by Gayle Callen
“I can walk on my own!” she whispered.
But he didn’t let her go, although he did take her hand instead of her elbow. He tugged her and the horses along behind him, then at just the right spot, ducked beneath a spray of ferns, to a hidden path down toward the water. He heard her suck in a breath in surprise. The horses followed them easily, this being well-known to them. The path grew muddy, their footsteps causing ripples along the shore of the calm loch. Her foot slipped once and he pulled her upright, catching her around the waist. Her hands flat on his chest, she stared up at him in shock.
“Should I not have touched ye, my lady?” he said emphasizing her honorific title.
“Ye’re a Carlyle,” she shot back.
They both knew that wasn’t the reason. Yet her Scottish lilt was back, and foolishly he rejoiced, even though it should mean nothing. But it made her seem of the Highlands, as if he could have her forever.
A warning bell sounded somewhere distant in his mind, but he ignored it.
She pushed at his chest, and for just a moment he kept his arm around her narrow waist, looking into those flashing golden eyes and thinking how much he admired her. At the outset she’d been calm and sweet, then gradually revealed her hidden fire and outrage, unafraid to speak her mind, though he was the chief of her enemies. He desired her more now that there were no lies between them, a powerful yearning he had no answer for.
But he let her waist go, kept hold of her hand and continued on the narrow muddy path, still hidden by the trees, and the growing size of boulders strewn along the loch, a giant replica of Finn’s stone village. Past the last boulder, he saw the tiny house, built into the rocks themselves. It could have been a fisherman’s home, and most who came upon it would think it that. But it wasn’t.
At the door, he pushed Catriona to the side and put a finger to his lips. She nodded, looking to the door with eagerness. She was brave and fearless, his Catriona.
Not his, he warned himself.
He knocked a specific beat, and when the door opened, he was staring at a cocked pistol. Catriona gasped, and the pistol turned toward her.
Duncan stepped between her and the barrel. “’Tis me,” he said softly.
The pistol lowered, and out of the gloom stepped a short, hulking man who always seemed ill-at-ease and lumbering on land, but moved with surprising balance and agility on his small sailing vessel.
“Carlyle,” Reid said. “It took ye long enough.”
The man stepped back as Duncan looped the horses’ reins around a tree branch, and pulled Catriona inside with him. It wasn’t as dark as it had first seemed. Reid turned up a lantern and added peat to the low fire. He saw Catriona glance around curiously, and understood what she saw. The front of the little building seemed sparse, with a neatly made box bed built into a wall near the hearth, a table and two uneven chairs, and a cupboard with shelves holding the barest necessities with which to cook meals. Along one wall were stacks of wooden crates piled to the ceiling.
“I came as quickly as I could,” Duncan said.
Reid looked at Catriona with lascivious interest. “And who be you?”
“She’s with me,” Duncan said coldly. “She’ll keep silent. Now tell me why ye insisted I come?”
After a suspicious glance at Catriona, Reid said, “My ship has been followed. I cannot deliver your cargo, and I don’t know when I’ll next return. I can’t risk sailin’ at night for they’ll mark me as a smuggler. I might be stopped leaving Loch Lomond regardless, and I want nothing suspicious aboard.”
Duncan scowled. “Then ye didn’t load the cargo?”
“Nay, ’tis all yours. I’ll send word when I can next sail.” He leered at Catriona, then insolently tugged his bonnet. “Mistress.”
“Reid,” Duncan called when the man reached the door.
Reid glanced over his shoulder and paused. “Aye.”
“Be safe.”
He flashed a smile, where several teeth were missing. “That I will.” Then he went out the door and closed it behind him.
Duncan turned and regarded Catriona, who looked at the closed door as if disappointed.
“If ye miss him, I can make him return,” he said dryly.
“’Tis true, I had questions for him.”
“None he would have answered.”
“He smuggles the whisky?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
She frowned and looked around. “But . . . this is only a fisherman’s cottage. Where are all the casks?”
“Ye know I’ll not answer that—for your own protection, of course.”
“Of course,” she repeated dryly.
“But I do have questions for ye.”
He stepped closer, her skirts swirling around his legs. They would have touched if she hadn’t stepped back.
“Are ye afraid of me?” he demanded, more harshly than he’d intended. He’d spent weeks protecting her, and the thought of being the cause of her fear both infuriated and saddened him.
She drew herself up and leaned toward him, pointing a finger for emphasis as she said, “You don’t frighten me. I followed ye, didn’t I?”
“Why? Does it have something to do with your snooping in my trunk?”
He couldn’t tell if she was blushing, in the low light.
“Aye, ye didn’t hide that from me.”
Stiffening, she said, “When ye gave me space for my garments in the trunk, I saw letters.”
“So ye found my father’s papers. Nothing in that trunk is a secret to me.”
“And have ye read them?”
He frowned. “Ye read them?”
“Have you?” she demanded.
“I read the first few, and they’re inconsequential. I don’t need to read another thing related to that man. He gave up on me, our family, this clan, a long time before he died.”
“Ye think so?” Now she pointed her finger in his face. “If ye believe that, it’s obvious ye didn’t finish the letters; ye don’t know what kind of a man your father was.”
“I know he was the kind of man who killed my mother.”
“So when it’s convenient, you refer to her as your mother, rather than the woman who spent her life making you miserable, who tortured poor Maeve?”
“Convenient?” he yelled. “You think because she was a monster, she wasn’t my mother?”
“I’m not saying that. This is about your father. Though ye think ye know—and disdain—everything about him, he had his own secrets, just like you do.”
Secrets? He took a breath to calm his frustration and steady his thoughts, even as uneasiness began to kindle inside him. “Speak plainly.”
“Your father knew about the stolen children, and was actively working to right that terrible wrong.”
He stiffened. “What are ye saying?”
“I read his letters, some even from the Earl of Aberfoyle, your enemy—”
“Your father.”
“—who was threatening your father because of what he knew. Oh, Father didn’t say it outright, but I understood what was happening.”
His mind spun as he tried to resettle this new picture of his father, but it was like a globe that circled and circled, never settling back where it had started.
Catriona lowered her voice and spoke calmly. “Your father had his beliefs, Duncan. He was fighting for them in his own way, not with his sword, but with letters.”
And for his part, Duncan had charged off, speaking rashly until it had gotten him imprisoned. He shook his head, forcing aside his own mistakes. “Ye didn’t follow me to tell me this. Ye could have said it right in the great hall.”
He glimpsed panic in her golden eyes before she replaced it with deliberate confusion. “I said I needed to speak with ye in private. I had no idea we were going to ride for hours. I lost ye at one point, but luckily I found ye again, and then it was too late to go back.”
“Ye’ve an answer for everything.”
That seemed to touch s
omething within her. “Excuse me?” she said quietly, formally.
“Ye did not follow me to talk about letters. Ye could have caught up to me anytime, but ye hung back so ye could see where I went, where the whisky is hidden. With your foolish curiosity, ye put yourself in danger—”
He saw the moment something snapped inside her.
“I put myself in danger?” she cried, throwing her arms wide.
“Aye, ye did, at every turn. Do ye believe yourself so above the hazards of the road? Ye traveled to Glasgow with only two guards—”
“Two strong, talented soldiers!” she cried.
“Ye went up to the dangerous ruins of my castle—”
“I had to, or I’d never have left the cave!”
“And now ye followed me on treacherous paths where outlaws could have been hiding—”
“Outlaws like you!” she cried.
They were leaning toward each other, hands on hips, both furious.
“Aye, I’m an outlaw,” he said gruffly, “and outlaws take what they want.”
He pulled her to him, relishing every curve of her body pressed hard to his, and kissed her.
Chapter 19
Cat had been full of righteous indignation, fury that he’d spurned her news about his father’s letters, accused her of being reckless—
And then he kissed her, and every reckless impulse of hers came true. It was as if her mind turned off, and her sensual emotions, long denied, just took over her body. She flung her arms around his neck, as if desperate to get closer. He lifted her right off the floor, and she hung suspended against him, the hard muscles of his body an agony and a temptation all at once. Their kiss was hot and wet and rough, his whiskers scraping her chin—she couldn’t taste enough of him, moaned when she lost his mouth, only to fling her head back when he gently bit her neck. She held his head to her, pulled the queue from his hair so that she could grasp the wavy locks.
He roughly set her on the ground, unhooked her cloak, and started pulling up her skirts, as he had the last time. She began to tug at the laces keeping her bodice together.
Duncan froze and watched her, his eyes hot with desire, their darkness full of temptation. When her laces were gone, and the stomacher fell away, he grabbed the edges of her bodice and held them together.
“Stop me, Cat, if ye must, but do it now.”
“If ye stop now, I’ll scream,” she said.
He let her go, and she staggered. Every part of her burned for him, burned for the pleasure he’d showed her, burned to see what she’d been missing. But if he didn’t want her—
“Take it off,” he said harshly, hands fisted at his side, every line of his body tense. “Take it all off before I tear it off.”
A wildness seemed to sweep over her at his rough words. She didn’t think about what he’d done to her. Nothing mattered but this room, this dark place, and the passion that felt like it might consume her.
She tugged at her tight sleeves, and her bodice fell to the floor. She untied the tapes holding her skirt and petticoats and kicked them away from her. All that was left were her stockings and shoes, her stays and chemise. The laces on her stays opened in the front, and her fingers fumbled with them, but he was patient, standing as still as a statue but for his harsh breathing, which made his chest rise and fall rapidly. She couldn’t seem to get her own breath, frustrated, until he pushed her fingers aside and his big hands deftly untangled and unthreaded the laces. She took a deep grateful breath when her stays fell away—and she let the past do the same. She couldn’t think about all the reasons not to do this. She wanted every pleasure she’d denied herself.
“Now this is the chemise ye wore when I found ye,” he said in awed husky tones. “Shiny silk, so fine it shows each delicate curve of ye, and your pretty nipples.”
He tweaked one gently and she shuddered.
“I wondered often if beneath the simple woolen gown, ye still wore this, all feminine and desirable. Let me see ye, Cat.”
She could only nod, trembling as she loosened the drawstring at her neck and shrugged her shoulders to start the downward slide of the garment. It caught briefly at her breasts, and he groaned. She suddenly felt powerful, capable of affecting this man in a primitive, sensual way. If he had a hold over her, then she had one over him.
And then the silk slithered down her body and she was naked.
He stared at her as if he’d never seen a woman before, when she knew that couldn’t be true. He was a man who did what he wanted, who’d once been wild, or so Maeve had told her. He reached out and cupped her right breast with his rough hand, and she closed her eyes and experienced the deep pleasure of it, which expanded outward from her breast and made the center of her thighs hot and yearning. She was trembling, and didn’t know how much longer she could stand to be on display for him.
“I’m on fire,” she whispered.
She felt him shudder through his hand.
“Take off your clothes,” she said.
It was an order, and he obeyed. After removing his sword belt and tossing onto the table his pistol and sword, he unpinned the plaid from his shoulder, and the folds fell to hang at his waist. He peeled off his jacket, his waistcoat, his neck cloth, with such speed that she could have laughed if she wasn’t so breathless to see him completely nude. He unbuckled his plaid and it fell down to the ground, leaving him in just his shirt, loose through the sleeves, long to his thighs, tented forward by the male part of him she was so curious to see. She thought he ripped a button at his throat opening his shirt, and she put her hands on his chest to stop him. She felt his racing heart, heard his frantic breathing, knew he wanted this joining as much as she did.
But she didn’t want it over so quickly.
“My turn,” she murmured, then began to pull up his shirt as he’d once done to her skirts, and slid her hands beneath.
His breathing seemed to come at a rasp, and then he wasn’t breathing at all, just standing all taut as a bowstring ready to let fly. She put her hands on his hips and found them hot and smooth, devoid of the hair that was on his legs. Looking up into his face, she braved a teasing smile and let her trembling hands slide back to find his backside, the muscles hard and twitching, as if he were a great horse held still when it wanted to gallop.
Leaning against his body, she felt the long length of his arousal against her stomach through the folds of his linen shirt, the only thing that separated them. Part of her wanted to rip it away, the other part of her wanted to explore, without all of his nakedness to overwhelm her. Their gazes locked, she let her hands explore him beneath the shirt around to the front. His chest had hair that dwindled as she followed the ridges of his abdominal muscles down. She took his penis in her hands, hot and smooth and hard, saw the pleasure change his expression into a grimace.
“Am I hurting ye?” she asked, loosening her hold.
“God, no.” His words were guttural and strained.
“Take off your shirt.”
He pulled it off over his head while she still held his erection. They were two naked people facing one another in the faint firelight. While she looked down in fascination at the maleness of his body, he reached up and began pulling the pins from her hair. The long locks fell down around her shoulders, brushed her breasts.
“Ye’re such a beauty,” he murmured. “I’ve longed for ye from the moment I first saw ye.”
There was nothing she could say to that that hadn’t already been said—and besides, she didn’t want to think about conflict when she could have this moment of passion. She explored him with her fingers, delicately at first, then with more confidence.
“If ye’ve satisfied your curiosity, I’ll take ye to bed, aye?”
It was another moment where she could change her mind, but it was too late. She wanted what he offered, wanted to think of nothing but satisfying her body’s carnal demands. She wanted something that was hers, now, this experience, these memories, for she didn’t know if she’d ever have other
s like it.
Still holding on to him, she drew him back toward the box bed and sat down. He loomed above her, over her, and she let go as she fell back. Her hair spilled out around her, even as he braced himself above her and looked his fill with such admiration. Then he bent his head and kissed her mouth, her nose, her chin, moving ever downward, to the hollow of her throat, the wings of her collarbones, between her breasts. He teased her unmercifully then, kissing patterns up the swell of her breasts without ever quite reaching the peaks, until she was shivering and on the verge of begging him to touch her.
As if reading her mind, he licked across her nipple and she cried out at the absolute pleasure of it. He did the same to the other, before meeting her gaze and drawing her nipple deep into his mouth to suck. She shuddered and moaned.
“Don’t stop,” she begged.
When at last he did, she caught her breath in disappointment—until his kisses moved lower, and his body spread her thighs. He lingered at her belly, and she couldn’t even breathe.
“Duncan—” His name was a broken plea.
He murmured into her curls, “Should I stop? Or can I show ye what pleasure can be?”
She hadn’t imagined there could be more, that he would be so bold—but then he was her Scottish outlaw. She gave a nod, and he used his tongue in ways she hadn’t imagined a man would do. He pleasured her, he licked her, he suckled her, and she made the wildest gasps and moans as she felt that intense pleasure taking hold inside her again, tightening everything she was, focusing all her concentration, until the cataclysmic release had her shaking beneath him.
And then he came down on top of her, all hot hard muscle, and kissed her mouth until she could taste herself on his tongue. It seemed both embarrassing and exciting all at once. She held him to her with her arms, her thighs at his hips, felt the hard length of his arousal along the sensitive swollen flesh he’d just pleasured.
“I’ll make the pain quick and brief,” he said against her mouth.
When he slid deep inside her, she gasped at the sting, the uncomfortable intrusion.
