She captured his lower lip between her teeth and bit her frustration.
He growled, thrusting against her again.
“Now.” She couldn’t wait anymore. She needed him inside her or she would lose her mind.
His hands left her breasts, tearing her clothes the rest of the way. He pulled her free of the remains, dropping them on top of his kilt. Deidre grabbed the edge of his shirt. He took over when she couldn’t lift it any higher, letting it fall onto the pile.
Ewan’s naked body was a masterpiece. Everything about it spoke of power impossibly contained. Broad shoulders flowed into a broad chest. The contours of it called to Deidre, and she reached up to touch him. She ran her hands over the ridges of pectoral muscles and traced the rough hairs that traveled a path down to his waist.
He held himself still while she admired him. The only motion was the deep inhale and exhale of his breath. She trailed her fingers lightly over his abdomen. A shiver arced through the stack of muscles there, traveling upward and ending in a twitch of his chest. She’d thought she couldn’t wait—and the ache he’d created in her was still a commanding force—but she was mesmerized by the sight of him.
“Does that tickle?” she asked.
He shook his head.
She skimmed her fingers again. Another shudder rippled through his body. Her approval came out as a low noise in her throat.
“Have ye had yer fill?”
“No.” Deidre doubted she ever would.
“Too bad.” He lifted her, wrapping her legs around him. One hand tangled in her hair again as the other reached between them. He touched her and she forgot all about the play of his muscles across his body.
It was his turn to growl approval. He slid his fingers back and forth, driving her mad. She tried to shift, wanting more, but she was immobilized between his hips and the door. “Ewan.”
His lips found the side of her neck. He did delicious things to the edge of her earlobe with his teeth. All the while, he rocked his fingers in a torturous rhythm—never entering, but not stopping or slowing, either. She was so close to the edge and she wanted the feel of him buried deep in her when she went over.
Deidre wrapped her hand around his cock again, matching the rhythm he set with his fingers. The torture of his mouth went still. His hips responded to her motion with shallow thrusts. She felt the change in him when the last of the control left, and only need remained.
He pulled her hand away, shifting her higher on the door and positioning himself at her entrance. Even that slight contact threatened to undo her.
“Now, Ewan.” She buried her fingers in his hair, urging him on.
He did it slow. It felt like an eternity, like there was no end to the feeling of him stretching her, filling her, going deeper still. She might have cried out—she couldn’t be certain. A string of Gaelic tumbled from his lips as he encased himself in her body.
As soon as he was fully inside her, he was leaving. Deidre knew she cried out then, but it was a brief abandonment before he returned in a collision that throbbed pleasure outward from her core.
“More. Faster.”
He did as she demanded.
The short, powerful thrusts took her over. She gave up trying to do anything but feel it. “Harder.”
That was it. That was what she needed. He pounded against that coil of sensation and she broke into a million pieces.
***
Ewan felt her come apart around him. It tripped the last ounce of restraint he had.
He buried his face in her neck as he drove himself home again and again. His hand found hers. Their clasped fists, pressed high on the doorway, was the last anchor he had on earth. She started crashing again.
The rippling heat surrounding him was too much. The rushing sensation took over and Ewan gave himself to it. Sight and sound disappeared—only the feel of Deidre wrapped around him remained—as his body shuddered. He came back to her cheek pressed against his and her fingertips stroking through the hair at the base of his neck.
They breathed together like that, up against the door, for long moments. More of his surroundings started seeping through. He was in the cellar. He was trapped.
“Ewan.” She framed his face with her hands, forcing him to look at her. “Stay with me.”
He tried. Ewan closed his eyes. Inhaling, he let the aroma of sweat and passion block out the room behind them. He focused on the steady thump of her heartbeat. He focused on the warmth of her, and the silky softness of her skin everywhere she was wrapped around him.
She kissed him gently—sweetly. Ewan grasped on to it like a drowning man. They explored each other slowly, now that they had released some of the tension that had been building since the day they met. He hardened inside her, his body eagerly choosing the wonders of Deidre over the panic that was trying to overwhelm him.
They held each other’s eyes as Ewan set a measured pace against the door. She didn’t rush him. He would happily spend the rest of his life in this in-between place with her.
The door behind them suddenly bumped them backward. Ewan pivoted, coming dangerously close to being knocked down the stairs. He shouted a hold to whoever was on the other side.
“Ewan?” Angus’s surprised voice came through the crack in the door.
“Aye.”
The pause was long. Angus knew what it meant for him to be down here. “Are ye clear of the door?”
“Just a second.”
Ewan couldn’t read Deidre’s face as he untangled them and set her back on her feet. They moved down a few steps. She picked up her dress, assessing the tear down the center. With freedom so close, he took a moment to truly appreciate the sight of her in nothing but stockings before he handed her his shirt. When she’d put it on and he had his plaid at least partially wrapped around his waist, he said, “Aye, we’re clear.”
It swung inward again, revealing Angus lit from behind by a stream of morning light. It had been like this before, twenty-five years ago. Then, Angus had needed to carry him up those last few steps. Ewan reached for Deidre’s hand. They climbed out of the cellar together.
“We’re tearing this door down. Right now.”
Angus pretended not to notice their lack of clothing. “Aye.”
“I didn’t know it wouldn’t open from the other side,” Deidre explained.
Ewan squeezed her hand. “Ye couldnae have. I dinnae tell ye.”
Angus picked up a sack of potatoes from the pile of goods Deidre had bought at the market. “We’ll just leave these up here then, for now.”
Ewan realized they’d run off in the middle of bringing it in. “Did the horses—”
“Aye. I took care of it. Fat and happy in their stalls.”
“I probably ought to find my bed. It was a long night on the road.” Deidre separated their hands.
He immediately wanted hers back. “Do ye want—”
“Oh no,” she said. “You’ve got a door to tear down. I’m fine alone.”
Ewan watched her go, looking every bit as comfortable in his shirt as she did fully dressed.
“Ye havenae slept, either. We dinnae have to do it right this second,” Angus suggested.
“No.” He wanted it done. Ewan never wanted to see that cursed door again.
Angus nodded. “I’ll get the tools.”
***
Deidre wiggled her toes underneath the water. After sleeping like the dead, she’d woken up sore in places she’d forgotten she had. Every ache made her smile a little, remembering how she’d received them. With the begrudging help of Curtis and his cohorts, Deidre secured a position soaking away the afternoon in the largest copper tub she had ever seen. Ewan had certainly been worth the wait.
She tipped her head back, letting the world drop away as she floated. Glorious.
Through the water, she heard a com
motion. She surfaced in time to hear muffled cursing.
“Angus?” He was the last person Deidre expected to find sneaking into her room to catch a peek at her in the bath.
The old Highlander paused his exodus. “Aye.”
“Did you need something?”
The back of his neck turned crimson. “Presently, I need to find yer brother and thrash the bloody hell out of him.”
Whatever was afoot, Deidre suspected she’d want to be out of the tub for it. All good things must come to an end. She stood up, streaming water.
He stepped toward the door. “I’ll just—”
“Stay. I’m getting out.” She dried herself off quickly, and put on the dressing gown she’d liberated from Ewan’s room. “All right, you can turn.”
His reluctance was clear but he turned to face her anyway. The flush had faded, and he was back to his usual austere expression.
“Why is Tristan in danger?” She started combing tangles out of her hair. “Not that I’m not certain he deserves it. I’m just curious.”
The frown deepened. “He told me ye wouldnae mind being interrupted, and that I should come in if ye dinnae hear my knock.”
Deidre couldn’t help it—she laughed. “I’m sorry. Did he say why I wouldn’t hear?”
“I dinnae ask.” Angus shook his head. “I should have. Wee devil spawn.”
“Well, there’s no harm done.” She could just imagine how pleased Tristan must be with himself. Angus was a hard man to get the better of. If she’d been feeling even a small measure less agreeable today, she would have taken advantage of his discomfort and teased him. Fortunately for Angus, Deidre was in a phenomenal mood. “What did you need?”
The reminder that he’d had a purpose stopped him from staring uncomfortably around her room. “I came to speak with ye about earlier.”
Deidre narrowed her eyes. “What about it?”
If Angus had come here to try and lecture her, he was in for a surprise. She refused to feel any sort of shame over what happened between her and Ewan. Even if they hadn’t gotten locked in the cellar, she’d meant to take him to her bed. Being caught in the act by Angus hadn’t been ideal, but she was by no means sorry for it.
“Calm yerself,” he said. “I came to thank ye.”
What in the bloody hell did he and Ewan talk about while they were smashing that door?
“For?” she asked.
“For getting him through it,” Angus said. “I expected him to be much worse off than he’s been.”
Deidre realized this was the best chance she would have of getting answers without making Ewan relive whatever he was avoiding down there. “What happened the last time he was here, Angus?”
The older man’s expression closed off, becoming impassive.
“Please. I know it was bad, I just . . .”
He sighed. “Aye. All right. When Ewan was a boy, he got trapped down there.”
She’d gathered that much. “For how long?”
“Three days.”
Being locked in that musty blackness for three days . . . “That’s awful.”
“That wasnae even close to the worst of it.”
Ewan’s father had been drunk, as he frequently was, and Ewan had done some thing or another that inspired Hugh MacMurdo’s wrath. He’d dragged Ewan to the cellar, meaning to leave him in there as a punishment. Ewan’s mother had tried to stop him. Hugh had shoved her, and she’d lost her balance on the stairs.
“Hugh was drunk and stupid. He didn’t ken what to do, so he just closed the door. Left the castle and went on a bender.” Twenty-five years later, Angus’s voice was ripe with menace. “She dinnae die straightaway. Ewan said she lingered for about a day, as far as he could tell.”
Deidre’s hand covered her mouth in shock.
She deserved better, he’d said. Yes, she most certainly had. So had he. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “How did no one notice they were missing?”
If anything, the air of menace around Angus deepened. “Iona kenned something was wrong. Nae exactly what, but she’d seen Hugh before he left and heard him going on about Aileanna nae being his fault. She covered it up. Said they’d all gone away together.”
Holy hell. “Why would she do that?”
“The Dalreochs are a fierce lot. Good people, but they avenge their own. Iona needed time to figure how to save her useless excuse for a son.”
Some of the pieces from their dinner with his grandmother fell into place. “She gave them Ewan.”
“Aye. Traded Aileanna’s son for her own. The MacMurdos would give up claim to him if the Dalreochs swore to nae seek retribution.”
And she’d thought he’d grown up easy.
Angus’s lips twisted in a cold smile. “Dinnae do her much good. Hugh ended up at the bottom of the cliff a month later.”
“Christ.” The whole thing was a mess. “He fell?”
“No. He was pushed.”
That didn’t surprise Deidre. Bad men had a way of finding bad ends eventually. “By who?”
“Rose.”
Chapter 16
The last piece of the door landed on the bonfire in a cloud of sparks. Ewan lowered himself to the grass and looked out at the ocean. It would take a long time for the hardened boards to catch and burn down, but he was determined to see it done.
It hadn’t been easy—the hinges were rusted with age, so they’d had to tear it down with axes. His hand had throbbed the entire time and the wood was practically petrified from age. It had felt fitting, though, that it should be a struggle. After seeing that door in his nightmares for twenty-five years, it would have been insulting if it had come down without a fight.
The entire time he was chipping away at the boards, moments from the past and present warred for his attention. Before, he’d only ever had terrifying memories of that place. Now in among the bad, there were new memories. Deidre’s demanding that he take her. Her gasp when they joined together the very first time. He and Angus laughing as they cursed every oak tree in Scotland. The first piece of the door breaking free, letting daylight into the cellar. It would never be a place he thought of fondly, but there was more to it now than just listening to his mother dying in the darkness.
A piece of green wood popped. The boards had finally started to catch. He leaned back against a boulder and finally let himself think about her. It was safer not to—the first thought of his mother was always her ragged breathing beside him as she struggled for air. The pain of the memory was close to unbearable, but the anger he felt at his memories was why he’d stopped letting himself think of her altogether. It was too easy to hurt someone without even realizing he was doing it.
This time, he was able to remember. It still hurt. God, did it ever hurt. The tears came in rivers, alone out on the cliff with only the fire to see. But after he remembered it all, after it stole his breath and ripped him apart, other memories came. Things he’d lost in the brutality of her death. She’d been young. He didn’t think he’d ever realized it before, but she couldn’t have been more than eighteen when he was born.
He remembered her laughing. They’d packed food and brought it out to the cliff’s edge. Ewan had decorated her with little flowers, hundreds of them, and she’d laughed. He remembered that she used to sing while she sewed. He would hide under her chair, staging great battles with his wooden soldiers. Sometimes the soft melody of her voice would lull him to sleep and he would wake up to her calling his name and carrying him off to bed.
“Are you all right?”
Ewan looked up to find Rose on the edge of the fire. “Aye.”
“May I sit with you?”
He nodded.
She joined him in the grass. “They should have torn it down years ago.”
“They should have done a lot of things,” he said, but lacked some of the bitterness it w
ould have had yesterday. “Rose, do you remember my mother?”
Her brow furrowed. “Of course, although I dinnae see her often without—”
Without his father. Aye, he remembered that, too. She’d been a different person around his father, fading into the background whenever Hugh was in the room.
“She used to brush my hair. I always hoped . . . I thought my own mother might have been a bit like her. If my parents had lived,” Rose added quietly.
Ewan searched his newfound memories for something that would dispel her melancholy. “Do ye remember when she would sneak us spice cakes?”
“I do!” Rose laughed. “Ye never could figure out how she got them past the cook.”
“Neither could you,” Ewan accused.
“I dinnae need to. She told me.”
“She dinnae.”
“She did.”
“What was it then?” The trick to getting spice cakes was one of the great mysteries of their childhood.
Rose smiled. “She asked for them.”
And its answer was thoroughly disappointing. “That cannae be the truth.”
“It is,” she promised. “I wouldnae lie to you. Nae about this.”
“Ye’d lie to me otherwise?” he joked.
Her response didn’t share his levity. “About some things, aye.”
That took Ewan by surprise. He chose his next words as carefully as he could. “Rose, does Angus have reason to think yer a danger to me?”
“I suppose he does.” Her voice trembled as she stared into the flames.
The fire sent up a billow of sparks as the boards shifted.
***
It was dark when Ewan came back. Deidre heard him moving around on his side of the door that joined their rooms. He paused in front of it once, twice. The second time, she decided to quit waiting for him to do the sensible thing.
Deidre pushed the door open, watching him. He picked up a ring from the top of the dresser. It was large with heavy detailing and flashing red stones set into it. He rolled it in his palm. He set it back down.
A Dangerous Damsel (The Countess Scandals) Page 14
