His Judas Bride

by Shehanne Moore

  “Morven? No. Morven wasn’t a pretty clan princess like you. She was a glen woman, plain and simple.”

  Well, didn’t this just get better by the minute? Not just the disconcertingly glazed way his gaze flicked over her face, as if he really did think she was pretty—what was going on here? A glen woman? Kara’s heart lurched so her breath tightened in her chest. And Lachlan had been a clan slave. A man who thought his second name was McLaughlin but couldn’t swear to it.

  “So why—”

  She bit her lip. Already, when his answer was likely to undermine her further, when she felt not just completely at his mercy in his arms like this, but as if she were being, not just carried, but carried from her dreams, why add to it by asking stupid questions? Even if that question might simply enrage him?

  As last night had shown, the answer to that was plain. Not only had she seduced him, he’d seduced her. Put simply the man was a randy dog. Not the least bit put out by the potentially disastrous situation he’d woken up to this morning either—a clan princess in his bed, his brother’s affianced bride.

  On the contrary his glittering sea-green eyes held that caressing measure of heat that had taken her straight to hell last night. Morven had probably gotten pregnant and was wonderful in bed, so he married her. Need Kara count all the things she herself wasn’t? Yet, having opened her mouth she knew she must say something.

  “I mean, wasn’t your father furious that you chose a glen woman?”

  “It certainly didn’t win me any prizes in the favorite son contest. Not at the time. But he came around eventually.”

  He adjusted his grip but not before the thought flickered in her mind that he must have loved her, as she had Lachlan, to have sacrificed so much.

  “Anyway, how about I take a look at that foot? Then, why don’t I make us some breakfast?”

  Kara’s jaw almost fell open. Make breakfast? Him? The terror of two glens? She wanted to see it, didn’t she? But any more of this charming domesticity, this twanging of heartstrings she didn’t possess, and she’d need to gouge her eyes out, considering what she was seeing instead.

  Still, breakfast—breakfast sounded good. She needed him to put her down.

  “How lovely. If you…” Was it too obvious if she insisted he put her on that ramshackle wooden chair there though?

  “There.”

  Too late. He set her down, just where she didn’t want to go. On the bed. And as if she were a piece of porcelain that might shatter too, although when she considered it, she felt like it to some extent, with the tiny fissures that crept like lace vines on her armor.

  “Breeches first though.”

  Thank God for that. Even if they sat so far down his hips, it wasn’t worth his trouble. Wondering how he rode about the glen, doing the things he did, with them like that, was not the thing to do here, when the necessity of reconstructing this, reconstructing herself, was paramount. Nor, when what had somehow began with him carrying her, maybe even before that, should she let her gaze be drawn by the baggy seating, to consider, for all the abundant muscles, his body was lean.

  The door handle to that room was one she could not grasp, for all it was there before her. That this man gave all kinds of damns for everyone but himself was something she could not afford to see. Her throat dried.

  “So who’s the first?” Somehow she made herself speak.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The most stubborn woman you’ve ever known?”

  He gritted his teeth on the hem of the tunic he picked off the bed. “Fallon.” He tore off a strip.

  “Fallon?”

  “That wee lass you somehow thought I’d committed incest to acquire.”

  Kara swallowed to mask her discomfort. Fallon. Grandchild of the ruler. Legitimate grandchild of the then ruler. Exactly what he’d name his child if he had one. She wished he’d stop this. For a man so masculine, he did seem to be surrounded by such a strong female presence. Even the dog, with its three and a bit legs. And he seemed so at home with them too.

  “You seem surprised.”

  She was but not as he thought. “I just thought she looked small to be…well…”

  He eased down beside her. He was so relaxed the way he did it. In spite of all her efforts not to, for the second time she was struck by his total acceptance of the situation. Of her. Yet he must know, if she was a chief’s daughter, not some piece of glen skirt, what he now faced. Could he have enjoyed it that much, being with her last night? Or was it an act? Last night she’d thought he’d been playing, to start with anyway.

  “She is. You try being left with a three-week-old baby and none of the right equipment.”

  Three weeks? Her breath caught so, she could barely sit there. She’d no idea. None. And her father had ordered that? For her?

  “It’s not easy.” He drew down his brows in that way where she couldn’t quite see his eyes. “I know you probably thought that knife business was strange. I just want her to be able to look after herself.”

  Almost Kara couldn’t breathe for what clogged the very back of her throat, the lump that rose from her ribcage and sat there like a fist.

  Pity, weaker than compassion, meant nothing. She could somehow push them to the darker reaches of her soul. Admiration, on the other hand, was harder to dismiss. If only her father had taught her that. To look after herself, because of men and the things they did. Instead of which he had fed her to them.

  “I shouldn’t say it, all right, given those responsible, but Morven being my wife was no guarantee of anything.”

  No, it wasn’t, and she was glad when in fact it was because she was his wife, he did not look at Kara. His fingers reached beneath her anklebone.

  “I’m certain this is just a sprain. You’d not be able to walk on it otherwise. I just need you to hold still while I bind…”

  Kara thought she was going to faint. It. He was going to say it. The word was right there on his tongue. But he didn’t. And she couldn’t. Not to save herself. She had forgotten all about those, the marks he stared at, right there on her ankle, as if his eyes were riveted.

  His brows clapped together. “Jesus. What the—” Before she could stop him he grabbed her other ankle. “That’s—that’s—”

  She tried wriggling her foot back from his clasp. Their situation of charming domesticity vanished like melting snow off a dyke.

  “A-a mess.” Dear God though, if she did not speak, speak calmly, rationally, without passing her tongue over her lips, she was finished. “Yes, I know.” Although how she spoke so calmly, so agreeably when his harsh stare engendered such horror, she had no idea.

  “You know?”

  Of course she knew. She knew he did too.

  “A riding accident.” Not even last night had she needed to think so quickly. “Last week.”

  This was like asking him to believe she was a ninety-eight-year-old man who could successfully pirouette across the surface of Loch Alpin. On two broken legs. When it wasn’t frozen. What else could she say though?

  What they had shared last night would not outweigh the fact he was the Black Wolf of Lochalpin and these were manacle marks on her ankles.

  He tilted his jaw. “A riding accident?”

  She would actually have preferred it if his brows had sunk instead of rising at the effrontery of her quick thoughts. It took every shred of her self-control not to falter.

  “Yes. My new mare. It dragged me along the ground.”

  Yet why should she falter? She’d seduced him, hadn’t she? It would be for nothing if she now let these ghosts of her screaming past condemn her, if she couldn’t now get her way out of this somehow. Surely he wasn’t going to come right out and accuse a woman he’d slept with, not once, but three times, of lying?

  “Well.” He stared for what seemed an eternity. Then he raised his chin. “Then maybe you won’t mind telling me, being how it is that stories of Lady Kara McGurkie’s horsewomanship are so legendary they keep all us poor people here
entertained on cold winter evenings, just how exactly it managed to drag you along the ground? So many times too? The truth, Princess. Who did this to you?”

  Oh, he was going to accuse her, wasn’t he? Damn him. And damn her father for spreading those lies, so now she’d have to tell more. Ones, that under other circumstances, she would have refrained from. Ones, that realizing he wasn’t just angry at her, it cost her to tell.

  “Did this to me? I’m sorry? If I could remember the exact details, I would. But I was busily trying to prevent my skull from fracturing at the time.” Lies she had to tell coolly too, but it would not do to stammer. Not if she wished to keep her throat intact. “Your winter evenings must be terrible though, if that is all your people have to entertain them.”

  “Oh, we have ways of relieving them.”

  They did. She could tell by the heavy way he breathed and what they were too. And it wasn’t the ways last night had been relieved with him either. Her stomach clenched, terror raking her scalp.

  “Really?” She quelled the unexpected desire to throw herself at his feet and beg for mercy. What good had such a thing ever done her after all? “And do they involve the sort of thing we did last night?”

  He slammed down his brows. “Well, maybe they damn well might, if you didn’t have marks older than Methuselah there you weren’t so damned determined to lie about.”

  “Oh, how convenient that is what you now want to believe, now you have taken my virginity. Used me. In the most brutal way a man can do a woman of my standing.”

  “Me? Use you?”

  “Yes. Yes, you have actually. I can’t think what other word there is for it.”

  “That’s rich coming from someone who hauled my tunic off last night. Do you think I don’t know what these marks are? How they came to be made? So now, it’s not just you’re telling me a pack of damned lies, it’s why you feel the need.”

  Cry. If only she could cry. But her tears were as nonexistent as her smiles. And she suspected he already saw through those. She did not wish to make things worse. To think if she had stayed in bed none of this would have happened.

  Bed? It was an idea of course.

  “I don’t know what you mean when I have no need to do anything. Only that now you don’t want me. And my father will be cross. He will shout and bawl.”

  “Isn’t that a wind change for a man who told you to follow your heart?”

  “And he will be cross with you, which is why I am so sorry when I am so disgraced, to find you this hard to reach, so tainted by all you have suffered, you see a villain behind each bush. Even in me.”

  “What?”

  “But it doesn’t stop me trying.”

  Of course she readily conceded she had not wanted to stay in bed, because she had vowed not to open her legs again. If she were to cast herself, cast herself into his arms, then would he stop asking questions? Lord save her, even if he knew this elaborate performance wasn’t real, would he? If she were to edge her fingers just that little bit, over his chest. Lower. Down the sculpted muscle to the hard wall of his stomach.

  If she were to skirt them further still to the fastenings of his breeches. Never mind the fastenings. Why trouble with the fastenings when she could just as easily slip her fingertips inside? When she could slip them around him? There were other ways to pleasure a man weren’t there and stop him asking questions?

  In all truth and the little honesty she had left her, it wasn’t just her body she sought to protect from what he roused. Coming here she had troubled herself not a wit about what might result, opening her legs for Ewen McDunnagh. A baby? Why would it happen now when nothing had ever resulted from these forced couplings? But with this man, this man it pained her to admit, when her father’s plans excluded him, how would it trouble her? Enough that she even acknowledged it was cause for concern?

  So this—she edged her leg across his thighs—this, when she obviously made him ravenous as she made him angry, was something she could do.

  If she had but known all the time he held her ankle in that steel grip, how much he wanted her, when she was so adrift and disorientated, she’d have forgotten all the nonsense about trying to explain herself and stuck her fingers into his breeches, to work him, sooner.

  She just wasn’t going to kiss him. No. If he got a mouthful of hair instead, that was too bad. His kisses were devastating. Last night had been a torture that way. Although she could certainly count on him to play friskily and on him curving his lips. He was enjoying this.

  Being thwacked on her back so the breath left her body in a gasp, she was less sure of. Or he way he somehow captured both her wrists either, dragged her hand clear out of his breeches. Especially not when his warm breath brushed her cheeks, the lips she feared him kissing. Especially not when she’d been the one in charge a second ago.

  “Please.” She tried wriggling free. “Don’t you understand? I want—” She tried arching her back. The fact was she couldn’t move, not just for his weight on her but the heat that lay on her skin, a hot, clammy fever. Her stomach knotted. Her breath came in ragged pants.

  “Has anyone ever told you, you’re too bossy for a woman?”

  Often. But not with their lips in her hair. “My father said I should—”

  They also never said it when they ran their free hand down her arm, stopping just short of her bare breast either. “Be bossy?”

  She must stop this. Free her hands. While it was good he had finally responded, she didn’t want it like this. With her at his mercy. Not even the pelt to cover herself. How it had happened was not something she intended asking herself. Not when it was vital she regain control.

  “No. He—”

  “To be such an inexperienced woman too. You know, that’s what most astonishes me about you.”

  Did it? Not according to the knowing way he not only locked his gaze with her, he hardened it too, even as his breath, hot and sinful, enveloped her. Oh God, she had misjudged this, hadn’t she?

  “But maybe that’s what you learned in Edinburgh? Hmm?”

  “No. I—”

  “Whatever your father said was noble of him when it comes to pleasing a man but we’re doing this the proper way.”

  Were they? Hell. Did he think she didn’t see what he was about here? The little game he played? She couldn’t, she wouldn’t let him between her legs. Not when what it did to her was something she did not want.

  He lowered his mouth to her breast. “Unless of course, you want to explain your objection? Along with these marks?”

  When last night’s hot wire re-extended itself from her breast to her sex, she wanted desperately to. But she did want Arland, and she was not likely to get him if she explained herself. What she was likely to get was her throat cut. She was a whore. And her father had killed the Wolf’s wife. Tell him that? When patience did not seem to be among his virtues?

  “Sir…I’ve told you—”

  “You want me, don’t you?”

  How was she meant to answer that? Every bit of her squirmed. But he raised his chin and looked down at her. The look was one of pure burning steel. If she argued, if she argued now, when she’d stuck her hand down his breeches, how guilty would that seem? Her legs were already open, his body positioned between them. It was but a question of parting them further.

  Dutifully she obliged. She even quirked her mouth as if it was no trouble. She supposed this insistence meant it wasn’t, when she could see exactly what he was about here, but after a few hurried movements as he unfastened his breeches, she struggled, despite the way he pushed into her, and her skin tightened, not to gasp her surprise.

  Of course, she admitted she was slick with his seed from last night, but even so the instant of clarity was chilling. He was rock hard and she just adjusted. Adjusted in a way she never had before to so rough an entrance.

  One that, she swallowed the gulp, if he thought he was going to screw the truth out of her, he was mistaken. On that she was determined. Without even trying s
he was determined. In that respect he didn’t know what he dealt with here. She arched her back.

  He did too, his eyes staring down at her with a desire that glazed them, a desire she could not afford to think was anything other than feigned, when she dared not close her own eyes. When the feel of his hardness was all of a passion and heat, she knew she must meet with cold icy disdain. She didn’t do this for pleasure. She did it because she had no choice. And she knew he did it—God almighty, the way his mouth found hers, she wasn’t sure why he did it. Her mind emptied of all conscious thought and her mouth tingled from that devastating touch, as these parts of her she had been a stranger to, until last night anyway, leaped in response. So horribly, all she could think was, as she fought not to tug her hands free and tangle her fingers in his hair, not to want more of his mouth, more than his mouth, not to desire to absorb every blazing inch of him, that this was like what she’d thought. What she’d imagined that very first day. The firestorm.

  She shifted to try to avoid his mouth. If it was some kind of duel, then it was vital she disengage herself from what he did to her, answer him in ways that would make him come undone. Yet, if it was, and she knew it was, why had her body opened like this? So all she wanted was to stop the lascivious gasps, the trembling, pulsing, the fire that flamed through every part of her. She couldn’t. Even before he hiked her legs over his hips, she couldn’t.

  To be so attuned to a man’s body was something she’d never truly experienced. Not even Lachlan had been quite so powerful, so raw, as when this man hiked her legs and pushed harder, waiting for the reaction. If he wasn’t so savoring of the moment as this, it would have shocked her to her core to know she was at this man’s mercy and still despite that wanted it, wanted him. Wanted to feel, although these were shores she desperately needed to be a stranger to, that she could walk them. And feel safe.