by Jackie Ivie
“That door leads back to the main hall. Follow it. Go to your chamber. Wait for me there.”
“Wait for you?” Lisle asked. Everything about her was swirling still, and there was a handsome, black-haired man at the center of it, beckoning to her, owning her…enthralling her…frightening her.
“I’ve got things to see to a-fore we finish our bargain.”
Chapter Sixteen
Langston’s room was comparable to hers, although his bed was twice the size of hers, and set up on a pedestal. That left less floor space, and consequently less room to pace in. Lisle looked about at the two sofa-sized benches, two opposing chairs in front of his fire, and then she was skimming her glance over the four marble-topped tables. He had sprigs of heather all about, putting the purple into prominence and making the air smell sweet. With the fire that was crackling and popping from a rock fireplace that looked like the stones had poured over the wall leading to his antechamber and flowed down to make a rock hearth, it looked comfortable and warm, and not at all like the den of iniquity that it had to be.
Lisle selected one of the chairs by his fire. She needed the warmth. She put her legs beneath her, folding them more for coverage than safety, and waited. The chemise reached to middle-thigh, grazing skin and raising gooseflesh, and she pulled on it, tucking it beneath where her knees met the front of the chair. That helped. Now, she had a tentlike enclosure, and nothing was clinging like it had been. She shouldn’t have been so specific, but that was of no help now.
She only had one chemise made of lawn, but it hadn’t been sewn with support and coverage in mind. There wasn’t much of the blue material across her bosom, making it nearly nonexistent, even with the added backing material in order to shade where it was cupping and lifting her, and making her very aware of every inch of her.
Her dozen seamstresses were each vying for creativity and jaw-dropping effects, and the woman who had designed this chemise had received sighs of pleasure from everyone but the wearer. There were little green-embroidered stems starting at the hem, climbing up the material and making it bunch and gather slightly with every thread in every needle hole. The stems got larger, crossing at her ribcage, before opening into two large tulip shapes, and that was what Lisle had been given to support her breasts.
It wasn’t working. It looked more like she was being lifted, and held out for display. In fact, the chemise wasn’t conducive to anything except drawing and holding the male eye. It did that job efficiently.
The door opened. Lisle craned her head over the top of the chair, and hoped her heart wasn’t pumping blood as rapidly into her cheeks as it felt like it was.
Langston was still attired in his kilt, although there was a vest tossed on for some reason. He hadn’t fastened it. That was unfortunate, Lisle decided. He’d also found his way into some mud, if the splatter of it on his socks was any indication, and he was either heaving with his exertions or he was having the same problem she was.
Lisle stood and watched as not only did his eyes go huge, but he took a step backward as well.
“Jesu’! Get something on!”
“But—” she began.
“Now! Get to the bed!”
“We…made a bargain,” she said softly.
“And you’re framed in the cursed firelight. Oh, my God!” He slapped a hand to his eyes with a definite smacking sound and then turned away, adding more words, said beneath his breath.
Lisle climbed the three steps to his bed and slid beneath the covers, placing her so far above and from him that she had to crane her head to see where he was.
He hadn’t moved, and if the firelight had been reflecting on her, it was being just as kind with him. Lisle watched as it flickered over flesh that had rivulets of what had to be sweat still glistening on it. Then he removed his hand, put both of them on his hips, and moved his head toward her.
“I am na’ sufficiently exhausted for this.”
“I doona’ understand. A bath requires exhaustion?”
“If you’re doing the assist…aye.”
“We had a bargain. I am paying it.”
He sucked in a huge breath before sending it back out. That was very interesting to watch. “You are a woman who knows the value of her word, once given. I admire that.”
“You ordered a bath, I trust?” Lisle was amazed her voice didn’t have any of the breathless quality he was making her feel, just by standing there, watching her. He should probably put more than a vest on his upper body, she decided.
“This is na’ a good idea.”
Lisle’s chin lifted and she swallowed.
“Yet it is a very good idea, at the same time.”
The pillows at her back were as soft and flexible as they’d looked. Lisle leaned back into them as he took a step toward her, and then another. He stopped when he reached the bottom of his structure, framing his upper chest and shoulders and that slicked-looking black hair with the white wall at his back and the coverlet at the bottom.
“You ken my meaning?” he asked.
“Nae.” She shook her head.
“You used your body to bargain with.”
“I dinna’!”
A slight smile touched his lips. “All right. I’ll say it with better words. You used my desire for your body to bargain with.”
Lisle’s eyes went wide. He was making certain she knew his intent, as he took a step up onto his platform, changing her view to include his abdomen.
“If I used such, it was na’ what you think,” she said through lips cold and difficult to move.
“Only because you doona’ know what you do, nor how to use it properly. I do.”
“As I already saw. Very well,” she interjected.
A smile touched his lips and he lifted a hand to push back at the hair that had escaped from behind his ears. “There’s a very big difference between us, Lisle…love.”
Love? Oh, sweet heaven! There was no stopping the instant flash of fire that hit her, making every part of her feel like it seared. Lisle shut her eyes, licked her lips, pulled in a breath, let it out, pulled in another, held it. Nothing was working. When she opened her eyes, he’d moved, leaning forward to support himself on his arms as he perched at the foot of his bed and watched her.
“Do you ken what this difference is?”
The words were spoken softly, or she was having trouble hearing over the drumbeat of sound pumping through her own ears. She shook her head again.
In response, he reached forward and pulled himself onto the bottom of the bed, using his arms and shoulders and the tucked-in coverlet for support and leverage in order to make the movement. Lisle wasn’t certain where her heart had gone to, because the beat was filling every portion of her. She didn’t dare blink.
“As I already made mention of it, I’m too exhausted to fight this any longer. I’ll cease the denials and just enjoy. I have nae other choice. I have tried this entire day to exhaust myself.”
“You have?” she asked.
“Aye.”
He reached forward again, shoving entire sections of himself into full, muscled view, and then he was wrapping his fists about hunks of coverlet and using it to slide himself farther onto the bed. He wasn’t but halfway onto the structure, and she had her knees nearly to her chin, but she could swear her toes were tingling.
“Why?”
“Because lessons doona’ come across well if they’re colored with passion. Naught much else does, either, now that I think on it.”
“Lessons?” she asked.
He licked his lips. Lisle’s entire body betrayed her as it pulsed. He saw it. She knew he did. “And passion,” he replied, and then he raised himself onto his hands and knees.
“P-p-pas…sion?” She stammered the word, and the last half of it was whispered.
“You ken what it is I see in you, Mistress Lisle?” he asked.
“Me?”
He licked his lips again. Her entire frame moved with it. It was the most horrid, unexpec
ted, amazing experience, and accompanied by such an increase in her pulse, and senses, that her eyes went even wider. He knew all of that, too.
“You. Blue eyes. Endless blue eyes, without a hint of guile, and more than a fair share of passion. Aye. You.”
He took a crawling motion toward her, and the mattress moved with it. Lisle couldn’t move her eyes. She was very afraid she’d forgotten how to blink. He’d reached the area below her curled-up feet, and went to his haunches, sliding with a seamless-looking movement. Then he was lifting one leg and wrapping his arm about it, and there wasn’t a bit of him that wasn’t worth looking over, more than once. Lisle did that very thing, although her eyes hadn’t received the command.
“You ken what the difference is yet?” he asked.
“You’re a very handsome man, Monteith.”
One side of his lips lifted. “I know. ’Tis one of my weapons. Actually, that part of us is the same.”
“What?” she asked. Weapons, she thought. He was talking weapons.
“We have the same weapon.” He said it in a soft whisper of sound, and moved, putting weight against her feet with the way he leaned forward.
“We do?”
“Oh, aye. You are a very beautiful woman, Lisle Monteith. Although there are thousands of beautiful women. You have something more. You have fire.”
She licked her lips and watched as a tremor ran through him when he saw it. The thrill of observing it surprised and scared her. She wondered if it was the same with him, and instinctively knew it was.
“Fire,” she said finally.
He nodded slowly and eased himself forward, until he was resting his chin atop her bent knees. There was a trembling going through where he touched her, even with the white coverlet between them. The tulip cups on her chemise were restrictive and scratching skin that had never felt the like. Lisle watched him glance there and grimace, before closing his eyes and making his trembling worse. It was some moments before he had it under control. At least, that’s what she suspected he was doing. Then he opened his eyes, showing the ale-colored warmth of them.
“And I am going to get severely burnt,” he said.
“You are?”
“Oh, aye. Mortally.”
“Why?”
He was moving closer, his weight bowing the support of her knees until they caved apart, placing him at the base of her stomach, and forcing the pounding to strengthen into a ear-filling beat.
“Because you doona’ comprehend what you do.”
He rolled onto his back, taking the coverlet with him, and if the chemise wasn’t fit exactly to every part of her, it would have gone, too. Lisle looked down at the man in her lap, and wondered at her sanity. He folded his arms across his chest, making the masculine bulging even more visual and distinct. She frowned.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You,” she replied. “This. Your strength. The ease with which you put all of it on display.”
“’Tis a weapon, Lisle. Doona’ mistake it for anything else.”
“Your body is a weapon?”
“As is yours.”
He moved his vision to include her tulip cups. Then he moved it back to her face. Lisle colored.
“There the resemblance ends. I know the penalty.”
“Penalty?” she asked.
“Aye. And I pay it…every time. Effortlessly. Without thought. Without regret and recrimination. You are different.”
“I am?”
He sighed. Everything on him moved with it. “You are a very handsome woman. Worse, you are a woman of passion, fire, and endless ecstasy.”
“Ecstasy?” she asked, although her lip quivered on the word.
“And I am doing my level best to ignore all of that.”
That had her frowning. He was reaching up and running a finger along the side of her cheek, ending at her chin. “Why?”
“Do you wish to be here?” he asked.
Lisle looked away, focusing for a moment on the fireplace that had seemed so warm and inviting earlier, and felt now like it was endless leagues away.
“Doona’ look away from me to answer that. Look here. Right here.”
He was lifting his head and pointing to his eyes. Lisle bent her head and complied, looking as deeply into his eyes as he would let her. There wasn’t a hint of anything save opaque black to be seen on the surface. She wondered why.
“Now…do you wish to be here or na’?” he asked.
“I…doona’ know. Perhaps,” she replied softly.
The amber was back, accompanied by a groan. “I am not exhausted enough for this!” He exclaimed it, and then proved the words by rolling back onto his hands and knees and putting his face very close to hers. That way, she had to feel every breath slipping over her face, watch every heave of his chest, and tremble all over with every bit of what he must be referring to when he called it passion.
“For what?” she asked right back, snarling slightly with the words, and sending her eyes all over him, since he’d arrayed himself for that purpose right in front of her. That much she understood.
“This!”
He reached forward to grip her shoulders; then he slammed her to his chest, crushing her tulip-encased bosom against the thick, heavy smell of him, melding himself into lace-covered sweat, and making her think her lawn chemise was too much material after all. Then he was looking at her, like he was asking something. Then he was filling his nose with the smell of her lips, her cheeks, and moving to an ear, and doing everything except the one thing she wanted.
His arms were as hard as they’d looked, and weren’t giving her much room to breathe as he continued his exploration.
“So sweet.” She thought she heard him murmur it, but it could be a mistake of the drum beating through her temples, and thumping everywhere along her. There was definitely a drum, pounding hard and in perfect rhythm to every one of her increased attempts for breath.
“So…passionate. So trusting. So open. So…clean. Fresh. So innocent.”
Lisle tried to turn her head to find his mouth, but he was denying that, too. She should have had Mary take out her braid before she’d dismissed the woman. It was just making it easier for him to slide his lips and breathe his words along her neck and over her shoulders, and everywhere but against her lips, where she wanted them.
“How…do you ken such?” she asked in the room he gave her.
“You reek of it, love. I doona’ trust only my nose, either. I trust all my senses. All of them.”
Love, she thought. There was that word again, but coming from him it couldn’t mean what it was supposed to. It couldn’t. The devil didn’t know what love was.
“Langston?” she asked.
He was inhaling and breathing all about the back of her neck and making shivers that were moving from there to the tips of her bosom, making little pinpricks of sensation that were tormenting her with the proximity of male flesh they were pressed against. From there, it was a quick drop all the way to where the chemise hem was, and that part of her really was on fire.
“Aye?” He whispered it, sending more rivulets to follow those already in motion, and that had her squirming and shoving, and doing her utmost to unlock his arms. All of which got her a chuckle, and that made a worse sensation as it traveled over her back, and settled into the same path that the other shivers had gone.
“Langston!” she tried again, sharpening her voice.
“You doona’ ken what you do,” he replied harshly.
“I know I doona’, but I want to do it!”
The shuddering that shook him with those words was made worse as he shoved himself onto his back, taking her with him and lifting her free of the remaining coverlet. Then he was running his arms all along her back and over her buttocks, and along the backs of her thighs that had never felt such a thing. Lisle gasped, and he had the motion, holding her lower lip between both of his while he sucked on it. That had her moaning, and he moved his mouth then, opening it to captur
e the sound, while his hands shifted, holding her loins tightly against a part of him possessing heat, and strength, and solid rigidity.
The sound of a long horn blast filled the room, growing in intensity and stridency, and it was followed by three shorter ones. Langston matched the cadence, moving her with it, the motion bringing her upward, and then back down, using the strength of his upper body, and nothing else.
“The horn.”
Lisle pulled her lips from his to say it, but he didn’t allow her time to say more before he had her mouth again, and this time he wasn’t allowing her any resistance at all. Lisle felt the straps holding the tulip cups in place moving as he peeled them down, rolling them into snakes of ribbon atop her arms.
She heard pounding, and it wasn’t any internal thing. It was nearly shaking the bed with it.
Langston lifted his head away, stared sightlessly at her for several moments, and then rolled his eyes up as he flung his head backwards. He was in luck that the mattress was soft, she thought, with a reaction such as that.
“My lord!” There was a frantic knocking at the antechamber door. “They’re at the drawbridge! At the bridge!”
“Run, Lisle.” Langston lifted his head and his look pierced her in place. “Run. To your chamber. Doona’ look back. You make me forget everything. I canna’ allow such a thing. Not now. Bloody hell. My arms have the weight of boulders.”
He was heaving great breaths when he finished the words, and it might be true, since his arms slid away with the weight of them.
“Why?” she asked.
“Are you still here?”
She nodded.
“Why?”
“Because you need help.”
He must have thought that the most amusing thing he’d ever heard, if the laughter that came from him was any indication. Lisle went onto her hands and knees, and then she was crawling down over the side of the bed.
“Go through the connecting door.”
“’Tis locked.” She checked it anyway. He raised himself.
“How did you get in here?”
“Through the hall.”
“In that attire? I’ll have you across my knee if you attempt such a thing again.”
