The Arrow

by Monica McCarty

  She leaned into him, burying herself against his chest, taking refuge in the protective strength of the arms around her, and letting him comfort her. He murmured low, soothing words against her head as he gently rocked her sobs away. Gradually, the breath returned to her lungs and the panicked race of her pulse began to slow.

  It was just a horrible dream, a return of one of the nightmares that had haunted her for years after that horrible day. There were different versions, including the one she’d just had where the soldier was raping her mother, and she kept hitting him over and over but he wouldn’t die. Another was of Cate in the well, starving and dying of thirst. All the joy and relief she experienced when she heard the rescuers turned to horror when the face that looked down at her wasn’t Gregor’s, but the soldier’s. The worst was the nightmare that actually happened, the replaying in her mind of those hideous seconds of her mother’s death, in slow, precise detail.

  She thought she’d rid herself of the nightmares for good, but all it took was seeing that man today to bring them back. Deep down, she knew they wouldn’t be gone until the soldier paid for what he’d done.

  Suddenly, angry at herself for the weakness, she drew back from the wall of Gregor’s chest—his bare chest, as she was just noticing—dabbing her eyes on the sleeve of her linen chemise. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  He released her. “You had a nightmare.”

  His gaze turned to the open doorway. Her embarrassment increased tenfold. It seemed like half the household was standing on the small landing outside her room. In the stream of light coming from the torch mounted outside her chamber she could see the concerned faces of Ete, Lizzie, Pip, and two of Gregor’s guardsmen, Bryan and Cormac.

  “It’s all right,” Gregor said. “Return to your rooms. I have her.”

  I have her. Though she knew it meant nothing, her heart tugged sharply nonetheless.

  The light dimmed as the crowd dispersed. Gregor stood to light a candle from the brazier, taking the time to add another block of peat to the fire. Before returning to sit beside her on the bed, he closed the door.

  Suddenly self-conscious, she felt her cheeks grow hot under his steady gaze. The temperature in the room seemed to have shot from the dead of winter to the height of summer in a few seconds. She was hot, and she knew it wasn’t from the peat; it was from the intimacy of being alone with him in her small bedchamber. Of course, the broad, muscular chest shimmering in the candlelight that seemed to fill every inch of her vision wasn’t helping matters.

  Good gracious, how did it get so defined like that? There didn’t appear to be any spare flesh on the man of which to speak. She could count the lines crossing his stomach, for heaven’s sake.

  He truly was magnificent.

  But he didn’t care about her. Reminding herself what had happened earlier—and his plan to be rid of her—she pursed her mouth and forced her eyes from the fever-inducing display of muscle.

  “I’m fine,” she said briskly. “I’m sorry for waking you. You can go back to bed now.”

  He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting her gaze to his. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re still shaking.” She was, she realized. “Christ, I’m still shaking. You scared the hell out of me. You sounded like you were in agony.” She had been. The agony of being helpless to do anything as your mother was raped and murdered before your eyes. “The soldier?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She stared into those gorgeous green eyes, felt her heart swell, and then shook her head. The soldier was the last thing she wanted to talk about. Not when Gregor was holding her like this. It might be the last chance she ever had.

  The air in the room seemed to change. It grew sharper and filled with a strange buzz. His eyes darkened, and his voice, when it came, deepened. “What do you want, sweetheart? Tell me how I can make it better.”

  Sweetheart. Her heart thudded. It was the second time he’d called her that. He never used endearments with her—never. Did it mean something? Was the tenderness in his eyes a trick of the candlelight, or could she trust what she was seeing?

  There was one way to find out. She told him the truth. “I want you to hold me in your arms and kiss me. I want you to make me forget.”

  Gregor stilled, cursing himself for a damned fool. What the hell had he expected? He knew better than to ask a question to which he didn’t want to hear the answer. But there she was in his arms—practically sitting on his lap—with her big, dark eyes wide and shimmering with tears, her face still pale and stricken by the tortured memories of her nightmare, looking more vulnerable than he’d seen her in a long time, and he’d never felt so bloody helpless in his life. He would have done anything to make it better. Anything to wrench those memories from her mind and allow her to forget. So he’d asked his fool question.

  God’s breath, she had no idea what she was asking of him. Kiss me. Make me forget. As if it were that easy, when just looking at her gazing up at him made his pulse race and his blood feel like something churning in a volcano. He wanted to do a hell of a lot more than kiss her. A whole hell of a lot more. And he didn’t trust himself to touch her. He, the man who never lost control and always knew exactly what he was doing in the bedchamber, realized he was looking at the woman who could break him.

  Every instinct in his body was standing on edge shouting Warning!, telling him that kissing her in the broad daylight was bad enough; he’d be mad to do so in a darkened chamber, alone, with both of them barely clothed.

  But she needed him, damn it. How could he refuse?

  Easily. But he didn’t want to. God knew, he needed to forget, too. The memory of her scream was too fresh. His blood had run cold. An icy sheen of panic had raced over his skin. He’d thought someone was hurting her, and it had left him weakened, stripped bare, without his usual defenses.

  Aye, that was the only explanation for how easily he succumbed to her siren’s call. How willingly his lips touched hers, even when he knew how hard it would be to pull away.

  He could do this, he told himself. Just a kiss to make her forget …

  But it was he who forgot every damned thing in his head the moment his mouth touched hers. His senses exploded. All he wanted to do was sink into her and never let go.

  How was it possible that anything could feel this good? Her lips were just as sweet and soft as he remembered. So pliant and … open.

  Ah hell, before he could stop himself, his tongue was in her mouth again, and he was giving her those long, deep strokes that made him think of swiving. Lots and lots of swiving. Sweaty-limbs-in-tangled-bedsheets kind of swiving. All he’d have to do was lay her back, untie the braies he’d thrown on, lift her chemise, and he could be inside her. Deep inside her. Plunging in and out in the same frantic rhythm of his tongue. He was hard as a spike just thinking about it.

  She was so sweet, so incredibly hot …

  His arm tightened around her back, drawing her closer. He felt the bead of her nipples against his chest, and just like that, the barely controlled kiss was gone, replaced by the hungry, swirling maelstrom of need that devoured his good intentions and spit them out like the pile of shite that they were.

  There was no such thing as “just a kiss” when it came to Cate. He wanted her in a way that he’d never wanted another woman, with an intensity that snapped the steely reins of his control as if they were a few brittle strands of thread. He didn’t understand it, didn’t really want to examine it—it was just the way it was.

  He slid his fingers through her silky hair, cradling the back of her head to plunder her mouth more fully. She responded with a low moan and an insistent press of her chest that went straight to his bollocks and tugged—hard—with a primal urgency that didn’t want to listen to reason or honor or any other excuse for not taking this kiss to its natural conclusion.

  She wasn’t making it easy on him to do the right thing. Cate was kissing him b
ack with every bit of passion that he was feeling, making all those breathy little moans that drove him wild. Her hands weren’t helping matters any either. She’d laced them around his neck when he’d first kissed her, but now they’d slid down to his shoulders and were gripping him as if she would never let go, her fingers digging into the muscle with an intensity and fervor that told him exactly how much she liked what he was doing to her. A lot. So much that he knew he could make her shatter with a few strokes.

  He groaned, knowing he shouldn’t think about that. What he should think about was stopping.

  But how the hell was he supposed to resist all this warm, baby-soft skin that smelled like wildflowers, lips that were as soft and sugary as warm honey, and hair—he let it pour over his hands—hair that slid between his fingers like silk?

  And then there was that tight little body straining against his chest, the firm mounds of her breasts with the hard pink tips digging into him, that gave him just a teasing hint of what she’d feel like naked against him. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted to feel all of her against him. He wanted her under him. On top of him. On her hands and knees in front of him. Any way and every way.

  It would be so damned easy to push her back on the bed and give himself all the contact—the naked contact—he craved. Skin to skin. He wanted to see her strong, slender body spread out beneath him like a banquet to feast upon. He wanted to suck the tiny nipples that were raking his chest, lick his way down the slender curve of her belly, and taste the sensitive place between her legs.

  God, he really wanted to do that. Feel those hard spasms against his mouth … taste her pleasure …

  He groaned deeper into her mouth as the erotic images swirled through him, jerking his cock hard against his stomach.

  His body pressed forward, urging her back, as the desire became too much to bear. It felt like a weight pressing him down. Touch her. Take her. Make her yours. It hummed through his blood, zipped along every one of his nerve endings, and seemed to have taken command of every bone in his body.

  He was breathing hard now, his heart hammering in his chest and ears, his skin hot and too damned tight as need pounded through every muscle and vein in his body. She was practically under him, her body stretched out beneath his. He wanted her so intensely, his body was shaking with it.

  Everything about it felt so right. But somewhere in the depths of his lust-crowded brain, he knew it wasn’t.

  He’d taken precisely one woman’s maidenhead in his life and had regretted it ever since. Then, he’d been a seventeen-year-old lust-starved lad whose weak attempt at honor had been rather handily disposed of by a few soft pleas and tender words of love. He was an experienced man now who knew better—and the right order of things. Cate deserved a wedding, a husband, and a marriage bed. Not a frantic, lust-hazed coupling at a vulnerable moment. He was supposed to be comforting her, not seducing her.

  With a mumbled oath, he pulled away. “We have to stop.”

  She blinked up at him, looking half-ravished and eager for the other half—not a good combination for a man fighting for control. “Why?”

  “It isn’t right. Your maidenhead belongs to your husband.”

  Christ, he sounded like an old man, or a stern guardian—neither of which sounded right at the moment. And if the crushed look in Cate’s eyes was any indication, she’d taken his attempt to do the right thing wrong.

  Still, he might have been able to hold to his honorable intentions if she hadn’t reached out and pushed him right over the edge.

  Fourteen

  “Your maidenhead belongs to your husband.”

  Gregor was the best archer in Scotland; it was no surprise that his arrow struck with cruel precision.

  Cate had thought he’d put the ridiculous idea of her betrothal behind him. How could he kiss her like that and still mean to marry her to another man?

  He must be the most stubborn, thickheaded man in Christendom! And perhaps blind as well, not to see what was right in front of him. He cared about her—loved her even, though she knew he would run to the nearest battlefield if she told him as much. He showed his feelings in the way he looked at her, in the way he held her, and yes, in the way he kissed her. A man could not kiss a woman with that kind of tenderness and passion and not be at least a little in love with her. She didn’t care how good he was at lovemaking, or how many women he’d had in his bed.

  Admittedly, she wasn’t exactly an expert on the subject, but she’d be willing to stake her life on it—and her virtue as well.

  Cate wasn’t going to let him pull away. Not this time. She was out of patience. She wouldn’t let him marry her off to another man.

  Sitting up a little, she reached out and put her palm flat on his chest. Emboldened by the hard slam of his heartbeat that seemed to jump up and meet it, she looked him squarely in the eye. “No.”

  He appeared too momentarily stunned to reply. Knowing it wouldn’t last, she took a deep breath and did the one thing she instinctively knew would put a decisive end to further argument. She let her hand slide down over the warm, hard ridges of stomach muscle to the tie at the waist of his braies.

  He sucked in his breath, his eyes dark and predatory, watching her every movement like a hawk daring a mouse to come into his range.

  She dared. With a deep breath for courage, she lowered her hand, curving it around the thick column of his manhood.

  Oh … my. She might have gulped, but the swallow stuck in her throat.

  Every muscle in his body seemed to tense—an impressive feat for a man who seemed to be built of little else. The low hissing sound that came from between his clenched teeth nearly made her pull away, but she didn’t. Instead, she felt a strange flush of what could only be called power—feminine power. The feel of him in her hand, so strong and thick, and surprisingly hard, knowing she’d made him that way, gave her courage.

  “No,” she repeated. “I want you, and I know you want me, too. I don’t want you to stop—I want you to finish what you started on the practice yard. I want you to be the one to show me passion. I want you to make love to me.” She looked into his eyes, which seemed to be glowing brighter than the fire. “Make love to me, Gregor … please.”

  If someone had asked her for the perfect response to her plea, she would never have thought the sharp curse that came from his mouth would have been it. But somehow the word fit, and not just because it rather crudely summed up what she was asking him to do. Somehow it seemed to encompass the intensity of emotion that he was keeping bottled up and she was forcing free. Somehow it seemed to capture the harshness of his desire, and the base depth of his need for her. And somehow that one wicked word seemed to strip away the last vestiges of pretense and civility, revealing the raw, primitive hunger that he would no longer deny. With that one word, she heard his helplessness, his surrender, and knew that no matter how exceptional a warrior he might be, this was one fight she was going to win.

  His mouth was pulled into almost a grimace, the arms holding her had turned as rigid as steel, and every muscle in his body seemed as tight as one of those bowstrings for which he’d become famous. Yet he was so impossibly gorgeous in the candlelight, it make her chest squeeze.

  “You don’t fight fair, sweetheart. I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t know if I can give you what you want.” She held her breath when he paused. “But God knows I’m going to try.”

  Cate sighed with relief. She didn’t know what promise he was making, except to know that he’d just made one. He didn’t give her time to ask, for no sooner had he finished than his mouth was covering hers in a kiss that left no doubt of his intentions.

  He did not intend to woo or entice, he intended to have her, and the knowledge bloomed inside her until warmth and happiness filled every part of her body.

  Drawing her hard against him, he claimed her mouth with bold, demanding strokes of his tongue that sent shudders of white-hot need rippling through her body, crashing over her in hard waves. She was drow
ning in sensation, being dragged under in a riptide of heat and desire. He was kissing her like he could never get enough of her. Kissing her like it meant something. Nay, like it meant everything. She returned the kiss with increasing fervency, until it seemed they had dissolved into one another, their mouths, their tongues, their bodies becoming one.

  Passion consumed them both—the same as before, yet different. It was just as incredible and just as powerful, but this time there was nothing holding back. It came on her hot and heavy, demanding and unyielding.

  It was the same soft mouth, the same spicy taste, the same deft tongue kissing her, but this kiss came with a no-holds-barred intensity that was both utterly dominating and oddly freeing at the same time. He made her feel safe. Protected. Loved.

  He was on her, in her, surrounding her. His heat enveloped, the granite solidness of his body pressed, his kiss possessed, but never did he take. Rather he gave himself in a way that she suspected he’d never given himself to a woman before. And she took him in with everything she had, opening herself up to him, his kiss, his touch, and the powerful sensations he was stirring inside her.

  Instinctively, her fingers curled tighter around his manhood. The husky, deep groan of his pleasure seemed to shudder through her as well. Holding her hand to him with his, he forced her to grip him harder, and then thrust up into the circle of her hand. Once. Twice. The bottom of her stomach seemed to melt between her legs as he thrust again, the raw, ragged sound of his pleasure echoing in her ears.

  With a curse that told her he’d had all the pleasure he could stand, he drew her hand away and lowered her back onto the bed.

  He came over her, pressing her more deeply into the mattress, his powerful body hard and unyielding on top of her. A warrior’s body with the thick, solid muscle that she’d come to crave. Desperately. Frantically. Her hands clutched his shoulders, gripped the rocky muscles of his arms and slid over the hard slabs of muscle at his back forged by years of using a bow, but still it wasn’t enough. She had to be closer, which seemed an impossible quest as their bodies were already fused together.