by Sondra Grey
He didn’t realize he was walking until the crowd was parting around him. Without thinking about what he was doing, he grabbed up a Macleod lassie and spun her onto the floor. The Macleod musicians had taken over where the troupe had left off and they were playing a rousing jig. The young woman in Brandon’s arm looked startled and then, as she took a look at his face, eager. Brandon danced close, spinning his partner until he was mere inches from Meg and that hulking Tormod. Then when they next spun he reached out, snagging Megs wrist and flicking his partner into Tormod’s arms.
He saw the giant’s eyes widen with disbelief and knew his grin was triumphant because Tormod roared with laughter and pulled the new maid close, whispering something in her ear that made her squeal with laughter.
It was Brandon’s concern no longer, because Meg was once again in his arms.
Chapter 21
I barely had time to catch my breath to scream. One minute I was dancing with Tormod again, trying to figure out how to escape, the next I was all but flying across the dance floor, only to be grabbed my Brandon. My wrist would be black and blue on the morrow.
I looked up into his eyes and bit back a cry of fear at their expression. They were black and intense, his mouth a hard line as it took me in. This was not the sweet Brandon from the night before, this Brandon was different, intense.
He didn’t spend long dancing with me. I was in his arms mere seconds before he spun me off the floor and was all but pushing me towards the exit, his hands a vice around my waist. The fear was edged with something sharper, and I felt that same quickening through my most secret parts, as if blood was pooling there and heating, as if my body knew what was coming and welcomed it.
We hit the dark of the hallway and Brandon whirled, caging me against the wall, his hand came up, pressing my shoulder back into the stones. His mouth came down, hot, hard, demanding. I responded to him in kind, so help me, I did. My body knew what it wanted. My pour bruised soul cried out in happiness.
I felt his knee, pressing against my legs, forcing them open so we’d be hip to hip.
He thrust his tongue down my throat, hands trapping me to the wall, drawing blood as he bit my lip fiercely. “We’ll have fun, you and I,” he breathed into my ear, nails biting into my shoulder. He licked the blood from my lip, bending his knees, he ground himself into my hips, humping like I’d seen the dogs do the bitches. I struggled, trying to push him off and his hand came back and let fly. I saw stars.
“Meg, Meg,” Brandon’s voice split through the haze of the memory. I realized I’d gone still and stiff as a board, that my breathing was shallow. He released my shoulder and raised his hand. I flinched, opening my eyes to see that he’d paused, hand out to cup my face. He was looking at me, bewildered. And then at his hand. He let it drop and took a step back.
I sucked in a deep breath, trying to steady myself. Heat still seared my blood, not even the memory could take that away. But fear and desire made for a heady cocktail and I was nearly crying with the need for…for something.
“Who hurt you?” he asked me quietly. “You’ve been hit before by a man. Was it your father?”
I almost laughed. It hadn’t been. Not that time. It had been one of the suitors my father had sent for. I never found out who he was. A highlander, was all I’d overheard my father say before he arrived. A highlander who was paying handsomely to marry a lowlander with access to King and to Coast.
I’d never minded my father marrying me off, for it was a way to escape him. Away to escape my stepmother, their son, the life they lived. I’d been playing in the back room when the dogs had barked, upset by something. I’d gone out to check and been confronted by the suitor. At first he’d been impressive, on the taller side, and well-built wearing the kilt and tartan that most highlanders wore. He had a head full of orange curls, a handsome enough face, though his nose was hooked. And he’d smiled at me and called me his bride.
I’d curtsied and bid him good day, and he’d bowed over my hand. Then before I realized what was happening he had me against the wall. He’d forced his mouth on mine and it had been my first ‘kiss’ he’d rammed his knees between mine and thrust himself between my legs only our clothes protecting me. He’d bit me, and when I struggled he’d slapped me, harder even than my father had ever hit me before.
“Behave,” he’d all but crooned in my ear. “You’re mine to do with as I wish. And I have a lot planned for you…”
Then my father had entered the hall and I’d managed to leave. That night, I told them I’d my flux – it was the only excuse that wouldn’t have gotten me dragged from my solar. And I’d run.
Brandon dropped his hand to his side. “I don’t strike women,” he said to me.
“I know,” I said, my breathing slowing. “I’m not afraid of you.” And I wasn’t, I realized. He wasn’t going to hurt me.
“Do you want me to take you back to the hall,” he asked, quietly.
I shook my head. “No. Please…” I didn’t know what I was asking for, but Brandon seemed to. He held out his hand and I took it, and let him lead me upstairs.
Chapter 22
I didn’t dare ask where we were going, but realized it soon enough. He was walking me back to my room.
We stopped before the door and Brandon paused before it. “I want to know what happened.” He said.
I knew what he meant but I shook my head. “It’s in the past. I won’t relive it,” I said. The man in the hallway, the one whose name I never learned, he was the monster in my nightmare, and I hated that he had that power over me still.
Brandon sighed and reached out, taking my chin in his hand and titled it so that he could look into my eyes. “I’ll find out, Meg,” he said to me. “It’s what I’m good at.”
“At finding things out? I thought you were a fiddle player,” I said, lightly. “A fiddle player whose accent occasionally slips, especially when he’s angry. Who walks with the confidence of a man who has grown up in comfort.”
Brandon’s grip on my chin hardened and his mouth flattened, nostrils flaring. “You’ve a taste for danger, don’t you Meg,” he said, softly.
I almost snorted. “You’re not dangerous,” I said.
“Aren’t I?” His mouth came down slowly, his fingers holding my chin in place. I wouldn’t have pulled away for the world. When his mouth came down atop mine, it was hungry. His kisses wet, hard, long. I kissed him back, the fear from earlier disappearing. I wanted to rid myself of the memory of my redheaded betrothed.
And so I kissed him back, my fingers tangling in his hair, holding his head to mine, not wanting to break the kiss. In his arms, I felt like, for a moment, it didn’t matter who I was. I was safe.
But Brandon let me go eventually, his fingers fumbling for the door handle, and when it opened, he tugged me in. “There’s a room,” he said, pulling my back into his arms. “Do you know all the things I have time to do to you in here.”
I was supposed to be sharing the chamber with Glenna, I opened my mouth to tell him that, but closed it as he locked the door and came back towards me. “Take off your dress” he commanded, his voice low, his finger running over the neckline of my gown, sending tremors through me.
I reached behind me, undoing the hook, and he stepped back and watched me peel the gown down around my shoulders. His eyes were like snowflakes, spreading shills where they landed. I stepped out of my dress, wearing only my shift.
“Take it off too,” he said. I wrapped my arms about myself. I’d be too vulnerable. I couldn’t.
As if sensing my refusal, he reached down and took off his boots. Then he unpinned his tartan, unwound his kilt, and lifted his shirt over his head until he stood there, in the center of the room, bare as the day he was born.
I’ve seen naked men before, and looked quickly away. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Brandon. He was glorious. Tall, muscle and sinew, not a spare ounce of fat on him. My eyes went immediately to the enormous, hard length of him jutting from a tangle of
dark curls. My mouth went dry, and I had to force myself to look somewhere else.
That slightly crooked nose wasn’t the only part of his body that had taken a beating. He had a scar across his chest that looked as if someone had taken a dagger to him. There was a burn mark on his left shoulder, a jagged scar along his leg. These were not fiddler’s wounds. These were warrior’s wounds.
Brandon Sorely, who are you?
I’d no time to think on it. Brandon had grown impatient with my refusal to remove my gown and was now striding forward. His arms came around me, pulling me into his hard embrace. I closed my eyes on a moan as the hot length of him came to rest against my belly. His lips brushed my lids, then my cheeks, before his hands came down, tilted my chin up, and his mouth covered mine again. I was so lost in his kiss I barely felt his hands reach around and untie the laces on my shift. I barely registered the rough fabric sliding down my shoulders until the cold air hit my nipples and I shivered.
He bent then, and I caught a cry as his lips closed over one nipple, sucking it hotly into his mouth. I felt heat shoot right through me. I arched like a cat pressing my breast further into his mouth. His free hand came up to lavish attention on the other. Each hot tug of his mouth, each pinch of his fingers sent heat rocketing through me. I writhed hotly against his hands, moaning, urging him without words to continue. To do to me what he’d done the last time.
His mouth left my breast and I looked down to see he’d gotten onto his knees one by one. All I could see was the top of his dark head, his beautiful, sculpted shoulders. I felt his fingers part my curls and closed my eyes, waiting to feel the fullness of his fingers inside me. I wasn’t expecting what came next: his mouth.
I shrieked as his fingers parted me and his tongue shot out and laved hotly between my legs, scorching me with sensations so fierce, my knees buckled. He reached up to steady me but didn’t relinquish control, his mouth kissing me there just as he’d kissed my lips earlier.
I quivered and cried out as his fingers slid into me, one and then the another, his tongue on that strange bud of nerves, fingers milking cry after cry from me. I was going higher and higher, the edge coming for me, building towards that exquisite release he’d shown me earlier.
I almost sobbed when he pulled away, when his hand left me. “No!” I cried out, but he’d surged to his feet, his lips finding mine again. I could taste myself there and I gasped against his mouth as he backed us onto the bed.
He didn’t stop there, his hands on my waist, he threw me up higher onto the bed and followed. His hands gripped beneath my knees and pressed them upward, opening me to his attention. I felt a hot shame scald me, but he didn’t linger long. He was between my legs, his hot, pulsing shaft pressing into my wet opening.
The sensation was so intense I cried out again, and his mouth came down, smothering my cries with his as he thrust in a merciless, aggressive move that brought him inside me to the hilt. We both cried out then, sensation after sensation rocketing through me. This was not the slow, gently lovemaking of earlier. This was fierce, desperate. Brandon pulled out and thrust back in, his rhythm hard, driving me into the bed. Each thrust hitting some place inside me that set flames licking at my skin. I sobbed beneath him, hips rising to meet each merciless thrust, begging him on faster as the sensations built higher, and higher, and higher.
He roared. I screamed, the climax hitting me with enough force to blind me. I was nothing but sensation, nothing but exploding, pulsing sensation. Release after release rippled through me, and I could feel him, shooting hot inside me, his teeth biting my shoulder as my nails scored his back.
It seemed ages before our muscles unlocked, before we both relaxed, collapsed on top of each other.
I must have made a sound, for he turned his head, his lips finding mine and silencing me in another fierce, possessive kiss.
Chapter 23
H is. Meg was his. Whatever she’d said to him whatever he was going to say to her – all that was a lie. This wasn’t. The Meg in his arms, the Meg he kissed, and made love to twice more that night – that Meg was his.
Why he’d ever wished to deny it… why he’d ever thought anything other than…
It was early morning when the realization came back to him. He wasn’t here to seduce Meg. He was here to find Angus MacDonald. He was here to get word of Angus MacDonald. To retrieve the blackguard and bring him back to the King’s justice. He was here to earn his freedom.
He stared down at Meg, who was cradled against his chest, looking, for all the world, easy and peaceful. Happy. He’d done that. He’d done what he said he wasn’t going to do. He’d seduced her again. No, he’d done more than that. It was as if he’d needed to prove to himself that her words on the ship were just words. That she hadn’t meant them, that she meant this.
Are you happy now?
Goddamn it, he was. But panic was hot on the heels of happiness. He had a job to do.
And why can’t you do both? Because you’re lying to her.
Brandon sat up in bed and Meg groaned at the loss of his heat, her eyes fluttering open and staring up at him.
The expression was wordless, but he understood what she needed from him. Goddamn it, he was going to break both of their hearts. And soon. He reached down and pressed a kiss to her temple. “I have to…” He didn’t know what he had to do. He didn’t have a lie prepared, and so he got up, tugged his clothing back on, and left.
“Sorry I didn’t come back to the room last night,” Glenna sang, when I found her the next morning. “Tormod, son of Tormod had a few things he wanted to show me.” She winked and giggled.
“Lord Meg, he’s hung like a horse!”
“Thank you for the image,” I said, my mind flashing back to Brandon. I refused to trouble over his behavior this morning. Because I wasn’t imagining it. I knew he wanted me as much as I wanted him.
I knew I was in trouble, especially later in the day, when he asked me to ride with him, and we’d stopped in the forest. He’d lifted me up, lifted up his kilt, and had me against a tree. And I’d liked it.
I couldn’t keep my hands off him. He danced with me that night, after our concert, and again the next night. Glenna refused to leave Tormod’s bed and so we’d free use of my room. I was so sore at the end of three days I could barely walk, let alone ride a horse.
I don’t know what the others knew. Babette looked at me oddly, but Thames and Robin went on as they always had. Glenna wouldn’t stop waking poetic about Tormod on the boat ride back to Skye. As I stared across the water, I no longer felt trapped. I no longer felt as if I had to only concentrate on each moment, because the future was too big to contemplate. I had Brandon. That was all that mattered.
Chapter 23
Each time he sank himself into Meg, Brandon felt regret. Regret for lying, regret for what he must eventually do. Regret for how he spent his time when he wasn’t in her company. The only way Brandon could justify his tryst with Meg was to gain whatever information he could.
When he wasn’t playing, or plowing, he was spying. He’d befriended the grooms, he’d befriended Tormod. He’d managed to get them talking about Angus Dubh and had gotten them to reveal enough of the man’s company that they believed Brandon when he told them that the young man Artair, who travelled with Angus, was Brandon’s cousin whose mother had died and Brandon was just trying to get him the word.
“’Twasn’t safe for him to let us know where he was going,” said Tormod on their last night, when he was in his cups. “Not with the king sending spies throughout the kingdom looking for him. But we sent him with a few letters. If our cousin Hendry at Drumbeg didn’t take him in, he probably went up to MacKenzie territory.
Brandon had nodded. “We’re set to play castle Claire in a week’s time. Perhaps I’ll find Artair there. If he comes back here, will you give him word of his mother?”
With a plan of action, Brandon didn’t feel so badly taking up with Meg. He felt like a boy again in the first spring of lust. He
couldn’t get enough of her. Even on the ship over, they stole into a berth and made love to each other silently, their mouths capturing each other’s cries.
Even the music felt different. The fiddle sang more sharply in his hands. His voice split from him with a kind of joy he only remembered from his youngest childhood. But soon and sooner they were approaching Claire Castle, where the Macleods of Drumbeg sat, no doubt sheltering a traitor to the crown. And when he caught Angus, then what? What was he to do with Meg?
Chapter 24
I knew something was wrong when we reached Drumbeg castle. For days after we’d left Ardvrek, Brandon had seemed like a different person. So had I. Even Ned had commented on it. He’d touched my cheek after we’d played a night in Kinloch. “You are glowing, dear,” he said. And he’d glanced at Brandon. “Does he deserve you?”
I’d shrugged Ned off. “I don’t know what you’re talking about” I said. Because I couldn’t admit that anything was going on between us. Admitting would mean opening myself up to censure later, when it all came crumbling down around me. And the closer we came to Drumbeg, the sooner I knew it would be.
We hadn’t just been lying together, we’d begun to talk as well. He told me a little bit about growing up, that he had brothers. That he was the middle child. I told him what I could stomach to tell him about my past. But I couldn’t talk about the beatings, or the reason I’d left. That girl – she was Maighread, and she had been helpless – Meg was not helpless. Meg had taken her own future into her hands. She earned her own money. She enjoyed a man.
I would ask him about winter, about heading through Mackenzie lands during the late harvest season and he would go quiet. It was clear as day that he didn’t mean to accompany us that far.
To be honest, I was shocked he made it all the way to Claire. We’d travelled two days out of our way to leave Thamas with Jenny for a while. He would come back and play with us when we were next heading south. I had thought for sure he meant to leave then – he’d become so quiet, and when we’d come together that evening, our love-making had taken on a desperate edge.
