by Jackie Ivie
“Is this true?” Payton asked. Seth hung his head, but he was pointing at Dallis as he did so.
“Seth tells me you made it difficult for him.”
“You should have beached your craft on land a-fore unloading it. ’Twould have gone easier.”
“Too deep. Can you mount yourself, then?”
“You should have picked a cove with a beach then…and I am na’ riding with you.”
“Redmond?” Payton asked it, and lifted his head toward where the man was standing, watching silently.
“’Tis said Caruth clan possess sharp tongues and sharper wits. I can see the truth of both now,” Redmond answered.
Payton groaned before answering. “’Tis your plan,” he replied.
“Perhaps she canna’ ride and tempers the fear with the argue?” Redmond suggested.
“Get me a horse,” Dallis spoke up. “I’ll ride.”
“Perhaps,” Payton ignored her outburst. “Perhaps na’. We doona’ have that choice. We may have to tie her.”
“Na’ if you hold to her. Help her keep a seat. ’Tis a long ride.”
“This is na’ a good idea. You take her.”
“She is na’ my wife,” Redmond replied.
“Will you both cease speaking of me as if I were na’ here?” Dallis asked.
“Aside from which, you ride Orion,” Redmond announced. “You ken he’s the strongest. ’Tis why you chose him.”
Payton grunted. “You bring twine?”
“Never without it.” He was pulling at a bundle of it the man always kept wrapped about his sporran.
“He is not tying me. I am not riding with you. And I have tired of this man-game,” Dallis continued.
“On four?” Redmond asked.
Payton nodded.
“Doona’ start counting,” Dallis warned. “Either of you.”
“One,” Redmond announced.
“Just as we did in Aberdeen. Hook to crook,” Payton said.
“Two,” Redmond replied.
“I’m warning you—!”
They moved before three. As always. It was the best way to get a drunken clansman atop a horse for the ride home. His wife’s squeal was cut off as Redmond wrapped both arms about her from the back, locking her arms in place as he lifted her. Then, he moved forward so that Payton could grip her beneath the arms and haul her up, swiveling her sideways so her buttocks fit between his thighs and her head beneath his chin. He had his arms tightly about her, listening to the rapid pace of her heart, while he waited for the sting of her anger. All of it had taken less than the count to four. He was rather proud of their execution, since he’d never had a drunken clansman in front of him before.
And then something happened. Something horrid. Payton pulled in air on the pressure inside his chest that he’d never admit to. That would never do. Ever. In the span of a heartbeat, he worried over it. Hated it. Tried to kill it. Nothing worked. He had to release the inhaled breath and gain another. Not only did she feel wonderfully soft within his arms, but she had a particular smell he’d thought imagined. And then forgotten.
She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t even breathing. He was starting to worry over how he’d get the wench to take her own breath, when she eased it out. Payton didn’t move anything on him. Anywhere.
“Payton?”
Her whisper was going to undo his stiff stance with the soft, breath-filled way she did it. He anchored his legs more firmly about the horse, hardened his arms, and concentrated. The thump of heartbeat hitting his scarred temple got louder.
“Aye?” he asked finally.
“’Tis hard to breathe.”
She squirmed slightly and received a further tightening of his arms about her before he could prevent it. He had to consciously force his own limbs to relax. Just slightly. She sighed a response. Payton had to turn his head aside before he swallowed so she wouldn’t hear the gulping sound. Then he was clearing his throat of any shake-sound. He didn’t know why it was this particular woman who could make him feel like a lad without wits. He didn’t like it, either.
“You’ll na’ fight me?” he asked, finally.
She shook her head. It was such a surprise, he pulled his head back slightly.
“Truly?”
“You have shelter planned. At some point? True?”
“Aye,” he replied.
“And food?”
He chuckled, sending a huff of air about her covered head that he could have sworn ruffled the wisps of hair at her forehead. He felt the pressure about his heart again. He worried again. Fought it. And then he feared it. There was just no reason it was this woman to do this thing to him. None.
“Well?” she asked.
“Aye,” he replied finally, and felt a bigger fool.
“Then, I’ll na’ fight you. Just get us there.”
“You hungered?” he asked, swiveling them in tandem and going into a bend in order to fish about in the pack at Orion’s rump.
Her immediate response was a gasp, followed by a total cling with her arms about his neck and one leg hooked about his waist as if he was in danger of dropping her, and not just getting her a biscuit. Payton hovered in midtwist, one arm still holding her to his chest, his other arm getting the bag, while his mind was filling over and over with more silent curses on everything.
He didn’t need a reminder of what ecstasy he’d found with her! He didn’t want any ideas to tempt him, and he sure as hell didn’t desire anything more than his distance from her. Then he spent time ordering his body to listen.
“We’re going to fall!”
She wasn’t screaming it, but she might as well be, since the night was projecting sound. Payton could hear the reaction from about them with snorts of amusement from his men.
“We…are…na’!”
He gave the last word more inflection than he meant to. That’s what came of tempering everything, especially his reaction. But he had the biscuits and had pulled back into place, and then he was doing his best to ignore how she’d wrapped about him, shoving her breasts into his belly while her woman-place pressed into his upper thigh. He spent the next moments trying not to show that it had been as difficult a maneuver as it had, as well. He still had one arm wrapped about her and was knocking her head about with his chest muscles until he slapped the bread sack onto where her groin was astride him.
“Here,” he announced. “And doona’ do something so dense again.”
“Put me with a better horseman, then.”
He breathed in deeply, lifting her with it. Then he exhaled. Words came out with it. “The lone one in danger of falling is you. Now, sit nicely like a good lass. Jesu’, Mary, and Joseph.”
She giggled, and Payton’s chest went thick with how that felt. He couldn’t determine if it was an angered reaction at her amusement or more of the same curse of emotion she was giving him. He decided it was anger.
“I was just…remembering,” she told him, as if he’d asked.
And then he remembered when he’d used that phrasing before, as well. When they’d created the babe. Payton grit his teeth on the new spate of cursing that his mind filled in for him. It had to be the exertion. That’s what was making him weak and turning his chest and now his belly into a mass of heat. He must not be healed enough…which was odd. He’d been working with the stone weights, eating fully, and wrestling his men and any other clansman that wanted to take a challenge from him, preparing for whatever battling he might encounter. He should have spent some time working through the other things, such as the reaction to this one particular woman.
“Can you just eat?” he replied with a gruff tone.
She was shifting, removing the arms locked about his neck and sliding her buttocks back into place between his legs and turning his night into hell. That’s what she was doing before she got back sideways to him again, settled herself with more movement than seemed necessary into the space he’d created for her, and worked the ties of his bag loose. And then everything got
worse.
“You have bread?”
She clasped the bag to her bosom and raised her gaze to him; her eyes wide, as was her mouth. Or the light was lying. Payton surprised himself by keeping the groan from sounding as he lifted his eyes from hers, and looked over her head at where all of them were waiting. They were riding double, and it looked like Redmond had the old woman. And they all looked to have the same grins on their faces.
“Why…are you sitting about?” Payton asked them, but he had to lower his voice after the first word.
“We’re waiting,” Redmond replied with more laughter to his tone than was voice.
“Waiting for what?”
“The command.”
Payton sighed hugely, pushing the hair off his forehead with the rush of air. “Christ! I am na’ the lone one here. Get to riding.”
“We are your Honor Guard, Payton. We follow you. Always.”
Sometimes, he truly hated Redmond MacCloud and his way of speaking. This could easily be one of them.
Chapter 10
Dallis tried to sleep, yet the more she tried the more it eluded her. She knew the reason. Her mind wouldn’t cease thinking long enough for sleep to take over. She didn’t dare let it. That was the lone thing keeping the sensation of being held by Payton Dunn-Fadden in abeyance. So, she suffered through each step of the horse, rocking her slightly backward and forward with a pace set for endurance, and tried to keep everything where it was supposed to be.
Especially her thoughts.
It shouldn’t be difficult. She should be exhausted.
First there had been the general slow starvation she’d suffered for weeks now, accompanied by the lack of sufficient movement. Such a thing made listless movements and weak limbs. She knew that, which was why she’d paced her chamber seemingly without end prior to this rescue. And then she took into account the ordeal of Payton’s rescue; the boat ride chilled by the bone-shaking elements and hampered by her own stubbornness. And then this forced contact atop a horse.
She knew they had the equivalent of a half day’s ride. She’d heard them. That calculated to be perhaps a league and a half in distance. Less, if they’d made allowance for the weather hampering their animals. And if the tales Lady Evelyn told her about Dunn-Fadden skills were true, Payton would have a camp set up with a nice warm fire, shelter, and a warm cot. He might even have it suspended from poles, with furs and satins…he might even have pillows.
Dallis shifted slightly, and felt the corresponding movement of the thigh at her backside as he allowed for it and compensated. She wondered if he managed that in his sleep, of if that state was eluding him as well, and then she cursed the perversity that gave her the thought. She didn’t want to think of her husband! She didn’t want anything to do with any man—especially this one! She wanted her freedom. She always had. And this man was taking her right to freedom.
Dallis had never been to Edinburgh and the castle. Her father had deemed it unnecessary and of little moment until she was wed and off his hands. He’d told her it was due to her winsome face as well as her dowry. She didn’t believe the truth of her features, but she well knew the wealth and position that had come with her hand. She wondered if the courtly skills Lady Evelyn had tried to bestow upon her were enough to compensate for arriving in little more than a nightshift and a borrowed length of plaid. She should be adorned as befit the greatest heiress in the Highlands, in velvets and white satin as was her creed, with a jeweled headband to hold her wimple in place, and a heavy golden girdle about her hips. All of which she’d lost years past. She hoped Payton had made allowances for her appearance.
He seemed to think of everything else. The two hard rolls she’d nibbled on had calmed her belly’s ills and the little bit of whiskey she’d sipped from the sporran he’d offered up had done even better, warming her clear to her toes. They should have given her time to don boots. And thick socks. That way, she wouldn’t be out in the elements with little more than slippers on her feet. Satin slippers weren’t known for warmth. Payton must have guessed it, though, for the way he’d wrapped the cloak about her lower legs and brought it back up beneath her had made a warm and secure and comfortable cocoon. It had also put the start to her need for constant thinking, since he’d used the wool about his shoulders to enwrap her to him, effectively sealing her in from the elements, but cursing her with this problem of sensation at the same time.
Dallis shifted again, felt the arm at her back tense slightly as if to keep her from falling, while the thigh she was settled against did the same thing. Again. It happened as many times as she shifted. It was truly amazing how he managed such a thing while sleeping. She knew he was slumbering. He had to be. The deep movement of the chest and belly she was snuggled against sounded too much like sleep-breathing. As did the faint rumble of snoring he made.
Dallis giggled and turned her face to rub her cheek against the fabric-covered hardness that was his chest. And then she wondered where the insanity that made her do such a thing came from.
He wasn’t asleep. He was startled, though, if the immediate tautness through all of him was any indication. There was a halt in his breathing and the sound of snoring stopped as well. She felt the cover over her head lifted and looked up to meet snow-flecked lashes around very wide eyes. And if it hadn’t been pre-dawn and snowing, reflecting what light there was, she wouldn’t have seen that much.
And then he made it so much worse as he pulled in on his cheeks, narrowing his face, while a hint of a smile touched his pursed lips.
“I…uh…” Dallis’s whisper stopped. She didn’t know what to say. She supposed it was a full-body blush that rushed through her, heating her even more than contact with his body was. She didn’t know enough about it to be certain.
“Aye?” he asked, and then he licked at his lower lip.
Her entire form lurched, all of his limbs seemed to react immediately to seize at her, and then he finished the pulse of motion as if it was supposed to transfer directly from her into him. Dallis’s mouth dropped open slightly to gain enough breath.
“’Tis hard enough to keep a seat in the dead of night,” he informed her, bending his head slightly to fit it beneath her covering, allowing a soft sift of snowfall to twinkle in the space between and about them.
His movement also put him so close to her, she could feel the breath from his words atop her nose. Worse, she could sense his proximity with some part of her she didn’t know enough about to defend.
“With a snowfall. And nae path.”
“I…uh…” Dallis repeated the phrase, in the exact same fashion.
“And with you in my arms.”
He just wouldn’t cease the slight murmur of his words as they grazed her skin, and then it was his lips doing the touching.
“It is na’ what you—”
“Hush.”
He said it against the skin of her lips, and that was most brutal of him. And unfair. And enticing. And a thousand other things that marked him a base scoundrel and a cheat.
He wasn’t so much kissing her, as he was lapping at her lips with his, lifting her in place with the soft suction against her skin. And then Dallis made it easy for him! One hand looped up and over his shoulder, twined about his neck, and then she could have sworn it was her body lifting slightly, locking her to him, so she could deepen the kiss and blend her moan with his.
He lifted his head away, pulling the skin of her lips awry with the movement, and ended their kiss with a look deep into her eyes. Bottomless deep.
“Easy…my love.”
She didn’t truly hear it, so he must have mouthed it. Either that, or her ears weren’t functioning. And he couldn’t have called her his love. He just…couldn’t.
“Nae, I—” Dallis stuttered.
“Lass…Lass.” He interrupted her, his free arm moving her about, while the hard lump of his sporran seemed to have sprouted bulk, since it was in the way. And then she knew why as he just kept shifting in place and talking. “Y
ou’re way too gifted. I must have forgotten that, although ’tis beyond me how.”
She knew for certain it was a blush now, as he finished arranging himself to his satisfaction and turned his face back to her. Then he lowered his chin to look at her through his lashes. If it was any closer to dawn, he’d have no trouble spotting her flushed skin with a slight skim of moisture.
His face split with a smile. Dallis called him a wretch and then a buffoon, followed by a simpleton, a rake, and then she named him a cheat. Silently. Not one word came out of her mouth, although her lips were parted for them. This is what came of spending a sleepless night atop a horse, she decided. Witlessness.
“Verra gifted. And now you must stop. We both must.”
He was clicking his tongue as if to chastise her. Dallis’s eyes went wide.
“Wait! Payton, I—!”
“Of course I’ll wait,” he informed her, shaking at the covering atop them, which made flecks of snow fly about. That added even more sparkle to the pink and yellow tinted air. “Grant me some wits, Wife. We’re atop a horse in a blizzom…covered in snow. And ’tis cold. I’ve a meal prepared, a fire burning, and a tent erected and warmed and readied. For my lone use. And I have a pallet. A large one.”
And then he winked.
He was right about the fire. And perhaps the meal, since there was a kettle of oats bubbling atop their fire, suspended by a tripod of unevenly chopped and peeled sticks. They’d used wet wood, though, or something of a worse nature, since the smoke cloud was easy to spot. They’d also selected a site open to the elements and any watchers, rather than any of a dozen strands of trees that could have hidden a smaller tent. Worse still, they only had one tent erected and it looked the size to accommodate a horde and not just their leader.
Dallis saw all this a moment after the horse halted and Payton pulled in a lung full of air, dislodging her from a spot against him. Then he was bellowing something, splitting the words into nonsense and making her ears ring with the volume of sound reverberating from his chest. It wasn’t until the third time that she realized it was a name.
