Vin shifted uncomfortably. “Naturally.”
Richard watched Vin slyly out of the corner of his eye noticing Vin’s unease. It seemed, Vin didn’t like this subject any better than speaking about the war. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Vin said evasively, though he knew clearly now where Richard was heading. An idiot could draw the parallels from his tale.
“To want what you think you should not,” Richard said simply confirming Vin’s suspicions. “My conscience ate at me wanting Abby as I did. Jack took it all out of my hide when he found out I was sleeping with her. Thought he was going to kill me for certain.”
Vin said nothing.
“In truth, I felt good after Jack beat me to a pulp,” was Richard’s next confession. “Made a lot of the guilt go away.”
Vin could almost feel Richard’s amusement on the whole subject and felt in that moment he would feel pretty good if he beat his brother to a pulp as well. He idly wondered if he was strong enough to take him. “Your point?”
“Moira doesn’t have a brother here to do that for her and her father is a pretty old man, but the rest of us – uh, those with more brotherly inclinations toward her – would gladly line up to give you the beating of a lifetime if it helps.”
Silence reigned as Vin ground his teeth in frustration. Bloody hell! Was he that obvious?
“No one blames you, of course,” Richard went on conversationally. “She’s sought after and not just because of her wealth. Moira is a beautiful woman, very desirable.”
Vin’s fists clenched.
“Are you going to deny it?”
“That I lust after her?” Vin growled.
“No, brother,” Richard’s astonishment took a moment to get under control. Was that all Vin thought it was? He tsked in a mocking fashion. “That you love her.”
Vin gaped at his brother even as his head started shaking automatically in denial. “Bloody hell, Richard. I don’t love her! Not unless it is like a sister! She’s my friend. One of the closest I’ve ever had in my life. And I’m ruining that every time I touch her.”
“Because you want to make love to her.”
“What I want is to fook her for days on end until I drive this terrible lust from my system,” Vin spat out crudely. “She’s driving me insane with wanting. But it’s just lust.” But it wasn’t just lust and bodily need, Vin admitted at least to himself. If it were only lust, the very enthusiastic Bess would have done the trick. No, it was Moira he wanted. Moira alone who drive him to this state of near insanity where he had to flee from her before he did something that he’d regret. “I need to leave,” he went on. “I’ll go to England, I think. To King’s Retreat.”
Richard thought about the estate his mother had grown up on in Essex. It was a fine estate and a large one. Though their grandfather had once raised sheep there, the queen’s steward had reverted to renting out parts of the land to tenant farmers since acquiring it as a property of the Crown when their grandmother had died a few years before. It would take a lot of work for Vin to learn how the estate was now run. Richard thought it would be good for Vin to have a purpose…if that estate wasn’t possibly the most isolated piece of property in southern England. It would be a disaster for Vin to close himself off from not only his family but people in general.
“I think that would be a big mistake at this point, Vin.”
“I don’t,” he responded stubbornly. “It’s my responsibility now.”
“Aye, it is but you can’t lock yourself away from everyone like that,” Richard argued. “You know how that place is. It would be like putting yourself into isolation once more.”
Though inwardly Vin shuddered at the mental picture Richard presented, he knew that it would have no bearing on his decision. “It needs to be done. The Queen will be expecting it of me.”
“The Queen can wait!”
But I cannot, Vin thought. He couldn’t stay in Edinburgh, in Francis’ house with Moira providing a constant temptation. His resolve and determination to keep her at an arm’s length would dissolve the moment she walked past him and the delicious scent of her tickled his senses. He couldn’t take her, would not! His only recourse was to remove himself from that enticement as quickly as possible. Then they could resume the innocent exchange of letters that had given them the friendship they shared for so long.
Before she came to hate him.
Before he came to hate himself.
“I don’t understand you, Vin,” Richard said scowling now. “How can you continue to deny what everyone sees? Lust? Only lust? You cannot be so obtuse to think that is the sum of it. I mean, you were always a dreamer, our whole lives. You lived in your own world. I don’t think you’ve ever truly been aware…I don’t know how to say it. It’s as if you see only what you want. You’ve placed what you feel for Moira in this tidy package called friendship and refuse to see when you open it that it could be so much more.”
“So now I’m delusional as well?”
“What’s wrong with loving her?” Richard wanted to know.
“It’s not what I want, Richard.” Vin ground his teeth, fighting the war within him. They all thought he was obtuse? Why was it no one could see what he needed, what really mattered?
Friends lasted a lifetime. The caring and loving of another person knowing they felt the same was life sustaining. It provided a companion through good times and bad. A comrade in your darkest hours. Why would he throw all that away for sex? Lovers were naught but a nine-days’ wonder, easily dismissed once the shine was off.
He didn’t want that to happen with Moira. He valued what he had with her too much.
Trouble had a way of manifesting itself. Sometimes the best way to avoid the trouble was to avoid the cause.
“I think you’re afraid to get close to her or anyone. Your world suits you so well, you’re afraid to shake it up. You never liked change.” Richard snapped out the accusations.
Vin disagreed with that heartily. He was close to any number of people. Moira was just one of them, but had the disadvantage of being the only female. “That’s not it at all! Moira is my friend and I need that from her right now.”
“Haven’t you ever considered being friends and lovers?” Richard asked. “Why do you continue to think you can’t have both with her?”
Vin closed his eyes, almost hating Richard in that moment for putting the idea in his head. What if he could have it all? Moira as a friend and a lover? The image caught and Vin couldn’t shake it free. “Yer a bastard for even making me think it, Richard.”
“I’m the bastard?” Part of Richard wanted to laugh but the other half was put out. “You’re the one pissing on everyone who wants to help you.”
“Why does everyone feel like I need help? I can take care of my own problems, you know,” Vin gnashed his teeth in frustration. Jumping to his feet, Vin scooped up a handful of pebbles and went to the water’s edge. “I’m sick of every treating me as if I were still in nappies.”
“Then stop acting like you are!” Richard ran a hand through his hair as he watched his brother violently fling one pebble after another far out into the firth. “It’s frustrating as hell. You think I act the older brother sometimes? That’s because you’ve been so lost to the world that I feel I must. You live in a world of absolutes. Black and white. It strains credulity! Take her, Vin, give in to it!”
Vin flung the rest of the rocks into the water and turned staring back up at his family’s ancestral castle. Setting aside the negative consequences of acting on his impulses, the temptation his brother offered was almost overwhelming. A part of him wanted to push the carefully erected barrier of friendship with Moira aside and grab her with both hands. The risks in many different areas were daunting to say nothing of the ghosts that still haunted him. How could he give in when the past was very much in his present? “I can’t! Even if I wanted to, I don’t deserve her after what I have done!”
“What did you do that yo
u think Moira wouldn’t forgive you?” Richard was puzzled by this new argument. Vin had been away for a long time. There was nothing he could have had the opportunity to do here so it had to have been something during those years of solitude. What could he possibly have done?
However, when Vin’s eyes met his, Richard found them so bleak, so filled with pain that he was taken aback. “What?” he whispered almost dreading the answer now.
“I killed her brother.”
“Killed him?”
“I am the reason he’s dead,” Vin clarified feeling the pain well up in him once more. Again he saw Jason’s ghost in front of him, cursing him. “I am the only reason that he isn’t standing here today instead of me. I might as well have pulled the trigger myself.”
Chapter 23
Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.
Marquis de Sade
Glenrothes House
Carlton Terrace
That Night
“We can’t go on like this, Vin.”
Looking up from his suitcase, Vin groaned at the sight of Moira in the doorway. He would always remember her like that, he thought, looking soft, rumpled, and oh-so inviting standing in his chamber wearing only her nightclothes. Her hair fell in a mass of curls down her back and the firelight flickered over her delicate features. Vin threw more clothes into his steamer trunk.
He had taken the train back to Edinburgh with Richard this afternoon, but all along the way, Vin knew he couldn’t stay. Moira was right. They couldn’t go on as they were, so he was determined to leave. “I know.”
“What are we going to do about it?”
If she only knew how inviting those words sounded, she would never speak them again. Vin knew what he truly wanted to do, of course. He wanted to finish what they had started. He wanted to take her with all the passion and lust boiling inside him. He didn’t trust himself with her any longer.
He wouldn’t, couldn’t. Couldn’t risk losing Moira’s friendship by subjecting her to this infernal lust. Couldn’t face her hate if she knew the truth of Jason’s death. If he embraced this passion as Richard urged him to, it would all be lost. God, he didn’t want her to hate him. Vin just felt he needed to leave and keep his mouth shut in the process. “I’m leaving, Moira. That should solve the problem.”
“What?” Moira asked, finally taking in what he was about, the clothes scattered…the open trunk at his feet. He was leaving, running away? Their passionate encounter three days past had given Moira all the encouragement she needed to continue in her determination to have Vin’s love. How was she to push, lure and nudge him into realizing he loved her if he were gone? “You’re leaving? Where do you think you’re going?”
“To King’s Retreat,” Vin told her curtly. “I need to get away from here.”
Moira’s mind scrambled to come up with something…anything that would induce him to stay since his determination was palpable, urgent even. “What about your nightmares? You need to be able to rest, Vin.”
“I will work it out.”
“But it was working so well here,” Moira argued.
Vin shot her a look that told her just how well he thought it actually worked. “Aye, I slept well, but obviously I cannot be trusted here.”
“What do you mean?”
His brow rose as if questioning that an answer was necessary. “Come, lovey, can’t you see? I cannot stay here. I need to work this madness out of my system before I ruin the friendship we have. If I were to stay, I’d be pouncing on you every time you turned about.”
That didn’t sound like such a bad thing to Moira at all. Suddenly, lust and love became two separate things. Despite her hopes, she’d always known it was unlikely to have one of those things from Vin, that he would not allow himself to look on her in such a fashion. If she could not have his love, why not take what she could have? She wanted him; Moira knew there was no denying it. That she was wanted from love or what he considered only a physical problem, she no longer cared. She would take what she could get at this point for as long as she could. If she gave him her body, he might stay, might have time to grow to love her. She could keep him with her; hug those dreams of more for as long as he was interested in her. But to say it aloud? To offer herself to him at the risk of rejection? Swallowing back her nerves, Moira whispered, “What if I wanted you to?”
“I just told you, I cannot stay!” he repeated without looking at her.
For a moment, Moira thought he was rejecting her once more but then she realized he had misunderstood. “No, Vin. What if I wanted you to give in to your urges?”
It took a full minute for her words to sink in before he turned slowly to face her, a frown marring his brow. “You don’t know what you’re saying, lovey.”
“I think I do.” Though she was trembling with nerves, Moira thrust her chin up stubbornly.
“You don’t need to do such a thing,” Vin shook his head. “It’s just lust, Moira, and wrong at that.”
“Why is it wrong?” Moira asked, desperately grasping at straws. “You were…alone for a long time. I think it’s perfectly understandable that you don’t want to be alone any longer.”
“I’m not talking about having company, lovey,” he grunted, turning back to his packing certain that despite their impulsive kisses and such, Moira truly had no idea what he wanted to do to her.
“I didn’t think you were, Vin.” Moira couldn’t help it. Her temper was beginning to simmer. Never had she met a man who could drift so easily through his life in a constant state of denial. He’d been comfortable with the practice before his departure six years before but now seemed to have gotten it down to a science. Couldn’t he see what everyone else considered so obvious? Or was it just that he didn’t want to?
“Bugger it, lovey!” he barked at her, finally reaching the edge of his patience as well. His brogue, which had subsided over the years, burst forth with the strength of his anger. “Dinnae ye realize that I want to fook ye so badly I’m ‘bout to die from it? I cannae stay here wi’out thinking of fooking ye, dreaming of all the ways I could fook ye. I cannae even take another woman because it’s ye I’ve got to have!”
Desire washed over Moira in a shudder that ran from head to toe. Oh, yes, she had known he wanted her, but not like that! Though he wanted her, she thought in the end any woman would do. Never had she imagined that his lust was only for her. By God, she wanted him as well; had only wanted him over the course of her entire life. “Then take me, Vin!” she blurted out.
“Aye, and have Jason’s ghost haunting me for the rest of my days for more reason than he has already?” he gritted out, not truly absorbing her words. “He’d rise from his grave and kill me if he had any idea the thoughts in my head! Yer my best friend’s wee sister, Moira! I’m going to burn in hell for wanting ye so!”
“Jason’s dead, Vin!” she yelled back. “He’s not here anymore, especially not to haunt you for being human! He would not care about this! He’d forgive you!”
“But I canna forgive myself!” Vin roared, his words meaning more than Moira could know.
“Bloody hell, Vin! Look at me!” she shouted but Vin shook his head and pushed around Moira determined to get as far away from her as he could. “Jason isn’t here anymore! This is about you and me! Look at me! I’m not a little sister anymore. I’m a woman with her own wants and needs!
“Vin! Get back here! We’re not finished!” she screeched as he left the room without remarking on her words. “Don’t you understand at all that I want you to do it? I want you to do all those things you think about to me. I want you! Argh!” Moira picked up a candlestick and flung it as hard as she could into the fireplace. With the rattle and clang of the metal against the bricks, all the anger and frustration fled as quickly as they had come and she stared dejectedly into the ashes left from the last fire that had burned days before. Like those ashes, her life would be cold and empty when Vin left. She’d never even have a chance to hold him in
her arms if he were gone.
“What did you say?”
Moira jumped at the softly spoken words and turned to find Vin in the doorway. One hand was propped high on the jam as he leaned there watching her. She drank him in from his shaggy dark hair and whiskered jaw to his casual appearance. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and his shirt open to midchest in the front. He was even barefoot. Though his lips were set tensely, his dark eyes were burning hot. Never had Moira seen him look more appealing. “I said I want you, Vin.”
“To do what?”
Her nerves skittered but Moira met his eye softly admitting, “I want you to make love to me so badly I’m about to die from it.”
Vin shuddered hearing his own words turned back on him and stepped into the room determined to take Moira in his arms and spare them both the wanting. To finally have done with this mad passion. He would have denied himself infinitely to spare Moira, but if she wanted him as well…
To his surprise, Moira met him halfway throwing her arms around him and drawing his mouth down to hers. She met his lips passionately parting her lips to invite him in, but Vin drew back and looked down at her lovely face feeling surprise that she could kiss him so. Hadn’t she always thought of him as a brother as he had so long been determined to see her as a sister?
“Are you certain, lovey?”
“I’ve never been more certain.”
“Why?” he had to ask.
Because I love you, Vin. I have always loved you! her heart begged her to tell the truth but instead answered, “Because for a long time I have been as alone as you, Vin, and I don’t want to be alone any longer.”
Chapter 24
A Question of Lust (Questions For A Highlander Book 3) Page 18
