A Well Favored Gentleman

by Christina Dodd

  At last she stopped, panting. She’d accomplished nothing, and he still touched her, sliding his shaft along until it was damp with her unwilling excitement.

  She turned her face away.

  “No.” He stopped. Taking her jaw in his hand, he turned her head until she looked at him again. “You watch me. This time I don’t want you to ever forget.” Lifting himself to his knees, he brought her hips off the ground. Holding her thighs, he found the center of her and pushed.

  “Remember.”

  And as she took that deliberate, deep thrust into herself, she did. She remembered everything.

  Lightning flashed so brightly she saw it beneath her closed eyelids. Thunder crashed in heaven’s cacophony. Her foot throbbed, but distantly, eased by the drugs she had taken. And a man’s weight beside her on the bed, warming with his body as he slept beside her. Then his seduction. Kisses so sweet they lulled her old fears. Caresses that pursued her delight. Intimacies such as she’d never imagined.

  And was only this morning rediscovering.

  She’d tucked memories deep into her mind, but the narcotics she’d taken were no match for the reality of Ian.

  “Ah.” He smiled at her expression. “You know now, don’t you?”

  If she didn’t admit it, she could save herself.

  “You do.” While nestled deep within her, he laughed out loud. The wind caught it and carried it up so everyone could hear.

  She wanted to tell him to hush, but he stroked again, and the muscles inside her clutched at him.

  “Dear Lord.” His eyes half closed. “You’re glorious.” He wrapped her legs around his hips and lowered her to the ground, lay on her, and surged into her again. “You remember.” He surged again. “You remember.” Again. “Remember.”

  His chest against hers, his breath on her face, the rasp of his beard, the thrust of him deep inside her—it was familiar. It was good. Compulsively she curled herself around him, taking him, wanting him, claiming him in her own way.

  Driven by his need, he moved quickly, then more quickly, pushing her into the grass, receiving gratification from her flesh, shaking and gasping and straining.

  And when he crushed himself against her open body, the tremors shook her. This wasn’t the same. This wasn’t a memory. This was better than before, greater than she’d dreamed. She cried out her pleasure and he laughed as he came slowly to rest on her.

  With both hands he cupped her face. “Mine.” He said it as if he couldn’t get enough of the word. “All mine.” Dazed and overwhelmed as she was, he kissed her, a conqueror’s kiss, and smiled a master’s smile. “All happiness on your birthday, Alanna. You’ve reached your majority today.”

  Now she remembered everything, and knew why she had fought it so much.

  She remembered…she had given him all her soul the first time they’d made love. This time she’d given him her heart.

  She loved him. Loved a man who wanted her so he could take control of her home. So he could usurp her place in Fionnaway.

  When a selkie mates with a leg-walker, they marry, or not, and if there’s a child, a protocol must be followed. First the child must be examined by the elders, and its nature determined. Human or selkie? They look to see, and if the babe is human, the selkie parent must stay on land. Twelve years a selkie is given before it must go back to the sea. Twelve years of exposure to the parching air, the malicious sunlight, the ordeal of living with aliens. Yet even the gradual withering of the body and soul is rewarded, for the children who come of these unions are always special. Always different. Always magical.

  Chapter 20

  “Did I hurt you?” Ian watched Alanna closely as he fed her chunks of cold rabbit.

  “Nay,” she whispered.

  He’d dressed her in his white shirt to protect her fair skin from the sun, and because it seemed to comfort her, he replaced her necklace so it dangled against her skin.

  She looked fragile seated on the wool blanket. Beneath the hat he’d brought her, wisps of grass stuck throughout the copper strands of hair. Her lips were red, too, from his kisses, and a worthy man should have felt guilty for giving her that beard burn across her chin.

  Ian didn’t. He felt damned good. In fact, he couldn’t remember when he had felt better. “More bread?”

  “Nay.”

  She hadn’t said one voluntary word since he’d held her down with his body and forced pleasure on her. She’d just sat with her arms across her belly, answering his questions and eating his food, and all the time appearing to be a little lost.

  She didn’t realize it, but those dreams he’d teased her with had teased him, too. He’d gotten no satisfaction from those nightly meetings of the mind, and his body had ached, too full and wanting for restraint. Now, with the pressure slightly allayed, he could coax her and court her and pretend he didn’t want her again right now. Which he did.

  With his thumb he dislodged a crumb from her lower lip. Then, unable to stop, he stroked her unsmiling mouth. “Are you going to say you didn’t enjoy it?”

  “Are you going to demand I talk about it?”

  “No. I suppose not. I can make that concession to your modesty.” He glanced down. She sat crossed-legged, everything but her knees concealed by his shirttails. He couldn’t see what rested beneath, but he could imagine. “It is modesty which stops you, isn’t it?”

  “You know it is.”

  “I don’t know anything about women.” No more than any man. “I only know I felt every ripple.”

  Startled, she clutched at the shirt she wore. “Ripple?”

  “Inside you.”

  She set her teeth and glared, but all that mattered was her blush.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t know?” he inquired.

  “I don’t know what you know. I don’t know much about how this works.” She snapped at him like a little bitch terrier turning on her first stud, and he was relieved to hear it. She’d been so subdued, he’d started to worry. He’d been too rough, and yet…and yet she’d been almost cruel. She’d tried too hard to deny her memories, to drive him away, and he couldn’t allow her more time.

  Today was her birthday. Time was what he did not have.

  He smiled at her. “Virgin.”

  “Not this time.”

  Her voice was faint, but he heard her and he remembered. The night at the witch’s hut. Her drugged sleep, the seduction he had deemed necessary. Her startled response, and his own fervent desire.

  Was he suffering from guilt? No, surely not. He’d weighed his options thoroughly before he’d gone to her that night, and events had proven his wisdom. However, he now found to his surprise a man could be confident and still need to employ tact with the woman he had manipulated.

  Alanna looked off to the side as if something waited there that needed her inspection, but when he glanced, he saw only the windswept grasses. She avoided his gaze, so he let his hand drift down to burrow beneath the hem of her shirt. His shirt. She jumped at his touch, but he just stroked her ankle and imagined how she was open, available to him if he wished.

  Of course, he’d make her wish, too. “I’ll teach you everything you need to know about this.”

  “I thought you already had.”

  He chuckled, low and deep in his throat. “We’ve barely begun. We’ll find a bed, and stay there all day and all night, and that’ll be just the beginning for us…when we are wed.”

  She flinched.

  He felt the movement in her ankle, and he almost flinched as well. Hating to know, but realizing he had to, he asked, “Do I repulse you?”

  “Repulse me? Do you jest?” She gestured, a quick little movement that took her protective hand away from her body. She tucked it hastily back, as though motion indicated an ease she didn’t feel. “I think it’s obvious you don’t repulse me.”

  “Because you respond to me when we—”

  “Sh.” She glared.

  He smothered a grin and tried to explain. “There are things that
can be done to a woman to make her receptive to a man.”

  She watched him inquisitively.

  “I’m said to be proficient…” He supposed he shouldn’t brag, and losing all patience and delicacy, he said, “Like this.” His hand jumped from her calf and onto her inner thigh.

  Muffling a shriek, she grabbed for him through the cotton, but he kept his motions tender and discreet. She had him by the wrist, pressing down as if that would stop him, but he let his fingers circle lazily along the soft skin in the middle of her thigh.

  Eyes wide, she watched him, waiting for him to pounce.

  Of course, he had no such scheme. She might deny he had hurt her, but he’d been too rough for an almost-virgin and he couldn’t take her again. Although…he’d donned his trousers as a sop to her modesty, and they fit too tightly again.

  But regardless of the demands of the tyrant between his legs, he couldn’t use Alanna so selfishly. He had truly established his claim; now was the time for wooing.

  Wistfully he withdrew his fingers, trailing them beneath her thigh, beneath her knee, and along her slim, smooth calf, shaped by years of climbing the rugged Scottish terrain. She scrutinized his every movement, and responded to his charming smile not at all.

  He had some work to do. Scooting over so he sat beside her, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Her rigid shoulders. She stared stiffly forward, but he lifted his knee just in case she glanced down. He didn’t think his cockstand would do much in the way of reassuring her. “There’s more to this than you and me. There’s your estate, and the people on it. My father is still in residence. Your cousin is still your heir. I’m not like them. You know that when you marry me, I’ll help you to care for Fionnaway. You can trust me.”

  “Why?” she asked belligerently. “I don’t know anything about you.”

  His fingers clenched on her arm. “You know my deepest secret.” Then he recalled he was supposed to be coaxing her. He loosened his grip and softened his tone. “My father couldn’t wait to share that. You believed him, and you didn’t say a word. Why?”

  “Everyone has their secrets, Ian.” She looked at him sideways.

  Did she have secrets? Of course she did. He could see them hovering about her in muted soft colors.

  Would she tell him her secrets? Not yet, but he could cajole her. He could make love to her. He could slip past her guard and someday know her as well as she knew herself.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she coaxed. “Convince me I should depend upon you to stay here.”

  Cautiously he slid back on the blanket and reclined on his elbows. “What do you want to know?”

  She relaxed a little. “How did your father meet your mother?”

  “I believe he and your father were friends. That is why he’s your guardian.”

  She bent her knees, pulled the shirt over them, and hunched forward as if the mere mention of her father gave her a bellyache. “Aye, Mr. Fairchild is just the sort of man my father would have called an all-righter.”

  “Leslie came here to visit—to sponge, if I want to be correct—and somehow met my mother. That is, of course, all I know for sure, but I imagine he made promises he never intended to keep, got her pregnant, and fled back to England.” He waited tensely to see if she would comment about the lack of a marriage.

  She didn’t even seem to notice, and he wasn’t truly surprised. Why would a woman who dealt with his beastliness be disturbed he was also a bastard? He probably could have confessed that he dressed in women’s clothing—his father’s poorly kept secret—and she still would have shrugged.

  She probed a little deeper. “Do you remember your mother?”

  He didn’t want to answer. He’d never told anyone. But this was Alanna. Practically his wife. She still clutched her legs close like a babe with a bellyache, and if he wished to convince her to wed him, he would have to concede at least a little of the truth to obtain her trust.

  Besides, she wouldn’t mock or laugh. He knew that. So like a man opening a long-closed and rusty door, he unlocked his memories. “I do.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Like a human.” He squinted, trying to see his mother down the lengthy tunnel of time. “And so beautiful, with her dark hair and sweet smile. I was her son, so of course, I thought so, but I remember the men hanging around. They wanted her, each one, until she…looked at them. She had a way to seeing clear down to your soul. Her eyes would get cloudy, almost silver—”

  “Like yours.”

  He paused and tensed, wondering what other half-breed manifestations he showed. “Do they? I didn’t know. I suppose that’s why people start stepping backward when I stare at them.”

  “One of the reasons. Do you, too, see down into people’s souls?”

  He touched his ring. He’d worn it on his hand since the day his mother had left him at Fairchild Manor. She’d taken it from the chain around his neck and told him it was time. Then she’d slipped it on his finger, and said it would help him make his way through the confusion of human emotions. It had; it was the ring that enabled him to see auras, and the stone that helped him judge others’ characters. Yet without being told, he knew the stone would not work in such a manner on another’s hand, so he answered Alanna. “No, but I’m only half a selkie.”

  She stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes, watching them intently. “People stare at you because of your height, I think, and because you give the impression of…I don’t know…of dominance.”

  “So I would be a good husband for the lady of Fionnaway,” he quipped.

  “You are persistent.”

  “Another worthy attribute.”

  “You don’t belong here.”

  Agony struck him, a hot brand to his heart. Sitting up, he grabbed her arms and forced her to face him. “I do! There is nowhere else that I belong but here.”

  “Ian, you’re hurting me.”

  Her eyes were wide, and he glanced down to see his fingers biting into her flesh.

  Nothing that she had ever said, none of her denials, had jolted him as did her refusal to share Fionnaway. Scrupulously he loosened his grip. “I’m sorry.” He stroked the red marks he had left on her skin. Bending his head to hide the anguish he feared must show in his eyes, he tried to explain in a way she would comprehend. “But I do belong here. I have been like a stray mongrel, searching for a place that filled my soul. I have found it here. Fionnaway is like the scent of fresh bread to a starving man, or a mother’s touch to a newborn babe. I do belong here, Alanna. I do.”

  She didn’t say anything, and he realized he’d been too intense. He’d spoken too dramatically, he’d made his vulnerability known. Now Alanna, like his father, like the Quaker girl, like all of society, had the power to strike him down if she wished.

  Did she wish?

  Carefully she slid her arms out from beneath his relaxed hold. “I have a temper which betrays me, as it did on this occasion. I spoke unwisely. Fionnaway is indeed your home for as long as you desire.”

  Her hands rested beneath his, palm to palm. The fine bones, the sinews, the pads and lines of skin, were open to him, vulnerable and yet quiescent. She trusted him not to abuse her, although his violent desires seemed close to the surface and almost ungovernable when she was near. Now they bubbled in him, making a mockery of his determination to allow her time to accept him.

  He just wanted a home. He just wanted her. She’d made no vows before the minister; he was mad to jeopardize her goodwill with a display of unwanted passion.

  Yet of its own will, one hand rose and cupped her chin. The other rose and cupped her breast. “Alanna.” He meant to sound seductive. He sounded imperious. “I’ll have you again now, whether you will or not.”

  Without a hint of shyness, she looked into his eyes. “Then I’d better agree, hadn’t I?”

  Chapter 21

  Alanna stood and discarded her hat. “Come along. I have something to show you.”

  Ian sat frozen wit
h surprise as she walked up the hill, and when he still hadn’t moved, she glanced over her shoulder. “Are you coming or no?”

  The question might be unconsciously provocative, but that way she dipped her head and looked at him from beneath lowered lashes was not. How had the lass learned such a trick in so short a time? She’d been an innocent not a month ago, and now Mother Nature had taught her how to bring a man panting to her side.

  Finding himself on his feet, he decided he was not one to challenge Mother Nature. Alanna disappeared over the summit, and he hurried, anxious to walk at her side. Then, as he crested the promontory, he slowed. What a stirring sight to see her walk among the grass. Her dainty feet scarcely bruised the ground. Her bare legs cut through the stalks, and the ripening heads slipped beneath the tail of the shirt she wore and teased her where he longed to touch.

  Descending the slope toward a run of trees, she never looked back to see if he was following. She could probably hear the requisite panting, he acknowledged, for with every step his need grew stronger.

  A line of trees crowned the ground ahead, and as she neared them she bent, giving him a glimpse of her pale thighs and a round curve of buttocks.

  Then, as if the ground swallowed her, she disappeared.

  Torn between lust and alarm, he skidded down the incline. She couldn’t be hurt; she knew this area too well. Yet…without warning, a small chasm opened at his feet. Only a short distance below, he could hear the splash of water as it tumbled over rocks, and farther upstream, the deeper spatter of a waterfall. He tottered on the edge, then plunged off. Before he had fallen even his own height, the ground came up and met him, and he stumbled, trying to save himself. Falling, he rolled, and when he opened his eyes, he found himself staring up at a frowning Alanna as she stood by his head.

  “I always thought you were so graceful,” she said.

  He could see up her shirt. His shirt. The shirt. He could see…everything. Her legs, and between them the pouting lips lightly covered by hair, and beneath those…