“Little ones?” he said, then apparently spotted the kittens. Some of the tension left his body. “Ah, that explains it. Wildcats don’t usually attack people.”
Keeping his pistol drawn, he looped his free arm about her waist. “I’ll spare the beastie if I can.” He pulled her back with slow, measured steps. “No big motions, ye ken? Nothing that will make her think we mean her harm. She’ll be loath to leave her wee ones, so she probably won’t follow.”
They inched back, keeping the drop-off to their left and the wall of rock to their right. Only when they were well out of sight of the wildcat did Lachlan turn and break into a swift walk, dragging her along as he shoved his pistol into his pocket.
Now that the crisis with the wildcat was past, it dawned on her that she’d lost her chance to escape. “Let go of me, sir!” she demanded, fighting to get free of his grip on her waist. “You’ve got what you wanted, but that doesn’t mean—”
“Got what I wanted!” He jerked her around to face him, his eyes blazing. “You think I wanted such a fright? To watch you nearly torn apart—”
“I doubt there was any chance of that,” she retorted, though the alarm in his face took her aback. “I’d have figured out on my own that the cat was wild.”
“Aye, after it mauled you.” He swore vilely. “And what did you think to do once you made good yer escape?”
She set her shoulders. “I would have found a crofter’s cottage—”
“There are no crofters here, only forest and lochs. The nearest village is twenty miles off. More likely you’d wander the hills until you starved.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Surely I could find sustenance somewhere.”
“You know how to fish? To hunt? When was the last time you killed a squirrel, skinned and gutted it, then cooked it over a fire you built yerself?” He made a sound of disgust. “I’ll wager ye don’t even know which berries are edible.”
That he was right annoyed her. “Then I’d simply have to walk until I reached the next village.” Turning on her heel, she marched down the path toward the woods. “I could manage twenty miles, you know. No matter what you think, I’m not some languishing, coddled sort of a girl.”
“Aye, and that’s the trouble,” he growled as he hurried to keep pace. “You’re just sure enough of yerself to try anything. It will get you killed.”
“I should at least like the chance to find out.”
“Devil take you, have you no sense?” Catching her by the arm, he shoved her against a boulder. When her temper flared and she hammered at his arms, he cursed and grabbed her hands, forcing them flat against the rock on either side of her hips. “Listen to me! Hold still a bit and just listen, will you?”
She stopped fighting to fix him with an icy glare.
He let go of her hands. “It’s not only wildcats and starvation you’d have to worry about. Thanks to the laird’s ‘improvements’ hereabouts, the only people left in the villages are hungry and desperate. They’d take one look at yer pretty gown and yer fine boots, and they’d see a body to plunder, not help.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said stoutly. “The Scots have always opened their hearts to strangers.”
“Where? The Lowlands? Edinburgh? In the Highlands, people are suspicious of cultured ladies who sound and look and act English. And there are men who…” He swept his gaze down her. “Ye’re a pretty lass, an innocent lass. Exactly the sort desperate men want to sully.”
“Let them just try,” she hissed.
His gaze snapped back to her face. “Right, I forgot,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “You’ll slash them with yer rapier wit.”
His condescension infuriated her. She kicked him as hard as she could manage with her sturdy walking boot.
With a howl of pain he jerked back, and she took off through the bracken toward the woods. She didn’t get far before he caught up to her, pouncing upon her like a beast. Next thing she knew, he had her on her back underneath him.
Rage scored his white features as he pinned her hands above her head. “So you’d fight them, would you?” he snarled. “If some villain tried to harm you, ye’d fight him off.”
She struggled to bring her knee up between his legs the way Mrs. Harris had said they should do if some man tried to hurt them, but he anticipated the move, thrusting his thick-as-oak thigh between hers to trap her.
Grabbing her wrists, he held them together in one large fist above her head, then raked his other hand down her neck to her bodice. “Very well, Princess Proud,” he taunted her. “Fight! Show me how easily you’d free yerself of some murdering savage who wanted to harm ye!”
She writhed beneath him, but she might as well have been staked to the ground for all the good it did. His weight crushed her so she couldn’t breathe, and his single hand was stronger than her two.
Holding her irate gaze with his grim one, he flicked open the top clasps of her pelisse robe, baring the upper swells of her breasts. “Stop me, damn you! Go on! Since you’re so ferocious and all!”
He started to slide his hand inside her bodice, and she gasped.
“You see?” He paused with his rough hand lying flat across her breastbone, the fingertips just grazing the inner flesh of her breast. “A moment or two is all it would take, and yer innocence would be gone. Is that what you want?”
She stared up at him, suddenly aware of the strain across his brow and the taut lines of his square jaw. He looked as if he was suffering great pain. Had she hurt him that badly when she’d kicked him?
Or was he simply struggling not to give in to his basest urges? That possibility alarmed her, and she realized how close she’d come to pushing him over the edge. Lord save her.
“Well, lass?” He slid his hand deeper inside her bodice to undo the bow of her corset. “Is that what you want?”
“No!” When he halted his motion, she lowered her voice. “No, Lachlan .”
Yet he didn’t remove his hand. For a moment, she feared she’d waited too long to stop him. His thigh lay intimately, heavily between her legs, a firm reminder of how easily he’d subdued her. Though the fabric of her corset and chemise still separated her bare flesh from his bare hand, she shivered to feel his fingers inside her bodice, mere inches from the crest of her breast. All he would have to do…
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t hurt me.”
He blinked at her, then yanked his hand free with a curse and rolled off to lie beside her in the green bracken.
At first, the only sound was that of their harsh breaths and the discordant cry of a nightjar. Then Lachlan swore and eased himself up onto one elbow to gaze into her face. “I would never hurt you, you know. Never.”
She wanted to believe that. She really did. But she knew how vulnerable she must look to him, lying here with her hair loose and her gown gaping open. And considering the circumstances…“That’s only because I’m no good to you if I’m damaged. Papa would never pay you.”
Flinching as if she’d slapped him, he stared at her with haunted eyes. “That’s not why.” The words sounded torn from him. Then his expression softened until he looked less the Highland warrior and more the rangy lad she’d once adored.
“That’s not why,” he repeated, his voice a husky rumble that made her breath catch in her throat. “And you know it.”
Then he lowered his head to hers.
She’d sworn not to let him kiss her again, and a few minutes ago, she would have resisted. But a few minutes ago, he’d been cruel to her. Now…
Now he was different. His cruelty had been born of a heartfelt concern for her, a concern now turning into something more. She could see it in his warm gaze, melting to a coppery brown. She could hear it in his indrawn breath when he paused with his lips a mere inch from hers, allowing her a chance to stop him.
She didn’t.
So he didn’t.
Lord save her.
Chapter Nine
Dear Cousin,
What do you know
of fortune hunters? Your every need is met—you’ve never had to face your spouse’s creditors, wondering if they will take everything you own. You’ve never been at the mercy of a fickle man.
Your testy relation,
Charlotte
Lachlan didn’t know what madness possessed him. He just needed to reassure Venetia —and himself—that he wasn’t the monster he’d probably seemed a moment ago, a man who would force a woman to endure his lascivious touch. That’s why he’d given her the chance to refuse the kiss.
But only a chance. Because the minute he’d been close enough to smell the lavender in her hair and see the warming of her eyes, he’d had to kiss her. He couldn’t help himself.
And she was letting him. Thank God, or he didn’t know what he might do. He was half drunk from lack of sleep, with his heart still pumping from the terror of seeing her at the mercy of a wildcat, and it took all his strength just to keep his kiss light. Especially when she melted, her lips parting beneath his own.
After that, there was no keeping it light. He just had to bury his tongue between those rosy lips. Never mind that his leg ached something fierce and his ribs throbbed from where she’d pounded him. Never mind that she could do the same to him again for plundering her lush mouth.
He didn’t care; he would take the chance. He kissed her heartily, needfully, wanting everything the bold wildcat of a lass would give him. And she gave him plenty. God help him, she lay in the bracken and kissed him back, drawing his tongue into her mouth, stroking it with hers.
Ever since they’d left Edinburgh, he’d watched her scrap and barter, unwilling to let him win. He’d bullied her at every turn, yet she’d held her own. It intoxicated him, her stubborn ferocity. To have her yielding even a tiny part of herself to him was more tempting than he could resist.
Then her hand crept up to cling to his neck, and his mind blanked to nothing but the taste of her, the sweet silk of her tongue mating with his. Need drove him now, hot and urgent, prodding him to put his hands on her, to explore and caress, to take the edge off his hunger before he lost his mind.
In a fever, he unfastened more ties of her gown and unclasped the belt about her waist, so he could slide his hand inside to stroke her corseted belly. Even that was not enough, for his hand began to roam, up and down, in long, caressing sweeps. But when his fingers brushed the very edge of the swell of one breast, she tore her lips from his to whisper, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I don’t know.” He skimmed her throat with his open mouth, reveling in the pounding of her pulse beneath his lips. “Something I shouldn’t, most likely.”
“If anyone were to see—”
“I told you, no one is around for miles.” He couldn’t help noticing that she was more worried about not being seen than about what he was doing. “And I ordered Jamie to stay with the horses.”
“Still, this is very wicked.” But she stated it like a fact, not a warning.
“Aye, very wicked.” With his blood thumping high, he pushed her gown open to bare her corset from breast to thigh. “I’m a wicked sort of man. And I suspect you’re more wicked than you’ll admit.” Deliberately, he loosened the gathers that held up the soft cups of her corset.
She swallowed, her gaze dropping to watch him. “Why do you say that?”
“Because of how you were at the ball,” he said, careful of his words. He didn’t want to spook her. “You went off into the dark with me and took a risk out of sheer curiosity.” He bent to kiss her cheek, then tug her earlobe with his teeth. “Admit it, lassie—beneath yer proprieties is a passionate woman aching to thumb her nose at the English rules binding her up so tight she can’t breathe.”
“Th-that’s not true.” She gasped when he thrust the tip of his tongue into her ear, then nibbled the lobe. “I…like the rules…I do.”
“Is that why you let me kiss you that night, a pure stranger?” He tugged loose the tie of her chemise. “Is that why you sing so many songs about devilish lords and highwaymen, breakers of rules every one of them?”
She jerked back to stare at him, her hand still gripping his neck. “I sang those ballads to show you the error of your ways.”
“Did you now? And why did you bother to learn them in the first place? To prepare for when you met up with a highwayman? No, lass, you learned them because they appealed to your wicked bent.” He smiled at her. “You sang them because you’ve got more of yer rebel Jacobite grandfather in you than ye ken.”
Hooking his fingers behind one soft cup of her stays, he drew it down to expose her chemise, then drew down the other.
But when he reached for the chemise, she caught his hand. “I’m not wicked enough for that, Lachlan.”
Her other arm was trapped at her side; otherwise she probably would’ve done more than halt his hand. But he didn’t let her modesty daunt him. Not now that he had a sight of her thinly covered breasts, rising on either side of her corset busk. Holy Christ, they were plump as pillows, their rosy nipples perking up beneath his gaze through the linen of her chemise.
“A wee bit of wickedness never hurt a body,” he said hoarsely as he bent his head to kiss the swell of one breast above the loosened chemise.
Her breath came as quickly as his. “You talk like every seducer I’ve been warned against.”
“Aye, and you like seducers, too, don’t you? God knows you sing enough songs about them.”
“That doesn’t mean…I don’t…”
“Your body likes them, anyway.” He pressed his luck by thumbing her nipple through the linen. “That’s why this little currant is puckering up for me.”
She sucked in a ragged breath, and he kissed her, long and deep, a seducer’s kiss, until he felt her hand slide up his coat sleeve to his shoulder.
Only then did he pull down her loosened chemise, allowing one of her lush breasts to spill entirely free. He covered it with his hand, exulting in the abundance of it, the way it quivered beneath his caress.
Her hand gripped his shoulder as he fondled and stroked, his kiss growing more frantic until he couldn’t think of anything but how badly he wanted her, how heavy his prick lay in his trews, aching for her.
He finally had her beneath him the way he’d been longing to have her, and for once she wasn’t acting like her father’s daughter. For once it was just the two of them and she wasn’t fighting him. The bonnie lass was lucky he wasn’t throwing up her skirts and taking her right here and now.
But he wasn’t fool enough for that. A little touching, a little kissing would be enough to hold him until they reached Ross-shire and he could lock her away to await her father.
Or so he tried to convince himself.
He slipped his thigh between her legs, trying to get closer, needing to be closer. With a moan, she wrenched her mouth from his. “Oh, Lachlan, you’ll be the ruin of me.”
“I won’t, I swear,” he said, fearing it was a lie and hoping it wasn’t.
“You will. Because…because I…”
“Enjoy this?” he rasped. “You like having my hands on you, do you?”
“Lord, yes.”
That was all the invitation he needed to suck her breast, teasing the tip with his teeth, drowning in the female flesh that lay so richly soft beneath him. His other hand dragged down the other side of her chemise, so he could enjoy that breast with his fingers as he laved the first with his tongue.
“Lachlan…” she gasped. “You are…this is…”
Venetia knew she sounded like a babbling fool, but that was how he was making her feel, with his mouth ravishing her and his fingers taking wild, reckless liberties. She shouldn’t be allowing it! Why was she allowing it?
“You can’t know what you do to me, lass,” he whispered against her breast. “You can’t know.”
“I know what you…do to me …” she rasped as he tugged on her nipple with his teeth, sending sensation screaming along every nerve.
That was why she was allowing this. Because it felt like
nothing she’d ever known. And because for once, he wasn’t growling at her or cursing her father or turning surly. For once, he was the Lachlan she’d adored as a girl.
So when his thigh rubbed between her legs, startling other sensations to life down below, she didn’t even hesitate to arch up against him. The pressure felt so good, so delicious…
And curse him if that didn’t prod him to take more liberties. Trailing his hand down to the juncture between her thighs, he began rubbing her through her chemise while his mouth continued to suck eagerly at her breasts, one after the other.
Dear Lord, that was astonishing. No wonder girls in ballads were always losing their virtue to rogues. Losing one’s virtue had a decided appeal. His tongue was doing the most amazing things to her nipples, while his fingers did a sliding motion down below that made her squirm and arch for more.
How could she have guessed seduction would feel so magical?
And how could he know so well what would excite her? She’d rubbed herself down there a time or two, seduced by the melting pleasure of it, but it felt nothing like this heady…delicious…
Dangerous…unwise—“Curse you, Lachlan, why are you doing this?” Why are you making me feel these things?
He lifted his head from her breast to rake her with a smoldering gaze that set flame to her skin. “I wanted you from the second I saw you.” He nuzzled her breast, his whiskered chin wonderfully rough against the soft flesh. “You walked into that ball like a queen dressed as a peasant, and I wanted you.”
That seemed a lifetime ago. She’d been so happy to be among other Scots, dancing strathspeys and watching the tartan worn so proudly.
While he plotted her kidnapping.
The thought banished her passion. That’s why he’d kissed her then. And probably why he was touching her now. Dear Lord, she was letting him do exactly the things she’d sworn she would never let him do.
Her heart lurching in her breast, she reached down to draw his hand from between her legs. “You didn’t want me,” she accused. She was such a fool. “You wanted Duncannon’s daughter.”
Beware a Scot's Revenge Page 9
