Her Enemy Highlander

by Nicole Locke

  He slowly shook his head. She hadn’t opened her eyes, but she could feel his hair brush against her shoulders.

  ‘It was trust,’ he insisted. ‘You trusted I’d care for you. So giving was your response.’

  Her body was against him, but Caird held back until she felt she wasn’t close enough. Finding purchase with his shoulders, she pulled and Caird shuddered out a sound, but he held firm.

  A few breaths. A few heartbeats until he continued, ‘Then you ran. You ran and I followed and I fought.’

  Mairead couldn’t make her legs cooperate so she could press more fully into him. Not when his lips reversed the trail along her neck, returned to her other ear, his tongue and breath both giving and denying contact.

  ‘I fought to keep you near me. Even then at the campsite, I knew I couldn’t let you go. That had nothing to do with the jewel, but with what I longed for with you.’

  His mouth was kisses and words, but his hands, oh, his hands’ caresses were both lengthy and fleeting, everything she needed and still not enough. Careful of her injury, he touched everywhere, but gave only whispers of heat.

  ‘Did you know I’d come for you?’ he asked.

  She felt his need hard against her as his hands tantalisingly skimmed up her arms that were wrapped around his shoulders and neck. He brushed his fingers over her clenched hands only to sweep back down her arms, along her sides and swirl at her lower back. And again.

  ‘Did you?’ he repeated, stopping his hands.

  She blinked. Had she? She remembered forcing the horse faster. She tried thinking. Caird stopped his hands and she needed them to move again. She’d known he’d come for her.

  ‘Aye,’ she answered.

  A curl to his lips. ‘It was trust.’ His hands continued their hovering caress. Touching her, but only increasing the pressure inside her. He was making her wait as she answered his questions.

  He should know she didn’t like to wait.

  She lowered her hands along his upper arms. ‘It was your arrogance, Colquhoun. I knew you’d follow because you felt entitled to kidnapping me.’

  ‘Stubbornness.’ Caird’s hands flexed at her waist, his breath hitched just at her jaw.

  He caressed again, but his hands and lips no longer skimmed, they swept.

  ‘It was trust that I’d follow,’ he said. ‘That I’d find you, protect you, keep you from harm.’ Just before he reached her lips, he whispered, ‘That blow to my chest I took purposefully.’

  She shook her head, not listening to his words, only aware of the increased pressure of his lips and hands. Because with just the shake of her head, he increased his touch again.

  She didn’t think he realised it. But if denying him and caressing him made his control slip, she’d do it again.

  ‘An accident only,’ she insisted. ‘You didn’t care for my safety. You didn’t want me fleeing and ruining our tale to your cousins. Your worry was for show.’

  ‘I worried for you. Even then, and far too much.’ Caird flexed his hands on her sides. ‘Your trembles as I held you were real. I trembled, too.’

  She shook her head as she gripped his arms, the leverage enough to pull him roughly closer.

  His surprise was all she needed. She tilted her head until her lips were against his.

  He held still. A heartbeat, and another.

  ‘Your response,’ he growled against her lips. ‘To me.’ A warning. ‘Is trust,’ he insisted as another sound, something primal, erupted from deep within him.

  Gripping her hips, Caird kissed her.

  Her breasts ached and she moved against him, tiny movements, which only increased the tension.

  Another sound from Caird, him moving, a jolt to their bodies as his shins found the bed.

  He pulled his head away, breaking their kiss, but not his intent. ‘The flooded river,’ he said hoarsely. ‘You wanted me.’

  She nodded, but he wasn’t looking at her.

  ‘Tell me,’ he repeated.

  ‘Aye,’ she said, her voice not her own and just as breathless as his. ‘Aye, I wanted.’

  He swallowed. ‘And how did you feel when I followed you? When I swam, when I ran, when I feared I wouldn’t reach you?’

  The icy water dragging her down. Caird too far away. But when she had been struggling to breathe, to survive, she’d kept her eyes not on the shore, but on him. She’d known he’d come for her.

  She had never depended on anyone. Because she’d never had anyone like Caird before. There was only one word to describe how it felt. But could she say it?

  When Caird was touching her and kissing her, she was helpless not to answer him.

  ‘Wondrous,’ she answered truthfully, impulsively. ‘It felt wondrous.’

  He nodded, satisfied. ‘Trust is wondrous,’ he said. ‘When you put your back to mine against those soldiers. When I woke from my injury, knowing you had saved my life by mending me, by protecting me.’

  Even as she protested, Caird lowered her down. ‘It was wondrous trust,’ he said.

  Her feet touched the floor, but it was only so his fingers, his hands, quick, efficient, could unlace the cords of her old gown and push the torn and frayed material off her shoulders. Only so his palms and spreading fingers could tug the weakened fabric until it unravelled and fell in defeat around her ankles.

  Gripping her transparent chemise, his eyes on hers, he ripped the garment in two. On a shuddered sigh, it billowed around them until she was completely bared to him.

  ‘Mairead,’ he said with reverence. His eyes didn’t hold hers any more. Instead, they roamed over her body and she felt his eyes everywhere.

  Under his gaze, her body didn’t feel like her own. She took a much needed breath and his eyes stilled and rested on her breasts.

  ‘Your skin,’ he whispered. ‘Against your dark hair and eyes, it’s impossibly white, impossibly soft. I’ve only had a taste and I only want more.’

  Her legs and limbs were shivering. She stood, but she felt as if she was moving in different directions at the same time. It wasn’t only his touch, it was his words, too.

  ‘Are you sure you had nae ale?’ she asked.

  ‘I do speak,’ he breathed roughly. ‘When I can’t control, can’t restrain, I speak words. Ale makes me so and apparently so do you.’

  ‘I make you without control?’

  ‘Constantly. More so than ale and I’m not used to it. Like now with you bare before me.’

  As his arms and hands worked slowly, efficiently, Caird’s gaze brushed upwards and stayed with hers. She blinked and his tunic was gone.

  In daylight every scar, scrape and wound was shown in relief, but that wasn’t what held her gaze. It was the breaths he took, the heightened colour of his skin, the sheen of sweat as he laboured. Laboured simply by looking at her.

  Another blink, and another, his leggings and braies hit the floor.

  In front of her, Caird stood naked. She’d seen him, but never—never—like this. Everything was different.

  Because now it was daylight. And the sun wasn’t as hot or warm or as magnificent as the man in front of her.

  Still he didn’t take; still he waited. She was beginning to realise what he meant by showing her trust would kill him. Because she felt that way as well, dying bit by bit, but also recreated. Reborn into something more. Something different.

  Caird took the step necessary to hold her. When he did, the hairs on his arms brushed against the sides of her already sensitive breasts and she couldn’t stand any more.

  When he held her closer, it was shocking, surprising, overwhelming, everything and nothing she could expect.

  The strength of muscle beneath heated skin, sinew binding and tensing from lifting her, beginnings of slickness encouraging her fingers to trace and
glide.

  She wanted to touch it all.

  Caird held Mairead close to him. Her body everything he thought it could be, and more.

  ‘I doona know the way of this,’ Mairead whispered.

  She tilted her chin to raise her eyes to him. He was left with shaking legs when he saw the desire and trepidation in her eyes. Just that look alone sent such a satisfaction through him, he immediately craved to hold and claim her. To take.

  ‘Of this?’ he asked, his fingers moving along her cheek. ‘Or of what we have between us?’

  She had more generous curves than any gown had outlined. More tempting skin than the sunlight revealed through her chemise. Her curves, her breasts, her hips spilled against him. And his hands and mouth felt unbearably greedy.

  Calling on his last reserves of patience, he waited for her answer. ‘Mairead?’ he asked.

  ‘Both,’ she whispered.

  A precious answer.

  ‘There is nae way of this. There is only removing doubts. There is only us.’ His finger tucked a curl behind her ear. ‘What is it you want to do?’

  ‘Touch,’ she answered. ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘Impulsive.’ His lips curved as the tension grew.

  Now that she was given the freedom to touch, it was her eyes that roamed.

  She laid her palms just below his chest and along the ridged symmetrical planes of his stomach. Her fingers traced around his wound. The fresh stitches were fine and holding. Around the area she’d burned, the wound was only faintly pink. It would scar, but it was healing.

  She continued to gaze as her hands felt. Her fascination increased as she stepped closer to reach higher up the expanse of his chest and shoulders. Closer, standing on her toes, until she leaned against him and he grasped her hands. Held her. A pause, a breathless wait. She darted a look. His face was darkened with colour; his cheeks were hollowed as if he took a sword wound again.

  Mairead’s tentative touch was brief and the barest hint of time he craved from her hands. Even so, he couldn’t withstand it. Not when he still needed to show her trust.

  Releasing her hands, he vowed, ‘Another time.’ Then he lifted and lowered her to the bed as he knelt between her legs.

  With her lying before him, he savoured her kiss-swollen lips. Greedy, his hands kneaded her generous hips and her outer thighs before caressing upward, until he covered and cupped her breasts. When she gave a sound of pleasure, he broke the kiss.

  ‘Your response,’ he said with a curve to his sensual lips. His hair, disarrayed and wild, fell forward with the tilt of his head.

  He held her breasts in his broad warrior’s hands. Her pale skin against his tan. Soft, unmarked against calloused and scarred.

  ‘Now will you, Colquhoun?’ Her hands clutched the linens beneath her.

  ‘Soon, I’ll take, Buchanan, I’ll take until you’re helpless to give. When you do... I’ll take again,’ he replied.

  He adjusted himself between her, one leg closer to the apex of her thighs. Eyes locked with hers, his hands circled, cupped, kneaded. And again.

  ‘Glimpses of your breasts, of wondering how they’d feel.’ Circling again, cupping, kneading. A rhythm he repeated again. And again. ‘Never enough.’

  Her breasts filled with a sort of burning heat that wasn’t pain, but something hotter, something searing.

  ‘Now to see, to feel their weight in my hands.’ He lowered his head, so his whispering words fanned across her and increased the pleasure and pressure. ‘To almost taste them.’

  The pleasure built as he hovered his mouth over her, as he continued his rhythm. She needed to move, tried to move, but his knee was there, blocking, forcing her to lift her hips up— She gasped. Not a barrier at all. Exquisite pleasure arced through her.

  He held still as if she shocked him. Without raising his hands or his mouth, he slowly moved his knee.

  ‘Not like that, not so soon,’ he said against her breasts, but she sensed a new tension in him. Something feral. She felt that same tension at her breasts, and between her thighs. She was desperate to move again.

  ‘What do you do?’ she asked, wanting his knee to return. Her hands cupped his head to keep him there in case he moved that pleasure, too. Never had she felt like this.

  ‘Showing you trust,’ he said. ‘And I can nae longer wait.’

  He lowered his mouth and she felt the flicker of his tongue, the press of his lips on her breasts.

  She gasped.

  An answering sound from him. Hungrier, greedier kisses, everywhere she wanted and yet... never did he touch the tips.

  She couldn’t keep sounds inside nor her movements still. She wanted more.

  Finally, agonisingly, she felt his breath against her nipples and she whimpered.

  His mouth hovering, a curl to his lips, his hands stilled again.

  ‘Your response, Mairead,’ he said. ‘Give me your response.’

  Breath fast against her, he waited for answers she couldn’t allow. Even now.

  His brows drew in. ‘You doubt.’ Incredulous. ‘You gave me trust, Mairead, more than I could ever hope.’

  He breathed deeply, holding on to his slipping control as he moved his mouth away. ‘When you told me I’d come for you.’

  Caird gave her breasts more strokes, more slides of his fingers until she moved with and from his touch. Until she arched and tightened. She needed his lips, his mouth right where he poised it above her. And he was making her wait.

  ‘You doubt,’ he said, ‘but against all odds I fought and won because you trusted me.’

  Cupping her breasts, lifting them again, his mouth hovering at the tip, his breaths tormenting, he vowed, ‘It was a precious thing. Your trust and your response. I’ll show you.’

  Mairead, her want sharp, felt the heady pleasure of his breath and roughened chin. Then finally, breathtakingly, his mouth covered the tip and rolled her nipple with his tongue.

  Her breath stopped on a gasp.

  Eyes locked with hers, his hand lifted the other breast to his waiting mouth. A longer wait. Then a sound before he sucked, and stroked, and pulled—more.

  Pleasure ripped through her. Giving waves of release.

  When Mairead’s response eased and her breaths returned, Caird rested his head between her breasts and cupped his arms around her sides. Her body was sated, soft and ready for him.

  He forced his breaths to return, for the pain of desire to subside. Mairead had given her response, but not her trust.

  It wasn’t enough. He needed to remove her doubts; he needed to show her more. Right now, he didn’t know if he could.

  Her touch. Tentative along his head, his hair, his shoulders. Pleasure easing his pain. Needing more, he held still.

  Mairead didn’t know the way of this. But Caird was showing her. His words and touch were intense and wondrous pleasure. Her body felt complete as he rested and cradled her against him. Impossibly, it also made her crave him more.

  She couldn’t crave more. Already she’d almost lost him.

  ‘Were there many?’ she asked. The soldiers, at the village. She’d never asked.

  Caird turned his head, but kept it resting on her chest. He seemed to want her touch along his slickened skin, so she continued. As her fingertips circled back along his shoulders, his breaths eased.

  ‘Harsh and hard odds, and at least one I missed,’ he answered, a different tension in him.

  He didn’t tell her how many soldiers. She feared he didn’t know because there had been too many to count.

  ‘Does it pain you...your shoulder?’ he whispered. ‘With me, like this, is it too much?’ He lifted his head.

  ‘Nae,’ she whispered. She hardly noticed it. Not now. Not when her heart pained her worse. The feeling was so fierce, she coul
dn’t avoid it. It was fear at almost losing him. And yet, as she had stood there in front of the Englishman, she knew he’d come for her.

  Caird watched as the light in Mairead’s eyes changed. They were dark and fathomless, but the life within them gave shimmering light to their depths. Like a night sky with too many stars to count.

  What he saw there gave him hope. Some conflict, some doubt was there, but she was starting to believe. Her eyes gave him strength to show her more, to make her bright eyes glaze with passion.

  He wanted to bring her to that peak again. He knew her body was ready for him. But it wasn’t enough, he needed her trust.

  Adjusting himself, he started again. Trying to be gentle, trying to coax with his hands, he kissed, he touched. But his ragged control slipped with a caress along her arm, a taste around her fingers, a breath against her wrist.

  ‘Caird?’ she whispered as she touched. Tentative caresses weakening...undoing him.

  ‘Follow me,’ he asked. Did she want words? They were burned out of him by her response, by her doubt.

  He kissed along her bared shoulders, down the valley between her breasts and underneath.

  His hands moved along her sides; his fingers feathered along her waist until he felt her hips. Then he moved his hands and mouth lower yet.

  ‘What do you do?’ she whispered, her hands tightening along his arms, refusing him.

  ‘Showing you,’ he said. ‘Trust.’

  Reverently, savouring the texture and taste of her, he continued his kisses along her stomach. He stroked the softness and heat of her skin. He had to give and show her patience, and it was breaking him.

  Delicately, intensely, Mairead’s hands eased and released their grip. Then, he heard her response above the sudden roaring in his ears, above his need for her.

  Her response. ‘Please.’

  When Mairead’s hands began their tentative caresses, Caird knew he could no longer be gentle. He was taking as his body demanded he do. The taste of her, the feel of her breasts and her release now drove his need.

  He took her hands, so much smaller than his and pressed them above her head. Taking his other hand, he caressed and kissed along her hip, along her thigh. Her tiny movements encouraging what he desperately wanted.