by Ann Jacobs
Up close, in the candlelight, the scars were far uglier. A mixture of burn marks and jagged lacerations that made her belly heave with joint forces of sorrow for the man asleep and revulsion for the man responsible for his pain.
Who had done this to him and why?
Perhaps his reputation as a blackguard had caught up with him. A jealous husband had sought revenge after finding him in his wife’s bed.
Nay. As much as Kristiana might have mixed feelings for the man, she did not believe him the type to dally with a married woman. So then what? Was war to blame for his disfigurement? And were there scars elsewhere?
Her curiosity too great to ignore, she moved to the head of the bed and lifted the candelabra higher. Once more she gasped. This time the sound was not due to old wounds. Nary a mark grazed his flesh, nothing more than a gentle dusting of dark, crisp hair lined the broad expanse of muscled sinew. Though he’d worn nothing at all the night they’d met on the parapet, she’d been too shocked by his presence, his demands, to take a worthy look at his body. Now she could not pull her gaze away.
The wide berth of his upper body dipped to a narrow waist. His breeches fit snugly over his thighs and his immense masculinity pressed so fiercely against the buckskin, she couldn’t help but wonder how he managed to keep it contained during the day.
The feral sound that had brought her to his chamber rang through her ears. She snapped her gaze to his face as she realized the source of the noise.
It was he. Not his hound, but the man himself.
As the sound grew more caustic, his dark head thrashed against the pillows. His expression drew into one of suffering, his brow knit heavily and his lips pressed into a fine line. Though she’d thought nothing of it before, she realized now he wore no covers. The tail end of the bedclothes was wrapped around his neck.
Holy Mother, he was choking to death!
“Tavish.” Her voice came out a shaky whisper she knew would never pull him from sleep. Slumber that would become permanent did she not do something soon. She tried again, louder. “Tavish! You must wake up.”
His helpless wails ceased as did his thrashing, and he was silent. Too silent.
Kristiana’s heart crashed against her ribs as the ramification of his stillness sank in. She could not let him die. He was their laird, their savior! The devil who dared to make her want things she shouldn’t.
Aware she needed the candelabra’s light to see by, she quickly placed it on the table near the bed. Drawing on her courage, she threw herself over him.
“Tavish!” she cried, shaking his shoulders in a desperate attempt to frighten life back into him. “Wake up, damn it! You will not die!”
Still he made no sound.
Bloody hell, what was she to do?
Could she possibly work the bedclothes from his neck? She had to try. Curling her fingers beneath the cool linen, she attempted to pry it from his heated flesh. Her hand stilled and she drew in a hasty breath when she felt his erratic pulse.
Thank God, he was not dead. Yet.
Damnation! She had to get the infernal bedclothes off his neck. Using the haphazard grasp she managed to attain, she jerked at the linen again and again, but the bedding stayed firm, corded around his throat. Suffocating him.
What? What to do?
She lifted her head and searched his closed eyes for an answer. If only she could wake him, he could remove the murdering bedclothes himself. But how…
Her gaze fell to the hard, compressed lines of his mouth and the answer that came to her stilled the air in her throat. Nay. She couldn’t. What if he thought—
His hollow cry of misery cut her off and she knew she was out of options. If it were her only chance, she must do it. Sliding her legs down to straddle his middle, she drew a steadying breath then lowered to his lips.
Just one kiss. If that didn’t work…It would work. It had to.
* * * * *
The bloody battle scene before Tavish’s eyes faded to a haze of red and black. He couldn’t make out his surroundings, but he felt safe, secure here. That the battle had passed. No more pain, no more suffering. Only the quiet of peace.
A softness pressed over his body, warmth splintered through his limbs. The faint smell of a lady’s perfume stimulated his senses. And the pressure on his lips…soft, wet. And was that a tongue? A kitten’s tongue perhaps, lapping at him like some fine cream?
“Mmm…”
The throaty feminine murmur sent the fog that had settled over Tavish’s brain scurrying away, and all at once he realized this was no dream. This was really happening. He knew this taste, this sweet flavor mingled with the enticing taste of sin. A kitten for sure. A wanton sex kitten who worked magic on his mind and body.
Lady Kristiana. She’d come to him.
After she had run away from him, that look of abject horror spoiling her lovely face, he’d had second thoughts about making her his mistress. But as she lay over him now, licking and sucking so fervently at his mouth, those misgivings vanished.
He lifted his head far enough to remove the bedclothes that had once again found their way around his neck, and then slid his hands over the slimness of her back. He tugged her lush curves to him as he took over the wild kiss she’d begun.
Plunging his tongue past her parted lips, he drank of her flavor, of the heat she so willingly offered. Continuing the duel, imbibing in the recesses of her mouth, he slid his hands beneath her robe to cup the plumpness of her ass. She wriggled against him, panting into his mouth when he gripped her buttocks more firmly, parting the cheeks with his grip. His cock pulsed in response, the buckskin that cloaked it painfully tight.
He dared not free his tumescent penis yet, for he wanted to sink into Kristiana’s luscious, young body far too much. Once they were skin to heated skin, the taut control he struggled to hold in check would snap. He wouldn’t fuck her so hastily this first time. Not when there would be endless opportunities to do so in the future.
Tavish broke free of her mouth to nuzzle at her neck. He nipped and bit at the sensitive skin, each of her throaty whimpers bringing as much pain as pleasure to his heavily confined shaft. Needing to take the added weight of her body from his erection, he rolled them until she lay on the bed beneath him. Once more he claimed her neck, biting her flesh almost cruelly as he caught the thin material of her nightdress in his hands and worked it upward. Her frantic huffs and puffs ceased for an instant when he uncovered her naked mound. Then they came louder, her hands drawing up from the bed to tangle in his thick hair. She urged him on with barely audible whispers of desire.
He ground the thick, hot length of his cock against her pussy and she mewled like a hungry kitten in his ear. Growling his want, he slid a hand between them to seek out the lips of her cunt. His first touch on her damp, silken curls was pure deliverance. She had tried to convince him what happened earlier today was a mistake, that she didn’t want him. The truth of her lust was revealed to him in that sodden stroke. Her body’s juices soaked her inner thighs. His fingers burned to thrust past her curls into the heated cavern of her core, to plunge into its deepest recesses, far past the point he allowed himself entry earlier today. First he needed one thing. Her assent.
Stroking his fingers at the edge of her swelled sex, Tavish lifted his gaze to her face. He could just make out her eyes in the candlelight. The darkest of blues, riddled with undeniable passion. Her insolent mouth was parted slightly and her bold tongue ran over her full lower lip. She looked insatiable, exquisite. And soon to be his.
“You’ve agreed then?” he rasped.
“Agreed?” Kristiana questioned breathlessly.
“To be my mistress?”
Her eyes edged wide. “Your mistress?”
His fingers stilled at the stupefaction in her tone. “Is that not why you’re here? Do you not wish to feel my hands on you? My fingers petting your slick, swollen pussy?”
She remained silent, their mingled breaths the only sound heard in the cool flood of
night. He resumed his caress against her folds, stroking the edges of their dampness but going no farther. He would get the truth from her, were it the last thing he did.
“Would you have me bury my fingers inside your tight, wet body, my lady?” He slipped one large, work-callused finger in, stopping to strum over her puffed up clitoris. “Would you have me take this delectable bud between my lips and feast upon it until your sweet come fills my mouth?”
She arched against his touch, grinding her dripping cunt against his finger, taking him further into her parted flesh as her grip on his hair became nearly intolerable. “Aye. Oh…I want that.”
Tavish heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, the truth.
Drawing back on his knees, he lowered between her spread thighs and added another finger to the first. He separated the folds of her soaking pussy to reveal her distended clit. The sight of her glistening pink cunt splayed wide in the soft spray of light had his balls tightening and his cock clamoring for release.
Grunting in the back of his throat, he caught her hips in his hands and lifted her mound to his mouth. The scent of her sex infiltrated his nostrils, sending his blood into a mad boil, and he urgently thrust his tongue against her slit. He lapped at her damp, shuddering pussy, devouring her juices all the while restraining himself from burying his tongue fully into her sweet center.
With effort, he pulled back. “Do you want this, Kristiana? Do you want me?”
“Please,” she cried, bucking up in search of his mouth. “Please…”
He drew his thumb between her thighs and pressed it against her cleft, once more separating the passion engorged flesh of her cunt to reveal her clitoris. He blew on the deep red bud and it quivered with the need for fulfillment. His groin tightened in turn, his balls drawing fiercely against the buckskin. Bloody hell, he needed to be free of the sadistic breeches before he came inside them.
“Please what, Kristiana?” he goaded, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the trembling, dewy nub.
Her nails drove hard into his scalp. “Please…make…”
“Make what?”
“Make me yours.”
Tavish could not stop his grin, for at this moment he believed sweeter words had never been spoken. Hastily, he moved from her and divested his breeches. Then he was over her again, throbbing with the need to plunge his cock into her pussy until his balls slapped a merciful tune against her ass.
“Please hurry,” she wailed, reclaiming her grip on his hair. “’Tis almost an unbearable ache.”
He knew the same agony, knew the need to come so badly his heart raced to what was surely a perilous limit. He petted her slick vulva once more, and then he plunged his fingers deep inside her. The thrill of her heat, her wetness, washed over him, firing his blood to a raging crescendo that died a sudden ugly, barely plausible death.
He drew his shaking hand away from her body as the air in his lungs burned with his exertion. “What the bloody…”
“Do not stop!” Kristiana implored, tugging fiercely at his hair.
He tore free of her grip and reared back on the bed, shook his head in disbelief. He locked on her wide-eyed gaze against his will. Passion still clouded her eyes, but beyond that she looked dejected, as if his leaving her were some wicked sin. In truth, continuing would be an iniquity. At least, to his mind.
“Tavish…please…”
Before he could succumb to her husky pleading, he stumbled off the bed and jerked on his breeches. “How?” he demanded, his hands curled at his sides. “How is it possible you could still be a virgin? Tomas ruined you. He took your innocence!”
She rose up on her knees and crawled across the bed to his side. Reaching out to him, she gripped his arm. Her long, red hair spilled wildly around her face, her breasts jiggled enticingly, and scent of her sweet, heady sex cloaked the air. He once more fought the urge to give in to her. “Nay. You did, sir. You took my innocence.”
“I have done no such thing,” he denied, putting distance between them.
He’d only come damned close to it. The air squeezed in his lungs all over again as he recalled the sensation of encountering her maidenhead.
Kristiana nodded. “Aye, ‘tis the truth. I haven’t been innocent since the moment we kissed. I want you. And you want me. Make me your mistress, Tavish.”
“Damn it.” Dragging his hand through his hair, he stalked to the window and looked out into the night. He saw no stars, no moon. He saw naught but her eyes beckoning him to come back to her and finish what they’d begun.
He would not do it! He would not fuck an innocent for sheer pleasure.
He looked back at her and sneered over his disreputable behavior. “I am not the scoundrel you have been led to believe, my lady. Never have I stolen a maiden’s virtue, whilst she was drunk from my kisses or sober as the day is long, and I will not start tonight. Now be gone from here.”
She scrambled to her feet, crossed to him and set her chin as she said too boldly for a chit of such inexperience, “’Tis been said, my laird, that actions speak louder than words. I could tell how badly you wanted me the other night.” Without hesitation, she placed her palm on his shaft. “I can feel your hardness now. You are ready.”
His cock leapt beneath her touch and his breeches strained too snugly to allow for proper circulation. Or, apparently, for proper judgment as well, as Tavish yearned to give in to her wanton demands. Holding tightly to the reins of common sense, he marched to the chamber door and threw it open.
He forced a scowl into place though he burned to apologize for taunting her into coming here in the first place. Had he only known the truth… “What I am, my lady, is tired of these insipid games of yours. If I wanted to bed an awkward virgin, I would take a wife.” Unable to look upon the hurt that flooded her delicate features, he folded his arms over his chest and turned away. “Leave now. I am through with you.”
The sound of Kristiana’s sniffle was almost his undoing. He dropped his arms to his sides and balled his hands to stop from turning back and pulling her into his embrace. The slightest of breezes lifted the hair at his nape as she hurried past, and then she was gone. The hollow slam of the door in her wake echoed the unexpected pang in his chest. The one that said he’d just lost something he’d never even realized he had.
* * * * *
The village of Landon rang with the sounds of the forthcoming Christmas. Yule logs had been gathered and lit in every home with hearths. The fire in the castle’s hearth flamed the highest of all. Two fat, thick logs—one of birch and another of ash to accommodate the diversity of the castle’s inhabitants—burned the night through, as did the candles placed at each and every window.
Happiness surrounded Kristiana and she couldn’t even force a smile. Ninny. Ninny. Ninny. Would the word never leave her? Or perhaps she was no longer a ninny. Perhaps, she had advanced to an outright fool.
Two days had past since she had thrown herself at Tavish and he had denied her. Still she could not erase their encounter from her mind. Perhaps it was because she had so stupidly believed she saved him from choking to death, or perhaps it was more the ugly wounds that scarred his virile flesh. Whatever the reason, she’d felt so close to him, as if they’d understood each other, knew each other’s sorrow. Each other’s passions. Then he’d discovered her maidenhead and he had cast her away.
She’d spent these last two days feeling ashamed, sorrowful, hiding out from the scorn of the devil’s dark gaze. No longer. He was the one who should feel badly. He was the liar here. The one who’d built a reputation around the skill of drugging maidens with his kiss. A skill he declared to not even possess!
If she thought they had shared something special that night, she’d been mistaken. They had shared nothing but a moment of lust. Aye, she would feel no more shame, no more sorrow. The holiday season was upon them and there was much to celebrate. At least, in the villagers’ eyes.
* * * * *
Tavish pressed his mount up the steep hillside to Cast
le Wynderon. He’d worked the day through, mindless to the cold, mindless to the merriment of the villagers that surrounded him. Only one thing claimed his attention the past two days—a blue-eyed chit who knew no better than to ask to be ruined.
He’d done his best to keep his distance from Kristiana—had even taken to sitting at opposite ends of the table during evening meal, but he couldn’t stop from looking, from wondering. From wanting.
Bloody hell, he wanted her worse than ever. And he could not have her. Would not have her. He had no mind for a wife, certainly not one he wanted with such fierce longing, and Lady Kristiana deserved far more than to be made a man’s mistress.
He would end this hunger coursing through his soul, distracting him to no end during the day and haunting his sleep at night. In a sennight, when the larger of the repairs were complete, he would ride to Inverness and find a strumpet to fuck.
Once he rid himself of the lascivious cravings that claimed him day and night, he could forge a friendship with Kristiana. The familial relationship they should have had from the start. Only they wouldn’t be family, because she was not his sister-in-law. She was also not truly the lady of the castle. She had never been.
What had happened with Tomas? Why the rumors? Why the feigned marriage?
He had to know, for the sake of his sanity.
* * * * *
“Laird MacBain would like to see you in his study.”
Unexpected heat rushed into Kristiana’s belly at the mention of Tavish. She scowled at the reaction. She must be coming down with a sickness for surely the warmth had naught to do with the devilish Englishman who shared her home and hearth.
She turned to a slim, white-haired Tompkins, one of several servants who now resided at Castle Wynderon, and did her best to smile. She failed miserably.
