His Wicked Highland Ways

by Laura Strickland

If a deep, gravelly voice answered, she would shame herself on the spot. How might a ghost sound?

  “It is I, Mistress MacWherter. ’Tis Finnan MacAllister.”

  Jeannie’s heart leaped for a whole new reason. Relief and dismay combined to elevate her pulse.

  She would still be mad to open the door.

  Yet he had come back to her—no matter in the middle of the night. Her feet carried her to the door without her volition; her fingers lifted the bar and swung the panel open.

  He stood there, hair mussed by the night wind, with Danny leaning against him. His eyes reached for her even before he spoke.

  “I am that sorry to come so late, but I seek refuge—not for me, but for the lad. I ha’ nowhere else to take him.”

  Jeannie stepped back, making of it an invitation. “Then, come in.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You are a merciful angel,” Finnan MacAllister said softly, his eyes on Danny but his voice a caress Jeannie could almost feel.

  They had bedded the lad down in a corner near the hearth. He now slept, restless with fever.

  That Danny remained very ill, Jeannie could not doubt. His skin burned to the touch and had a waxen quality. She could quite see why MacAllister did not want to keep him at large out on the hillside, but why did he have to come to her door?

  Now she struggled to think clearly and found it far too difficult. Finnan MacAllister’s presence affected her on levels she could barely understand.

  Her awareness leaped every time he moved, flexed a muscle, every time he drew a breath. He had brought the fragrance of the night in with him, along with an underlying scent of pure male that roused all her senses.

  She watched his hands as he pulled the blanket to Danny’s chin and then touched the lad’s forehead—graceful, strong, long-fingered hands covered with scars and those twisting tattoos. Strange how none of those scars diminished his male beauty.

  “I hope you have hidden your horses well,” she whispered.

  “We did not come on horseback. We walked over the hills, and it took a toll on the lad. Still, we ha’ come through worse.”

  She felt a sudden, consuming curiosity to know all he had been through, and what had befallen him. She might sit for days just listening to the music of his voice while he told her.

  Beautiful hands, beautiful voice; but could she trust him?

  Trust—such a fragile and tremulous thing. She had trusted her father, once. Trusted Geordie, as well. Geordie, at least, had not disappointed her; he had kept to his word. But this man beside her? Another matter completely.

  He seated himself on the bench beside her, which put him less than an arm’s length away. She might reach out and touch his hand if she chose. Move into his arms.

  And what then? What if she followed a heretofore unprecedented impulse, leaned in and kissed him? Would madness ensue? Would she be lost?

  She chose her words carefully and spoke, instead. “They were here this afternoon, the brothers Avrie, looking for you.”

  That made him stare, a sharp glance she felt like a touch. “Then I should not be here. I am sorry for drawing you into my quarrel.”

  “It seems far more than a quarrel. They say they have burnt your house to the ground.”

  He smiled, the last thing she expected. “Not quite. They stormed the place, aye, and gutted some of the rooms with fire, but Dun Mhor is built of cold stone and will stand long after I am dust.”

  “Yet they have chased you to the hills.”

  “I do not like the prospect of being caught like a rat in a trap. Anyway, the hills are my true home. I ha’ spent half my life in the wild.”

  Yes, and she sensed that about him, the stillness he sometimes achieved, and the canny, measuring glance as of some creature untamed.

  “We will away now, if you wish,” he added, very offhand. “The last thing I want, Jeannie, is to bring harm upon you.”

  He should not be so familiar as to call her by her given name, yet hearing it in that soft, musical voice rendered her incapable of minding.

  “You can hardly move him now.” She nodded at Danny. “And anyway, it is nearly dawn. Let him rest.”

  “The morning star was rising when I came to your door.” He spoke the words like poetry.

  She folded her fingers together in an attempt to discipline them. “How is it the Avries think they can hunt you like an animal? Are there no laws here?”

  “There are, and far older than any known in Dumfries. The land makes our laws; the very hills do. The only right is survival. The land is mine, so do what they will the Avries cannot defeat me.”

  Madness, Jeannie thought. Did he really believe such wild assertions?

  “If they catch you, what will they do?”

  He gave a thin smile. “What I did to their father, and what he in his turn did to mine. But they will no’ find it easy; I will not be caught unawares again. Now are you ready to reconsider and turn me from your door?”

  Suddenly restless, Jeannie got to her feet. She took up the poker and stirred the fire, her face turned from him. “Murder does not justify murder,” she said, “even in the highlands.”

  “I do not expect you to understand it,” he told her. “But I will fight as I must. This place is my blood and my bones, and that of all those who came before me. All the while I roamed the world earning my way, I carried the love and duty of it, like a second heartbeat.”

  All those years he had been a mercenary. So perhaps killing meant little enough to him. It might be as easy as breathing.

  He went on softly, “A man must make his way—a lad must, in my case, for I was scarcely more when I began. I left here with little but my father’s bloodied torc, and his sword.”

  Jeannie turned her face and looked at him, searching. Could she even try to imagine the life he had led? Could he imagine hers, striving so desperately to hold together the pieces of a life already shattered?

  Geordie had carried that same sense of fierce endurance beneath his pain and regret. She sensed no regret in this man, however.

  “And how do you see all this ending?” she challenged. “They dispossessed you and your family, you murdered their father, so now they would kill you, as well. Will you live like a hare in the hills forever?”

  “Better a hare free in these hills than a man anywhere else. But nay, ’twill not be forever. Only until they are driven back out of the glen.”

  “Or dead.”

  “Or dead.”

  A chill traced its way up Jeannie’s back. Wicked to speak so casually of such an eventuality. The worst of it was she believed him.

  “And what about Aggie and me,” she asked, “caught in the middle of it?” She could not hide in the hills, and she had nowhere else to go.

  He, too, got to his feet and approached her. Before she could think to protest, he reached out and captured her hands.

  And oh, the warmth of his touch went through her, chased like fever up her arms, heated the breath in her lungs, and rose straight to her head. It kept her motionless as he stepped closer and looked her in the eyes.

  “I would remind you, Jeannie MacWherter, I am a man who keeps his promises.”

  And his threats. That she believed.

  He stepped still nearer; now she could feel the heat of him all up and down her body. “And have I no’ promised to keep you safe?”

  “You promised that to the ghost of my dead husband.” She said it wryly, combatting the feelings that assaulted her.

  “A sacred vow, for Geordie and I are bonded even beyond the grave.”

  And so would he take what even Geordie never had? Jeannie had pitied Geordie MacWherter, relied on him, perhaps even felt for him sincere affection, but nothing that would persuade her to take the big, bluff highlander to her bed. Now, though, the impulse stormed her like a gale wind.

  She had managed to live twenty-two years without experiencing this sharp and wild desire. Why now?

  “And,” she asked, her voice falter
ing as she gazed into his eyes, “how do you mean to protect me while fighting for your own life, and Danny’s?”

  “One thing I learned all those years roaming the world was how to fight. Trust me, Jeannie. Once I take you under my protection you are safe, you are mine.”

  Did she move still closer then? Did she truly lay the palms of her hands against the warmth of his chest?

  She could feel his heart beating, deep heavy thuds like the pulse of the world. She had a sudden, terrifying thought: this man could become her world, if she let him. Maybe even if she did not.

  She told him honestly, “It is not easy for me to trust.”

  “Then,” he whispered, “only let me show you my devotion.”

  His hands slid slowly up her arms in a tantalizing friction as he bent his head to hers. Still caught by what she saw in his eyes, Jeannie could not look away. His gaze held her fast as might a magical spell, even as his lips reached for hers.

  He drew her up against him an instant before he claimed her mouth, so she felt all of him in a rush of pure, muscular heat. His lips seared hers, soft and persuasive yet hot as fire. Sensation speared through her from that point of contact and burned away any lingering hope of resistance.

  Oh, and she had never imagined touching someone could feel like this. Darkness rushed at her on the wings of flame and pleasure as demoralizing as pain. She surrendered to it completely, as to sudden death.

  His lips molded to hers, moved and wooed, coaxed her lips apart. He seemed to drink of her and then to pour himself into her like strong drink. His tongue slipped into her mouth, licked the insides of her lips, and stroked her tongue in an act of blatant intimacy that turned Jeannie’s knees to water.

  No one had ever touched her so. She knew she should haul on the strings of her sanity—her propriety—and push him away. But all she could imagine was his tongue touching her everywhere while she lay open and welcoming beneath it, naked and shameless.

  Wicked.

  He made a soft sound in his throat—satisfaction or demand—and it completed her undoing. She opened her mouth further beneath his, pressed herself to him, lifted her arms and wound them about his neck. Smooth, warm muscle met her fingers, and a tumble of hair like silk. His heart beat still more quickly against her breast, and hers sped to match it. She wanted to be inside him; she wanted him inside her.

  Yes, and he came armed for it; she could now feel him pressed insistently against her and could not mistake that particular weapon. It should shock her further, make her pull away from him and flee. Instead she felt a rush of victorious joy that she had aroused him.

  His tongue stroked hers and took up a deep, suggestive rhythm. Jeannie had never lain with any man, no, but she understood instinctively just what that dance meant. Had she any doubt, he pressed himself against her in silent demand, and she fought the desire to part her legs and welcome him in.

  She nearly sobbed in protest when he broke the kiss and withdrew his tongue from her mouth. “Jeannie,” he said raggedly. “Jeannie, Jeannie—”

  She gasped and threaded her fingers through his hair. Determinedly, she reached for his mouth again—wet and hot, hers. This time she slid her tongue between his lips, coaxed his tongue to her bidding, and when he thrust it upon her, a mad idea burst to life in her mind: she could slide down his body, take him into her mouth just as she had that tongue.

  Doubly wicked! But he made her feel wanton and abandoned, and all those things she had never expected to be.

  His hands, that held her so fast against him, slid softly downward, caressing her body as they went. Pleasure, still more intense, pierced her to the marrow. Surely she would die if she did not have this man.

  Again he broke the kiss, but it was only to slide that irresistible mouth of his across her cheek and shiver little kisses to the corner of her mouth.

  She tried to recapture his lips with hers, needing it badly, and he gave a soft, low laugh that vibrated through her. By heaven, but she longed to hear that in her ear, in the dark.

  “So beautiful,” he murmured. “Do you ken how beautiful you are?”

  She little cared if that were true, so long as he believed it, so long as it made him want her. So this was how good women went astray…

  “Please,” she begged, and captured his mouth again. He tasted like nothing she had ever known: honey, and the best whisky, and danger.

  His hand moved once more, caressing its way up her body, and found her breast. Jeannie stopped breathing and the world stood still.

  Surely she had been made to fill this man’s hands? To lie beneath him? To give and give, and give.

  ****

  This will be entirely too easy, Finnan MacAllister thought in satisfaction. Already Jeannie MacWherter melted in his hands like frost in the sun.

  The lying hoyden—how was he supposed to believe a woman who burned with such passion would have kept Geordie or any other man from her bed? Yet he had Geordie’s own word on that, his letters written out of an aching and sorrowful heart.

  She will not love me, Finn, not in the way a woman loves a man or even as a wife accepts her husband. ’Tis proof, had I needed it, I am but a blight on this world.

  Finnan had heeded the sadness those words expressed, but taken up completely with his struggle here in the glen had he neglected the deeper darkness in Geordie’s soul? Geordie had often expressed an almost childlike idealism, all too easily disappointed. He possessed little of the hard cynicism Finnan had learned to wear like armor, and that protected him yet.

  It did protect him, he assured himself, even as he kissed Jeannie MacWherter again, his tongue mimicking the action his loins ached to complete. She proved a far too potent temptation.

  And he could have her here and now on her own hearthstones, with Danny but an arm’s reach away, if he wished. The risk and danger of the prospect further enflamed him, the chance of the lad waking to see them moving together, him spearing the woman as she deserved.

  And she did deserve it.

  He shifted his hand on her breast—soft, delectable warmth—and sought her nipple with his thumb. He now had his tongue so far down her throat it was an act of copulation of itself, and he clearly felt her stiffen as pleasure shot through her. Deliberately, he slid his fingers down the neck of her gown. Ah, but for a creature of hell she was heaven to touch.

  Yet Finnan did not believe in heaven—only hard-won retribution.

  Jeannie arched her back and pressed herself into his palm, a willing offering. He knew then without question that he had won.

  Was it too soon to push her to complete the act? He had her well on the hook now and did not want to frighten her off. Yet he ached so to plunge into her, he did not know that he could endure.

  Fiercely, he reined in his impulses. He must make her want him beyond all reason, needed to play the role of protector to the hilt. He needed her to love him, not just give in.

  But it would be hard to draw away now when the spell he wove held them both fast.

  He stopped kissing her but left his hand inside her bodice in a blatant act of claiming. The contrast between her soft, mounded flesh and taut nipple goaded his desire. He felt wild to open the garment and replace his fingers with his mouth.

  He pictured all the ways he might have her: on her knees; or on her back, spread for him like a holy offering.

  He managed to say, “I am that sorry, Jeannie. I ha’ overstepped myself.” And he tried to withdraw his hand.

  Her fingers flew to cover his and pressed them to her breast. She licked her lips, and a wild woman looked at him from her eyes.

  “Please, Finnan.”

  The first time she had spoken his given name, and said it with that sweetness she wore like a cloak—almost believable. Almost.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Outside the cottage a cock crowed, heralding morning. Jeannie heard it like a woman emerging from a dream, or more correctly one freeing herself from enchantment. For Finnan MacAllister had surely woven a po
tent spell.

  She contemplated it, not sure she believed in dark magic. As a girl, she had attended the kirk, expecting it to afford her some comfort and peace. It never had, because the minister spoke only of ruination, sin, and sacrifice.

  Ruination and sacrifice she had found in her own home. Sin, it seemed, found her only now.

  Would it be such a sin to haul Finnan MacAllister away into her bedroom? To peel the clothing from that beautiful body of his, divest him of the rough, woolen kilt, and have him all for her own?

  Unquestionably.

  And she cared for her immortal soul, did she not? Of course she did. Well, perhaps.

  He still held her pinioned against him, one arm hard across her back. His other hand remained thrust inside her bodice. Sweet heaven, how could she have let that happen? She looked down at her own body and saw his long fingers cupping her breast. A new, potent wave of desire assailed her.

  But she was a sane, rational woman, and the cockerel had called her to herself. She released Finnan’s wrist and fought her way free.

  Her dress, disconcertingly, gaped open. When had he untied the front of it? The shawl she had been wearing lay in a heap on the floor. The sheer impropriety of it brought heat over her in a rush.

  Looking up, she encountered his gaze: bright with danger, hot as fire, and yet guarded. What did she see there besides admiration? Ah, but he liked what he had seen of her, and what he had felt. Triumph flared through her again.

  She took another decisive step backward, out of his reach this time. “Laird MacAllister, I do not know what came over me,” she began.

  “Or me.” He bent and caught up her shawl from the floor, offered it to her. When she took it, her fingers brushed his, and she recoiled as if burned, and clutched the woolen fabric to her bosom.

  Earnestly, he asked, “Can you forgive me? I have no excuse save for your beauty, and the fact that I have been alone—far too alone—a long while.”

  Jeannie, her thoughts scattered, did not know how to reply. The cottage seemed suddenly too small to contain both of them. She wanted to run out the door into the dawn.

  Yet the remnants of his magical spell held her, and she knew, disconcertingly, if he snapped his fingers she would be in his arms again. She turned and fled to the only place she could, her bedroom. No door but only a curtain separated it from the other room. It seemed a woefully inadequate barrier now.