by Laurel Adams
Finding none, she exhaled. “You’re lucky…it—”
She broke off upon looking at him, her view partially obstructed by…a rather tall spire of manly flesh. Unless she were to count the times she’d seen a farmhand pissing in the stream, she’d never seen a grown man’s private parts before. Certainly, never so close as this. She marveled at his erection—and not just because she wouldn’t have thought a man who had lost so much blood could possibly be capable of such a virile display. Fascinated by the blunt, swollen head of it, Arabella could scarcely tear her eyes away until she heard Malcolm say, “Don’t be frightened, lass. Just ignore it.”
She wasn’t frightened, but there was no earthly way she could ignore it. Painfully curious, she whispered, “Is that…is that because of me?”
“Do you want it to be?” He asked the question without any mirth or teasing. It was a question in deadly earnest.
Under his scrutiny, Arabella felt as trapped as if he was holding her by the wrists. Taken entirely unawares by the strong sensual pull between them—a pull no less real for being invisible. “I—I’m not sure. I only know that I want to touch you.” How in the world had she uttered such a brazen sentiment? She hadn’t felt like a wanton when she’d been kidnapped, but something seemed to have cracked open in her since, and she was now curious about all the things a good girl ought not be curious about at all.
“You shouldn’t want that,” he replied.
It felt like a slap. She knew it. She knew that she must be wicked and sinful. But it was the second time a man had told her what she shouldn’t want, and such a burning resentment rose inside her that she snapped, “Why not? Am I too sullied for you?”
In his dark eyes, she saw a flash of something feral and angry. “You’re no sullied thing. I say you shouldn’t want to touch me, because you can do better than a miserable accursed man who accused you of witchcraft.”
Then, before she could even utter an apology, he did grasp her by the wrist, and dragged her hand to his shaft, wrapping her fingers around it underneath his own. She gasped, both in surprise and exhilaration at the feel of engorged flesh. She delighted in the velvety skin and the way his cock pulse beneath her fingers. Every thought but her own arousal fled when he began to move her hand up and down, teaching her how to stroke him in a way that gave him pleasure.
“Oh,” she whispered, sliding up beside him so that her arm had more room to move. They came nose to nose, breath to breath, his stare so intense that she was lost in the black depths of his eyes, and scarcely knew what was happening.
“Is that what you wanted, lass?”
She nodded, loving the way his hand felt so strong around hers. How the size of his palm covered her hand completely, making her feel small and delicate as a true lady, even if the act she was performing was anything but ladylike. “Yes, this is what I want.”
“Then don’t ever do that again,” he growled. “Don’t use what I told you about my dead wife to get your way.”
These words shamed her, but this time, she knew she deserved it. She’d used his deepest pain to wound him and she wasn’t proud of it. Not entirely anyway. What she’d learned in the past day or so about herself was that when someone hurt Arabella, she tried to hurt them back. And while she’d have been a better person if she could turn the other cheek, she wouldn’t have survived if she did.
“He thought I was sullied,” Arabella murmured.
Malcolm stopped stroking. “Who?”
“Conall. The man I was to marry. This is his cottage. I ran straight to him from the hell of my capture. And he never once asked me if I was hurt. Never asked if my family was safe.” Arabella swallowed down a sudden rush of bile in her throat, felt a stab of pain in her heart that she’d been too numb to feel before. “He never kissed me nor held me in his arms to offer comfort. No. All Conall wanted to know was whether or not I’d been violated.”
“Don’t marry him,” was all Malcolm had to say.
“As if a woman has a choice.”
“A smart woman can always find a way to have a choice. Don’t marry him.”
“I won’t. I’d rather be a whore.”
She spit the words. And she meant them.
“Is that why you wanted to touch me?”
“No,” she whispered, emboldened. “T’was because you wanted me.”
His eyes softened. “How could I not want you, lass? You saved my life.”
“Because you nearly died trying to save mine.”
He kissed her. It wasn’t warm and sweet and boyishly tender like Davy’s kiss had been. But smoldering in some way, even though his lips were cool against hers. Seeming to savor her kiss, he took a shuddering breath. “You make me lightheaded, lass.”
It’s the blood loss, she thought. He wasn’t a well man. He ought not be using his strength to kiss her. But kiss her he did, in a way that was not at all playful. In a way that spoke of a promise to do more. Much more…if he was restored to his strength.
She never heard Davy come in.
Not until he announced himself from the doorway with a clearing of his throat. “Good to see you’re on the mend, Malcolm.”
Arabella tore herself away from Malcolm’s kiss, rising so swiftly from the bed that she nearly stumbled, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. After her encounter last night with Davy—no matter what he’d said about staking no claim to her—what must he now think to find her kissing another man?
What was she to think of herself?
“It’s a dreich morning,” Davy blethered on, as if nothing was amiss, a pail of what looked to be milk dangling from one hand. “Cold, drizzly and miserable even for late autumn. But I see you two found a way to make the most of it.”
He said this with a smile, but Davy said almost everything with a smile. And if he was angry with her, she wasn’t sure he’d let himself show it. There was nothing to do but address it straight on. “That kiss just happened,” she sputtered, guilt-ridden. “I’m not sure how.”
Davy shrugged. “Malcolm tempts even the sauciest of wenches. They all want to be the one to heal his brooding soul—”
“Stap your havering or I’ll skelp you, Davy,” Malcolm snarled.
Davy only gave a hearty laugh. “You can’t even rise from that bed, man. But it heartens me to see that some part of you can still rise…”
Malcolm scowled, but the mention of his erection tenting beneath the blanket didn’t make him blush. It was Arabella who did all the blushing. She was mortified. She wanted to disappear. Especially when Davy leaned lazily in the doorway, blocking all avenue of escape. “It’s alright, lass. Didn’t Malcolm tell you that we’ve shared women before?”
God’s blood. Now that was the most wicked thing Arabella had ever heard in her life. A thing so shocking that her knees went a bit weak, forcing her to sink to the edge of the bed. “Wh—what?” Then, because that seemed too daft a question, she added, “Why?”
Davy took a sip of the creamy milk from the pail and cheerfully licked the foam from his upper lip. “Double the pleasure for half the effort. That’s why. When a girl feels four hands upon her instead of two, she turns insatiable, and will let you do most anything you like. It’s supremely satisfying for everyone involved.”
Arabella glanced over her shoulder at Malcolm, perhaps hoping that he’d deny it, but he didn’t. He didn’t look particularly vexed by Davy’s bringing it up, either. The two men were quite comfortable with each other, she could see. She was the interloper here. Though scandalized by the situation and uncomfortable with the lusts she was only beginning to discover inside herself, she was trapped in a cottage with two men who seemed scandalized by nothing.
And she felt as if she needed to escape them both.
“Milk?” Davy asked, offering her a ladle.
“No thank you,” Arabella whispered, brushing past.
“Suit yourself,” he said, calling after her. “But it’s still warm. Straight from the cow. And I’m offering you the cream!”
Chapter Six
The eggs were burning and there was no help for it. And in adding salt to mess, Arabella only made it worse. “Where are the laird’s men?” she asked. “Shouldn’t they have come by now?”
“Maybe he couldn’t spare any men,” Davy said, his legs up on the table as if he was as bored and restless as she was. “Or maybe they got waylaid by a band of warriors along the way.”
“We can’t just stay here waiting to be discovered,” Arabella said.
I can’t just stay here with the two of you, she thought.
“Likely the Donalds have greater ambitions than to avenge themselves upon the us. Probably, they intend to take the castle then kill us at their leisure.”
“Cheerful,” Arabella said, with a frown.
“Well, I don’t plan to let them do it, lass. I just said it was their intention!” She didn’t see what Davy could possibly do to stop the enemy, holed up in this cottage. He must’ve been thinking the same. “How long before Malcolm can ride?”
“He’s lucky to have lived through the night,” Arabella replied, poking mournfully at the eggs. “But his color is back now. We might get him into a saddle tomorrow, but if we try it now he’s like to swoon—”
Her words were cut off by Malcolm’s irritated shout from the other room. “I hear you talking about me like I’m an cripple, ye ken.”
Arabella rushed to the doorway. “You shouldn’t shout. You shouldn’t strain yourself at all.”
“Can’t laze about either,” he groused, making another attempt to get up.
Arabella hurried to his side, trying to push his shoulders back down, but even in his weakened state, he was too strong for her, so she scolded, “You’re going to open up your stitches and faint again.”
He glared with genuine outrage. “Do you take me for a distressed damsel? A man doesn’t faint!”
“Aye, right!” Davy said, sarcastically, coming up behind her. “A man just falls to the ground, smashes his noggin and naps with the faeries for a spell…”
“Help me up,” Malcolm insisted. “I can nap with the faeries as easy in a chair as in a bed.”
They did as he asked—a torturous endeavor that proved he was in no way capable of riding a horse. No way capable of caring for himself at all. He was decidedly weak and thirsty, and even though they were in danger, Arabella knew they couldn’t leave him. She gave Malcolm as much hot water as he could stand, then served the men their burned eggs.
Davy was too polite to say the obvious—that Arabella was a disaster when it came to cooking. Or perhaps he feared that she’d spiced it with some poison. Either way, he pushed the food around his plate and said, “Give it to Malcolm. He needs the sustenance more than I do.”
“It’s bad, I know,” she said.
Davy nodded. “Aye, but he doesn’t have a choosey palate.”
Arabella worried they weren’t talking about eggs.
She couldn’t imagine that Davy didn’t mind what he’d seen that morning; couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t hold it against her that she’d been intimate with Malcolm after being intimate with him. And because she was so utterly confused by her mounting desire for both men, she needed a moment alone to think.
So when Davy fussed about near Malcolm where he slumped and shivered by the fire, she slipped out of the cottage to find more eggs. Pulling the plaid around her shoulders, she thought the weather was unseasonably cold. The wind bit at her nose and the sky was grey in a foreboding way that made her hurry to the hen house.
It was there, amidst the clucking that Davy found her, and actually snapped at her as if in panic. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
“Looking for eggs in case you missed any,” she said.
“I didn’t bloody well miss any, you silly woman. It’s not safe outside.”
“It’s not safe inside the cottage either, if a war band should come across us.”
“Aye, but at least you’d have my sword to defend you. And Malcolm’s too, because that stubborn bastard would still try to wield one, even in his state.”
She didn’t know Davy well, but she’d never heard such a surly tone from him. She hadn’t meant to make him anxious. She liked him so well, she regretted causing him even a moment’s grief. “I hope you’ll forgive me for this morning, Davy. I didn’t mean to be such a wanton.”
His blue eyes softened. “Is that what has you so mopey, lass?”
“I went from your arms last night—”
“To Malcolm’s bed,” he finished, with a chuckle. “I know. I put you there after leaving you wanting. You were just acting upon the desire that I built in you.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Arabella said, not wanting to deny the genuine sensual attraction she felt with Malcolm.
Davy came closer, sporting a cocksure grin. “But mostly true.”
She started to deny it, but then, upon reflection of how Davy had awakened her to a new world of pleasure, she reconsidered. “Perhaps you did have much to do with it…”
He liked that answer, and gently backed her up against the coop. “It’s not that I wanted to stop last night, lass. It’s only that if you’re going to surrender your maidenhead, you ought to have a choice about it, and I wanted you to be sure.”
“A—a choice about it?” she asked, the full realization of what they’d nearly done coming to her more clearly than before.
“Aye, and we’ll abide by it. You have my word on that. Whether you decide upon me or Malcolm, or both, or neither.”
Arabella’s mouth fell open, stunned, as always, by the man’s brazen talk.
“Both?” she asked, breathlessly.
So breathlessly, in fact, that he laughed. “Oh, you like that idea, do you?” It was, of course, a wicked, idea. And when Arabella let her imagination run that way for only a moment, she found herself swaying on her feet. Gleefully, Davy caught her round the waist, and brought his mouth to her ear. “It’s an option, ye ken.”
Goosebumps prickled up her arms. “It’s a wicked, sinful—”
“T’wouldn’t be as much fun if it weren’t wicked and sinful,” Davy interrupted, nipping softly at the lobe of her ear in such a way as to make her gasp again.
This time with pleasure.
“Hush,” he said.
And she thought he meant to kiss her quiet.
But then she saw that his eyes were narrow, the flirtation fled in an instant. His body tensed against hers, alert. Vigilant. He’d heard something. And then she heard it too. The sound of horse hooves. And Arabella’s heart leapt to her throat in fear.
“You stay here,” Davy whispered, reaching for his sword. “Stay hidden, no matter what you hear.”
“You can’t go out there,” Arabella whispered. “They’ll kill you.”
“Likely,” he said, flashing her a grin. “But Malcolm and I will kill a few of them too before we die, and I’m sure you can handle the rest.”
It was bravado, but not false bravado. Bravery that made her heart swell. How could she let him go? She clung to his arm, but he kissed her quickly, then broke free with one last admonition. “Stay hidden.”
He crept from the hen house, quietly, leaving her to secret herself amongst the clucking and pecking birds. And because she wished to hear what was happening outside, she half-thought to wring their scrawny necks to keep them quiet.
She shouldn’t have let Davy go, she thought. Shouldn’t let these men fight and die for her. And at the thought she might never see either of them alive, her eyes flooded with terrified tears. Straining to hear, her fingers going numb in the cold, she thought a muffled shout ring out. But it was gone like a phantom, leaving her to wonder if she’d imagined it. And it seemed like she waited an eternity, crouched in the straw, waiting to hear something. Anything.
A half an hour passed, she thought, though it was hard to say. Until finally the door creaked open, and she wished she never heard it at all. Stay hidden, Davy had said, and so she did. But her
freezing fingers felt in the straw for the ax used to butcher the chickens. It was a tiny weapon, but she was resolved to use it.
They would surely rape her this time, either before or after she was dead. She was sorry to know that it would be these villains who would make her bleed, but she was at least grateful—deeply grateful—that she had known the brief and fleeting pleasure of a kiss. Two kisses. Kisses that made her feel womanly without making her feel like a man’s conquest.
Then she heard Davy’s familiar voice. “You can come out now, lass.”
She exhaled sharply, still grasping the ax, and stood to face him—half-expecting to find him covered in blood and gore. Instead, she found his broad shoulders covered in flakes of snow.
“T’was a bloody tinker,” Davy said wryly at the sight of the ax in her hand. “I nearly took his head off, the fool. But I should’ve taken his tongue.”
“Why?” Arabella asked, rushing into his arms anyway. She held him tight. Very tight. Wanting to kiss his face. Wanting to kiss him everywhere.
Davy pulled her close, grinning a bit at her enthusiastic embrace. “Oh, he was looking for a place to lay his head for the night on account of the worsening weather and I had to refuse him and send him away. Had to tell a tall tale, too. And give him half the pots in the cottage to get him to go.”
“What tale did you tell him?”
“Said I was a newly married lad with a ripe young wife whose quim I was eager to taste. And whose virtue I didn’t want smeared by another man hearing her scream in pleasure, even from the barn.”
“Davy!” Arabella cried, embarrassed to hear such language. Embarrassed, too, at the way it made something inside her quiver with excitement.
Davy sighed. “Don’t think he believed me, though. And if he should come across another crofter from the village, they’re likely to know it for a lie. I might’ve done wrong, lass, to send him away. And in this weather, no less.”
“Is it really snowing?” Arabella asked. “This early in the year?”
