by Lisa Torquay
“The news ran in the village.” The widow adjoined.
“I am sure Sam’s academic ambitions are not your purpose here.” The statement brought up the real aim of her presence.
Shannon inhaled as if surprised with the objective answer. “The Laird and I were in a… frequent contact for months, you should know.”
“I am not very interested in my husband’s past… circumstances.” She lied. “But you mean to insist, I see.”
“The day in the fields, he could not take his eyes off you.” Rather jocose, that.
The dratted day she found herself unable look at the man for reasons she avoided evaluating altogether. “I did not take note.” And she did not, for she tried too bad to keep her stomach in its proper place.
“Completely besotted with you.” Mrs Newton added.
Hell would freeze over before the man was besotted with anyone, let alone her.
Taran chose that minute to make a sudden appearance. “Glen told me you have a visitor.” He used to come from the fields around this time.
The sight of him emptied everything in her head. He stood on the carpet tall, dishevelled from work, hard muscles, green stare on her. Seconds passed before either of them unfastened their attention from each other, closely observed by said visitor.
He turned to spot the widow on the other side. “Shannon.”
“Laird McDougal.” She stood to greet him.
Aileen followed. “Mrs Newton here seems to think she has a claim on you.” She imparted without preamble.
Taran and the widow exchanged a glance. “I did not say that.” The blonde protested.
“But implied it.” Aileen would not let her take the stage.
Her husband acquired an annoyed stance, crossing his thick arms over broad chest.
“Did you promise her anything?” She asked him. Better deal with the situation bluntly.
He frowned, impatient. “No. We had a… casual understanding.” Good thing he did not seek to deny it.
“Though you started expecting more, Mrs Newton.” His wife probed.
Taran focused on her, an admiring trait on his rugged face.
Shannon showed positive discomfort in her fidgeting hands and straying gaze. “One wonders.” Her voice came weak.
“Do you love him?” Lady McDougal was not certain she wanted to receive an answer. Whether she got it or not, the reality of it would not go away.
“Love?” The widow’s delicate brows pleated. “I mean, look at him.”
Taran’s green beacons alternated between both women.
“Lust, then.” Aileen got it right, for the woman blushed. Less bad, she concluded relieved. “And a will to occupy the highest ranks in the clan, I presume.” Correct again, as the pale blue eyes lowered.
Who would blame the blonde for lusting after the man? She, Aileen, had no right to cast the first stone, for sure!
“I— “ The blonde stammered. “I should not have come.”
Aileen would not disagree with the other woman there.
“Excuse me.” Mrs Newton blurted before she nearly scurried from the room, shutting the door.
The Laird and the lady formed a team, the blonde realised. They worked together, they stuck together, as a unit. No breach to use in her own favour.
When Aileen’s stare found Taran’s, his eyes trained on her with a rather perplexed expression in them. “You literally neutralized the situation.”
Her head swivelled to him, not happy in the least. “What did you expect? That I acted like a prudish virgin?”
At that, his gaze strolled over her, searing. “There is nothing prudish about you, no.” His tone lowered a notch and her colour heightened with his double entendre.
Ignoring the liquid flush arrowing to her middle, she crossed her arms and looked at him woodenly. “Will I have to manage any more of your women?” Her firm stance disguised her overturning insides.
“No.” His stare never wavered. “Shannon has been the only one in the months before you… arrived.” ‘Arrive’ being a totally inappropriate verb. “I cut off our arrangement the day you showed up in the fields.” He added.
The same she had almost cast out her accounts witnessing their intimacy. This she would not confess to a soul.
“Good.” She responded firmly and gyrated to strut to the entrance.
“Aileen.” He called as her hand reached the door-knob. Her head came to him and their glares snatched. “Are you not jealous?” A quizzical glint about him.
“Jealous?” Should she own to it? “I have this deadly desire to thrash the both of you for putting me in this position.” And returned to the door-knob.
“Come here, wee hurricane.” He insisted, in a growl.
That liquid flush multiplied. She froze in the act of opening the door. The command and the voice were too big an army to fight against as her feet treaded to him on their own accord.
One strong arm grabbed her by the waist while the other hand rounded her nape to bring her mouth up to his sensuous one. Shameless, his tongue invaded her and in seconds they kissed in a starved entangling of tongues and arms. Her fingers unerring in his sable hair, pressed him to her. Clean sweat, earthen man, stubble jaw assailed her senses
And she blew up in flames, her whole body hungering for this man. Not possible to let herself go on craving him her entire life. It felt exactly like it. Endless, abyssal.
His arm around her waist lifted her to him, and levelled, they kissed deeper. Her mouth opened wider for him as they devoured each other.
“Aileen.” He rumbled on her mouth. “I want you.” His teeth nibbled her lower lip. “Here.” More feverish nibbles. “Now.” He dived in her lips again.
Her hand reached down under his tented tartan and closed around his tumescent member, caressing its long shape. It reacted lengthening. To touch the whole of his body could only be called paradise, she adored it. Touching him, even more.
In these past nights, he had taught her how to pleasure him and she learned it fast for it scalded her in return. He groaned with her wicked hand.
A servant passed coughing in the hallway causing her to remember where they were and that anyone could walk in on them at any minute.
Her arms disentangled from him and her feet came down to the floor. “I am afraid you will have to wait until tonight, husband.” To tease him fast became one of her favourite pass-times. When he came to her in the night he was fire, thirst and explosion.
More than usual, that is.
He eyed down at her burning with arousal and she cast him a naughty glance under her lashes.
“Vixen.” He threw as she exited.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Days passed by when, an evening, Aileen came from the dressing room in the lady’s chambers to find Taran standing by the window, a longing look on him. He wore only his tartan, which he would take off before tucking with her in bed. She had only her robe on because he used to complain that nightgowns were too tangling to take off her.
She had caught him in this far away mood of late and wished she could do something about it.
“You miss Sam.” She said, coming closer.
His green stare turned to her, the simple gesture unsettling. It was always like two candent flashes aimed directly at her insides.
Raking his coal hair, he expelled air through his nostrils and nodded reluctant.
She did not deem herself guilty for causing the boy to leave. He came to an age he needed to spread his wings. His father in this state, though, bled her heart.
He sat on their bed. “He never spent more than a few days away from the manor.” Knees apart, his elbows rested on them. “I am not used to his absence.”
Aileen neared to him. “Come here.” Her arms cradled his broad shoulders and his head lay on her bosom. His strong biceps circled her waist as her fingers roamed his sable strands. They remined thus for countless minutes in comforting silence.
In common accord, they spread on the bed while
she continued to snuggle him on her bosom, trying to give him a relief of his pensiveness.
“He has been writing often, has he not?” She started.
“He has.” His deep voice came muffled. “The last letter arrived yesterday.” His hand caressed her arm.
“Any news?” Fingers feathered his taut neck.
“Met that professor he mentioned.” He burrowed farther in her receptive chest.
“He told me about him.” She commented. “An authority in botanic, by the looks of it.” Her hand advanced down his spine.
“The biggest star in his life.” Taran did not hide a tad of prickliness.
A knowing grin came to her lips. “No need to be jealous.” Her other finger traced his ear. “You are still his hero.”
His lips grazed her over the silky fabric of her robe distractedly. “Oh, yes.” A trace of self-scorn here.
“The most important is he sounds happy.” She murmured soothing.
“Fit in as if he was born there.” Matter-of-factly. Neither doubted it would happen.
Palms stroked his bunched upper arm. “Christmas is just around the corner.” She said. “He will be here soon enough.”
Head gesticulating agreement on her wrinkled robe, his other hand touched her hip as he found repose in her warm generosity.
~.~.~
Father Robert, the priest that ended up not marrying them, suggested Taran call up the chieftains, tenants and villagers to introduce his new wife. Even busy as they were, he had no good excuse to skip it. And so it was that, on Sunday, they gathered in the church grounds in the village in a feast prepared by the families.
Dressed formally in his tartan, Taran led Aileen on his arm. She paraded his plaid and looked radiant with her glossy chestnut hair falling down her back. If he puffed his broad chest a breath more, he would go down as a peacock, so proud he felt to have her at his side.
The crisp mid-October day boasted an unusual sun painting the autumn colourful vegetation in intense tawny shades. A grassy tang floated in the cool air shuffling with a light breeze. The fires roasted meat and whisky from his distillery flowed liberally. Merriment marked the atmosphere.
He introduced her to his clan and kin, but people wanting a word with him soon led him away.
From afar he watched her talk to his people affably as if she had known them since she was a girl. No member of that feast doubted they represented a powerful alliance, and that few could stand up the them.
Then the first chieftain risked a word with her, being rewarded with undivided attention.
Taran’s guts snapped. The sight of her talking with another man sat uncomfortable in him.
A second chieftain joined in, encouraged by her treatment of the first.
Fierce irritation tore at him, even if he pretended to listen to what a tenant babbled on his left.
When Quinn, the one he encountered in her study, roamed to her group, bile rose in him so sulphurous he must lock all his body not to hurtle to them. And beat the three men to a pulp.
Still a fourth approached her, and men surrounded her, those who had been his acquaintances his entire life. Men who worked by his side, who supported him when Fergus plotted to take Taran’s rightful place. Men who had their families and lived peacefully.
He did not understand what happened to him.
Her group burst in laugher at something she had said and a suffocating fury threatened to detonate in thousands of splinters. His heart pounded a warlike drum, his fists clenched until they whitened, his rugged features crumpled into an unmoving scowl.
The pressure inside became so unbearable he needed to excuse himself and walk away. At the back of the church, he leaned against a wall, both hands raking his hair, lips pressed tense. Unseeing, his green enraged gaze followed a crystalline creek running across the lawn.
Incapable of finding sound logic in his reactions, he cantered the yellowish grass.
Perhaps, Fiona’s infidelity—or infidelities, he was not sure—had affected him more than he considered possible. He never gave much thought to this, but then, he never married again, did he? In the pit of his stomach, the fear of another nightmare match bubbled like acid.
He understood it even less, for he had not loved Fiona or she him. Her flighty actions did not hurt him specifically. His pride, yes. No more, though. His deceased wife became the experience of marriage he had. The sole one in his life. She came to symbolise what marriage meant. And it meant distance, indifference, abandon and adultery.
Fiona’s actions must not let him taint this match with his present wife, he admonished himself. Easier said, he scoffed. By the looks of him at this moment, it had been tainted from the start. An ugly picture, he reckoned, if he was to respond in this fashion every time a man came near her. Any man, with any intention. Good or bad. Innocent or malicious.
Rationally, he recognised Aileen differed totally from Fiona. Grounded, she took care of his manor, his son. Him. Especially him. The memory of them talking about Sam’s absence surfaced, causing him to re-live her warmth anew and how he revelled in it. She did not show the slightest inclination for city life, parties or flirting. On the contrary, she had thrived in working his fields, organising their daily life, without a word about doing anything other than this.
What he felt for Aileen? He did not have the damnedest idea. And preferred not to dwell on it. She instigated the most jumbled manifestations from him. He did not have a clue where to begin. Which made the whole thing seem even crazier.
People would find his disappearance strange. He obliged himself to go back.
Aileen registered when Taran marched to the back of the church as if the demons chased after him, brows pleated with worry. His severe expression presaged nothing positive.
She forced herself to maintain a pretence of interest in the surrounding conversation, but her mind drifted elsewhere.
The chieftains’ wives claimed her company by the time she witnessed him slipping into the feast and approaching a family of tenants. His stance, though had not improved. Something was nagging at him and she had no way of gauging what it might be.
~.~.~
Feast over, they sat in the carriage in graveyard silence. Taran across from her, brooded at her, a marble expression on his rugged face.
She risked a glance at her husband as it washed with the coldness coming from him. And the scalding onslaught his green attention invariably caused in her. Her stare had to lower to recompose herself. More than that, she had to reconcile these raggedly contradictory sensations.
“The chieftains’ families are very loyal to you.” She ventured, only for him to probe her with an even more unyielding scrutiny.
No answer came from him and the deadly hush stretched, making the crisp air in the vehicle dense and heavy with unspoken thoughts.
His taut body unmoving, his stance frozen. It was as if invisible ropes tied around him keeping him motionless, restrained. Contained. The notion of what might happen if those ropes broke, and set him free chilled her at the same time it excited her imagination. And her insides.
Another flick at him, his fierce stare clasped fast on her, with a smelting quality that reverberated throughout her. She feared she would be reduced to a puddle on the wooden floor. A feverish, wanton puddle.
The tremendous endeavour not to fidget failed as her hands gripped each other on her lap and her eyes examined him disguisedly in the dimming light.
Resolutely, her stare fled to the window where she kept it for the rest of the ride.
~.~.~
Arriving at the manor, she sought refuge in her dressing room, taking her time to undress. Thankfully, her highland’s attire did not require a lady’s maid’s help. After wrapping her robe, she paced the enclosed space not knowing what to do.
She did not contemplate sleeping in the room, naturally. There was not a reason exactly for that though the mood around her felt… misplaced. And it would be a coward act, not to mention the childishness of it. Air fill
ing her lungs, she motioned to leave.
The candle on the dressing table flickered with moving air. From the door opening.
“You do not mean to stay here all night, I reckon.” His hoarse growl startled her with the immediate effect of washing heat over her skin, lungs sucking in air.
“I—“ Her voice flew when his obdurate gaze clashed with her.
The minuscule room too small to encompass his warrior-sized frame, he loomed over her, heat and earthen man exhaling from his skin, trim hips looped with a tartan. The powerful torso right in front of her ogle contributed to the molten moisture in her centre.
He covered the few feet between them, her head bent back to meet his green concupiscence. Unbridled energy rushed between them, red-hot. Unrefined hands touched the sash on her slim waist. Her mahogany eyes followed them only to widen on the bulge tenting the plaid. The molten heat became scorching.
Those big hands jerked her robe open availing her for his lustful inspection. A thorough inspection. In one lithe move, his mouth came to fill up with one mound while a hand fondled the other.
She knew doom ruled when her head fell back gasping and her fingers clutched his steel shoulders as if she would disintegrate. He did not relent as he suckled deep on the other one too, reducing her to a pulp of greed and surrender. She never cogitated not surrendering, anyway. How could she?
Her robe fell to the carpet when he released her defenceless breasts. To span her narrow waist with his work-roughened hands and turn her cheek to the wall, next to which lay a chair.
One muscled arm locked around her middle. The other hand captured an eager mound while his bristle lips ravened the curve between her neck and her shoulder, predatory on the denouncing pulse under the goose-bumped tissue.
Such an orchestrated assault on her senses left no chance of resistance. All she wanted was for him to take her however he wanted, because if he did not, despair would corrode her. This being the reason she arched against him, begging with her body, the ache unbearable.
Face to the side, arms braced beside her head, lips ajar sucking oxygen, eyes shut, in her world of pleasure. Her awareness solely of him glued to her back, triumphantly naked. She did not see where his tartan went. And did not care.
