by Paula Quinn
Emma’s heart pounded in her chest. Was Sebastian correct when he said that if Malcolm was so ready to leave without her, what was he still doing here?
“Emma.” He reached them in a few long strides and stood over them. Gascon whined for his attention.
She didn’t know if he gave it; her heart thumped in her ears too loudly.
“I wish to have a word alone with ye.”
Should she go? Sebastian remained silent. No one else was there to stop her.
She didn’t want to refuse him. She wanted to touch him, run her palms down his strong arms and over his muscular chest. She missed spending hours with him. Sebastian was wonderful, but she wanted Malcolm.
She remained sitting and bent her head. “I don’t know if I shou—”
He swooped down and without a word to either her or to Sebastian, plucked her from the grass and hefted her over his shoulder.
Gascon barked, then whined, then grew silent when Malcolm made a sound with his mouth. If she screamed, she’d alert Harry, and he and Malcolm would likely fight. Harry would lose, of course, and she’d be out on the street, begging for food.
But if he thought she’d go without a fight, he was sadly mistaken.
She straightened her body, balanced enough to provide the right amount of force when she bent her arm and jammed her boney elbow into his collarbone.
He yelped and set her feet on the ground. The instant she was down, she held her hand to him, measuring the distance between them, making sure she didn’t miss when she hauled back her hand and slapped him as hard as she could across the cheek. Gascon barked again, then ran forward and then back to them again, like he was eager to go.
“How dare you manhandle me?” she demanded.
The problem was that she couldn’t see her captor bending for her again. When he tossed her over his shoulder a second time, Sebastian finally intervened, calling as he caught up to them.
“Grant, wait, there’s something you should know.”
What? What was he going to say? Emma lifted her head where it dangled against her captor’s back. She shook it, hoping Sebastian saw her. Hoping he heeded and didn’t mortify her!
“If ye’re goin’ to tell me ye care fer her,” Malcolm warned without stopping, without turning, “dinna’ waste yer time. It willna’ change anything.”
Emma hoped Sebastian remained quiet.
“This was a ruse.”
Oh no! No! “Sebastian, don’t bore him with foolish drivel.” But she should have expected this. Sebastian’s bare honesty was what she liked most about him.
Malcolm stopped and turned, leaving Emma’s face toward the brothel. “A ruse?” he asked while she pounded on his back.
“To make you jea—”
“Malcolm!” Emma cut Sebastian off before she fainted from embarrassment. “Put me down or I will never forgive you!” she finally demanded. He obeyed and set her down. She felt around with her foot, found what she wanted, and bent to pick it up.
Sebastian saw the rock coming and moved away in plenty of time to escape it.
“Don’t be angry with her,” he said even as she turned her scarlet face away from him. “It was my idea. Not hers.”
He left, passing them to stride to the brothel and disappear inside, leaving her to her own defense after he betrayed her friendship.
“What exactly was his idea?” Malcolm’s breath stole across her face, deep and dark while he moved closer to her and stood above her.
She would never admit to him that she’d used Sebastian the rat to rouse Malcolm’s heart into action. The rat, it appeared had been correct though. Malcolm was roused.
“Toss me over you like a sack of grain again,” she warned, hoping to divert his thoughts in another direction, “and you’d best sleep with one eye open.”
“I’ll risk it if ye dinna’ accompany me to m’ horse on yer own.”
Oh, he couldn’t be sincere. Would he truly toss her over his shoulder for a third time like some… some…
“Lass.”
The thread of warning in his voice convinced her that he would do as he said.
She wasn’t afraid of him and she would tell him so later. For now though, to keep Harry from more endless questions, she sank her fingers into Gascon’s fur and picked up her steps beside Malcolm of her own will.
“What is it you want to speak to me about? And why can’t we speak here?” she asked him as they came to the stable.
“I want to speak to ye alone. We’re no’ alone here.”
“Where are we going?” She did want to go to the coast. Could she trust herself there with Malcolm? It was difficult to keep her hands off him the first time. Now it would be impossible. No matter how angry she was at him.
“Quit askin’ questions,” he commanded. “I’m verra’ angry with ye and I—”
“Ha!” She laughed and beside her, Gascon gave a soft whine as they entered the stable. “I’m calling on the last of my resolve to keep from clawing out your eyes!”
“Is that so?” he demanded, stopping them in a beam of light that filtered through the wooden walls. Emma could feel the heat of it on her face. “Fer what, then? Because I refused to deceive ye and told ye how I feel? Aye, remind me never to do that again, lass.”
He sounded so repulsed; Emma felt the urge to laugh. But he was too serious. She imagined he shared his heart with very few.
Still, he deserved this for tossing her about. “Oui, I shall remind you,” she promised. “’Twill save other women from learning that they mean very little to you, and worse, that you mean even less to yourself.” She cast him a bland expression. “I promise you ’tis not attractive.”
Was that his laughter filling the stagnant air with fragrance? Goodness, how was it possible that he didn’t consider himself up to her standard when he thought he was a prince? She’d never met anyone like him.
They said Oliver Winther was the most arrogant man in England. Rumor was that he believed he was an eagle, the most majestic of predators. He wore a golden eagle feather tied to his waist and took down his prey without mercy.
Was Malcolm as bad as that? “Listen, Malcolm,” she said, wanting to fall into his arms but stepping away from him instead. “Nothing more needs to be spoken between us. If you’re leaving Hebburn, then go. You don’t owe me any explanations, and in honesty, I don’t want any. I just don’t wish to drag this out any longer.”
His fingers closing around her wrist stopped her departure. “Emma, d’ye care fer Fletcher? Tell me and I’ll no’ bother ye again.”
“No. I don’t. But I could if I had no one else.”
“Ye do have someone else,” he said softly into her curls.
She knew being alone with him was dangerous. She didn’t care. She lifted her hands to his face and traced his mouth while he told her how beautiful she was to him. Her breath grew short when she felt him lean in. She ached to kiss him and sighed into his mouth as he crushed her up against him.
She opened to his tongue. She felt him against her teeth, sensual, probing. Her blood rushed through her veins, forging a sizzling path to her groin. She burned in his arms and the intensity of it frightened her. She’d never been with a man, never even kissed one before Malcolm, but she lived in a brothel. She knew about sex. The walls were thin and the talk was crude, at best.
Curling her arms around his neck, she pulled herself up his body, just enough to feel the steel between his thighs. Instinct made her lift her leg and try to wrap it around him.
He groaned like a wounded animal and cupped his hands around her buttocks, covering them.
She felt like biting him, eating him alive. She told him and he laughed before returning to her mouth, hungrier than before. Soon though, he withdrew, his breath hard.
“Come.” He growled the demand and she let him lead her to his horse.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Malcolm couldn’t tell which was harder to contain, his heart from bursting through his chest while he l
ay beneath Emma, taking in every beautiful contour of her face, or his unyielding cock from his English breeches.
He’d taken her to the sea, to a small cove nestled between the cliffs. The sand was warm and soft beneath him. The sound of crashing waves filled his ears… unless what he heard was his blood moving through him.
She did this to him. This wisp of a woman shackling his wrists over his head and straddling him, her skirts pulled up over her supple thighs.
He hadn’t guarded his heart against her because he’d convinced himself that he couldn’t experience love, that he was somehow deficient. That belief hit him hard and took much from him. But Emma brought it all back.
“Tell the truth,” she said, wearing a playful smile behind a soft yellow tendril. She tempted him to obey her every command. “Were you jealous?”
Hell, he was. Fletcher was fortunate to still be breathing. He laughed. “Was that the plan?”
When she gave him a smile and lowered her chin to hide the blush stealing across her nose, he realized with a jolt of something hot that went deeper than any chasm the human mind can conjure, that he’d been wrong all these years.
She let go of his wrists to trace the contours of his face, his nose, his dimples, his lips, pausing while he kissed her curious fingers.
“What plan?” she teased, leaning down to plant a kiss on his mouth. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Mmm.” Her distraction was working. He didn’t care about plans or a ruse or whose idea it was to make him jealous. It had worked.
“Aye,” he whispered against her lips, and drew his hands over her soft, bare thighs. “I was jealous, crazed with it.” He grew even harder against her when she gasped at the feel of his hands on her buttocks. He was hard enough to take her, and by the way she was rubbing her sweet body against him, she was getting ready to be taken. “I thought of a dozen ways to kill him. Another day and I might have done it.”
She licked the seam of his mouth, then drew her tongue over it. “I don’t belong to you, Mr. Grant.”
His control nearly snapped. It would be easy to slip out of his breeches—in fact, he was nearly there now—and teach her how to ride him like the wind rides the surf. Then she would belong to him and no one else.
But he wanted to be different with her. Pride and logic were the next to go. He’d miss them.
“Tell me what I must do to win ye then.”
“Do you want to win me?”
“Aye, lass, I do.”
She laughed, tossing back her head and exposing her throat to his hungry mouth.
“The man worthy of winning my heart,” she half-panted, half-purred while he bit her neck with tender urgency, “must not care that I cannot see.”
“But ye can see, m’ love. Ye see what the eyes miss.”
Her breath came quicker as she worked his shirt loose from his breeches and pulled it over his shoulders. “His own eye would never roam once he won my heart.”
“Why would he ever look anywhere else again once he’d won yer heart?”
She sat up straight on him and with her hair tumbling down around her face, began untying the laces of her gown. “And most important of all, he must build me a home.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “What about those attributes ye talked aboot? Honor? Humility?”
She shrugged and slipped her shoulder out of her gown. “I’d rather have an imperfect man than a knight.”
“Imperfect?” He pinched her rump and she shrieked.
His head shouted warnings at him even as he laughed with her and sat up to meet her and claim her mouth. There was Emma’s future to consider, as well as his word to Harry.
He closed his arms around her and rolled her gently on her back in the sand. They would keep their feelings hidden from Harry until Malcolm could figure out what to do. For now, nothing mattered in the world but kissing her.
He took his fill, tasting the deepest corners of her mouth, breathing her, consuming and being consumed by her. When she tugged on his breeches, pushing them over his hips, he nearly groaned at his freedom. He ached and pulsed for her, but he waited and released her breasts from the laces of her gown.
He should stop. She was innocent, untried, and he was…
The tips of her breasts were like ripe, coral berries. He wanted to bask in their sweetness and lose himself in every inch of her. Was this what the other men in Camlochlin felt? Was this what called them to battle themselves and become better men?
He watched her flesh tighten as he ran his fingers over her nipple. When he dipped his mouth to drink from her, she groaned and relaxed her thighs beneath him.
“I want… I want…” she gasped, not knowing.
He knew. He wanted it as well.
He pushed the front of her skirts above her thighs, exposing her to his ready cock. He paused, his muscles twitching with impatience to have her. He’d done this before and he’d never stopped himself just before. This was different. He never let himself think of the consequences of his actions, or in what terrible state a lass could leave his heart.
He never expected her to coil her legs around his waist and pull him down between her thighs. She took his lower lip between her teeth and bit down gently. He groaned and pushed his hard tip to her entrance.
Her sharp intake of breath cautioned him to continue slowly. She was a virgin—another honor she offered him. A virgin with a sweetly wanton appetite.
The caress of her legs around him tortured him, as did the sight of her spread beneath him. He pressed his hips against her and moved with languid ease over her crux. She grew warmer, wetter, moaning softly with need. How was he supposed to resist her? He couldn’t. So instead of trying, he bent to kiss her and tell her how she made him feel. When she tossed back her head, he raked his teeth over her warm throat and sank halfway into her.
Her sheath was tight, licking fire down his shaft. Her short gasps fueled the flames. On the verge of bursting, he pulled out, drawing a long, languid groan for her. He pushed against her again, entering deeper this time. She tried to close her legs but he held them open with the strength of his thighs and dipped his hungry mouth to her nipple. Suckling her made her moan and drip around him. When she wiggled under him, he answered with an even deeper plunge.
“I would have ye, Emma,” he said thickly, close to her mouth, his eyes locked on her.
She grew slicker. He thrust harder.
“It pains me,” she said, pushing her face into the crook of his neck.
“I shall stop then.” He moved to withdraw, but she held him tight and pushed him back to his original position, beneath her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in a great breath when she straddled him, taking him whole, from tip to base. He watched her fling back her golden curls and wriggle her tight body atop him. The eruption came quick. He cupped her hips and drew her off him while his seed shot upward from his body.
She must have thought they were done because she broke free of his embrace and leaped up on her feet. She took off toward the waves while he recovered.
“Emma!”
He heard her laughter on the wind before it lifted her gown off the sand, where she left it, and set it over his face.
He sat up and turned around to see her running, wearing only a thin chemise, her tresses flowing out behind her. He laughed when she spread her arms wide.
Rising, he pulled his breeches off his ankles then took off after her. He caught her moments after her feet hit the water. Their laughter echoed off the high cliff walls as they fell into the shallow waves.
She shivered in his arms and he held her tighter, kissing her while the surf rolled over them and the sea reclaimed the sand underneath.
Emma closed her eyes as a violent jolt of pleasure shook her in her skin. Her flesh cooled by frothy waves and heated by Malcolm’s tongue trickling down her belly to her inner thigh. Her senses came alive like never before. The sound of his breath, hard and heavy, rushed through her ear
s like the whitecaps rolling in over them. His wet fingers tickled her skin and made her giggle and gasp at the same time. She’d heard the girls talking about this kind of play—when a man put his mouth… there. She’d wondered what it might feel like but never… never imagined it would feel this good. She felt consumed by heat, engulfed in flames as he laved his tongue over her sensitive nub and then kissed it. Instinctively, she spread wider and arched her back. He licked her so indecently, she felt the urge to push him away, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She never wanted him to move from where he was.
The world shook around her. Sand washed away beneath her with the pulling of the tide, and she felt herself being carried away toward the crest of oblivion—pure, pleasurable oblivion. Before she knew what she was doing, she pushed herself upward, pressing deeper, moaning at the cascading bliss sparking light all around her. She bit her lip and cried out, bucking her body involuntarily beneath him. Pleasure exploded into something she never experienced before and she reached down and grabbed his face in her hands, guiding him to drink of her deeper.
She cried out his name and tossed her head from side to side as passion overtook her, turned her world upside down, and then drained her.
She lay sprawled in the sand like one overcome by a sea monster, her breath short, fast and hard, her muscles trembling.
“What did you do to me?” she asked him, winded.
“Something I hope to do more often if ye let me.” He lay beside her on the wet sand.
“I wouldn’t dream of stopping you.” She smiled, then blushed at her boldness.
She wanted to ask him how he intended on pleasuring her again when he was leaving. She wanted to ask him once and for all if he planned on taking her with him to Camlochlin or if he still believed he couldn’t make her happy.
But her courage left her.
She loved him too much to feign bravery if he told her he was leaving without her.
So she didn’t ask.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Malcolm and Emma lay dressed in the dry sand, warming beside a small fire Malcolm had made with a flint rock and some shavings from inside a piece of driftwood. He never wanted to go back to the brothel. She didn’t belong there.
