The Rogue

by Allison Butler

  His masculine heat covered her and Keila revelled in the weight of his body on hers.

  Adair searched her face and looked into her eyes. ‘There will be pain.’ Keila glimpsed the regret colouring his tone in his blue gaze. ‘But I will ensure the pleasure that follows is greater and lasts much longer.’ A glint of silver flashed in the blue depths like a promise.

  ‘Show me, Adair.’ She reached for him and pulled his mouth down to hers.

  Their lips met and melded, his mouth taking command of the kiss even as his fingers found her most sensitive spot and teased until her hips lifted from the ground of their own accord. She struggled to catch her breath and fought to get closer to his wicked fingers and any other part of him close at hand.

  ‘Shh, easy, Keila. We’re almost … there.’

  Something warm and hard pressed into her just below where his fingers had been. She hitched in another startled breath as his fingers returned to play once more, making her yearn for more. She flexed her hips upward, searching, and was rewarded with greater pressure pushing deeper inside her. She’d never wanted something this much. Never wanted this until she’d met Adair.

  ‘Keila.’ His palms cradled her face. His eyes delved into hers and his head lowered. His mouth captured her lips and her cry, as his hips surged forward driving into her heat.

  She clenched her eyes shut against the pain. Time stopped, everything stilled. She lost several breaths. Gentle lips pressed staying kisses along her jaw, upon her cheeks and closed eyes, at the edge of her mouth. Taut muscles relaxed, her fingers eased from clawing into his naked back. Keila dragged in an uneven breath and opened her eyes to find Adair’s blue gaze fixed on hers. Waiting.

  ‘Tell me there is more.’ Her husky voice stole the concern from his eyes.

  ‘There is,’ he slowly lowered his head once more. ‘Much more.’ His words heightened her curiosity. His kiss quickened her blood and sped up her heart.

  Keila gave herself over to his kiss, to him, as his hips flexed and he almost withdrew from her, only to push inside her again, deep, all the way. Over and over again. His movements, building a fire, stoking the flames higher, her yearning for something she didn’t know but desperately wanted. Something she needed. She pulled her mouth free.

  ‘Adair?’ Two breaths. ‘Please.’

  ‘Feel it, Keila.’ Words rumbled in his chest. His hands cupped her face. ‘Stay with me.’ His gaze bore into hers. His hips tilted. The craving shifted, intensified. Her muscles clenched about him.

  She moaned; the sound ripped from somewhere deep inside her where she melted like liquid silver. ‘Oh God.’ The next thrust glided deeper, held.

  ‘Hold me, Keila.’ Thrust and hold. ‘Feel me.’ Deeper. ‘Let go, Keila.’

  She clutched him to her sweat-slickened body, tightened about him and surrendered to the glowing heat, the leaping flames. The fire. She rode the hot, rippling waves, burning, engulfed and relishing the molten heat.

  ‘Keila!’

  Her name, torn from his throat, sounding like a plea, fanned the inferno higher.

  Chapter 15

  Adair panted into the curve of Keila’s neck, inhaling heather and pine, exhaling, breathing in this woman who was like no other. His heart hammered. His body sank into her softness as her fingers traced patterns and swirls in the moisture coating his back. He didn’t want to move. Could stay like this forever. Keila. The first maiden he’d lain with. Her gift to him, something he’d forever treasure. The sound of her reaching ecstasy filled him with such heightened pleasure he’d almost spilled his seed inside her.

  Not wanting to leave a string of bairns without a name, he always withdrew. He’d withdrawn and roared her name, just in time. But with Keila, her pleasure had been more powerful than any other and more important. Her pleasure had been his and he’d wanted to stay buried deep within her heat when he’d found his own.

  He pushed up higher on his elbows and searched the face of this woman of firsts. Her hands stilled and her red-gold lashes lifted to reveal the emerald eyes he’d learned could alter his day with a glance. They stared up at him now with firelight flickering in their depths and a softness borne of wonder. A fist clamped around his heart and squeezed.

  ‘Well.’ One single breathless word and a smile that shone in her eyes.

  He swallowed and cleared his throat. ‘Well.’ But his voice still broke when he said it. He swallowed again and his thumbs traced the rosy skin of her high cheekbones, his need to touch her great. He leaned low and pressed a gentle kiss on her mouth, but the sample wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He kissed her again, followed the line of her closed lips with his tongue until she opened for him and welcomed him inside.

  He swelled and thickened against her thigh. He wanted her again. He wanted more. Now. But it was too soon.

  He calmed the kiss and started to lift his mouth away. Her gasp brushed his lips a moment before her hands cupped his nape and pulled his head back down. Her tongue swept into his mouth and her hips rose up and shifted against him. A groan he couldn’t stop escaped. He reached between them, and positioning himself, slowly pressed forward, filling her heat. Her hips lifted to meet each of his downward thrusts, though this time the rhythm was slower, more intense. Their slickened bodies glided and melded together. Their mouths, their lips and tongues fused, hungry, seeking more. Busy hands clutching, grasping, clinging with an urgency Adair had never experienced. Another first.

  He craved Keila, needed her in a way he’d never suffered. One hand shifted behind her head and brought her mouth closer to his so he could taste her, savour her better. His other hand slid down beneath her bottom, tilting her hips higher, opening her to take him deeper. Her knees clamped about his hips and her fingers clawed into his back creating a joint urgency between them, a rush to get closer, move faster, to feel everything. To feel it all.

  ‘Now, Keila.’ Dair drove himself deeper a whisper of time before her cry of rapture exploded and filled the air. When her cries of release ceased and when he could wait no longer, he slipped from her heat and shuddered his release on her hip and thigh. Keila clung to him, held him and his arms tightened about her further, pulling her into him, closer, a need he had no control over.

  Adair rolled to his side and onto his back, taking Keila’s quivering form with him. She lay over him, her slender form moist and warm. Her cheek against his chest. Long strands of her red-gold hair draping his side. Her breathing fast and shallow. He drew in a long breath and felt her scant weight rise with his inhalation, and then sink and settle into him as he exhaled. Keila inhaled a shivery breath and released a sigh. A sound that shot straight into his heart. A moment he would never forget.

  How long they lay thus, Adair had no clue, but so caught up in the pleasure of the shared aftermath, the warm stillness, he remained silent, refusing to move.

  Her cheek lifted and she turned her head. Strands of her silken hair skimming and tickling his chest as she placed her palms on him and lowered her chin against the back of her hands. She peered down at him, appearing comfortable in her nakedness, in his presence.

  This time, he spoke first. ‘Well.’ His single word earned him a slow smile that curved her bonny mouth.

  ‘Well.’ She spoke the word on a sigh. Her red-gold brows lifted, widening her enchanting eyes and her smile.

  Adair chuckled at her delightfully wicked expression and Keila released a soft laugh. Wrapping his arms around her, he rolled over and cradled her beneath him once more. He stared down at her, unable to remember a time when he’d felt this happy. ‘So you found our joining amusing?’

  She looked up at him. ‘I found,’ she ceased laughing but her smile remained. ‘I found our joining to be … the most glorious thing I have ever known.’

  Dair’s chest filled with warmth. That Keila recognised and acknowledged the beauty in what they’d shared made his own experience greater, more special than it was already. And it had been far from his first time.

  ‘Aside fro
m brewing ale, of course.’

  Adair blinked at her jest comparing their lovemaking to brewing ale. ‘Of course.’ Her smile had disappeared. Part of him wanted to stay exactly where he was forever, but he knew he couldn’t. ‘Is there any water close by?’

  ‘There’s a pail of water in the far corner of the shed and cloths on the shelf above.’

  ‘Wait here.’ Dair slowly moved from over her. He stood and walked around the large wooden casks and the gently simmering cauldron to where he found the water and cloths. Retrieving what he needed, he headed back the same way, wondering just for a moment where they would go from here.

  She lay precisely as he’d left her, appraising his body while lying as naked as he. He liked that she didn’t try to cover herself and hide from his appreciative gaze. She was all natural beauty, from the slender column of her throat to the fullness of her breasts and down the deep curve that his hands had explored and on to the womanly flare of her hips. Firelight splashed her creamy, smooth skin, bathing it in hues of red and gold.

  He stood at her feet and looked into her eyes. ‘You are beautiful.’

  Her gaze trailed the length of him. ‘As are you.’ She pushed up into a sitting position and made to rise.

  ‘Nae.’ He knelt beside her. ‘Let me.’

  She settled back, with her arms locked at the elbows behind her, watching him.

  Dair squeezed water from one cloth, and after glancing at her face, he peered down at the proof of their joining smearing her hip and inner thighs. He glanced up again for a moment, before using gentle strokes to wash all traces of her blood and his seed from her skin. ‘Did I hurt you?’

  She tilted her head to one side. ‘The hurt is a part of it. I see nae way around it.’ Her gaze met his. ‘The pain was sharp, but didn’t last for long.’

  ‘Good.’ He dried the moisture from her legs. ‘Are you comfortable here or would you prefer to return inside Drummin House?’ He rinsed the cloth and used it on himself.

  ‘Thank you.’ She drew her knees up and turned and looked toward the closed wooden shutters. ‘It is still dark out and I’m comfortable here.’ She reached for her discarded clothing. ‘But I will dress in case Moira wakes and comes looking for me.’

  ‘An excellent suggestion.’ He spread the drying cloth out beside his plaid. ‘As will I. The dragon has a tendency to show up and find me at my best.’ He lay on his plaid and rolled, wrapping himself within its folds. ‘I’d rather be wearing something if it happens again.’ He sat up and reached for his linen shirt.

  She settled on her hands and knees on the cloth he’d spread out for them to share, and leaning closer, before he could don his shirt, brushed her fingers along the scar that ran for three inches from his side around his back at the base of his ribs. ‘What happened?’

  Adair looked up as she rocked back onto her knees waiting for his reply. ‘Any scars I have I see as lessons learned.’ He shifted forward and sat on the cloth beside her. ‘I earned that scar on my first skirmish into English territory to retrieve the cattle that had been stolen from the winter field.’ He’d practically begged the laird to let him go with them and he’d finally given in. ‘There were five of us. The laird, his son Lachlan and two men at arms. It was dark, as it often is when the cattle are stolen and retrieved, but we found the small herd of beasts not too far across the border.’

  ‘Why did the English take them?’

  ‘Having cattle, especially good cattle, means money and power, nae matter which side of the border you live. The most important thing is to nae get caught, whether you’re lifting someone else’s property or taking back what is yours.’

  She slowly shook her head as a look of fascination and confusion painted her features.

  ‘The laird and his men dealt with the English reivers while Lachlan and I had been commanded to watch and learn what we could in the poor light.’ It hadn’t been easy to stay out of the fray, but he and Lachlan had managed. ‘We were about to move from the cover of trees when a small sound from behind told us we were nae longer alone. Our swords were already drawn at the ready, and likely what saved us. We turned our mounts and were attacked by one of the English reivers, who’d returned from patrolling their makeshift camp and found us.

  ‘Lachlan was on my right and as both our horses turned, my mount jostled Lachlan’s, forcing it to take a step forward. The scum’s blade was already slicing the air but missed his target and found me instead. As you can see, it wasn’t a fatal wound and Lachlan despatched the fool with one strike of his own sword.’

  ‘How old were you and Lachlan?’

  ‘We were both fifteen summers, both young men.’ Eleven years had passed since that day. They’d all grown older and Lundy and Lachlan now had a wife. ‘Come here.’ He held open his left arm. ‘Lie with me.’

  She blinked and shifted into the hollow at his side. He lowered them to the ground, pleased with how well she seemed to fit him. Soft ends of her silken hair tickled his upper arm and a moment before her head settled on his chest, her fingertips softly circled the round, puckered scar a full finger’s length below his left shoulder. ‘And here?’

  ‘Ah, that particular lesson was learned when I was only six summers and had been with the Elliots for two years.’ He smiled. ‘That day I learned it is dangerous to sleep in after a set time had been chosen to meet. All the lads, Lachlan, Lundy, Duff, Cal and I had finished making our spears the day before and had hidden them from Lachlan’s father, the Elliot laird.’

  Dair remembered the day as if it were the one just gone. He could also remember struggling to come up with an amusing excuse for being late to lessen the sting of disappointment in himself. ‘I’d hidden my spear beside the last corner post that made up the cattle’s enclosure, but had nae clue they’d decided to test the spears there between the enclosure and curtain wall.’ He slowly shook his head as the memory suddenly played out like he was the reliving it again. ‘The spear was already in the air when I stepped around the corner.’

  Keila’s gasp filled the air, and her body stiffened as she began to sit up. ‘Shh! Rest easy, Keila.’ He wrapped his arm around her back and shoulders and drew her back down along his side. While her concern for him was touching, he loathed having her worry unnecessarily. ‘Again, as you can see, I survived.’ He smiled and was relieved when her form relaxed against him once more.

  ‘Who threw the spear?’

  ‘The laird asked the same question at the time. We all knew who loosed the spear, but we all knew the fault was mine.’

  ‘None of you told him?’

  Dair shook his head. ‘And none ever did.’ He cleared his throat at the thought of the laird now gone. ‘I healed quickly, thanks to Iona, the Elliot’s healer and her skills, but also due to her scaring me with pending doom if I didn’t.’

  They lay in silence, Dair staring up into the wooden beams supporting the thatched roof, but seeing the faces of all those he’d recently spoken about. They’d like Keila. He closed his eyes as his fingers skimmed the length of her upper arm.

  ‘You are truly fond of all these people,’ she said quietly.

  He smiled. ‘Aye.’ He felt Keila swallow.

  ‘You must be pleased you’ll be seeing them all again soon.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ***

  Keila stood watching Adair, the man she’d lain with twice in the night, as he walked through the dawn’s new light toward the bend in the river to fetch water. She hugged herself and squeezed, hardly believing the night they’d shared was real and not some imagined dream. Her skin still rippled with remembered pleasure from his touch and her mind swam with wonder at all she’d learned about Adair, where he’d come from and the man he was. Waking in his arms only moments ago had been both surprising and delightful. She could stare at him simply walking all day, but then she couldn’t prepare something to break their fast as she’d said she would.

  Tearing her gaze from his swaggering form, she turned and marched between the gardens to
ward the rear entrance to Drummin House. She loved her home and a rush of warmth at the thought of having Adair join her inside soon filled her chest. Her eyes lifted to the top left window and she experienced a moment of unease at what Moira might think of what she’d done, of what she and Adair had shared. Her gaze slid away to the left of her home and the sight of Rory’s reed-like figure traipsing toward her in the morning light chased away her niggling concern.

  She stopped and waited for Rory, studying his face as he drew nearer. But instead of the usual weathered smile he greeted her with, his lips were pressed tightly together and his grey eyes looked back at her with sadness.

  Two steps and she was before him. ‘Rory, what is it?’

  ‘Ah, lass, ’tis good to see ye home. It’s my Netti. She’s in God-awful pain.’ He slowly shook his head and looked at her with moisture in his eyes.

  Keila grasped his hand. ‘Come, Rory. I’ll fix Netti a potion for the pain.’ She tugged him inside and sat him down at the long trestle before she stoked the fire in the hearth higher and added a pot of water to boil.

  ‘We were coming by today to let you know we’d returned early from market,’ she said as she gathered what she needed. Rory nodded absently, staring at the flames while Keila ground the leaves and then mixed the feverfew with water.

  ‘I don’t like fire,’ Rory mumbled slowly shaking his head. He stood abruptly and his stool toppled over behind him.

  Keila stilled. ‘You’re safe here, Rory,’ she said in a soothing tone. There was more than Netti’s pained legs troubling the older man. ‘Leave the stool. I’ll right it later.’ Her gaze flickered from between where Rory stood staring down at the fallen stool and the potion she was pouring into the earthen jug. ‘The potion is almost ready, Rory.’ Was Moira still sleeping?

  Rory glanced at Keila as she covered the potion with a square of hide.