His Judas Bride

by Shehanne Moore

  True too, that the sexuality he oozed wasn’t in the normal run of things. It was, in fact, in the very dangerous run of things. Sleek. Knowing. Moody. Even wet and shivering, irritated too, he was too handsome for his own good.

  But so long as he did not prove too handsome for her own good, how much of a problem could there be, if she was to make sure of him? Her son’s future was at stake here, as well as her own and that of her sisters. Had she accused Ewen McDunnagh of rape perhaps, but she hadn’t. And she must be honest, when the Wolf was a man and there was one way to make sure of a man, especially when she could not very well tell him the truth, this could be worse. He smelled nice. Probably from bathing every day in the water lapping near her feet. Physically she could see nothing to criticize about him or to remind her of Lachlan either.

  How could she go back to McDunnagh Castle now? Even if Ewen McDunnagh didn’t kill her for the shocking affront to his pride, as the evening had so clearly shown, she couldn’t marry him.

  A woman of her dark experience wasn’t exactly likely to be moved. It didn’t matter what this man roused. The flickerings of a woman set at liberty. Nothing more. A woman who was better to have been ignorant of the passion she had once known. As earlier with his brother had perfectly proved, she was the very one to do this. There was also that secret she held, the one about Morven.

  Reaching out her hand she grasped the neck of the whiskey bottle. He stood on her path to heaven. What other choice did she have but to remove him?

  She wiped her mouth. Then she cleared her throat. “Sir.” It was the most ludicrous formality, given what she planned, but she needed to start somewhere. Now he’d sat down on the edge of the bed, the opportunity was perfect, especially as he unfastened his tunic ties. “About… About…”

  “What?”

  Every single drop of moisture evaporated from Kara’s mouth. How awful was this, to be so little skilled in the art of seduction when he was the Black Wolf of Lochalpin and this was her last card? She ran her tongue over her lips to moisten them.

  “Why I ran away.” Touch him? She was going to have to. At least put one hand on his shoulder, so she could wriggle closer. “About…about there being someone else.”

  Having her hand in a honey pot in a cave full of starving bears would be easier, considering the freezing glare he shot at her. Of course, he was cold. They both were.

  “What about it?”

  Must he be so difficult? So obtuse? When it was perfectly obvious? “What do you think?”

  Grasping her skirts she wriggled deliberately onto his lap. Not as gracefully as she’d have liked. Her teeth were chattering too badly for that and she’d done something to her ankle. She clutched another shallow breath, not just at her daring. Sweeping the damp hair back from the sides of his face, she pressed her mouth to his.

  His mouth was cool, his breath tasting faintly of whiskey, while his actual lips felt… Of course he was wet. He was cold. His hair tips dripped water. The dampness brushed her cheeks, as she pressed closer. Soaked into her fingertips. Her palms.

  But God, oh God, did he hate the McGurkies so much that his lips were like chunks of ice? He’d defended her the other day.

  Alarm flared, clogging the back of her throat. Mother of God, of all the men she could have chosen here, how could she have gambled Arland, herself, and her sisters’ futures on the one with ice floats in his veins. Or was it just that after five years, she’d forgotten how to kiss?

  She couldn’t have. He was a man and all men had their breaking point. She just needed to swallow the panic swamping her like a black tide and find his. She grasped his hand, frozen to his tunic ties. However much he hated the McGurkies, surely the apple-round softness of her breast would settle this?

  “Hell. Princess. Don’t you think things are getting the tiniest bit out of hand here? Hmm?”

  The way he jerked away, it wasn’t terribly likely. Although she wasn’t about to say so. To think she had worried solely about her response. This belt, the one holding his breeches hadn’t been undone. She must unbuckle it. Because then she would have access to his breeches themselves. She grasped it.

  “Not when I can see how you want me.”

  “Want you?”

  Must he make that strange noise, not quite a huff of breath, not quite a chuckle either, as if the concept was amusing? She wasn’t that bad.

  “Is that what you think?” The sarcastic rejoinder came from so far down his chest, the miracle was she didn’t let go of the belt instead of continue to work it.

  But then she’d no choice but to now.

  “You think that I want you?”

  “I don’t think.” She raised her chin, then she lowered it again. “I know.”

  “But you don’t think I have better respect than let you sit here, handing out your virginity in a cave to a man you know nothing about? Hmm?”

  Her virginity? With difficulty she managed not to pop the buckle clear off the belt.

  “You see I just don’t want any trouble with your father, Princess.”

  Trouble? With her father? Aye, right. The Wolf? Who had been a prickling thorn in his side for five years? A tremor coursed through her. Desperation had blinded her to one pertinent fact. Perhaps, after all, this wasn’t so clever when she didn’t have a maidenhead? Couldn’t fake one either. That wouldn’t have been a worry with his drunken sot of a brother. But this man now…

  Know it? He was bound to know it, the quite shocking way she splayed herself on his lap, grasping at his belt buckle. It might be he thought these were Edinburgh manners. It was the capital city after all. And people did things differently in capital cities than in humble glens.

  “My…my father, sir?” Who would have thought it though? What kind of man was he? St. Callm of all the virgins? Having every consideration for what she didn’t possess? Or was there a little more to it than that? She gave the belt another tug. “He…he has always desired that I follow my heart.”

  “Oh, does he? And has he also told you how long it’s been since I was with a woman?”

  He hadn’t. But she was a little too busy struggling to come to terms with the way the Wolf squared his jaw to worry about that. She shrank from the harshness of the breath licking her cheek. As for the cold intensity of the sea-green eyes, fastened like ice picks on her, the fierce undertone of his voice, these were things she simply had not bargained on.

  “Properly with a woman? Not just a wee kiss here. A wee feel of a nice breast there?”

  Oh God, did he have to touch her? In such a crude way? Grab hold of her wrist too, as if to fend her off.

  “Sir—I don’t see what—”

  “Five years.”

  She forced in a breath. Please don’t tell her he was like her. She couldn’t do this if he was. She couldn’t do this anyway. He didn’t want her. Not with the banked-up fury that lay at the back of his eyes, their iced coldness.

  “So you be very clear what you tempt here.”

  And even if he did want her, how wrong would that be? To do that to him? She saw it now. If only she had seen it before, but she had been preoccupied with her own desperation. She lowered her gaze, although it didn’t stop her feeling his own burning holes in her skin, so she didn’t know what to do now.

  “So then? That kiss? If you still want to give me it?”

  Her throat clenched. How could she?

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  Actually she did. She did want to give it. Truly. And nothing to do with the mess she had made of this. Why shouldn’t she have a moment? For all his looks. For all his reputation. Five years? He was almost too vulnerable to let go of.

  Before she could stop herself she clasped the sides of his face. His mouth was so soft. As if it was so unexpected she would do this, she even felt the click of his throat as he swallowed. Her breath caught. And he didn’t take any kind of advantage of what she did. When she thought of all the men, the ones who had hurt her, it was something she supposed.
>
  She edged back. His eyes held hers for a long moment. Solemnly. Sea-green in a fog bank. Raising his finger he pointed at his cheek.

  Well? Wasn’t that what she got for kissing him?

  Yet she did this to get back her son. Was she going to deny herself the chance because this man demanded a kiss now she’d somehow got him where she wanted him?

  She swallowed, dragging a particle of air into her parched lungs, silence crackling and extending as she leaned forward and glided her lips across the tiny indent in his cheek. The faint stubble tickled pleasantly. So pleasantly, as the dent deepened, her belief in herself and the metal caliber of her heartstrings began to falter.

  “Other one.”

  Or had she? Got him where she wanted, that was? Well, she could say no. The damn bastard had no right playing her like this with instruments of more torturing design than the rack and chain. But if she did that, when it had seemed to her a few moments ago, maybe he did play her about her father, how foolish would that be?

  Proving she did want him, that was what she was doing, wasn’t it? She brushed the hint of darkened stubble on his other cheek.

  He turned his head and his mouth found hers. Nuzzled against it. She tasted need. Real aching need. It was so unexpected, although he barely touched them, her lips parted beneath his. Fully.

  The confirmation he wanted her, at least to kiss her, shouldn’t have made her heart pound. Not when disquiet stirred. Five years? What a cool liar.

  Without dragging her lips away, she reached again for his silver belt buckle. Suppose the five years were no lie—what the blazes was wrong with her fingers they fumbled like this though, like an old woman’s full of knots? Men that desperate were like bulls. It would solve several problems. In fact it would solve all her problems, especially if one kiss on which she only half concentrated could extinguish her like this.

  He lowered his hands and clasped hold of hers. Fear prickled the back of her neck. Oh, Jesus. God. And all the saints.

  “You’re quite a woman, aren’t you?”

  Perhaps his breath resonated unevenly against her cheeks, but suspicion glittered in his gaze. She didn’t know she could bear being told she was too presumptuous. Not again.

  “I thought you’d like to take it off?”

  “Fine.” He spread his hands. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  Her fingers found the buckle. Pushed. Pulled. The buckle wasn’t all they found. He was heavily erect. And he didn’t exactly make any effort to hide it. If anything she suspected he enjoyed the sensation of her fingers’ proximity. The anticipation that her knuckles or her fingertips, or her thumb might accidentally brush his stone-hard heat. And lose control of the belt entirely because of the uncontrolled way they jerked it. Damn it.

  Her cheeks pounded. Dear God, what was wrong with her? One slip, one miniscule, deliberate slip was all it would take to turn this to her advantage and she…she…couldn’t, because she couldn’t rid herself of this feeling that maybe she shouldn’t have touched his belt, if all it had done was increase his suspicions.

  “Having a little difficulty there?”

  “No. I—”

  “Here. Let me.” His face was taut and impassioned. Liquid fire. Hardened steel. He grasped her hands, undid the buckle with them beneath his, and tossed the belt to the floor of the cave, all the while still staring intensely at her.

  How she kept her chin up as his fingers next grasped her cloak ties, when her insides had turned to water—well, the throb in her ankle was something to concentrate on. Especially the short work he made of the cloak. One yank to part it. Another to fling it aside. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t warned her about tempting him.

  He bent his head. Took her mouth. How the blazes had it happened that she should find herself thinking it might have been better not to run away from Ewen McDunnagh?

  In a few words?

  His hands slipped inside the shoulders of her gown, and he hauled it down over her breasts.

  In more?

  The trail of fire his fingers, his lips left in their wake. His heat enveloped her. Completely. Body. Breath. Scent. So that core, that core which had destroyed her once before, stirred. Not what she desired but nobody had run their hands over her like this in years. Nobody had kissed her skin. Not even Lachlan would have been so bold as to kiss down her thighs, inside them. Her breath caught as she held it. She could still resist this though. For all that he stirred, she was dead inside.

  Except if she was, it seemed that what emerged from beneath the tunic he tugged over his head would not cause her heart to pause.

  An angel could not have such a body. An angel couldn’t, or she wouldn’t look. It was stunning. So beautiful it was a sin for it to be covered. Narrow hipped. Almost completely hairless. Strong biceps. Lean walls of flat stomach muscle, extending all the way to…did she say covered? Were the breeches any lower… How they could sit so far down his hips and yet remain on was impossible. Especially, she was forced to admit through her increasing daze, with the way her hands itched. She lay down.

  God, please give her the acting skills to play the innocent virgin. Certainly she was as nervous as one.

  His fingers undid the buttons. “So, Princess.”

  Of course God never did answer her prayers. Or maybe he just knew exactly what she was about? The long slow way his knuckles dusted her stomach and his gaze narrowed seductively, suggested he did. The fact his body was hardened to rock solid certainty when a few seconds ago his exploration had been full, and he now wasted time too, which made it all the more imperative she keep control.

  “How about you tell me what you like?”

  Kara fisted the bedclothes in a bid not to leap upright. “Like?” She closed her eyes. Two could play that game. “I wouldn’t know. How would I?”

  “That’s all right. That’s what we’re here to find out. We have all night too.”

  If that was what he thought he was wrong. She could and would like to hurry this along. In the absence of that she could and would fight this, although of course she realized, having been so eager a moment ago, how this must look. And it was painful to acknowledge that things had already gone so far wrong that even the faint trailing of his fingertips down the center of her ribcage raised an unfortunate heat in her. A heat she was no less astonished to feel, for having expected it. Wasn’t she dead to men touching her after all?

  “So how about you just tell me…” His hand slid up, molten velvet, and her eyes flew open, as the fingertips skimmed her nipple. Circled it. Paused.

  She realized how completely she’d forgotten how it was to have a man touch her so intimately. She bit her lip to smother the guttural sound that very nearly escaped her. For her own sake she should give no indication how badly his touch affected her. In that respect it did no harm to pretend to be a virgin.

  “…if you like this. Or do you prefer…”

  The intensity, the heated intensity with which he bent his head, took her nipple in his mouth, ran his tongue over it, one eye on her the whole time he did it, nearly made her shriek aloud. Her hands fisted on the fur beneath her, so tight, she swore she balded it.

  Lachlan would have died of mortification to explore her breast in such a way, whatever they’d once been to each other.

  Lachlan, she began to think, hadn’t known very much at all.

  She arched her spine. Deliberately. The pressure of his mouth made her blood beat beneath it in a way it hadn’t for five years. A hot rod sizzled all the way from the engorged tip of her nipple to her sex. At all costs she needed to be a stranger to it. To keep him completely ignorant of what he’d done. “I want—I want you to just, just—”

  “What about this? Hmm?

  He slid his fingers down her belly, and she realized, in a panic, she didn’t know whether it was best to say yes or no. What if she said yes and he slid his fingers lower and touched her, at the very center of her being? But what if she said no and he redoubled his efforts?

  How
pathetic, when she considered the assaults she’d suffered she should so fear a man whose fingers held such sweet drugging pleasure, she squirmed. Apart from what he’d done to her breast, his exploration of her body, this far anyway, was strangely innocent. Far more so than when he’d removed her clothes.

  “Sir, please.” She’d known this would be difficult. She’d no idea how difficult. “I…I… Take me. That’s w-what I want.”

  He raised his head. The blazing stare only built her anticipation but fortunately his hands had ceased their gradual slide toward her sex. “You’re keen. I’ve not had an offer like that for some time.”

  “Desire isn’t a sin.”

  “So? Do you desire me?”

  She made a protesting sound and nearly rose up from the bed, as his hand thrust between her clenched thighs. He could not make it clearer if he tried what he was going to do, and she struggled to remain calm. Because despite her attempt to fight this, she was aroused. Moisture welled and pooled between her legs. Her stomach clenched, she couldn’t help it, as he eased her thighs apart. The sensation of his cool fingers curving the burning flesh of her thigh, was unlike anything she’d ever felt.

  “So you’re all ready for me are you, Princess?”

  She nodded. Fervently. Already she hated that her voice sounded rash, fevered, unlike her, and thought it better not to speak. She flicked her eyes shut.

  “Has no one ever told you it’s a man’s duty to see a woman thoroughly pleasured first though?”

  She had never heard such rot. Rot that made it more imperative she did not surrender. Not when she did this for Arland, nothing more. “It… I d-didn’t think men bothered with things like that. I thought they just—I believe it my duty simply to comply.”

  “Then you’ve thought wrong. Especially since this is your first time.” He eased her thighs a little further apart.