.”
He noticed the full bucket of water in the corner and couldn’t help but gawk. “Ye…ye did all this while I was sleeping?” he murmured. “On yer own?”
“Oui.”
By God, this woman never ceased to surprise—and impress—him. She was a lady-in-waiting for the bloody Queen of France, for heaven’s sake. When was the last time she’d had to tend a horse, or carry water, or come up with a solution for a leaking thatch roof?
Yet she’d done all that—after removing an arrow from his shoulder and stitching up the wound.
“Ye…ye are…” He shook his head. “I’ve never kenned a woman like ye, Vivienne.”
A slow, radiant smile broke over her face before she regained her matter-of-fact air. “Let me fetch us something to eat, then I’ll see to the horse.”
She set about her task, moving gracefully through the small, dilapidated cottage as if it were the King of France’s palace. Kieran sat in silent wonderment, his chest swelling nigh painfully.
He’d forgotten just how damn good it felt to let someone look after him, to give him attention and care.
And how good it felt to wake up with a woman in his arms. But not just any woman.
Vivienne.
Hell and damnation. Aye, he was indeed in danger. But worse, he no longer wanted to keep himself safe.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Let me do that, lass.”
Vivienne scurried out of Kieran’s reach, which was hard given how small the cottage was in relation to the long span of his arms.
“Non. You already have your hands full with your task, Monsieur MacAdams,” she retorted teasingly.
He growled in response to her faux primness, leveling her with a cool blue glower. Still, he settled back onto the bedstead and lifted her book before his face once more, leaving her to finish chopping the vegetables that would go into their stew.
A smile tugged at her lips as she chopped to the sound of his deep, gruff brogue reciting the chivalric tale. He was accompanied by the soft ping of the drip from the roof into the pot on the floor. A gentle rain had been falling all day, yet the inside of the cottage was cozy, somehow made even more so by the soothing rhythm of the drip.
How things had changed since their frantic arrival at the isolated hut. These last five days had been some of the most idyllic Vivienne had ever experienced.
For the first two days, Vivienne had insisted that Kieran remain in bed. The straw mattress hadn’t been salvageable, so she’d dragged it behind the cottage to be dealt with later, but the bare wooden slats of the bedstead had been made into a cozy nest of woolen plaids.
Soon, though, he’d declared that there was naught wrong with his legs, and had risen to survey the cottage, the clearing, and the barn. Still, without the use of his right arm, he was limited in what he could do. Vivienne didn’t mind, however, for she was becoming quite adept at running the little cottage on her own.
They’d subsisted thus far on the food stores they’d brought from Scone, but with Kieran’s instructions on what to look for, Vivienne had gathered the last late-season berries and root vegetables from the surrounding woods.
Today she was determined to give them more than hard oatcakes and dried meat to eat. She dropped a handful sliced turnips and carrots into the iron pot—more of a caldron, for it was round-bellied and had a handle for hanging over the fire—that rested on the table beside her.
Blessedly, they were able to light a fire in the hearth. With the weather growing colder and a plentitude of cracks and gaps letting frosty air into the cottage, Vivienne had tentatively sparked a few dried bark shavings using Kieran’s flint stones and held her breath as she waited to
see if the smoke filled the cottage.
To her relief, it had drawn straight up the chimney without spewing any back into the room, indicating that the chimney was clear. With Kieran unable to chop wood—and without an axe to do so anyway—Vivienne had gathered fallen twigs and branches behind the cottage, and every evening they’d had a small but cheery fire.
And when the fire had gone out each night, they stayed toasty by curling up together underneath the plaids. It was for warmth only, she’d told herself firmly, for Kieran was still on the mend. The truth was, she felt drawn to him like a moth to fire. But just like the moth that got too close, she feared she had already been singed beyond repair.
Oui, their lust for each other burned hot—perhaps even hotter in these last few days because they’d denied themselves pleasure while Kieran healed. But the raging passion between them did not explain the way Vivienne’s stomach fluttered at the mere sound of his voice, or the warmth in her chest at his simple nearness.
She’d fancied herself in love with Guy once, but now she realized she’d only felt a childish infatuation for him. She’d liked his extravagant words of praise and the elegant way he rode his horse, but that wasn’t love. She hadn’t even truly known him—his thin façade concealed no greater depths or deeper emotions.
Perhaps it hadn’t even been an infatuation with Guy, but with the picture of herself he’d painted and held before her. She’d wanted to believe Guy loved her too, but none of it had been real, for he hadn’t known her either.
Kieran, on the other hand, had seen sides of her that no one—not even her father or the Queen—had witnessed. He’d seen her be strong, and vulnerable, and frightened. He’d seen her stripped bare of her finery, her frosty composure, and her control, yet he accepted it all with grace and ease. Well, more like with a grunt, a scowl, and a blunt word or two, but she’d learned that was as close to grace and ease as Kieran got.
Vivienne realized belatedly that her hands had stilled in their chopping and Kieran’s voice had stopped. She looked up to find him eyeing her keenly over the top of the book.
“Where did ye just wander off to?”
“Oh, nowhere.” She hurriedly dropped the rest of the vegetables into the caldron and began cutting up the dried, salted meat they’d brought from Scone.
“Dinnae fash, lass. I cannae take offense if ye find my reading horrendous. Besides, how many times have ye heard this tale? More than a hundred, I’d wager.”
It was true, she’d heard it countless times, and Kieran did still read with halting slowness, but he was utterly wrong about the reason her attention had drifted.
“I like hearing you read it,” she blurted, feeling heat climb into her face. “It makes the story different somehow, more…compelling.” Oh, she was making a fool of herself now. She swallowed, pretending to be engrossed in chopping the meat. “Besides, it is a pleasure to be read to, don’t you think?”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the sides of his mouth lift. “Yer and my idea of pleasure is a wee bit different, lass.”
Now her face would surely go up in flames for how hot it was. Luckily, he took pity on her and went on in a safer direction.
“That juniper, for example,” he said, pointing at the little bundle of sprigs she’d gathered and put into a tall cup on the table. “Ye say it is for enjoyment, but it doesnae serve any purpose.”
She resisted the unladylike urge to roll her eyes. “Oh, it serves a purpose,” she countered tartly. “The juniper smells lovely, and a bit of greenery indoors is pleasing to the eye.”
He set the book aside and crossed his arms—as best he could given the fact that his shoulder was still healing. “Hmph.” He eyed her grudgingly, but then relented. “I suppose I can admit that having a woman’s touch around this place is agreeable enough. It hasnae had it since—”
He cut off abruptly, his frown deepening.
“Since your mother passed away?” she offered hesitantly. Once the terror of their flight from their attackers had waned and she’d had time to consider how they’d reached this place, she’d realized that the cottage wasn’t just a lucky find. “This is your family’s home, is it not?”
His eyes flickered with surprise, then tightened with pain. “Aye.”
“And you thought to bring me here to keep me safe.”
He exhaled wryly. “Ye’ve seen for yerself how isolated we are here. I dinnae even ken if my own clan knows this plot of land exists.”
He waved a hand over the sparse interior of the cottage. “When I decided to join the Bruce’s cause, I sold off our animals—we had a few goats and pigs as well as a draft horse—along with all the tools and almost everything else. From the way the tradesmen were staring at me in the nearest village, I imagine they thought me a wild barbarian come down from the mountains, no’ a fellow MacAdams who’d been working the land all his life.”
Vivienne smiled softly. “And you’ve never returned in all the time you’ve been gone?”
“No’ since I walked away when I was but twenty years old,” he replied, his gaze drifting to the fire that crackled in the hearth. “I wasnae sure what to do with the place, in truth. What with it being my family’s land, it seemed wrong to sell it. Yet I couldnae stay anymore, so I simply sealed everything up and left. That was ten long years past.”
A memory of his earlier words pricked the back of her mind. She pursed her lips, confusion tugging at her.
“You mentioned before that you came into this land when you were eighteen,” she said.
“Aye.”
“But you also said that you left to join the Bruce’s cause immediately after you inherited this stead,” she went on, cocking her head. “That leaves two years unaccounted for.”
He tensed, and his features went hard as if they were a stone wall—sealing her out.
“Aye, well, mayhap it took a bit longer to clear out of this place than I said before.”
He fell quiet, apparently ending that line of conversation, but Vivienne couldn’t help but feel unsettled. The tickle of apprehension in the back of her mind and the gnaw of unease in her stomach told her that he was keeping something from her. But Kieran wasn’t a man to be forced into opening up, so she didn’t press.
After a moment of laden silence, Kieran picked up the book again and resumed reading. As Vivienne dropped the meat into the caldron and brought over the bucket to add water, the comfortable, relaxed air she’d felt earlier began returning.
Kieran stopped reading abruptly with a sigh, drawing her out of her contented lull.
“I’m glad ye like my reading, lass, but this isnae my strong suit.” He was frowning at her over the top of the book. “I’m simply no’ made to sit abed all day like a wee old biddy.”
A surprised laugh bubbled up in her throat. It was true, her delicate, finely made book looked preposterously out of place in his big, gnarled hands. And though she very much enjoyed the sight of him partially reclined in the bed, his large, powerful frame was simply not meant to lie in repose all day.
“Dinnae ye have something else for me to do?” he asked, setting aside her book once more. “Something to lift or move or…or smash?”
Now she was laughing hard enough to put a stitch in her side. “Non, I’m afraid not,” she breathed through her mirth.
She took up the caldron’s handle to move the stew to the fire. But the caldron, which had already been heavy enough to give her a little trouble when it had been empty, was now even heavier with the added water. The caldron tipped precariously on the edge of the table, threatening to spill the entire uncooked stew.
Like a bolt of lightning, Kieran shot from the bed to her side, grabbing the caldron’s handle and righting the liquid inside.
“Och, this is something I can help with,” he said, lifting the iron caldron with his good arm as if it weighed naught more than an empty basket.
He strode to the fire, easily placing the caldron on the hook over the flames.
Vivienne c
ouldn’t help it. Her cheeks warmed at his show of strength and the easy power in his body as he turned and walked back to her.
“Ye shouldnae have to be doing any of this, lass.” He halted before her with a frown. “I should.”
Unexpectedly, she bristled at that. “Why? Because you do not think me capable?”
“Nay, it isnae that,” he replied with a definitive shake of his head. “Ye’ve more than proven ye are capable of aught these past five days. But I dinnae like seeing ye struggle under these lowly burdens.”
He stilled, his pale eyes intent and penetrating as he fixed her with a stare. “Ye are the sort of woman who should be pampered, Vivienne. If I had my way, ye wouldnae ever have to lift a finger for such menial tasks.”
“Oh?” she breathed, her pulse quickening as he swept her slowly with his gaze. “Then what would I do all day?”
“Och, lass,” he rasped, his voice low and drawn. “All ye should ever have to do is lie back and be pleasured.”
He slowly dipped his head until his lips were only a hair’s breadth from hers, but then he halted, teasing her with his nearness as if to challenge her resolve.
But Vivienne had already admitted defeat against her desire for him. She rocked forward, their lips connecting in a searing kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kieran’s pulse spiked hard when Vivienne’s lips met his. Aye, she wanted this as badly as he did.
That knowledge nearly made him push her against the nearest wall, yank up her skirts, and thrust into her possessively. She was his, damn it.
But nay, he’d offered her far more pleasure that a swift swiving against the wall. He would take his time and make sure she knew he’d meant every word.
He deepened their kiss, mating his tongue with hers in a slow promise of what was to come. She sighed into his mouth, making the skin on the back of his neck prickle in anticipation and his cock stiffen beneath his kilt.
He began backing her toward the table, wicked plans taking shape in his mind. Oh, there was so much he wanted to do to her, but he was already weakened by his own raging need. He could only hope to show her just how serious he was about pleasuring her before he came undone himself.