by Lisa Torquay
Several times during the day, a fierce impulse to run away threatened to overcome her despite the crystalline foolishness of it. Her patience was wearing thin right at that moment.
They found a clearing in the woods not far from the road. Taran tethered the horse near the rushing brook and untied the provisions.
The brisk walk left her feeling hot, so she took off her cloak and hung it on a branch with her small sack.
His green gaze spotted her. “We have to share the blanket.” He opened the side saddle bag. “I did not have time to pack much more.”
She wished she found the idea disgusting, wished the shiver which ran through her meant aversion, that her eyes bulged with absurdity. None of these were reality. She ditched the warning of her mind and its insistence in finding out what exactly it meant for fear the irrationality of it won the day. And won over her. All that came to her, thus, was a blush that had little to do with repulse and oh so much to do with something she preferred to ignore altogether.
Those improper thoughts must have shown on her face because he braced his legs, fists on his lean hips. “If the idea disgusts you, you should not have placed yourself in this situation.”
Anger bubbled just below the surface. “What did you expect?” She replied vehement. “It is my prerogative to regain my freedom.”
Fire darted from his wolf-like stance. “Your prerogative is to comply with the Laird.”
“The McKendrick, you mean.” She acquired a mocking posture.
He chuckled derogatory. “After you marry, I will rule you.” The glint on his piercing eyes neared smugness.
The idea of him ruling her caused all kinds of chemical reactions in her insides. None pleasant. Aversion, vexation. And another one that melted down her belly with a positively wicked trait.
His talk of marriage boiled her irritation. “How dare you think you will one day be my…” she scowled at him openly. “Laird?” This came dripping with contempt.
This seemed to shake his cool. He had been immobile until then, but his strong legs stalked towards her, eyes keeping her hostage.
“Do not think you will go launching yourself on the roads ever again!” A strong behest as his hand pointed there energetic.
“I will try as many times as I need to put maximum distance from your dictatorial person!” She defied, fast losing the hold on her emotions.
“What if something happened to you?” His anger matched hers now.
“Then it would be your fault.” She threw. “You abducted me, I would be on the road because of you.” Her forefinger shoved at him.
He advanced on her and she continued keeping away from him. Though she could not keep away from herself and the pebbling of her breasts, their swelling. Or the breath that hitched at the sight of his giant frame looming over her with those solid muscles too much on show through his agape shirt and his tartan.
“You will not place yourself in danger.” Did he even learn how to talk without issuing orders?
He continued his prowl and she her retreat as her insides clamoured a complete reversal of her actions in the name of things she did not even understand fully. Her heart beat a timeless drum, her stomach flipped over and back while extreme heat fought with cold quivers in places she never paid attention to in her life.
Her back touched a tree “You are the danger!” She shouted, not caring this was saying too much, disclosing too much, baring to him these forbidden secrets she did not confess to herself, let alone to another. Let alone to him.
His eyes squeezed perilously as he halted before her. “Am I, Aileen?” A guttural growl that sowed goose-bumps over her feverish skin with her name alone on his disturbing lips.
The heat of his broad fame overtook hers, filled her vision with the darkness of his stubble, the darkness of her thoughts. And a hunger so incoherent, her mind simply shut down completely.
One hand beside her head braced him, and she lifted her head to meet his lupus expression. It devoured her face with an eagerness difficult to be indifferent to at this precise moment.
They stood so close she could see the cleft on his chin under the dark stubble. Their eyes clutched, their uneven breaths mingled. Their wills clashed.
In this position his shirt opened so wide her palms itched to amble the hot skin and feel the hairs grazing them, inch by sinful inch. The scent of him horse, clean sweat and earth entered her nostrils insufficient, which plunged her in a terrible need to lower her nose and go for more.
But then his gaze attacked her lips, they tingled, and he angled his coal head that much to reach them. The world stopped, froze, arrested in that moment, suspended and full of unwanted desires.
Just to clap into motion again and spin, round and round unceasingly. Faster at each turn. To the point of provoking a resounding implosion in every one of the reason she must resist, oppose, fight back this avalanche of downfall.
Her idiot mouth responded without her permission. And raised to his imperceptibly, but enough that she sensed the warmth of a mouth which should have been prohibited to exist on this planet. Or she should have been spared the torment of its shape by never having set eyes upon it.
The arm bracing him flexed diminishing the already insignificant distance between them as her heart somersaulted spreading heat everywhere. Something poked her belly with a slight touch foreign to her. Mahogany eyes darted down to see a tented tartan over his… his. Pure crimson erupted when she flashed her gaze back to his. Only to realise the dark centre swallowed the green and his expression turned to a famished-pack-in-winter.
The will to wrap that part of him so overwhelming her hands sought the tree bark behind her. Her nails clawed at it until they broke, her fingers became raw. And she yearned febrile that this wolf pounced on her, took her, devoured her in the same time that he sated this desperate… hollowness. A melted, honeyed hollowness.
The need to muster a herculean will-power interfered with her hazy sensations as her mind demanded she moved. Wrenching herself from the tree, she sprang in the direction of the brook, stiff back, mentally cursing the fact that highlanders never adopted the healthy English habit of underwear.
Taran raked a strained hand through his hair as Aileen disappeared down the bank, his lips pressed together. He must start wearing breeches, he mused. They would have compressed his unruly body into painful submission. The woman had the troubling power to disintegrate any vestige of self-control he possessed. With little left as of now.
He wrote it down to the tension and worry he went through during the urgent night ride. All kinds of tragic images passed through his head in those horrible hours. If anything had happened to her, he would never forgive himself.
Resilience proved to be one of her personal qualities. Not only did she succeed in escaping from right under his nose—a nose too keen on nuzzling her paradisiac skin—but also, she covered a considerable distance in so short a time. He never underestimated the stubborn woman which meant he would have to tighten his vigilance. The fact that she did not even blink at the need to walk to the manor surprised him as well.
Fiona had been very different. They married at too young an age, he concluded years later. It had been an arranged match between his father and the Laird McPherson, the alliance advantageous for both. Taran never wavered from his duty to his clan, but Fiona acquired other conceptions. She dreamed of experiencing life in the city, Aberdeen or Edinburgh, with the theatre, opera, balls, tea-parties and shopping. She had insisted for him to buy a house in one of these places and live in it part of the year. This was never his ambition. He loved the Highlands and possessed a strong sense of duty towards his clan.
After Sam’s birth, she became restless and moody. In the hopes to cheer her, he agreed to send her to Aberdeen for a couple of months, certain she would lose the fascination soon enough. She did not. More than that, she took a lover. Perhaps lovers.
In their third year of marriage, they had been living separate lives. Not that he loved her or had an
y feeling other than friendship. He did not care to be a cuckold though. It hurt his pride and his dignity. The notion she seemed not to love Sam the worst. In the forth year, she left a party too drunk to see a carriage speeding along the street and it fatally overrode her. No sense of loss ever befell Taran. But marriage got scratched from his life.
Sam did not know the details of his mother’s life in Aberdeen or her death. Taran strove to create a positive image of Fiona for his sake. Nannies and governesses provided proper feminine influence, and he did his best for his son’s happiness.
Eager to dispel these memories, he busied himself preparing the camp. Ten minutes later, Aileen came with arms full of dry wood for the fire. Her focused nature continued to amaze him.
Fire built, they ate in a silence stretched to extreme tightness. The prospect of the night put Taran in a state where his guts were tied and wired.
CHAPTER FIVE
In an attempt not to think about her glossy chestnut strands in a tight bun which bared the nape of her neck to indecent reveries; or her simple dress, simple to the point of giving away too much of her curvy slightness, he took her cloak to line the ground. He would wrap in his tartan and use the blanket to cover them, the fire big enough to last the night and drive off dangerous animals.
He had no illusions he would get any sleep tonight, but he must try.
She did not look at him when she lay down on her side nearer the fire, or turned her back to his side. He did the same. The blanket was not wide, which forced them to lie rather close.
He must have dozed off because next thing he knew was he had turned to her and she to him, burrowing herself in him, fast asleep. He tried to sneak back, but she came closer, surely seeking warmth for the chilli night. No other choice other than adjust the blanket to keep her warm. She left him no room to place his arm. The idea of touching her deliberately unleashed a rush in his blood. Slowly, nearly losing control, avoiding waking her, afraid if she awoke, he would send everything to the devil, he wrapped his large hand around her. The long fingered, strong hand fit perfectly on tiny waist, warm, soft. Inviting.
The heat of her skin seeped to him, bringing her scent of woman and aniseed. Her warm breath caressed his throat in feathery puffs. How a woman could send him to a paradise that tasted like the veriest bottom of hell he would never fathom. He lay there awake for hours before pure exhaustion pulled him to a restless sleep.
Soon before dawn, he opened his eyes to an inferno of heat. Not from the weather, well understood, for the morning air came colder still. She had come over him. Full over him, belly to belly, hip to hip. Damn, chest to chest, her full mounds crushing on him. Under the blanket, their bodies glued, intimate, like they had been designed for each other. Her head furrowed in his throat, her breathing on it. They were so close, her lips a half inch from his skin. The need to move and make those cushions connect with his neck the very definition of desperation.
The worst was still to come. He became so hard, so near insanity he fantasised turning and pinning her to the ground to pound in her blind and mindless until both got gut-wrenching satisfaction. Every single muscle on his body went dead rigid. He locked his limbs tight, frozen for fear of acting on that fantasy. Hands fisted to whitish point, shoulders stiff, jaw ticking, he looked up to the nightly canopies and did not even breath.
If he thought this was bad, then he was in for a horrible disappointment. She moved. Just a flyspeck degree that he could not even define aa a move. But his unbearably full blown erection registered it. Very much. Too much.
Her hair had gone lose in the night and covered his shoulders. With her non-move, strands slid to his agape shirt caressing the skin, and plunged him in the most sadistic torture one might conceive. The fact that her arms came to hug his thick upper arms made the torture all the more sophisticated.
He would not hold it for long.
Deflagration loomed close.
He was lost.
He had been lost for some time.
At that precise second, she lifted her head, abrupt, sleepy, hands coming to his chest.
Ifrinn!
Their eyes merged in the incipient light as he watched it down on her.
“Oh, sod it!” She murmured, finally awake.
And scrambled from him as if he was a serpent.
Good she did it, because now there came this sense of loss, frost and incompletion. He had to deal with it.
He did not know how to deal with it.
Aileen trudged to the brook’s bank calling herself a thousand names in Gaelic, English and even some in French. How could she be so stupid as to sleep all over that… that devil?
And then she called herself a thousand kinds of fool for being asleep. For missing the imprint of his length along hers. For failing to inhale his scent consciously. For not gauging the thickness of his muscled arms. For having felt his… manhood for only a fraction of a second.
Dear me! He was… he was… damn! He was gigantic!
It was not like she had not ever seen a man naked before in her life. With three brothers who got hurt now and again, tending for them gave her a very… exact idea of the male anatomy. And its… states.
What a state!
Dear me! He was… magnificent! All of him.
Eyes up to the lighting sky, she called herself a fool—once more—for being witless enough to yearn for such a ninny thing. Miss the feel… huff!
She washed her face and her neck in the icy water in a vain attempt to cool her primed body, achieving not an ounce of it.
Hair done tight and prim, she paced back to the clearing. Meet those flashing green eyes? That would not happen in a darn couple of years!
They walked back to the manor mainly in silence as she continued ruminating the last days—and nights—in not so positive a view.
~.~.~
Harvest had started in earnest. Not in the mood to sit in the manor musing about things she did not comprehend, she decided to come give a hand. Used to it, she got involved in the McKendrick’s activities as part of her normal life.
Practical dress on, hair pinned up, hat, sickle in hand she bent cutting the ripe oats.
“What are you doing?” The guttural question caused scalding heat, followed by a wash of cold to course through her.
Quickly straightening, she swivelled to him. And wished she had not done that. Ever again. In the morning sun, his moss-green eyes glittered a questioning and vaguely disconcerted light. Wind-dishevelled sable hair, full tartan over a snowy shirt, tall as a Celtic king of old, square jaw set, taut frame. His figure had to muddle a woman’s head forever.
They had not talked since he brought her back yesterday. And she would not mind it if she met him in a century’s time, so to say.
Memories of that fatidic morning in the woods did not stop playing in her head, producing humid heat each time.
“Helping.” She ripped her goggle from him and went back to her work.
“I did not bring you here to work.” He came closer.
Not ceding to the pea-headed mistake of looking at him again. “What did you expect me to do? Sit in the manor all day doing nothing?” That had never been her style.
If she sat all day, those memories would haunt her to madness point.
“As the future lady-of-the-manor— “ He trailed off meaningfully.
Her temper tried to stay cool, but fury at the mention of marriage proved inevitable.
“I should be helping my brothers.” She tamped down the tart answer she wanted to give him.
“Indeed.” He breathed a derisive chuckle. “And what were you going to do at your aunt’s?”
She would chase the miscreant who gave him her itinerary and he would find a new job only in the Americas. She thought boiling.
No other choice than to turn to him anew. “This is none of your business.”
Maybe she should tell him she sought to relieve the pressure for marriage. He would know she intended to choose who, when and where to marry
, troglodyte methods or not.
“Go back to the manor.” He ordered unrepentant. “You and Sam pleaded for time to know each other.”
That fury pushed hard at that moment. “Hell will freeze over before you decide about my life!”
A sardonic smirk surged in those lips made for torment. “With this fire of yours, you will melt the whole Arctic sooner.”
As he braced his legs, arms crossed his impossible eyes ambulated over her from hat to boots, slow, heated. Those thick lashes gradually shading the intent glint in the same measure her skin flushed with the same gradient. It made her want to throttle him to the ground and then come over him and—And what, you stupid woman?
Oh, it would be so convenient if they were alone and she could punch him in his rugged face! But workers, farmers and tenants milled around at this busy season.
She did not need to do it, he read her thoughts. So much so, he bowed mockingly before he turned to go.
Evidently, everyone there knew who she was, for they treated her with the due respect.
Her work resumed, she strived not to think of the giant.
If the buidseach gave him another of those… esurient once over, he would not be responsible for what he did next. He thought, walking away from her as if the trolls chased him.
Taran headed to the group of tenants farther in the field as he tried to reconcile this woman with his idea of a daughter of a Laird. Fiona had abhorred anything related to land, and the work involved in it. For her, it served merely to generate the money necessary to use in the city.
An obvious fact that Aileen was no stranger to the toiling of a manor. Her practised movements with the sickle confirmed it. And she bent dishing him with her delectable back together with the ideas of what he would like to do with it. The sole solution to keep distant—very distant—from her.
Needless to say, he had spent another atrocious night, even if in the comfort of the Laird’s chambers or bed. The later the worst. Wintry after the night they spent in the woods and the manner in which they awoke. The best night of his life. Even if turbulent, frustrating, overflowing with outlawed fantasies and desires.
