Taken: A Laird for All Time Novel (Volume 2)

by Angeline Fortin

  Lifting her legs, she entwined them tightly around his hips as his pushed up her skirts and his hands cupped her bottom, squeezing hard as he fit them together, thrusting erotically against her. His erection was long and thick, insistent. She welcomed the invasion, already hot and ready from her thoughts of him, from the sight of him. Any reservations she had about where this all might lead were fading fast.

  His lips branded a path down her neck, his whiskers rasping, exciting. Scarlett bit his shoulder, his neck. Provoking him, then licking away the sting.

  “Ye drive me to madness.” His brogue was thick, nearly indecipherable.

  “Honey, I’m already there,” she whispered in his ear before nipping on his lobe.

  A pained groan rumbled up from deep within him, shaking them both.

  Turning, he carried her to the bed and fell with her on to the mattress. His eyes met hers, fierce, dark with passion. Hunger. For her. “I’m going to take ye, Scarlett. No’ because I want to shag ye but because I long to possess ye.”

  Scarlett trembled at the resolve in his rough brogue. Possess. It sounded so complete. So devastating. “Yes.”

  With a savage growl, Laird thrust hard, driving deep into her ready, willing body. They cried out in unison, possessor and possessed. He was so big, too big but still she wanted more. Wrapped tightly around him, every part of her became his as Laird pounded a steady rhythm into her depths. His chest against hers, his thighs against her. It was a full body possession.

  “Laird,” she moaned, urging him on as she held him with her thighs. Stroked him with her hands. “Yes, oh yes!”

  Laird buried his face in her shoulder and quickened his tempo, his fingers biting into her hips. Euphoria coiled deep within her and spiraled out. Pulsing, searing, singing through her veins. Incredible. Impossible. She wanted to savor it, as always her passion for him spiraled out of control. Too soon. Too quickly. Lost, helpless against the waves as they began to crash. Drowning beneath the waves of ecstasy as they lapped over her. Consumed her.

  Harder. Faster. An agonized keening filled her ears and Scarlett realized it was her. Rapture called to her. A whimper escaped her, and then she cried out.

  “Laird.” She shattered with a hoarse scream, coming apart at a cellular level as he plunged hard once more and tensed. His own groan muffled against her neck as his heavy weight pressed her deeper into the mattress.

  A moment later, he shifted and Scarlett felt him unlacing her gown. He trailed soft kisses down her neck and shoulders as he bared them, tossing her linen parlett aside. Her corset loosened and Scarlett drew in a deep, revitalizing breath. “Stand,” he commanded.

  Scarlett rocked her cheek negatively against his damp chest. Silent laughter shook them and Laird clapped a hand lightly over her bottom. “Contrary lass.”

  He lifted her to her feet and Scarlett swayed, clinging to his shoulders as he untied her skirts and petticoats. She wore no corset so her clothing fell to the floor as he swept it all downward, leaving her in nothing but her stockings and shoes. Laird looked up at her for a long moment, his eyes skimming like flames over her body. His calloused palms closed over her breasts and he released a ragged breath.

  Lifting her, he laid her back on the mattress. Climbing to his knees, he lifted her leg and grasped one foot to remove her shoe. The muscles in her calf and thigh tensed and jumped as he fingers skimmed upward. Unrolling one stocking slowly, his lips followed it down. Kissing, licking and raking her with his teeth. His eyes, shining like silver plate now, held hers with wicked humor. He bit her ankle, the arch of her foot before lowering her limb and repeating the process on the other leg.

  Scarlett watched him, her fingers curling into the counterpane as she twitched and tensed with every touch. Her body was still pulsing with satisfaction from their quick, hard mating but heat was already began to pool between her thighs once more.

  Finishing with the other leg, he crawled slowly up and over her bending his head here and there to graze his lips or stubbled cheek along her sensitized flesh. He held himself above, arms bulging as he looked down at her.

  Scarlett was trembling, shaken by his size as he loomed over her. He was so big, so broad; Scarlett should have felt suffocated by his overwhelming presence. She didn’t. That tightly leashed power was the freakin’ sexiest thing she had ever experienced. His arms were like steel beneath her hands as she caressed them, moving over his chest once more, unable to resist touching his deliciously sculpted body. He was a colossus.

  “You are so beautiful,” she said softly, feeling his body tense even more with surprise.

  “Nay, mo chroí, ‘tis ye who is the beautiful one, for never hae a seen a more bonny sight in my life than ye right where ye are.” He stared down at her intently, cupping her breasts.

  God’s breath, but he had missed looking upon her.

  She was a vision in the candlelight, her short auburn hair aflame in the flickering light. Her skin flushed and dewy from her exertions. Her modest bosom heaving distractedly beneath his palms.

  How could he have ever thought her scrawny, James wondered? She was dazzling. Perfect.

  Enticing. She made his blood heat on a normal day, but like this! Ardor was scorching through his veins. Even having just taken her, he was impatient to have her again. To ravish her fervently, though a part of him wished he could make love to her tenderly. His fey, fragile lass deserved tenderness but such delicacy had no place among the riotous passions that consumed him. Having known the paradise her body could bring, having tasted of her bliss, he was only that much more eager to plunder her again and again.

  Perhaps one day.

  This was not that day.

  He moved between her thighs once more, pleased when she wrapped them tightly around his hips in a welcoming embrace. His muscles tensed and twitched as her palms smoothed over his chest and ribs, around his back and downward to his arse.

  Scarlett cast him an enticing glance from beneath her lashes then lifted her head. Her tongue traced an erotic line up his throat. By the time she nipped at his chin, his arms were shaking with lust. He rocked his hips forward, unerringly finding her. She blossomed around him, welcomed him.

  Bending his head, James caught her lips and thrust hard as she arched her hips to meet his, tasting her gasp. Her delight. She was a bold one but her passion matched his. Withdrawing slowly, he tried to savor the sensation of her encasing him but the urgency was building undeniably again. He drove into her welcoming depths, again. Deeper. Her wild cries and helpless gasps spurred him on until Scarlett was clinging to him. A sob sounded in the back of her throat, a cry that told him she was reaching heaven’s gates once more.

  James lifted her bottom, tilting her hips upward and quickened his pace. His lips found her neck, that enticing earlobe. “Come for me, mo ghrá,” he urged and her heavenly body contracted and pulsed around him as a thready cry passed her lips. He couldn’t stop his body from answering in kind.

  “Ah, mo ghrá, mo chroí. Adhrodh métú!”

  His fingers eased, then massaged before James lifted himself away. The mattress dipped as he rolled over on his back next to her.

  In the silence, their harsh breathing matched as they caught their breath.

  His hand found hers and their fingers entwined.

  “Ye are mine.” The words were quietly spoken but brooked no denial.

  “Then take me with you.”

  He said nothing but she felt his nod.

  Bloody hell but she was getting to him. Had she managed to break through his defenses so easily? He was beginning to care about more than what she might know. What she might want from them. Who she might be.

  He cared about what she thought about him, the person. Whether she liked him more than Rhys.

  Aye, that was the problem, wasn’t it?

  He might have her passion but it was Rhys she gave her friendship to. Rhys who she talked with at length. Rhys who provoked the sweet laughter that reached his ears even through the din
of a thousand men.

  It was his brother’s arms that she fell into upon reaching their encampment each night, his company she sought while the servants were erecting her tent among the village of soldiers and followers. Rhys who she dined with outside her tent, whispering into his ear while James was absent.

  All of it ignited a fierce, hereto unbeknownst envy within him. He knew not who she was or from whence she came, but for now, in this moment of time she was his. His father be damned.

  James pulled Scarlett into his arms, wrapping his arms tightly around her. He had missed her so dearly these past days even an edict from the King himself couldn’t have stopped him from having her at his side in the days to come. His threat to leave her there had been spoken in anger. Anger built by the sight of Scarlett laughing again and again with his brother over the past days.

  Now that he had tasted joy on her cherry lips, leaving her behind was no option at all. It had been extraordinary, how her desire had infused him as if drawn from her lips to permeate his soul. The experience had been like no other. He’d been so in tune with her body, captivated. He hadn’t thought himself capable of such an all-consuming passion. A passion not just of the body.

  James shook of the mawkish thought but couldn’t refrain from admitting aloud, “I’ve missed ye these past days, mo chroí.”

  Scarlett looked up at him, feeling a jolt of surprise and maybe a little annoyance, too. “Missed me? Really? I thought you’d forgotten all about me.”

  “How could I forget aboot ye, mo chroí?” Laird traced his knuckles along her jaw before gently rubbing her ear lobe between his fingers. She savored his touch and the husky burr of his softly spoken words even though she had no clue what they meant. “There’s been little else on my mind all these past days.”

  “Really? I couldn’t tell with the way you were ignoring me,” she said, biting her lip. Ugh, she berated herself. No man, regardless of the century, appreciated a clingy, controlling woman.

  “I wisnae ignoring ye, lass,” he sighed, tucking her head into the curve of his shoulder. “I stayed away from ye because I cannae be near ye wi’out wanting ye, lass,” he whispered, bending his lips to her ear. A little shudder raced through her and a blush blossomed on her cheeks. “Yer utterly beguiling. My father would ken how I felt the moment he saw me wi’ ye. He would ken I’m bewitched.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “For yer sake and mine, my father cannae think that there is anything more between us than my returning ye to the Lindsay. He has enough suspicions already. I couldnae appear too close to ye whilst he was nearby. Appearances are everything.”

  “Appearances, huh? Doesn’t he care that Rhys appears close to me?”

  “Rhys disnae care. ‘Tis his way of thumbing his nose at Father.”

  “But you wouldn’t dare.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No’ whilst my future is in his hands.”

  “How is it in his hands?” Rhys had told her Laird didn’t answer to anyone.

  “I will tell ye my secrets when ye reveal yers, lass.”

  He must have known that would be enough to shut her up.

  But he wasn’t just avoiding her because he regretted their passionate encounters. If he did, he had shown none of it tonight.

  At least there was that.

  26

  “How do ye fair this morn, Scarlett?” Rhys asked, drawing her horse up alongside Scarlett’s the next morning.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are ye certain? I heard the oddest moaning last night.”

  “Did you, now?” Scarlett winced, wondering if Laird had given his brother an accounting of their night together.

  “Aye,” he persisted. “I only mention it because ye seem a bit flushed this morning. A fever perhaps?”

  “Oh, dear, I do hope you aren’t falling ill,” Aleizia said from her other side.

  True to her name, Scarlett blushed mightily all the way up to her hairline. “No, I just…” Scarlett pressed her lips tightly together. She had ne intention of sharing the details with Rhys or Aleizia. “I’m fine.”

  “Hmm, must hae been an auld tom maun hae been caught beneath some of the supplies stacked behind yer tent.” He flashed her a wink and smiled knowingly.

  “Must have been,” Scarlett responded weakly, shifting in the awkward saddle and it wasn’t only because she found it so uncomfortable. She was still tender from the previous night. That second bout might have been just one too many. She wasn’t used to it.

  Their lovemaking, as hasty as it had been, had been explosive. There was something appealing about being utterly ravished. She had never felt such urgency in her life, had never known that desire could be so intense, all consuming. He had taken her to a plane of rapture she hadn’t even known existed.

  No, he had propelled her there, ratcheting up her desires to match his as if he would accept nothing less. It was a far cry from her experience with her former partners who had both worried so much about whether or not they were pleasing her that they’d forgotten to actually do it.

  One of them had spent so much time asking her over and over ‘Do you like that? Do you like that?’ that she’d nodded just to hurry him along because it had been so distracting. She’d had to take charge of the progress just to see it through.

  And in the end, she had been nothing but a conquest for them. Bragging rights to Scarlett Thomas’ bed. It was why she had never taken another lover.

  And now she had taken Laird Hepburn. A man who was desperate to have her. Just her. Scarlett. Yet even in that impassioned haste, he had seen to it that she found her own pleasure in the moment before he found his own satisfaction.

  Scarlett squirmed in the saddle, memories of magnificent his body against hers renewing the tension between her thighs.

  Even a minute on horseback was a burden but she was only making it worse thinking like that.

  “Are ye looking for someone?” Rhys continued. “Laird, perhaps?”

  With a blush, Scarlett returned her focus to her traveling companions. No, she hadn’t been searching the crowd for Laird, but she had been absently scanning the amassed troops hoping to spot the elusive Donell. What if the peculiar old Scotsman was really the source of her predicament, as he implied?

  Of course, he had to be. What else would he be doing here as well? Did that mean that Laird and his sword weren’t the key to her way back home after all? That she didn’t need to stay close to him?

  That she didn’t need him at all?

  No, some instinct told her that her future – and with it, her return to her own time and place – was linked directly to Laird. While it might be against her best interests to travel with Laird and leave Dunskirk and Donell behind, she somehow knew Donell would be back around when it suited him to be and not a moment before.

  “No, I wasn’t looking for anyone,” she lied. “I was just thinking what a tedious day it’s going to be.”

  “Perhaps we can pass the time with a story,” Aleizia suggested.

  “Aye, a story would be just the thing,” Rhys agreed, though his curious smile told her that he knew she was lying.

  “Do you know a good one?” she asked and smiled when he chuckled.

  “Mayhap. Mayhap.” Rhys looked up thoughtfully. “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale perhaps?”

  Chaucer. “Heard it. What else do you have?”

  “The Treatise on the Reformation?”

  Aleizia shook her head vehemently and Scarlett wrinkled her nose playfully. “Sounds a little dry for a road trip and I don’t dare doze off on this beast. Nothing else?”

  Rhys laughed. “There are some old poems and a bard’s tale or two I might relate, but truth I’d rather hear another of your stories. They are unlike any I’ve ever heard before. I love this… What did you call it? Musical theater?”

  “Of course you do,” she said with a smile. “But I’m not about to sing out here with all these people around.”

  “Such a great misfortun
e,” Aleizia said sadly.

  “For me as well,” Rhys teased, laying a hand over his heart. “Have you no other tales?”

  “How about the tales of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men who robbed from the rich to give to the poor when Prince John ruled England when Richard the Lionheart departed on the Crusades?”

  Rhys’ eyes widened. “I believe I might hae heard tell of such a tale before. That might verra well be the first time ye’ve spoken of anything I might find familiar.”

  “Well, we can’t have that, can we?” Scarlett joked, then an idea came to her and she pulled out her purse and dug inside for her paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice. She had brought it along to read on the plane but had almost forgotten about it. “How about this?”

  “What is that?” he asked, taking the dog-eared old thing from her and studying it curiously.

  “It’s a book,” Scarlett said, resisting the urge to add a ‘Duh’. “You do have books, don’t you?”

  “Aye, we hae books. Large, heavy tomes for the most part.” Rhys smoothed a palm over the cover before running the pad of his thumb down the even, laser-cut edge as Aleizia looked on curiously. “It’s so… tiny. The color on the cover… the pages are…” Rhys shook his head as he trailed off.

  “Let me see it.”

  Scarlett looked up in surprise to see that Laird had fallen in between her and Aleizia. Rhys leaned across her and handed him the novel. Like Rhys, he examined it with some awe before opening it reverently and running a finger over the typeface print. “I’ve ne’er seen such uniform script. ‘Tis so small, yet there is so much space left blank at the sides.”

  “It’s the margin.”

  “’Tis a waste of fine paper,” he said, rubbing a single page between two fingers. “’Tis verra fine, true. I’ve ne’er seen the like. Where did ye get it?”