His massive shoulders pulled against the strain of the shackles behind him, and the bulk of his muscles loomed beneath the rips in the cloth stretched tightly across his chest. His trousers had dissolved into mere threads stretched across hard thighs, and what fabric remained fluttered around his calves, offering tantalizing glimpses of the strength beneath. She wanted to know how hard his muscles actually were. What would power like that feel like?
She’d known only Trevor’s gentle hands and lean frame, and even the touch of her husband and the feel of his body were dim memories. How would it feel to have rough hands scrape across her skin, to have her body gathered in arms with such strength, to be taken by a man such as this? Her hands clutched at her skirt. She must be mad for thinking thoughts like that.
Greasy black hair draped over his shoulders and hid the features of the face she desperately wanted to see. She felt compelled to know if any of her judgments were correct. Was he a scoundrel, a misfit, a criminal? Would his eyes be wild in a dirty and monstrous face, glittering with pure evil, eagerly searching for victims to maim, torture, kill? She needed to see his eyes, wanted to see them so much she feared in another moment she would race the short distance between them to sweep the damp, dirty locks from his face.
A man like this could be anything.
Agitated and suddenly nervous, she pressed her hands harder against her thighs. She didn’t trust herself, not at all.
Sam cleared his throat and motioned for her. She took a hesitant step, meaning to follow him, but the captive suddenly shook his head with the fury of a charging bull, and the hair lashed around his face, scouring his skin with grease, dirt, and weeks of filth. Megan froze, hypnotized as she watched the tangles fly, revealing the criminal’s face in quick, teasing bits, like a puzzle she must put together in her own head.
Despite the hardened and muscled body and the allure of strength and vitality, he was not as young as she’d first thought. Lines of experience and maturity etched his skin. He was over thirty, a man in the prime of his life. She wondered now how he had not been captured before if he was vicious and cruel. Surely a murderous blackguard would be caught and hanged, never becoming thirty. Justice should have been swift and unmerciful if he was as bad as all that.
His strong, rugged face held as much dirt as the rest of him and had taken as much abuse as his body. Abrasions and scars marred his skin. Old wounds as well as new ones scraped almost every part of his body. Pale striations and scarlet scratches ran rampant over his dark skin, and several long, puckered grooves and darkened patches looked to have been serious injuries, perhaps even deadly. This was either a very lucky man or he had unparalleled skills.
A bristling black beard covered the lower half of his cheeks and jaw and stretched deep into the collar of his shirt. Ragged and unkempt, it probably crawled with lice and other creatures she couldn’t even imagine. She shivered just thinking of what could be trapped there. The riot of dark hair on his face made him look primitive, almost feral, like a captive from another time, another place. He looked like he’d been dragged from a cave in the wilds of some exotic island. She’d heard stories of men who lived like animals in jungles, in mountains, in deserts. This man looked like an Englishman, but he moved like no man she had ever seen before.
His mouth, nearly buried in the expanse of the scraggy beard, hardened into a firm, set line, clenched tight, as though holding in vicious and damning words that might spew from him with the slightest provocation. His chest rose and fell beneath the disgusting shirt, and the hard, even breaths spoke of a man trying to keep his impulses and instincts under control. She knew how he felt because her impulse was to lay her hand upon his chest and feel his heart. She wanted to know if he was at all frightened. She wondered if a man like this could be afraid of anything.
The scars on his body proved he’d already faced death in many forms. Could a man such as this be afraid of something less deadly? A strange place filled with strange people? A laboring walk toward something unknown? A future that left little chance for hope? Obviously this man had reached his final destination. This was his last chance. Men who arrived in Virginia dressed in chains had few options remaining.
His face held a fascination for her she could not deny. He seemed, despite his rough and grungy appearance, to have been a powerful man in whatever life he’d lived before. He was not happy to be in chains. Every fiber of his being strained against his imprisonment. This man was used to being free, and even the air he breathed seemed borrowed against his will. Was he a pirate, an explorer, a mercenary? Perhaps an exiled king, a wandering adventurer, a champion of the oppressed?
He’s a man, Megan, and probably not a good one. They do not bind good men in chains. Stop looking at him and driving yourself crazy speculating over a man that will never be part of your life. He’s a criminal, nothing more.
Beneath the grime, under the streaks of dirt and filth, the smears of dried blood, and the random pattern of scratches, she saw he could be very handsome.
Prominent bones rose high on his cheeks, and his slightly crooked nose looked as though it had been broken several times. When he shook his hair again, he exposed a broad forehead and a pair of shimmering eyes. From where she stood—too near by the reaction of her body—she saw his eyes were green, as dark and hard as emeralds. While his glance swept across the dock with an odd detachment, she continued to watch him. There was no warmth, no hope, and no interest in his gaze. He was beyond seeing anything in front of him. She felt what stirred in this man, and it stirred something in her. He seemed consumed with hatred so deep, so forceful, and so overwhelming it spiraled from his body like a whirling wind and knocked against her with hurricane force.
She shivered in the summer sun. A man like this one would turn her world upside down. She had forgotten what she was doing. She ran a shaky hand over her breasts, conscious of her exposed flesh in a way she’d never been before and thoroughly aware that her heart pounded beneath it. She wondered if anyone else could hear her heart beating, because it seemed thunderous to her ears.
The man’s eyes paused in their cursory inspection, caught something of interest, and his head tilted. Megan silently prayed the man would have no interest in a slip of a girl wearing a yellow dress. What had possessed her to wear yellow? Trevor loved this dress, but now she felt as though she wore a marker drawing all eyes toward her. The bodice was too low cut, and the sleeves draped on her arms, exposing her shoulders. Suddenly conscious of more than one pair of lusty eyes, she worried most about the dark man’s. She held her breath.
* * * *
Alexander Campbell flexed his wrists against the bonds that held them. His numb arms protested, and he’d lost all sensation in his hands. The prickles and needles that had settled there earlier had vanished, leaving dead flesh hanging below his wrists. The shackles were so tight he had lost control over the movement below them.
He twitched his shoulders beneath the dirty, foul linen. Movement there was near to impossible as well. If he ever got the bonds removed and regained control of his muscles, someone was going to fucking pay. The first bastard who came within reach would be one sorry son of a bitch.
He just kept walking. There didn’t seem to be much choice. No going back. Scotland was an entire ocean and lifetime away and someone else’s problem now. Both Cromwell and young King Charles could rot in hell for the trouble they’d put him through.
Christ, what a place they had shipped him to. Not a mountain to be seen, not a hilltop, not a crag. Definitely nothing like home, though he supposed that was part of the penance. He was being punished, making reparation for crimes against the state. Would his judges have known that surrounding him with so much green would hurt his eyes, that forcing him to live on such a flat expanse of land would shatter his spirit? Perhaps not, and yet this place would slowly eat his soul until there was nothing left.
Punished or not, he counted himself lucky he wasn’t trapped in the grueling heat of Barbados, where men died in t
he cane fields within months, or the frigid coast of Massachusetts, buried in some kind of mine. Others of his clan had shipped to both those hells. All in all, the wilds of Virginia offered more than he had hoped for, not that he had any hope left, and even though it held nothing to nourish his soul, it was pretty enough to look upon.
His eyes roamed the dock, across faces that meant nothing to him, over a small village that held nothing for him. What did it matter? He had no future wherever he landed and no possibility of one for seven years. He was lucky he had come out of it alive.
Warrior. Rebel. Traitor. Prisoner of war. Convict. He’d been all those things recently. Looking back, if he had it to do all over again, he might have settled down in one of the tiny Highland villages, married one of his lovers, and let someone else fight the good fight. Better yet, King Charles could fight his own bloody battles and leave the good men of County Argyll alone, minding their own business, living their own lives, living at all.
Not that there was probably anything left in County Argyll now. Cromwell would see to that.
A flash of color caught his eye, a burst of yellow like a pure, sweet daffodil caught in the stillness of a shadowed meadow. His gaze flickered toward it, and he found himself staring at the most beautiful girl he’d seen in a very long while. She tugged at the bodice of her dress, her fingers sweeping across a small mound of pale flesh. A sudden ache flared through him, and his fingers, previously dead and hanging limp behind his back, twitched with an itch to touch her. He couldn’t take his eyes off the perfect swell of her breasts. Small, to be sure, but he’d never needed more than a mouthful to satisfy him. He’d not had a woman in nearly a year, and this one…
When she raised her face, her eyes caught at his, and he lowered his head. He had to. He couldn’t bear to see the beauty of her. He willed her eyes off him. He did not want a woman such as this inspecting him, judging him, or, worse yet, pitying him.
Don’t look at her, Campbell. A girl like this will steal whatever you have left, tuck it into that tight little bodice, and keep it without a thought, without a care, without mercy. You’ll never have a woman like this again, so don’t torture yourself with the sight of her.
His own resignation tasted like ashes in his mouth. Christ, he may be bound in shackles, but they hadn’t cut off his balls yet. Still, a woman like that, a man like him, the last year of hell, and this impossible capture…He barely felt like a living man, but the last he looked, his balls still hung where they should be. He’d risk it, because he couldn’t help it. He took advantage of the veil of hair hiding his face and raised his eyes.
* * * *
The man suddenly lowered his head as though he’d seen something that stole his courage, like a child avoiding something painful, hiding from his worse nightmare. His black hair fell across his face, but between the strands he hesitantly lifted his eyes, peeking through the shade of his brows. His glance slid slowly, almost fearfully, toward her and focused.
She tried not to look at him, really tried, but suddenly looking at him seemed the only thought in her head. She risked a quick glance and found he had stopped dead on the dock and stared right at her. His glance skimmed down the length of her body like a cruel caress, raking over her bare shoulders, across the cleavage she had just exposed, and lower still. She felt the heat of his gaze on her flesh, burning through her dress to the enticements beneath. The fury she’d seen simmering within him turned to something else.
His eyes focused again on the swell of her breasts, roaming over every inch of flesh as though it held some sustenance he craved. His lips parted as a shudder swept through his body. The green eyes narrowed, filling with something that scared her, and slowly moved back up, over the auburn curls that tumbled over her shoulders, the column of her throat, across her mouth where they lingered for a brief moment, and finally to her eyes.
No, no. Please don’t look at me.
She could not tear her gaze away. A small smile flickered across his mouth, almost lost in the shadow of his beard. Everything inside her screamed to look away, turn around, and avoid the gaze of this man at all cost. Instead the power of his eyes forced her backwards, and she found herself trapped against the wagon. Her hands curled into the wheels, anchoring her there, tightening until her knuckles cracked with the strain. She couldn’t get her breath. She shook her head, although she had no idea why.
* * * *
His cock swelled without his consent, an unbearable pressure that matched the throbbing in his wrists. He studied her tiny frame, the small, aching temptation of her breasts, the narrow waist, and the place where her body would have accepted him in a different time, a different place. He was barely alive, and still he could think of nothing but his cock. There was definitely something not right about him. A warrior, a rebel, a traitor, a prisoner of war, and a convict had no right to think about his cock at all, not when his very life was at stake on a minute-to-minute basis. Thinking about his cock could make him forget how tenuous his next breath might be, but right now, he didn’t seem to care if his last breath came because the little beauty was a glimpse of heaven and he’d be happy to go there. He’d follow her to heaven or hell. It mattered naught which direction she led him.
Although she was definitely not a child—the delicate curves of her body told him that—she was small and far different from the other women mingling in the crowd. Long, ropy lengths of auburn hair cascaded over her bare shoulders, wild and unbound. No married woman he’d known would dare leave her home with her hair displayed so immodestly. To do so was to invite harsh judgment and possible disaster. More than one maiden in the Highlands had been kidnapped by another clan to breed, but to take a wife or mother was an offense that led to quick conflict. Females learned early what was acceptable—and hair such as this was not. If a battle raged in the Highlands because of a woman’s bad judgment, there was hell to pay. This girl had to be someone’s daughter, and obviously her father thought nothing of allowing such a wanton display, perhaps even encouraged it to find a suitable match in this less-than-civilized place.
She had beautiful hair. The deep russet tresses were threaded with hints of gold that hid within the darker strands like treasure, and he ached to feel the softness of it slide through his fingers. With hair such as hers, she must be a maiden. The last virgin he’d had was…aye, Deirdre. A bonny sweet lass with golden skin and eyes the color of honey. She’d held her virginity longer than most in his county—past her eighteenth year—but he’d been more than happy to rid her of that burden.
Alex glanced again at the girl’s face. He thought she was older than eighteen, definitely, closer to twenty perhaps. His eyes swept the dock. An unmarried maiden in a place like this? It was practically inconceivable. The men seemed to outnumber the women twenty to one, and yet this girl, this beautiful bit of feminine fluff, though accompanied by a giant and a reedy older man, seemed to belong to neither one.
When he found her eyes—deep, shining sapphires, wide and shocked beneath a fringe of black lashes—a flush spread over her face and her teeth caught her bottom lip, tugging the rosy flesh into her mouth. It was provocative, sensuous, and positively the most arousing thing he’d ever seen. He wanted to touch her. He could practically feel his rough hands gliding over that smooth, pale skin, dipping into curves, over mounds of tempting flesh. He wanted that luscious, rosy mouth against his, wanted to rip that pretty yellow dress from her body and cover her naked flesh with his entire length. Mostly, though, he wanted to nestle between her legs and slide his cock into the soft moisture of her pussy and feel the hot, swollen flesh surround him, clench around him, beg him to drive hard.
Christ, I need a woman.
Alex smiled at her. At least he thought it was a smile. He hadn’t smiled in a very long time. When she fell back against the wagon, he knew he’d succeeded. She shook her head as though reading his mind.
* * * *
She heard Trevor’s voice again, talking with Sam, a dim sound at the edge of her consci
ousness, but the only thing she seemed to be aware of was that man, and he was aware of her. Fully aware. Her eyes dropped between his legs—why, she had no idea because it was the worst possible thing she could have done—and saw a tight bulge against his breeches, a swollen, rigid shaft that she swore was actually moving, bending toward her. She gulped because, as frightening as it was, as impossible as the mere size of it was, she could not seem to pull her eyes away from it. A sound came from her, a soft whimper that scared her to death. It seemed filled with longing, with ache, with need. She covered her mouth, trying desperately to stop the sound before someone heard it. But someone did.
The dark man either heard it or knew the thoughts that ran through her mind because they had already been charging through his. When she saw another smile flicker on his wide mouth, she started to slide down the wagon. Sam grabbed her under the arm and held her upright.
“It’s the heat, Meggie.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said softly.
“Come along. We’ll find you some shade.”
Sam started to tug her across the grass toward the shade of the trees and away from the dock. She stared over her shoulder at the dark-haired man.
Someone should put me on a leash. I’m not to be trusted.
Loving Two Highlanders Page 2
