by Sabrina York
Her pulse pounded as she stared at the shadows dancing through the room. She strained to hear what had awakened her, but all was still. She thought she might have imagined the noise when, of a sudden, Brùid’s tail gave a whomp. Then another. And then a series of sharp whacks against the mattress.
Her door creaked open and candlelight flickered through the crack.
“Hannah?” A whisper.
Aye, a whisper. Nothing more. But it made her breath catch and her soul take wing. Not a ghost. Her husband. He was home. “I’m awake.”
Alexander stepped into the room. He lifted the candle and a glow encased his face. Hannah stilled, stared at him. He was so striking it made her chest ache. He smiled and her heart hitched. Even as she threw back the covers to spring from the bed and run to him, he stalked to her side. In one movement he set the candle on the table, sat beside her, and pulled her into his arms.
“How was your trip to Ackergill?”
His chin firmed. “Fine.”
She opened her mouth to respond, to ask for more information, but he didn’t allow it. His mouth was warm on hers, hungry. The heat from his chest bathed her. But what warmed her more was his ardor.
As much as she’d yearned for him for days, apparently he’d been thinking about her as well. Thinking about this.
He kissed her with a haunting desperation and then nibbled his way down her neck to a spot that sent delicious shivers skittering through her. Tossing her head back and staring up at the ceiling, she reveled in the exquisite torture.
Ah, he worked her, tormented her, pleased her.
It was maddening. It was sublime. It was incredibly beguiling.
Surely beguiling enough that all thoughts of a prosaic nature should have been driven from her mind, excised, banished by bliss.
Not so.
As her husband’s tongue drew a delightful dervish on every nerve, the incongruous thought occurred to her that, in the flickering light of the candle, the walls of her chamber looked even more like manure. The brown was slightly more brown and the hint of yellow even more … bilious.
She wrinkled her nose and tipped her head to the side.
Not just manure, but the manure of an ailing cow. How could it be—?
“Hannah?”
With a start she realized Alexander had stopped what he was doing. Even as disgruntlement gushed through her, so did her resolve. Oh, she wanted to continue this conversation. She wanted to very much. Just not here.
She cupped his cheek and stared into his stunning eyes. So tender. So sincere. So puzzled.
“Could we go into your room?”
His brow knit. “My … room?”
“Oh, aye. Let’s.” She wriggled free of the covers and bounded from the bed, prepared to flee the orgy of excrement, but Alexander caught her arm.
“Why not … here?”
She tried not to make a face. Really, she did.
He shot a glance about her chambers, a frown brewing. “Do you … not … like your room?”
She wove her fingers together. “It’s verra nice. But yours is … larger?”
He stood and stared down at her. His throat worked. And ah, his desolate expression raked her. “You … doona like your room.”
Beneath the weight of his chagrin, she wanted to wilt.
He had redecorated it. For her.
Oh, she was such a petty, shallow woman. She should adore the room—despite the dismal color scheme. She should try.
But she couldn’t lie. All she could manage was a shrug.
His fingers closed into a fist. “W-why?”
“It’s … lovely.” Even to her own ears, her assertion was not convincing.
“Why?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Oh dear.”
“Why?” With each request, his voice became stronger, more strident.
“It’s just so verra…”
“So verra … what?”
She mangled her fingers together and peeped up at him. “So verra brown?”
He stilled. “It’s a beautiful color of brown.”
It was difficult not to gape at him. How on earth could he ever think this was a beautiful color of brown? It was dowdy and dismal and it made her want to howl at the moon in—
“It’s … the color of your eyes.”
Hannah’s knees locked. Her breath stalled. She struggled to keep her balance as she stared at him. Not because of the words he’d said—although those were surprising—but because of his tone. It rumbled with … Was that adoration?
But still—
She snatched up the candle and ran to the glass, studying first her reflection and then the hideous fabric on the walls and—
Oh dear.
Oh God.
It was.
It was exactly the same color.
No wonder she hated it.
He came up behind her and set his hands on her shoulders. The counterpoint in the glass—of his long fingers against her delicate collarbone, the way the breadth of his palm encompassed her—captured her attention. His thumb walked up her neck to her jaw. He stroked her. And, holding her gaze in the mirror, he said, “It’s the most beautiful color in the world.”
She nearly collapsed against him.
It was the sweetest, most romantic thing she could ever have imagined.
And he didn’t stumble over so much as a word.
But it put her in quite a pickle, because clearly he had gone to extraordinary lengths to please her and honor her and show her his devotion … and she really hated the color.
She did the only thing she could do.
She turned in his arms and framed his face in her palms and kissed him.
And then, once he was thoroughly besotted, she led him through the parlor and into his room, where thoughts of barnyard brawls would not distract her from the delectation of his very enticing form.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She dinna like her room.
Try as he might, Alexander couldn’t banish the thought.
It supplanted even his anxiety over his unpleasant altercation with Caithness, which was extreme. Upon Alexander’s return home, he’d wanted nothing more than to hold her, sink into her, and forget the worry that scudded like acid through his veins.
But now … this.
She dinna like her room.
Even as he kissed her and caressed her and gently removed her nightdress, the thought clanged through him like a church bell.
She pushed him back against the pillows and began unfastening his belt. He helped her as she removed his boots and tugged down his breeks, but truly, his mind was beset. As much as he wanted this, as much as he’d wanted it all week, his thoughts roiled.
He should have been distracted by the curve of her breast, or her moans when he nibbled on her thrusting nipples. The silk of her skin or her scent or, for heaven’s sake, her fervor as she undressed him. But he wasn’t.
He couldn’t bear the thought that he’d disappointed her. Worse, that he’d gone on thinking she was happy here when she wasn’t. On his long ride to Ackergill, he’d done little else but think about Hannah. About their marriage and how far they’d come in such a short stretch of time. He’d thought about how contented she made him. He’d assumed she was contented as well.
Beyond all that, somewhere on that rutted track he’d realized he wanted her much more than he’d allowed himself to admit. He needed her.
This swirling tumult in his heart was, very probably, love.
It didn’t feel the way he thought love would feel. In fact, it felt very much like fear, tinged with desperation and an incongruous hope. Perhaps a hint of hunger.
Or more than a hint.
She dinna like her room.
His chest ached.
He had so wanted to please her in this. He’d been convinced he had.
Where had he gone wrong? Oh, certainly she didn’t like brown—he’d learned as much in the game they’d played on their picnic—but her room wasn’t bro
wn so much as smoky topaz with swirls of gold. It was a deep, rich color, one he wanted to sink into.
With that thought, he kissed her lids, one after the other, and then kissed his way along each arching brow. Kissed her cheekbones, the little dent beneath her nose, the tip of her chin.
Their eyes locked and something shifted in him. Another need rose and consumed his biting curiosity. He hauled her up his body, against him, thrilling at the drag of her silken skin against his. He set his mouth on hers, nuzzling, questing, attempting to say with his actions the words he couldn’t yet utter.
She melted into him with a murmur and began exploring him with her soft, delectable mouth.
They really needed to talk about her room. He really needed to know.
But not yet. Not just yet.
First he needed to hold her, soak her in. Steep in her presence and rally his courage.
On a good day, constructing cogent words was a challenge. It was even more difficult with her, although he found, as he came to know her better, his raging fear that she would discover his curse and revile him for it lessened. In fact, though they had not discussed it, he suspected she already knew the truth about his struggle to speak. Even though the prospect of that discussion dismayed him, it would almost be a relief.
The game she’d devised had touched him deeply. It had been a gentle and clever way of addressing the fact that he wasn’t much of a conversationalist. While her game—or the need for it at least—had mortified him in some bleak corner of his soul, the fact that she wanted to connect with him, despite his affliction, had given him hope.
Hope that maybe, when she knew all of it, she wouldn’t be repulsed.
How glorious would it be to be able to speak to her … with no fear? No fear whatsoever?
A pity he didn’t have the courage to simply tell her. Everything.
But it was far too soon for that.
She ceased her tantalizing nibbles on his neck and lifted her head to frown at him. “Alexander? Are you paying attention?”
No. He hadn’t been. Not entirely.
He nodded.
“Humph.” In a fit of pique, she raked him with her nails. When she hit his nipple, his attention sharpened, peaked. His cock nudged her thigh and she rubbed against it. With a murmur she nestled closer. “That’s better.”
He tried to stop her leg from moving, from dragging insanity on him, as each touch further addled his thinking. He tried to stop her leg from moving but succeeded only in finding another delectable place to stroke. The back of her knee was particularly tender. That and the crease where her thigh met her lush bottom.
That she giggled and squirmed didn’t help.
She dinna like her room.
The nagging thought crept back to the forefront of his consciousness, scalding him. When she began nibbling her way down his chest toward his belly, he had to stop her. He just had to. He needed to know, and if she continued this play she would succeed in distracting him utterly.
She peered up at him with a question etched on her features when he stilled her busy hands. He rolled over, pinning her beneath him. While the flare of her nostrils, the sudden tight grip of excitement on her face, incited him to action, he used his position to hold her still, so he could work through the question he needed to ask without interference.
“Do you—”
Ah hell. His throat closed up.
He sucked in a deep breath and tried again, aware that she lay quiescently beneath him, that she stared up at him, patiently awaiting his next words.
“Do you … really hate your room?”
Her chuckle vibrated through him in an enticing rumble.
“Do … you?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned up to kiss him. At the very end of the sweetest kiss he’d ever known, she whispered, “With a passion.”
Why he laughed he didn’t know. It was truly a disaster of monumental proportions. A woman’s welcome in her new home set the tenor for the marriage. And that he’d been so utterly wrong in his choices bothered him.
Because he’d been so certain.
He probably laughed because she did. Because her revulsion twined with an amusement, an élan, he found irresistible.
“I’ll … have it redone.” He tipped his head to the side and surveyed her. “Do you like … puce?”
Her response was a full-bellied chuckle, one he felt compelled to taste.
When he finished kissing her, for the time being, at least, and he lifted his head, she stroked his cheek and said, “You doona have to redo it.”
“I do.” It was imperative. She’d mentioned she liked green. He could have it done in a bright spring heather. Ah. An excellent idea. Then their rooms would match.
“I could always just sleep here,” she murmured.
Another excellent idea.
They kissed for a while more and his passion began to flare—and then another thought struck him. “Why … why do you not like the … brown?” It was, truly, the loveliest color on earth.
“Oh, please, Alexander.” She pouted. “Let it go.”
“I canna.” It was like a thorn in his side, wedged right there next to his passion. “Why…?”
She sobered and gazed at him for a long while before answering, “I dinna realize it, but it is, indeed, the exact color of my eyes.”
He thumbed her lashes. “Beautiful.”
She snorted and turned away. He grasped her chin and directed her attention back to him.
“Beautiful,” he insisted.
“My eyes are no’ beautiful.”
“Liar.”
“They are no’. Lana has beautiful eyes. So clear and blue, like a summer sky. And Susana, my other sister … her eyes are a stunning green.” Hannah put out a lip. “My eyes are like mud.”
And it hit him. Like a fist to the gut.
As incomprehensible as it was, Hannah believed she was not pretty.
Hannah, with her alabaster skin, her thick ebony hair, her delectable curves—and, aye, her exquisite, mesmerizing topaz-brown eyes—was the most glorious creature he’d ever seen. His chest constricted. His throat clenched. Frustration sizzled through him. Ah, how he wished he were, indeed, a poet. How he wished the words could flow right now.
He would tell her, convince her with some lyrical sonnet, some magical prose, exactly what he saw when he looked at her.
But he knew the words would not come. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t issue forth the flood of beatitudes she needed to hear.
He would show her instead.
He would show her how beautiful she was in his eyes.
So there would be no doubt.
* * *
Hannah didn’t completely understand Alexander’s expression as he stared down at her. There was an odd mixture of dismay and determination … and something else she couldn’t quite name. She hoped it wasn’t pity.
How mortifying to admit the truth of why she deplored her room. And to him. But it wasn’t as though he couldn’t see it every time he looked at her.
She was not beautiful. Certainly not as striking as Susana or as angelic as Lana.
She wasn’t a troll, either, but all her life she’d known she simply didn’t stand a chance of competing with her sisters’ blazing presences. She’d always worried she could never truly win a man’s love—that she wasn’t quite pretty enough. It had been a silly, irritating fear, one she’d sloughed away whenever it niggled at the back of her brain. She had so much to offer and she truly liked herself and, she convinced herself, she didn’t need a man’s love to be whole.
But now that she’d met Alexander, now that she’d come to know him, that tiny spark of a fear had ignited into a roaring blaze.
She very much wanted to win his love.
It was a pity she didn’t know how.
It hurt to bare her soul, her fears. To him. Like this. Wound together with him in his bed, naked, his hard body pressing into hers, his heat surrounding her.
It hurt to stare into his eyes as he loomed over her; the moment was far too raw.
Frantically she searched her mind for some jest, some offhand comment, something to shatter the brittle ache inside her and ease this discomfort, but she couldn’t pin down her wispy thoughts.
And then every thought scattered, whipped away by a great gust roiling in off the churning sea. Because he framed her face in his enormous hands—her ordinary, plain, unremarkable face—and kissed her forehead. “Beautiful,” he murmured.
He kissed her brow. “Beautiful.”
Her cheek. “Beautiful.”
The tip of her imperfect nose. “Beautiful.”
He went on, touching his lips to every inch of her face, repeating the word again and again after each and every buss. And when he had exhausted the options of her features, he pulled back her hair and started working on her ears. They were largish and poked out a bit, so it took a while to acknowledge every inch, but these he declared to be beautiful too.
When he got to her neck, he became distracted and forgot to say beautiful, but he mumbled it occasionally as he worked his way over the sensitive column.
Aside from the great welling in her chest at his tenderness, his devotion, his dedication to making her feel pretty, his efforts delighted her in other ways as well. Her nerves began to hum. Her skin rippled with pleasure. The tiny hairs on her arm prickled.
Oh, she wasn’t some phenomenal beauty and she knew it, but the fact that he would dedicate himself to convincing her she was, was enough.
If she hadn’t loved him before—if she hadn’t been drawn to him physically and attracted to him spiritually and besotted with him emotionally—she certainly loved him now.
He was, indeed, the most gorgeous, captivating, fascinating man she’d ever met.
And he was her husband.
A bubble of joy welled up. The urge to laugh, crow, rejoice, filled her.
But she did none of these things. Instead she threaded her fingers through his hair and gripped tightly until he, perforce, raised his head. He gazed at her with a curious look on his face.
“You,” she said in a tight voice that threatened to fail her, “are the beautiful one.” And she pushed him away, tipping him off her and onto his back. He was much larger and stronger than she, but he allowed it. Perhaps he’d been stunned by the ferocity of her tone.
