Torn Between Two Highlanders

by Laurel Adams

  “Och, aye. Coming down in big flakes. Which could be good news or bad news, depending?”

  “On what?”

  “If the Donald war bands have already found shelter, they’ll stay where they are until the storm passes over. That would be good. Give Malcolm time to heal. Give us time to set out for the castle. But if our enemies are not sheltered, this cozy little cottage with smoke rising up from a warm fire will be as inviting as any house they ever laid eyes upon.”

  So it was all luck, Arabella thought. If fate turned one way, they might all live to a ripe old age. If it turned another, they’d be dead by morning, all three of them. And as she walked back to the cottage beside Davy, seeking shelter in his warmth against the falling snow, she felt a dread to the marrow of her bones.

  They found Malcolm asleep in his chair by the fire—blissfully unaware of the encounter with the tinker. But his breathing wasn’t rapid and labored as it had been before; she didn’t think he’d lost consciousness again. He seemed in genuine slumber, and Arabella marveled at the strength of his constitution. But she still felt the icy dread that night, when Davy was so worn down from keeping watch that he was all-but-dozing while standing up by the door.

  Malcolm awakened only to insist that Arabella take the bed.

  “And where will you and Davy rest?” she asked.

  “On the floor,” Malcolm said, apparently determined to kill himself.

  Fortunately, Davy wasn’t having it. “Leave me the chair and share the bed with her again, you bloody bastard. And know that I won’t make the offer again tomorrow night even if you’re still half-dead.”

  “Tomorrow night?” Malcolm asked. “We can’t afford three days holed up here. If I’m not well enough to ride in the morning, you take the lass and go.”

  Davy snorted. “Are you deaf? Listen to that howling wind. Have a peek out the door if you like. The snow is already up to my knees and if it doesn’t let up soon…”

  They’d be stuck here, Arabella thought. It wouldn’t be the first time, she thought. Davy had told her that story about being trapped with Malcolm in the snows once before. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now she found herself glad to be in the company of two men who were so resourceful.

  Either the Donalds would come upon them tonight and slaughter them, or they would be stuck in place by the snows, too. There was nothing to do but wait. But she was not going to wait for men to take her virtue.

  And she was not going to wait for death never knowing the pleasures of life.

  Perhaps it was the time she had spent crouched down by the chickens, contemplating falling into the clutches of men who cared nothing for her. Or perhaps it was only the thrill of fear still thrumming in her blood. But in taking her hair down for bed, she asked, “How does it work?”

  Both men eyed her curiously.

  “How does what work?” Davy asked.

  “When you’ve…when you’ve taken a woman…together.” She burned with embarrassment to ask the question, but she was rewarded by Davy’s keen smile and Malcolm’s intense interest.

  “Do you mean what positions we take?” Malcolm asked.

  Arabella’s stomach flipped, trying to imagine how many positions there were.

  Fortunately, the men didn’t wait for her to answer.

  “Sometimes we have a girl on her knees,” Davy explained, greatly warming to the subject. “Sucking one of us while the other takes her from behind. That’s Mal’s favorite way, but I like the ways that don’t involve my staring at his ugly mug.”

  Ugly? Her eyes cut to Malcolm, who didn’t seem insulted by the remark. But she was insulted on his behalf. Yes, his face was scarred and like granite. Hard, stony, and remote. But she still thought he was the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes upon. And though he never seemed to smile, she could intuit pleasure or displeasure in his eyes. Right now, they burned into her in a most pleasurable way. A way that emboldened her to ask, “What other ways are there to share a woman?”

  Davy nodded, as if he was pleased to be asked. “One of us in her arse and the other in her wet cunny. That’s a good one.”

  Arabella’s breath hitched. Oh, Lord. She didn’t think she could ask another thing. And yet, she felt compelled to. “And do you…do you touch each other?”

  “Not if we can help it,” Malcolm said.

  Davy added, with a wicked flare in his blue eyes, “The fun is giving all our attentions to a lass and watching her come unraveled under our hands.”

  Arabella wanted to come unravelled. She very much wanted that. A heat was building in her, and the source of it wasn’t her furiously blushing cheeks. No, it was somewhere in her belly, somewhere lower, between her legs. And it ached. It ached in such a way she didn’t think it could be eased unless one of these men touched her there.

  She thought of Davy and Malcolm kissing her at the same time. More than kissing her. And it was so arousing, she couldn’t quite catch her breath.

  “Would you like us to do that to you, lass?” Davy asked, seducing her with a sweet smile and words so velvety that the smoothness disguised the sin of them. He moved to her side, and she caught the scent of him. Clean, as if he’d bathed in the stream before the snows had come. And the heat of his body so near filled her senses.

  “I don’t know,” she confessed.

  It was enough encouragement for Davy to clasp her against him, and let his fingers slide up beneath the man’s shirt she’d donned. He lifted it up, his hands sliding gently to cup her breast, to flick a thumb over her sensitive nipple. It made her close her eyes. It made her moan. “But the thought arouses you, yes?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, not caring in this moment if it damned her.

  She was aroused, that much she knew. And it was a strange feeling, swirling about in her head and heart and body, like smoke swirling from a spark before a fire blazed in full glory. How was she to know what she wanted with the snow falling heavily outside and Davy’s warm hands on her, and Malcolm’s intense gaze sweeping over her with certain lust?

  “Because the thought of it arouses me too, lass,” Davy said. “Enough that I could come right now, should I put my hand to myself.”

  A glance at Malcolm and the dark lust in his eyes showed a desire to have her completely. But she had to be sure. “And it would excite you, too, to take me together?”

  “Aye,” Malcolm said, resolutely.

  “Is that your choice, Arabella?” Davy asked.

  She swallowed. “I—I think it is. But I’m not sure. Not sure of anything…”

  Davy nodded, not discouraged in the least. “Well then, you must help me get Malcolm to bed so we can help you decide.”

  Chapter Seven

  They kissed her that night. Both of them. Malcolm on the pillow to the left of her in the bed, pulling back the curtain of her hair to fasten his lips upon her neck. Davy, kneeling upon the floor to her right, closing his mouth over hers to leave her breathless.

  They stroked her, too. Davy’s hands gently roving over her body but never stroking one place to satisfaction. Malcom’s fingers going straight between her thighs, dextrous fingers circling a spot between her slippery nether lips that forced her to cry out. “So wet,” Malcolm said with approval, and a bit of smugness at her reaction.

  And Davy readily agreed.

  But she wondered when one or the other of them would be overcome with jealousy, when their playful banter might become real anger, with her in the middle of it. She had never known men to willingly share anything.

  “Are you sure you both want this?” she asked, because she had never wanted anything so much in her life.

  “We all want it,” Malcolm said to calm her.

  Davy nodded, “The only question is which one of us you will give the honor of taking your maidenhead.”

  Malcolm’s grim face twitched at that—the semblance of a smirk—as if he were certain that he would be the one to have the honor. And Davy smirked back, making her realize t
hat these two spoke to one another without words, each of them cooperating to execute a battle plan upon the map of her body.

  And she was happy to give them the victory, because she was overcome with a lust that made her quake. They were erasing her terrorized memories of men crowding around her, brutalizing her. Replacing them with new memories and sensations of delight. In truth, she flowered under their attentions into an utter wanton—the kind of woman she’d been taught to think poorly of. But she couldn’t stop to care. No, she wouldn’t have stopped. Not for anything but Malcolm, who shifted his hips against her side so that she could feel the glorious length of his hardness.

  But in doing so, he grimaced against the pain.

  He wasn’t healed enough, yet. And though it gratified her that he so obviously wanted her—that both men breathed hard in her ears with desire—she could not live with herself if she ever did Malcolm harm.

  He wasn’t healed enough yet for riding a horse, much less riding a woman.

  He needed his strength, and she would not take it from him.

  “Enough,” she whispered, regretfully. “Enough.”

  They stopped. Both of them. As if she’d uttered a magic spell. And the power they had given her over them, and over herself, was so heady she wondered a moment if she truly was a witch.

  “Is something wrong?” Davy asked, panting near her ear.

  “Nothing whatsoever,” she said, her voice dreamy and far away. “It is only that I’m frightened.” Frightened that the injured man would open his sutures and start to bleed again, she meant. Frightened that he would endure pain for her part. But she could see the two men didn’t take it that way.

  “You mustn’t be afraid,” Malcolm said.

  Davy insisted, “We wouldn’t hurt you, lass. Only give you pleasure.”

  “Even the first time?” Arabella asked. “I’m told—I’ve heard…”

  Davy, who had claimed never to have had a virgin girl, shrugged helplessly. It was Malcolm, who had been a husband, who nodded. “Och, aye. There is pain the first time. But it fades quickly and turns to sweetness.”

  She wasn’t afraid of the pain of breaking her maidenhead. Given the way the men made her feel, she didn’t doubt Malcolm in the slightest when he said it would fade quickly to sweetness. She wanted that sweetness, truly she did. But she was sure he was already in pain, and that it was not sweet at all.

  “I’d like some time to muster my courage,” she said. “If—if that would not enrage you both too much.”

  Davy laughed. “Aye, right. It’s rage I feel swelling in my balls. Lass, any man who wouldn’t wait for you to muster your courage is a man without any of his own.”

  She felt something for him then. Something well beyond the heat of lust. And then felt it again when Malcolm nodded solemnly, rolling onto to his back. She hated to let them withdraw from her, but it was the right decision.

  Malcolm said, “Put my claymore in the bed. Down the middle, to keep us separate and guard her virtue.”

  The virtue she wanted so badly to surrender? No, she thought. It’s his virtue he wants to guard. For no matter how warmly she felt for Malcolm, she knew one thing for a certain. He might want her. He might kiss her. He might finger her most intimate places and plot to couple with her in carnal bliss.

  But he didn’t want to hold her; not as a man holds a woman he loves.

  And he clearly feared that he might.

  ~~~

  She slept so long the next morning, she didn’t hear the rooster crow. Or perhaps it was that she couldn’t hear the rooster crow, considering the world was quiet and blanketed with snow.

  Malcolm rose gingerly from his pillow, testing his leg. Though he hissed to put pressure upon it, the pain no longer put him flat on his back when he tried. He cursed, then cursed again, more colorfully. But he was no longer a pale and desiccated husk of himself. He was strong. He would recover. And because he hadn’t yet seen the snowfall at the door, he said, “Let’s be up and on the trail. If you can get me into a saddle, I can ride. Tie me onto the creature if need be, but we can’t stay here another minute.”

  Davy snorted. “Have you taken a peek outside?”

  The storm had continued all night, melting a bit then freezing again to treacherous ice, a hardened drift blocking the door to the cottage almost to the height of Davy’s belly. “Even if we dug our way out, the horses will never be able to manage it. Especially not carrying a giant like you and that dagger of yours.”

  He meant the claymore, which Malcolm touched with almost as much affection as he might touch a woman. “But I’m better now,” Malcolm insisted. “Fit as a fiddle.”

  That might be overstating it; he wasn’t fully healed. Which made Arabella glad that she had not let him exert himself the night before.

  Still, he complained, “Are we to sit about and do nothing while the castle might be under siege?”

  “They wouldn’t lay siege in a snow storm,” Davy said, then shook his head. “Likely, the enemy is as trapped as we are.” Then he shot Arabella a wicked, toothy smile. “So in the meanwhile, how are we to entertain ourselves?”

  “By making breakfast,” she said, suppressing a grin.

  “I’ll do it,” Davy said, swiftly. “After all, I make a passable porridge, whereas you…”

  He was teasing her, she knew. But her stomach was growling, and she wanted breakfast more than she wanted to argue about who might best tend the cook fire. He told battle stories as he cooked the porridge for breakfast. It was porridge again in the afternoon, when he told tales about the laird and his kinsman, Ian Macrae, who was as much the laird’s foe as his friend.

  It was porridge again in the evening, and by then, it seemed to her as if Davy might never run out of tales to tell.

  At least, until he asked, “Have you no tales of your own, Arabella?”

  “I’m just a crofter’s daughter,” she replied, wrapped tightly in the plaid they’d stolen off a dead man, days before. “And not a very good one.”

  “There’s a fire in you,” Davy said, stuffing porridge into his mouth. “No doubt that tart tongue of yours brought about a thrashing at your Papa’s knee.”

  “More than once,” she confessed. “Papa once said I was more like a boy than a girl in that I could never seem to follow the rules. Liked my own company too much. Loved nature and my own experiments. Went out into the wilds to collect herbs and draw them. Lost track of time. But I always went alone, so I’m afraid I have no tales to tell.”

  “You draw?” Malcolm asked, suitably impressed. “That’s a rare talent.”

  Arabella bit her lip. “But a dull one.”

  Davy snorted. “Come now, surely something exciting has happened to you.”

  Arabella thought hard on it, and a memory came to her. “I suppose there was the time that the laird tried to hang my Papa from a tree for failing to pay what he owed.”

  Davy stopped chewing. Malcolm’s eyes dropped.

  And then she knew, they’d both been with the laird that day.

  Perhaps if they hadn’t both looked so guilty, she wouldn’t have realized it. They hadn’t known her, and she hadn’t known them when it happened. The episode had been fraught with such fear that she couldn’t remember large chunks of what happened, which meant she wasn’t sure which one of them put the noose on her father’s neck.

  But she felt certain it was one of the two of them.

  “The laird spared your father, though,” Davy offered weakly.

  Arabella’s heart hardened. “Only when my sister begged for Papa’s life, upon her knees, promising the laird her body in exchange.”

  Neither man said a word. And she regretted having brought it up. They were the laird’s men and bound in obedience to him, just as she was. Just as Heather was. It had been the laird’s idea to string up their father—no one else’s. It hadn’t been Davy or Malcolm’s idea to make her sister into a harlot either. And it seemed as if that day had happened in another lifetime. Arabella fo
rced her blood to thaw a bit. Given what these men had done for her, risked for her, it wouldn’t be fair to hold it against them, she supposed.

  Davy was the first to speak. “If it helps to know, your sister and the laird…well, things may have started badly, but the time I saw them last, they seemed sweet upon one another.”

  Arabella glanced at him askance, trying desperately to imagine their stern laird as being sweet upon anyone. “Why do you say that?”

  “John Macrae is harsh and stingy as a miser,” Davy explained. “But he spared no expense with your sister. Bought her pretty new dresses. And when she wanted to learn her letters, he arranged for a tutor, too.”

  Arabella was intrigued. “Heather is learning her letters from a tutor?”

  “Who is to stop her? So long as she pleases the laird, her days are her own.”

  Arabella considered seriously. Her father hadn’t approved of book learning for his daughters, and when Heather had gone off with the laird, he’d cursed her name. But was it possible that Arabella’s sister was now freer as the laird’s harlot than she’d been as a virtuous crofter’s daughter?

  “I would like to learn my letters,” Arabella decided. “Numbers, too. It would help to be able to draw the names of the plants I sketch, and the healing herbs.”

  A husband might not allow it, but as a fallen woman Arabella wouldn’t have to answer to a husband. She was beginning to see many advantages to being ruined. Advantages that made her welcome it even more than her lustful body already did.

  “It’s Ian Macrae that’s the scholar amongst us,” Davy said, shifting closer to her. “But I could teach you a letter or two.”

  “But he can only teach you one or two,” Malcolm taunted. “Whereas I can show you them all.”

  There weren’t any books in Conall’s cottage, but there were bills of sale, signed with his mark on the line. Both men went over them with her, helping her to trace the letters with her fingers and say them aloud such that they made words. Arabella felt gloriously accomplished. Rebellious, too. “My Papa loses sight of me for a few days and look what mischief I get up to.”