by Anna Durand
Rory let out a sigh of pure contentment. "My Emery, you are irreplaceable."
My Emery. Irreplaceable. The words echoed in my mind, and my heart yearned to accept the deeper meaning they might hold. He called me his, but only in the afterglow of sexual release. I was irreplaceable, but he might've meant as a lover. Christ, I knew I shouldn't let the phrasing get to me.
The glowy sensation in my chest compelled me to believe.
He rolled off my body, robbing me of his heat and weight.
The glowiness receded, though an ember took root in my heart.
I turned onto my side and burrowed against him. When he wound an arm around me, I smiled into his chest. Though I hated to risk losing this wonderful closeness between us, I needed to ask him a question while he was mellowed out.
Raised on an elbow, I asked, "Why did you not want me to close my eyes?"
Though his arm stayed around me, he scrubbed his face with his other hand. "Does it matter? I rescinded the rule."
I felt myself balanced on a thin layer of earth floating on a bog, vulnerable to the slightest movement in the wrong direction that might yank it out from under me. Despite the danger of forging ahead, I might never have him in this mood again, at ease and open to talking.
"I think it does matter, Rory. To you, for sure. And what matters to you affects me."
He covered his eyes with his hand. "My third wife, Una. Whenever we were… intimate, and I would, ah…" Lines cinched tight on his forehead, while his mouth twisted. "When I gave her oral sex, she would keep her eyes shut the entire time. I assumed it was a sign she enjoyed it. Only when she left me did she confess the truth."
No way I would speak or move. Anything might make him clam up again.
After a moment, he went on. "I had noticed she rarely achieved orgasm during intercourse, but she always came when I used my mouth on her." He squirmed but kept his arm wreathed around me and stared up at the ceiling. "On the day she walked out, Una told me she'd made a terrible mistake marrying me. She couldn't be with me or any man because she's gay."
Jesus. No wonder he was skittish about relationships.
"I asked her how long she'd known," he said, "about her preference for women. She said she'd always known, for as long as she could remember. I couldn't understand how that could be, since we'd had sex many times. Una told me she could only have an orgasm during oral sex, and only if she closed her eyes and imagined I was a woman."
Christ, that would've emasculated the most stalwart of men. Why the hell had the woman told him that? For heaven's sake, she could've left it at "I'm gay, Rory."
He shielded his face with an arm over his eyes. "During intercourse, she would pretend to like it when she really wanted it to be over as quickly as possible. Our eight months together were, according to Una, the most painful of her life. She cried while telling me all of this, apologized repeatedly for lying to me."
I wanted to throw my arms around him. Knowing how much he despised talking about his previous marriages, however, I would do nothing that might make him feel embarrassed or exposed. But a question had occurred to me, and the answer seemed vital.
"Um…" I craned my neck to see his face but couldn't.
"Go on. You have a question, ask it."
"You don't have to tell me any more than you already have." I laid my hand over his where it curled over my arm. "I can't help wondering. Why did Una marry you in the first place?"
With half his face concealed behind his arm, he answered in a flat voice. "She believed her family would despise her for being gay. That turned out to be wrong, but she believed it for many years."
I squashed my lips between my teeth, struggling against the impulse to pry a little more.
Rory lowered his arm to reveal his face, but he'd gone stoic, his facade impenetrable. "Say it. Whatever it is, go on and say it."
Damn. How did he know I was itching to say something?
I wiggled around until I was on my knees, sitting back on my heels with my hands on my thighs. "Una caused you a lot of pain, the kind that sticks around for years. Deceiving you like that was mean and selfish."
"Una's not a bad person. She worried about what others thought of her, and I believe she cared for me in a certain way, but her fears were of her own making. Those are the hardest to overcome. I have no ill will toward Una. She did the best she could."
"Fine, maybe Una's not evil." I looked at my hands, twiddling my fingers with nervous energy. "But don't tell me Isobel wasn't selfish and mean, bitching about your job and how much money you made. You're my husband now, and I won't pretend I'm okay with the harm they did to you, whether it was intentional or not."
He hadn't told me about wife number two yet. What damage did she inflict on him?
Rory gave me a strange look, and when he spoke, his tone was guarded. "That sounds rather possessive."
"I stand up for the people I —" Love. I cut myself off a nanosecond before blurting out the word, but he'd freak for sure if I said it. Besides, I wasn't positive I meant it yet. Heading in that direction, yeah, but love? Way too soon to know. I started over, saying, "As a rule, I assume everybody's doing their best and doesn't mean to hurt anybody else. But I stand up for my family. We are married, whatever the reason for it, which makes you family."
"That's… generous of you. I have a family of my own, though, so it's not necessary."
Queasiness roiled in my stomach. A family of his own. Sounded like I wasn't included in that group.
"I know you have a family," I said, "and they're amazing. But you haven't told them the whole story about your exes, have you?"
He hesitated. "No."
"Then it's up to me to say 'oh hell no' to what they did to you." I thought for a moment, then asked, "Am I the only one who knows?"
"Yes." He held up a staying hand when I opened my mouth to say more. "I'd rather not discuss this any further at the moment."
"Okay. Thank you for telling me, even though it couldn't have been easy for you."
He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and managed a ghost of a smile for me. "You won the bet. What do you want for it?"
I tapped my chin, pretending to think hard about my options. "Hmm, what do I want from Rory baby?"
His lips scrunched up, but as usual, it seemed more like an attempt to quash a smile than an expression of irritation. Man, I was getting damn sick of his need to not smile at me.
Determined to lighten the mood, I swung a leg over him to sit astride his thighs. "I want to see the ocean."
Cinnamon brows shot up. "That's all?"
"I've never seen the ocean, but no. That's not all."
"You have never seen the ocean?"
"I lived in landlocked states. Born and raised in Idaho, moved to Colorado after college. Plenty of lakes, but no seashore."
He clasped his hands behind his head. "What else do you want, then? This was supposed to be one activity of your choice, not a Christmas list."
I raked my nails down his stomach to within inches of his groin. "It will be one activity, Mr. Persnickety. I want to see the ocean as part of a broader tour of the Highlands. And I want you to be my tour guide."
He made a face. "I have work."
"One day," I said, bracing my hands on his shoulders, my breasts dangling in his line of sight, "that's all I'm asking. A day trip."
"Jamie would be a better guide."
I nipped his nose. "No dice. You agreed to our wager, and this is the one thing I want." I sat up and slapped his chest. "Don't be a grouch. Show me your homeland, Rory."
He regarded me in silence as the minutes ticked by on the bedside clock. I shimmied my behind, and he grimaced. Beneath me, his cock stirred.
With a swiftness that surprised a squeak out of me, he surged up and flipped us both. I landed flat on my back with him above me, his knees penning my legs. He strapped my hands to the pillow with his own, at either side of my head. His face
descended toward mine, but his lips hovered inches from mine.
"Again?" I asked, and we both knew full well what I meant. My body had come alive the instant he tossed me onto my back. "I'm up for anything, you know that. On our first night together, I loved the way you woke me up in the middle of the night to make love to me one more time."
The desire heating his expression snuffed out.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
He leaped up to kneel over me, stepped off the bed, and walked out of the room.
The door clicked shut.
I pushed up on my elbows, a chill prickling my skin. What the hell had happened? I lay there, mute and paralyzed, while a maelstrom of thoughts sucked me down into oblivion. One inescapable conclusion echoed in my mind.
He wasn't coming back.
Though I'd known he would sleep in his room, the abruptness of his departure hit me harder than I'd imagined it could. A searing pain stabbed straight through my heart into my soul. Nothing but a plaything, that's what I was. A warm body to slake his needs. Worse than a trophy wife, I'd become his whore.
Shit, shit, shit. What an idiot I'd been, rushing into marriage with a damaged man entrenched in his solitary lifestyle. Maybe he didn't want to be helped. Maybe I'd fucked up my life royally, and now I had to live with the consequences of my impulsive and reckless decision.
I pulled the covers over me, huddling with my knees drawn to my chest, knowing I would not sleep tonight.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The next morning, I woke to find Rory had sneaked into my room sometime overnight to leave a note on the bedside table. "Meet me on the green," it said, like I was expected to know what the heck the green meant. Since I didn't, I grabbed a quick breakfast in the kitchen, eating the meal Mrs. Darroch had left in the fridge for me, marked with a sticky note that bore my name. I bumped into her in the hallway and asked a vital question.
"Where's 'the green'?"
"It's the grassy area behind the garden," she said, "outside the wall. There's a door behind the hydrangeas."
The wooden door to "the green" hid behind a lavish hydrangea bush with pale-pink, mop-headed blossoms. The shrub, planted beside the doorway, had grown beyond its original location to spill its branches over the exit. I twisted the rusty metal knob and pushed, adding a bit of shoulder force to the effort. The door popped open.
I stumbled through it onto freshly mowed grass, its green scent enveloping me. Though most days had been cloudy, this morning Mother Nature had blessed us with a blue sky marred by only a smattering of clouds.
My husband was in the center of the green, wearing a kilt and leather boots but nothing else. He faced away from me, the sun burnishing his bare back and arms. A long, thin wooden pole lay lengthwise on the grass before him. Its surface had bumps where branches were removed, and its bark had been stripped. The pole must've measured twenty feet long. Five similar poles lay in a pile near the clearing's edge.
These were the poles I'd seen a few days ago when I explored the grounds.
Rory crouched to grasp the pole in both hands, heaved it up, and walked his hands down its length to lift it above his head. When he reached the other end, he had the pole upright.
I sidled up to the wall, fascinated by his actions.
He moved around the pole, keeping it between his hands, so he faced the opposite direction. His attention darted around the green, and when it fell on me, his eyes narrowed and his chest puffed out.
"There you are," he said. "At last."
"What are you doing?"
He slapped the pole. "Practicing my caber toss."
So that was a caber. Calli had mentioned the wooden poles and that Scottish men liked to toss them around. "You're seriously planning to chuck that thing?"
"I am."
A hot thrill shivered through me. He'd invited me out here, implying he wanted me to watch.
Rory shifted his hands down the pole, squatting at its base, and hefted its end up with both hands beneath it. The muscles in his arms and back rippled and flexed.
The caber wobbled the tiniest bit.
I sucked in a breath, unable to release it.
With a harsh yell, he thrust his hands up and out, tossing the caber end over end.
Its furthest end must've landed fifty feet away.
"Holy shit!" I blurted the phrase before my brain filter kicked back into gear.
Rory smirked. "I'll take that as a compliment."
A wicked tingle coursed through me, and I couldn't tear my gaze away from him — away from his broad, muscle-bound chest and his thickly corded arms and his astonishingly powerful thighs. I wanted that body, right now.
I glanced at the caber, that twenty-foot tree, and asked, "Is it safe to practice flinging trees by yourself?"
He rolled one shoulder in a casual shrug. "Safe enough. I used to practice with Lachlan, but I gave up the sport three years ago."
"Why?"
Another nonchalant shrug.
He didn't want to tell me, so I changed tack. "When did you start up again?"
"Last week."
I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my lavender shorts. "After we got married."
He nodded, pretending to examine the grass.
Ah-ha. His renewed desire to chuck trees had arisen post-Emery. The fact struck me as important, though I couldn't fathom what it meant.
"Would ye like to watch me go again?" he asked, his voice warmed by a seductive timbre.
"Love to."
He repeated his raising of the caber and launched the pole end over end.
This time, I pulled out my phone and captured the moment with its camera.
I leaped away from the wall, clapping and whooping. "Go, Rory baby!"
My husband quirked a brow at me, his lips ticking up, eyes sparkling in the sunshine. "Ye like to watch."
Oh yeah. As much as I loved ogling him while he lobbed trees, I wanted more than a sexy spectacle. In spite of the way he'd left last night, I craved him like never before.
I had a fetish for caber tossing. Who knew?
He strode toward me, hips undulating, whisky-dark eyes hooded.
Though I could've reached out to touch him, the arm's length between us seemed way too far. I needed him to mash that body into mine, caging me between the wall and those acres of delectable muscles.
"Wow," I said, "you're like Hercules."
His smirk heated into a darkly erotic smile.
And at last, I got it.
"You invited me here," I said. "You wanted me to see you flinging trees."
He hooked a thumb inside the waist of his kilt.
I cocked my head, leaning into the wall. "Are you showing off for me?"
"Why would I?"
"You tell me." I braced one foot on the wall, my knee bent. "Therapy is a journey of self-discovery, after all."
In a single stride, he erased the distance between us. My bent leg brushed his kilt. He slipped a hand around the curve of my naked thigh to curl it around the underside. "Do I need to prove my masculine prowess to you?"
I settled a hand on his belly, sketching the lines of his abs with my fingertips. "I'm fully aware of your virility and stamina."
He coasted that hand up the underside of my thigh, inside my shorts and panties, his callused skin rough on the soft curve of my ass. As he slanted his body into mine, sinews flexed against me, and my head lolled into the cool stone of the wall. He flattened his free hand on the rock alongside me and rested his chin on my shoulder.
Strong fingers kneaded my ass.
I latched my leg around his, pulling the hard length of his cock into my belly.
His lips painted a hot, damp trail up my throat. "Have ye ever fucked up against a castle wall?"
"Oh yeah, dozens of times."
He tugged my hips into his body. "Liar."
Only he could inflame my lust by calling me a liar.
"Let's g
o for it," I said.
He went hard as the stone behind me, though not in the part of his body I wanted. He glanced around as if rousing from a bizarre dream.
"Mhac na galla," he hissed, and shoved away from me. "We cannae."
Because it was daytime, and we weren't in a bed.
"What the hell is mhac na galla?"
"It means son of a bitch." He touched his forehead. "We cannot do this."
"Come on," I said, heedless of the raw frustration in my voice. "Getting me worked up and yanking the rug out from under me again? After the way you sprinted out of my bedroom last night? Not cool, Rory. Not cool at all."
"I believe you're mixing several metaphors."
"Screw metaphors." I rapped my fist on his chest. "Show a little respect, or at least common courtesy. I'm your wife, not your concubine."
He raked a hand through his hair. "I didn't — You're right. I'm sorry, you deserve better, but you knew what I am when you agreed to our arrangement. You said you understood the terms."
Fuck. Our promise in the form of an unenforceable contract had bitten me in the ass, and all I could do was smear antibiotic ointment on the wound. "Thanks so much for reminding me."
The sharpness in my tone seemed to take him aback. He lurched backward, gesturing toward the garden door. "I'm sure you have other things to do. Twirling about on the lawn, perhaps."
"You saw me yesterday?"
"I did."
"That was spinning and skipping, not 'twirling about.' " I flapped a hand in the direction of his discarded caber. "Not any weirder than hurling giant sticks."
"The caber toss is a feat of strength and control," he said. "What purpose does spinning serve?"
"It's fun. And I was soaking up the sunshine." I took a big breath and threw my arms wide as I'd done while lounging on the grass yesterday. "Why don't you come out and join me this time, instead of peeping on me from the first-floor hallway."
"How did you know where I was?"
"Simple deduction. You were in your office, like always, and it's on the first floor. The office windows don't face the front lawn. To see me, you would've had to walk out into the hall."
