The need to take her furiously, to brand her forever, lashed him like a whip. The urges were about to rule him. “Doona want tae hurt you. But…I need it…I need tae do it hard.”
She rolled her hips up to him. “Whatever you need.”
Maddy almost took the words back when she saw his eyes darken, burning with lust.
He cupped his hand around her nape and drew her up. “I’ll never let you go,” he grated, leaning down to take her lips. “Never…”He was losing control—she could sense it, could feel it. His massive body loomed over her, his muscles tight and slick, from his corded neck all the way to the sharp indentations leading from his waist to his groin.
He pressed one of her knees to her chest, leaning his torso against the back of that leg, wrapping his arm around it, clutching it as he thrust. He placed his other hand low on her belly to thumb her clitoris, making her writhe in bliss.
Whenever he rocked into her, he pushed against her leg, spreading her wide. He seemed to crave the feeling of his chest rubbing against it.
But soon, his rhythm turned furious. Every time she thought he couldn’t go deeper, he’d plunge more powerfully, making her cry out in surprise and pleasure.
This was even more than what she’d dreamed it would be like with him. She was captivated by the wild look in his eyes and the feel of his body working against her clutching nails or rippling under her sweeping palms. When he didn’t have his firm lips on her neck or breasts or mouth, they were parted with ragged breaths.
This was worth the wait a thousand times over….
Hands clamped to the backs of her knees, he bucked hard between her parted thighs, again and again until her head thrashed on the pillow. She fought the pleasure, wanting this to last forever. But under the steady onslaught of his body, she waged a losing battle.
Just as she realized she was going to climax once more, he bit out, “Want tae feel you comin’ again.”
When she did, crying his name, a desperate, guttural sound broke from his chest. His eyes met hers as he poured himself hotly inside her. His voice a rasp, he declared, “Mine.” And then he collapsed atop her.
Breaths harsh against her neck, arms wrapped around her, he held her too tightly, but he was shaken by what had occurred between them.
I never knew.
As she ran her nails up and down his damp back, she whispered in an awed tone, “Oh, Scot, you’ve redeemed yourself completely.” He clutched her tighter, wondering if he was ever going to be able to release her.
This is what it’s all about.
He’d been so ignorant before, scorning what he could never comprehend without giving himself up to it.
Ethan understood that what he’d experienced in the past had been so lacking compared to what Maddy gave him—it was as if he’d been eating all his life without ever having been hungry or ever having tasted a morsel.
Now he starved. And feasted.
And he never wanted to go back.
Thirty-eight
When men like us change, it’s profoundly….
Hugh had been right, Ethan thought as he lay in bed, holding Maddy as she slept. Rain poured outside in a black winter’s night, but they were warm in their bed in front of a fire.
The peculiar thing was that Ethan didn’t feel like he was changing so much as reverting to normal—even though he’d never been considerate or amiable. He just found it easy with her.
When Ethan was with her, he felt like a husband. Maybe even…maybe even a good one.
After their wedding, Maddy had asked him if they could postpone journeying to the Highlands until the spring. She’d told him she liked it at Carillon and wanted to stay for the winter. Easy enough.
For the last two months here, she’d filled his life with excitement, zest. He still didn’t understand how those traits hadn’t been trampled from her, beaten down by years of hardship, but he was thankful they hadn’t. She truly seemed to have shucked off the mantle of La Marais, and rarely had nightmares any longer.
Each night, she slept in his arms, and oftentimes she would stretch out her little body over him and fall asleep on him. Which he especially liked because he could hold her in place and enter her so easily.
Whenever he had to leave for an afternoon to work on the estate, she always ran out to greet him when he returned, flying into his arms, hitting his chest hard, her face beaming. “I missed you,” she would breathe against his neck as he caught her to him, even if he’d only been gone a few hours.
Last week, he’d said, “Maddy, do you know what it’s like, seeing you run to me?”
She’d drawn back and given him a wry half grin. “Do you know what it’s like not being able to wait for you to finish the short walk to the door…?”
Ethan was always thought to be bitter and cold—so why did he find himself chasing his wee wife around the house at least once a day as she squealed with laughter?
In fact, their home was filled with laughter. She’d made it inviting. She’d even made friends with all the neighbors. It seemed as if invitations arrived every day.
She was like a bridge for him to others. He figured people assumed he was like her—affable and fun-loving. He had no doubt that when he brought her to his clan, she’d affect how he was viewed there as well.
Maddy especially liked a widow named Agnes Hallee, who lived down the coast with a brood of six mischievous bairns. Maddy enjoyed playing with the children—flying kites, taming and collecting stray pets, outrunning the most ornery peacock—reminding Ethan of how her own childhood had been cut short….
Sometimes he doubted his decision to hide the past from her and was plagued with the need to confess. But she was so damned happy, telling him daily how much. Why ruin this?
Sometimes, he fooled himself, forgetting that all this could end.
When he forgot, he was happier than he’d ever been in his entire life. There’d been another time he’d done this. The week before his father died, his da had promised Ethan he’d take him hunting in the Hebrides for his fourteenth birthday, just two weeks away.
Even after he’d seen his father’s body, Ethan had kept forgetting. For days, he’d awakened each morning, bounding out of bed with a grin on his face, because it was one day closer to their trip. Then everything would return in a rush, and he’d be shamed to have forgotten it, to have felt happiness in the wake of such a tragic loss.
Now Ethan stared at the ceiling, squeezing Maddy closer to him. Those were the last times he’d ever been content before now.
But he couldn’t imagine any way that she might find out. All the people involved that night were either long gone from England or dead. As an extra precaution, Ethan had fired the land agent at Iveley—who, predictably, wasn’t enterprising or particularly hardworking. Then Ethan had instructed his attorney to deed Iveley to Maddy and do whatever he could to obscure the chain of ownership. Only after the new deed was in place had Ethan hired another steward—a young man with limited experience, but who was by all accounts exceptionally dedicated and hardworking.
In any case, no one with any connection to his past knew where he and Maddy were. Few knew at all. Corrine did, but only because Maddy had sent her and Bea money. He’d insisted on that. If Maddy hadn’t had Corrine to look out for her in the beginning, she could have…died. The two were her family, and he was ready to support them as he would a wife’s blood kin.
Now that Madeleine was his, he was determined that he would spoil her so terribly he might begin to make up for all he’d done to her in the past. He bought her delicacies, constantly plying her with food, and every day here she grew even more stunning, gaining flesh in all the right places. She’d beamed with pride once her ring finally fit.
When he allowed himself to think that his wife had been starving in a slum because of him, he took the rage that clawed at him—rage at himself—and suffered it as his penance. Then he would redouble his efforts to make her content.
“You know what I miss?” sh
e’d told him a few weeks ago. “My horse at Iveley. She was so striking with her sorrel coat and expressive eyes. I swear she loved me as much as I did her.”
So, naturally, he’d bought Maddy a sorrel mare, because he was like all those other besotted bastards out there, ready to slay dragons for their wives for even a hint of a smile. He took her riding every day.
His new horse, bought from the same stable as hers, was yet another stalwart gelding—which had taken a strong and unwavering dislike to Ethan. As ever, animals either loved him or hated him. Though Maddy had avowed, “I think all animals hate you—except cats.” At his expression, she’d hastily added, “but feline approval is important.”
At every opportunity, that sodding gelding strove to throw him, buck him, or scrape him from the saddle by slicing against a tree. Which made Maddy howl with laughter so hard, she had to hang onto her horse’s mane to keep from falling out of her saddle. She laughed until even he would crack a grin.
Though he feared he was buying Maddy too much, he couldn’t seem to stop. He could easily afford it, and there were so many things that she’d needed and had been forced to go without. She should own such a collection of clothing and jewels that he would have to wait for her to get ready as she chose among them. If there was one thing Ethan knew husbands did, it was to wait on wives to get ready.
When he’d bought her a pearl choker a couple of weeks earlier, she’d said, “Ethan, this is all a tad…overwhelming.” Her smile had been wan.
“I thought you wanted a rich husband,” he’d said. “This is what rich husbands do.”
“I didn’t particularly want a man with money to get jewelry and trappings of wealth. I only wanted security and stability. For myself, and, well, for the children I want to have….”
Bairns. What if I canna give them to her? he thought yet again, tensing beside her.
Ethan had had that bloody curse hanging over him for so long that he’d begun to worry that he hadn’t gotten Madeleine pregnant yet. And Ethan was somewhat annoyed by the fact that Court had been able to accomplish something in three weeks that Ethan hadn’t managed in months.
Not that Ethan had ever expected to have bairns before. He hadn’t—but for some reason, he’d begun to feel that he would with her. Some thought would flash in his mind as though this were a foregone conclusion.
While Maddy still slept, he eased her to her back. Tugging the cover from her, he studied her naked body. He rubbed her flat belly and pictured her big with his child, lush and full, and looked forward to it.
Ethan grew hard as rock at that image of her his mind conjured up. It was so primal—so stirring—that he felt possessive to a killing degree and aroused to an undeniable one.
The idea of planting his seed in her, then protecting her, keeping her happy and nurturing her as she grew it…
She woke to him pinning her wrists above her, entering her as she gasped. She moaned as he took her harder and harder, until he was plunging into her in a frenzy, trying.
Thirty-nine
During her walk down to the beach on a fine spring morning, Maddy was stalked by a black tom kitten.
Ethan had brought him from the village for her. She called him Petit Chat Noir.
After she rolled out her blanket and sat, she ruffled her fingers in the sand until he charged. But he soon grew less interested in la guerre and more in l’amitié. As Maddy petted his ears, she gazed out at the waves, musing over the last few months as Ethan’s wife.
Ethan’s transition from rough, secretive, aggressive Highlander to gentle, caring husband had been seamless and effortless.
In Maddy’s imaginings. The reality had proved far different.
He was ridiculously overprotective. “You canna walk down to the beach by yourself,” he’d decreed. “And absolutely no’ into the village.”
“Have you forgotten where I grew up?” she’d asked. “I daresay I can handle all that the treacherous seaside village can offer. What do you think I’ll have to defend against? Scallops? Seaweed? Shells! Always the damned shells.”
“Have your fun, young lass. But I will no’ be moved from this. You must bring Sorcha.”
He could be moody, sometimes staring off over the sea for what seemed like hours. She would give anything to know what he was thinking about. He was possessive, preferring to have her all to himself. “What do you mean, visitors?” he’d demanded just this morning. “We had some just two weeks ago. Do you no’ like spendin’ time with me?”
And he could be intensely jealous…Once, when she and Ethan had spent a weekend in Ireland, an unwitting American tycoon had flirted with her on the ferry trip. She’d consoled herself by musing that the man’s bruises would eventually fade. Plus, the Yank would probably never even glance at a Highlander’s wife ever again, saving himself another beating.
She’d discovered that Ethan’s superstitious nature ran deeper than she’d thought. He believed, for instance, that a clan seer had predicted Ethan and Maddy’s union five hundred years ago….
And if Maddy didn’t know how much income Ethan made, she’d pronounce him a spendthrift. Packages were continually arriving. He’d bought her a horse, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and more clothing than she could wear in a lifetime. There was nothing left in the village for him to purchase for her. When she’d casually mentioned that she wanted to restore the orangery, within a week new parts for the furnace and a crop of citrus trees had arrived.
She had to wonder if he was buying her these gifts to make up for how poor she’d been. He couldn’t know that every gift reminded her of how much she’d lacked.
Maddy had learned from him that his youngest brother’s wife was also rich and even had royal Spanish blood. Maddy had become acutely aware that Ethan’s brothers had both married accomplished heiresses, while Ethan had gotten the plucky chit from the slum. Maddy dreaded meeting Ethan’s family, and for some reason, she sensed he equally dreaded it.
She’d begun wanting Ethan to see Iveley Hall, her childhood home, so he would recognize that she’d been brought up with great wealth and that her childhood had been idyllic up to a point—he needn’t try to give her everything and the moon.
He had an estate he wanted to check on over the summer. Iveley wasn’t directly on the way, but it wasn’t more than an hour away by rail. She’d decided to write the owners and inquire if they might let her and Ethan have a short tour. Just to see it once more.
Surely Ethan would agree to take her. Yet even as she thought it, she wondered. She’d noticed that for some reason, whenever she mentioned Iveley, he tensed. She didn’t think he even realized it, but there continued to be a barely perceptible change in him whenever she spoke of her former home. In fact, the same occurred whenever she mentioned her parents as well.
He claimed that he’d never met her parents or been to Iveley, but sometimes she wondered if he…lied.
He’d called her mother by her first name on more than one occasion, startling Maddy each time. And once, when Maddy had confided her fear that she would be a bad mother like her own, he’d disagreed so vehemently, she’d been taken aback. “How can you feel so strongly?” she’d asked. “Are you certain you never met her?”
“Aye. It’s just clear that she was cruel to you, and since you doona have a cruel bone in your body, you can be nothing like her,” he’d answered so smoothly….
But if there were shadows in their marriage, there was a great deal of sunshine as well.
Ethan had told her he considered Corrine and Bea her kin, and he encouraged Maddy to send for them. He’d even offered to hire Corrine as a steward, since he’d seen her work ethic firsthand and still couldn’t find anyone here that he trusted. And Bea’s job? “A companion?” he’d suggested. “Or, at the rate you’re accumulating stray animals from the countryside, maybe a pet caretaker.”
Though Maddy had beseeched them to come to England, they were reluctant, citing de mal en pire. But she thought she was wearing them down with each lett
er describing Carillon. In the meantime, he’d suggested that she send an eyebrow-raising amount of money to them, delighting her.
And Ethan laughed more and more each day, regularly demonstrating a droll sense of humor. One morning when she’d been potting in the orangery, he’d strolled in. “What is this?” he’d demanded, his expression perfectly deadpan. “I doona understand the purpose of this exercise.” She’d frowned, then glanced down at her kitten, who’d been wide-eyed, affixed by tooth and claw to Ethan’s trouser leg. She’d laughed till tears had come. “It’s like a burr I canna lose,” he’d muttered, walking out with the kitten once more.
Also good…his lovemaking was breathtaking and wicked. Yet even his desire for her seemed tinged with the same urgency with which he gave her gifts.
Just this week when they’d gone riding, rain had begun to sprinkle down. He’d led her beneath an oak, beside a gurgling stream, and as the spring mist had lightly fallen, he’d pressed her against the tree, kissing her damp neck.
She’d gasped. “Here, Ethan?”
In answer, he’d slowly lifted her skirts, then ripped the slit of her pantalettes wide, making her tremble with anticipation. When he’d suckled her through her wet blouse, she’d been overwhelmed by sensation. She’d grown lost in the feel of his hot mouth against her nipples and his muscles flexing beneath her palms. The crisp, tantalizing scent of his body had mingled with that of lichen-covered rocks and fragrant heath.
He’d lifted her, his big hand pressing her head firmly to his chest. With his other arm looped around her bottom, he’d held her in place as he’d slid inside her. When she’d moaned, swiftly on the verge, his thrusts had turned hard and furious. As she’d climaxed, he’d pumped inside her, hissing, “Let this take….”
She knew he hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud. The desperate need in his words and in his continued actions disquieted her….
It was times like those—when he behaved in inexplicable ways, when she could feel that secrets and barriers and even lies remained between them—that she began to have a growing sense of foreboding.
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