by Lisa Torquay
Her magnificent dark eyes attacked him with vexation for several seconds before she defied his order by taking impulse and climbing up her equine friend. Her wide riding habit skirts allowed it, bunching slightly to show her boots.
Fingal froze, the wrenching fear of losing her—should the horse spring and cause her to fall and break her neck—almost suffocated him. He did not allow panic to dominate him though; he strived to stay alert, in case he needed to stop the beast even if with his bare hands.
Fiadhaich did not move. Neither did Fingal, lest the animal react badly to a sudden rush.
The impossible lass smiled and caressed the strong neck as she coaxed him to go with slow, small pulls on the reins and knees. Miracle of miracles, before the laird’s own eyes, the horse started on a walk as if he was the sweetest gelding ever to roam the Earth.
The stable lads stopped what they were doing. Craig, who was passing by, stood outside the fences, jaw dropped. Fingal lifted an imperious hand ordaining everyone to continue quiet.
No one seemed to think it weird her riding astride, marvelling instead at the horse whose name made a mild description of his indomitable nature.
Emily did not cease to talk to the stallion, treating him with care and handling him with utter thoughtfulness. Under her competent tutelage, the horse trotted, cantered, and even galloped for a few minutes.
First frozen from fear, Fingal morphed into mesmerised by the image of his brave amazon on the purebred. A myriad of tangled impressions crossed him, tying him in a million knots. Amazement at her accomplishment, admiration for her resilience, satisfaction to see his horse so happy for the first time in months. And the hottest desire that had ever collided with him. It came on so boiling his mind almost stopped functioning.
But it still worked enough for him to see the other men looking at her with equal coveting.
And then he burned with murderous jealousy.
At that second, the lass halted the horse and dismounted in graceful movements. When she landed safely, the men exploded in applause and cheers, eliciting a smile from her. “It’s not me,” she said. “He is a darling,” she praised the horse as she gifted him with a carrot.
Still, the bastards coveted.
They were treated to a lethal scowl as Fingal gave a curt wave with his hand, dismissing them summarily. They left none too content.
His attention returned to her as her brows pleated at his curtness with his employees. Those confounding impressions blinded him too much to care. His strong fingers grabbed hers, and in large strides he took her to the adjoining shed and banged the door shut. Pressing her to the wooden wall, his large hand lined her nape. “If my men watch you riding astride ever again, I’ll kill them all!” he growled before he pillaged her mouth.
A moan stuck in her throat while her arms circled his shoulder, fingers merging in his hair.
Oh, yeah.
He buried his instantly raging erection on her soft belly and deepened the kiss as if his life depended on it. It did because he might die from his lust for her.
Wide skirts and all, she looped one leg around his and pulled him even closer. He had never imagined he would find such a fiery woman in his entire life. The simple gesture drove him close to undoing for the simple fact it showed how much she wanted him, too. Earthy and sensuous, his amazon.
Frantic, breath ragged, he unbuttoned the riding habit’s tailored jacket and scraped his stubbled mouth down the low neckline it revealed. He inhaled the woman scent on her satiny skin, desperate for more. Her sigh was response enough to fuel his out-of-control self.
“I’d give ten years of my life to be inside you,” he groaned on her sensitive skin.
“Yes,” she breathed in agreement.
Fingal clasped his mouth to hers again as if it would quench a thirst the likes of which he had never seen in his life. It would not quench it. Nothing would.
But they tried.
And failed miserably.
A soft neigh out in the stockyard took Fingal out of his hazy craving and dissatisfied state. He lifted his head to her, to find the same haze in her eyes, flushed skin, and ragged breath. He put distance between them to register his tented tartan.
Forceful air escaped through his nostrils, and he raked his hand through his luxuriant hair. “You’d better go before someone happens on us.”
Eyes wide on him, they drank on each other for long moments as she nodded and buttoned the tailored jacket, leaving the cramped space.
The day had come when they would risk Fingal mounting Fiadhaich. Catriona’s heart beat with blistering speed at the mere idea. That the horse took her did not appear so out of sorts, seeing how he accepted a female better than a male. But a man was something else.
She had ridden the stallion several times in the last few days, but exclusively in the fenced space. It would not do to get him used to her taking him around the estate when she would not be the one to ride him on a daily basis. Her intention had been to check if the horse would accommodate a rider and pave the way for a man to do it.
Now that it was happening, dread mixed with anxiety and restlessness. The powerful stallion’s response might very well be unpredictable and utterly dangerous. If Fingal got hurt, she did not know what she would do, how she would react. Badly, no doubt.
Catriona remembered how the Arab beauty had become rebellious when they first bridled and then saddled him. The poor darling had suffered too much.
That morning, ready for a ride, they had exercised him for a long hour. There was no delaying it any longer.
“I’ll soothe him, while you mount.” she offered when Fingal approached Fiadhaich.
“You will do no such thing.” Why the blasted laird insisted in ordering her about was a mystery since she almost never heeded him.
“He might react badly otherwise,” she debated.
“Exactly because of that, I want you safely out of the way,” he insisted.
The stable staff wandered about at their tasks but seemed attentive to what took place in the stockyard.
“And precisely because of that, I want to stay here and see if I can avoid it.”
They faced each other stubbornly with a few feet between them while the stallion stood by their sides.
“Damn you, Sassenach!” he said under his breath.
She grinned at that. “Ready?”
“Yes, but promise me to get outside as soon as I’m mounted.” Fists on his hips, he looked directly down at her.
Catriona made a show of sighing with aggravation. “Agreed.”
Despite her bravado, her fear for his safety increased—not a positive thing when animals could sense your mood. With a deep inhale, she tried to calm herself.
As Fingal put his foot in the stirrup, Catriona talked with Fiadhaich in soft tones. When the laird sat on the saddle, she gave him a carrot. The man’s other foot was placed in the other stirrup, as well.
“Leave,” he said curtly.
With no other choice, she did after caressing her equine friend on the nose.
Out of the fence, she held on to it tensely. Surely, the stallion had been mounted before, or he would not have accepted her so promptly. Yet, his past plight might get in the way.
Wide-eyed, she willed the darling beast to take care of Fingal as she would.
Fiadhaich’s front feet dug on the ground as he snorted his impatience, shaking his head. From where she stood, she talked to him as she usually did in calm soft tones.
Cautious, Fingal pulled the reins and kneed the flanks slightly. At first, the horse did not budge. It was the precise point he might follow or rebel. The horseman waited, and she continued her soothing from afar.
What felt like an eternity hung over them. The horse moved a foot. Then another. One pace, a second, and he was trotting around the yard. Catriona exhaled in pure relief at the horse’s yielding but kept her watch.
For half an hour, Fingal rode in varied speeds. Next, he stopped, dismounted, caught a carrot from Catriona, and offer
ed it to the purebred.
And went on to try again. By then, the surrounding fence had filled with people as the stallion and rider made progress.
Naturally, it was merely the first time Fingal rode him. The training would finish when Fiadhaich showed to be amenable to riding around the estate.
Fingal dismounted, gave the horse to one of the lads and exited the yard. “Well, Sassenach, you seem to have made it,” he praised as he neared her.
Their eyes clasped with much more meaning than that platitude. “It was not me,” she emphasised. “He did it because he received love and care.”
“Yes, but your soft guidance and understanding were essential,” he insisted.
In the days that followed, Fingal rode Fiadhaich in the stockyard several times with her as an observer. Then they took the horse by the reins to other parts of the grounds for him to make his recognition.
Finally, they tried a ride through the estate. Catriona rode Debranua by Fingal and Fiadhaich, stopping many times for the stallion to rest, eat, or drink from the lochs or brooks along the way. The ride proved uneventful.
Catriona’s time in the McKendrick had come to an end.
Not that she became too happy about it. Not at all. For more reasons than one. She would have to leave Scotland, to start with, without knowing when or whether she would return. And leave the man—the most wrong, improper, maddening man she had ever met.
Melancholy feelings mixed with a certain relief that her life would go back to its watery normality without anyone being the wiser. Not even this obliterated the certainty that whatever ‘normal’ life she attained, it would pale in comparison to what she dreamed for herself. Her beloved Highlands eternally far away. And this man, well, this man would remain a memory of what could never be.
“I’ll leave tomorrow,” she informed him as they returned from the ride. She would send word to Flora and Peter before she packed.
Fingal rounded on her, a frown between his luminous eyes. “Stay a day more.”
Her head shook slightly. “I can’t. It’s been too long.” No point postponing the inevitable.
Staring directly ahead, he gave a curt nod.
They did not speak until they returned to the stables. The stallion stayed in the smallest one of the complex where no stable hand slept so the Arab beauty could rest properly after his intense training.
Catriona prepared for her trip the next day. After bathing, she packed her things in her trunk, separating the practical dress she would wear for the trip that would last for several days, if the weather held. Or more, if not.
She retired to bed early to start refreshed in the morning.
But sleep eluded her.
Thousands of agitated thoughts crossed her mind in gnarled succession like a wheel that never stopped. Tired of tossing and turning, she got up, threw her cloak over the nightgown and left her tower room with a lantern.
She exited through the back door and roamed aimless in the fresh night. Deep silence greeted her, broken only by the occasional cricket. Without consciously knowing where she was going, she neared the stable where Fiadhaich stayed. Maybe unconsciously she wished to say a last good bye to the courageous horse who succeeded in overcoming his sad story.
Hanging the lantern on a nearby peg, she headed to his stall. The horse put his head over the low door to welcome her. Long minutes passed as she talked to and stroked him.
The poor beast needed rest, so she hugged him a last time. “I’ll miss you, darling boy,” she murmured.
“Will you miss me too?” a deep voice said from the entrance.
CHAPTER NINE
Her feet swivelled to Fingal as her heart gave a huge somersault. Dark eyes bulged on him, tall, broad, ruffled hair, tartan in disarray. Shirtless. Did the man not know what the sight of his steel torso did to her? Transformed her into a famished creature.
He closed the door with a resolute click that caused goose bumps on every inch of her. As he prowled to the stall, her breath hitched in her throat.
“I saw you from my study,” he explained as he halted less than four feet from her.
Her lips drew an ‘oh’ that made his eyes flay them and continue down to her cloaked silhouette, to raise back up to the gaze that had not torn from him since the first moment he arrived, speech nowhere to be found. His presence had the power to subvert every brain function as she froze there with a thousand feelings coursing through her.
“You didn’t answer my question.” Two more steps and he stood so close she registered the heat emanating from him.
The rasp mushroomed steam to all those forbidden places. “I—maybe,” she blurted as her head bent back to sustain his intense glare.
Every single cell clamoured for him as if they pulled her in his direction without her mind allowing it, so uncensored it never ceased to amaze her.
Square hands clasped her tiny waist. “Why do you insist on lying, Sassenach?”
Somewhere in the farthest precinct of her mind, a timid thought told her to leave. To tear her darned eyes from him and trudge to the door to save her body, her soul, and even her tattered pride, of which there was no sign at the moment.
“I’m not—”
And then one of his hands slipped under the cloak to cup her breast. Everything else lost meaning, her name, her clan, her future role in his life. Every single thing lost meaning. In this dim, enclosed place, she was merely a woman that needed this man more than an eagle needed to fly. The world outside served for nothing more than to impose its meaningless rules on mortals incapable of following them. And by Jove, she was a mortal, more than willing to commit mortal sins. Revel in them, die laughing at them, like a mad woman who was happy once. Only once.
His thumb started rubbing the peaked mound and, besides losing its meaning, everything disappeared—turned to sensation, to fire, to yearning.
Her head fell back with a sigh as she held his bare shoulders. Deft fingers unclasped her cloak, and it bunched on the boards, leaving her in a lacy nightgown.
Cinnamon eyes meshed with hers, drinking, seeking. “I cannot offer you marriage,” he rasped.
She had this impulse of scoffing at his scruples, not because they were funny, no. But because she had kicked hers through the window the second he snapped the door shut.
“Neither can I.” It aired as a faint breath.
His gaze burned hotter on her when a side-smile drew his sculpted lips. Agile, his muscled arm laced her by her waist to lift her from the ground and carry her to an empty stall. Unwrapping his tartan, he threw it on the fluffy piles of hay disposed there.
For the second time in her life, Catriona looked her fill, enraptured by his rugged beauty. His fierce hand shot out to her nape and brought her obedient mouth under his in a hungry kiss. With a muffled moan, she laced his neck with both arms and clung to his naked frame. His smart fingers unbuttoned her neckline and in seconds her nightgown fell in a whisper on the hay. And they were skin to warm skin, again, as it should.
“It’s impossible to stay away, Emily,” he mumbled, his stubble rasping her skin everywhere.
“So don’t,” she replied as her own lips tasted him where they could reach.
He made her lie on the tartan, and it was softer than her mattress. His strong body covered hers as she received him, cradled him with arms and legs. Her bosom revelled in the roughened chest, her legs grazed his hairy thighs, her fingers merged in his luxuriant hair; the scent of him, green woods and man, infiltrated her nostrils. Their lips joined with pure starvation. They kissed with eagerness. Then they kissed with urgency. Kissed with thirst. Then with lust as they became more and more carnal. For long moments they devoured each other like there was no tomorrow.
There was not, in fact.
His ever-greedy mouth descended along her neck to nip the curve with her shoulder. And lower. And lower, where he clasped one breast with his mouth and his hand held the other possessively. She responded with moans, with her fingers raking his hair, with
her head falling back in pure delight.
His stubble trailed further down until his shameless lips clutched to her between her legs, fairly to consume her, unbridled, with lascivious insistence. He savoured all of her, heedless of what he was doing to her, to the heat spreading and singeing her, to the eruption that taunted and threatened. He took her to the verge of insanity, smearing her moist flesh with savage intent. The outburst came, inevitable and total. Her spine arched as a long moan escaped her throat.
Returning over her, he braced his arms at her side, eyes piercing hers. “I’ll possess you, Sassenach,” he growled. “Because you’re mine, and will always be.”
No time for her to answer as the tip of him met her, and she opened in extreme need for him to fill her. He entered her and sat to the hilt, simply to stop, as if careful not to hurt her.
But the beginnings of another orgasm flourished in the depths of her.
“Move, Fingal!” she demanded, pulling him with her legs.
“Wait…you need time to—”
“Move, for pity’s sake, I am—”
And he did. Deep, hard, true.
Her deflagration came twice as intense as the first, spreading waves and more waves of pleasure through her body. His flesh inside her was the most indescribably delicious thing she had ever experienced.
“Damn it, woman, you’ll turn me to dust!”
He let go, thrusting fast, erratic, in between harsh grunts, unforgiving pushes. He touched something in the bottom of her, wrenching one more ragged orgasm from her, before exploding with a mindless growl as he emptied himself to his last drop.
He fell on her, panting, to find sanctuary in the curve of her neck.
When his breath had gone back to normal, he fell on the tartan and pulled her with him. They lay entwined for a long time.
Fingal wanted to flog himself for his weakness one minute. On the next, he wanted to yell his exhilaration from the top of Ben Nevis itself, only to rush back and take her again. And again. All in one single breath. The same she stole with her unreserved passion.
