by Alisa Adams
He liked that she was small. He craved her as something vulnerable, something he could possess and protect.
The first initiation into lovemaking was momentarily painful.
Aoide was shocked out of her lustful haze as Lachlan found his way home, into her body. There was a sting and a stretch and a sense of invasion. But, with the way his hands had found her breasts and worshiped her shape with care, the tension between her thighs soon faded. His touch molded her into a vessel for his loving.
At first, Lachlan was the only one to move. He shifted, back and forth, so slow and so gentle. When he wasn't kissing her, he was watching her, his gaze more sinful than his touch. As she shifted, however, moving her hips to ease an ache in her back, Aoide pushed forward as he did. The combination of their bodies coming together had them both gasping, teetering on something new. And then, nature took its course.
Together, they moved in waves that needed no instruction, no guidance. Her previous state of chastity, nor his choking honor stilled the natural, organic way that they became one, guided by instinct and their deepest, most raw desires.
By the end, their communion was edging towards that aggression that Lachlan had shown before. His hand gripped her knee and spread her wide, his face twisted into something like pain, his groans turned stifled and harsh. Aoide reveled in it. With every sound of anguish, of surrender and weakness, of need, that Lachlan showed, she claimed it as her own power. She might have been lying beneath him, invaded by his body, and claimed as his woman. But she was laying a claim to him also. She was holding the reins to his power, to his body—and perhaps to his heart.
As the two of them came together in an explosion of sensation that left Aoide trembling and her muscles twitching with shock, she could hardly think. Only feel.
Lachlan had fallen further into her arms, crushing her beneath his weight. His presence was still inside of her, his breath upon her shoulder and in her hair. Her feet had moved to wrap around his waist, her heels upon his back. From the curling hair to her curling toes, Lachlan possessed her completely. He was everywhere. Entirely inescapable.
Which was good, because Aoide had no desire to be anywhere but here.
She had no idea how long the two of them lay together. Retaining her place on her back, Aoide had shifted herself when Lachlan moved to lay beside her. Her shoulder found its place in his chest, and the side of her hip was nestled between his thighs. He curled around her, a longbow of strength and power. Yet he didn't seem particularly potent at that moment. He was languid. Comfortable. Content.
Lachlan's arm was rested up and over her head, the ends of his fingers playing with her hair. His other hand had found the smooth skin of her belly and was busy stroking back and forth with the gentlest of touches. Neither of them had reached for the blankets until Aoide had shivered against the cold. Lachlan had seen them both covered, but he didn't still his touching. His eyes were trained upon the covers as if he could see beyond them and repaint the texture of her skin in his mind.
"You are quiet."
Those three words to pass Lachlan's lips were the first in what felt like hours, years lost in their own cocoon of intimacy.
"So are you," she offered, unsure what else to say.
"I am often quiet," he said. His gaze would still not rise to meet hers. "You are ne'er short of things to say. Since the first."
"The first?" She frowned. Had she said something to them when first they had met? She could only remember being thrown at his feet and being terrified of the looming shadow above her.
"Nothing."
They fell into quiet again. The fingers upon her middle shook for a moment, suddenly unsure.
"You..."
Lachlan then fell quiet.
"You...?" she prompted.
His touch stilled. He still wouldn't meet her eyes. Silence.
Until...
"You wished for this." The words were a statement, but the tone turned them almost questioning. "You did not...prefer another." Again, another statement, but posed like a question.
Initially, complete confusion kept Aoide silent. She felt the man beside her tense even further, shifting from stone or marble. It was only when she recalled the situation he had taken her from, the moment that he had interrupted with Dennis, that she had even the slightest recollection of why he might have doubted her interest.
"Did I do something to suggest that I wasn't willing?" she asked, entirely shocked that she had left herself bare and exposed in so many ways, and yet he now doubted her. She began to get up, to move away with disgust, but a heavy hand upon her shoulder had her flat on her back once more.
"No."
The single word was an assurance, a realization, and an apology all in one.
Aoide's ire was calmed.
More silence followed, but it wasn't a tense one. The two of them lay together in each other's company without shame or embarrassment. A true union of nakedness, where they could witness and experience one another in their barest forms. What made their communion more real was how he now made eye contact, no longer fearful perhaps of what he might see there.
"Tell me of your mother."
The suggestion was even more confusing than his last conversation topic. Aoide felt her mind struggling to twist and bend and follow her new lover's train of thought.
"Why?"
"Because she created you," he said simply. "I'd like to know. You said she was to blame for your education."
"She was." Aoide responded on instinct before realizing she had accepted the subject of chatter. She licked her lips. "She was a physician. A healer. She worked with natural remedies, potions, and poultices. Salves and such."
Aoide's heart raced a little as she described the woman who had raised her. She was proud of the woman that had taught her about the world, but she also knew how most viewed her good intentions and skills with herbs and flora, how they had been chased from place to place. What would Lachlan think of such truths?
"I, er...I learned a lot about the world from her. She was born to a wealthy family, taught under fine tutors. She passed all she knew on to me. At least about that. Not so much her remedies."
"What happened to her?" His words were tender, as if he had picked up on her use of the past tense when she spoke of her mother.
"She died," she said simply. "She was ill."
It had been the height of all ironies and had made Aoide angrier than she knew what to do with for months. Too weak to tend to herself, Fanny had been left to rely on a young daughter that had only the meagerest portion of her knowledge. Aoide had run for physicians from three towns; she had journeyed miles from their home over and again.
No one would tend to a “witch.”
"She was your only family?"
Aoide nodded.
"I traveled a little on my own, but I didn't have the skills that she did. I couldn't offer anyone anything. That's when I joined with Garrett and his group."
"You said you had an aunt."
Lachlan's words were quiet in the dark. The few candles that had been lit when they entered the tent were now burnt down to near their stubs. They flickered, small in their waxy stands and giving them little to see by.
"I lied," she admitted.
Aoide searched Lachlan's face, looking for betrayal. She breathed a sigh of relief when she didn't see any.
"Why?"
"I..." Hesitantly, she reached up to press a hand to the side of Lachlan's face. She brushed over the hard ridges of his features, and her thumb stroked over the shape of his lips. He kissed her touch. "I wasn't ready to leave yet. You would not let me come with you without a reason."
The flame of the candle beside the bed danced in the dark irises of Lachlan's eyes. They distorted his vision, making it hard to read his emotions. But his next words were shocking enough without the intensity that was no doubt hidden in the mirror image of the flickering flame.
"Aoide...be my wife."
Air stilled in her chest. Her heart s
topped beating. Her eyes flew wide.
It was another statement posed as a question.
A question that, despite their nude state in bed together, seemed utterly surreal.
With the words being so completely dreamlike, no rational thought could invade Aoide's mind to control her answer. She replied on simple instinct, the aftermath of their loving a warm hum beneath her skin.
"Alright."
15
From that day onwards, Aoide's life changed.
In so many ways, her world was just as it had been before: she continued to sleep in Lachlan's tent at night and journeyed miles towards the Mackenzie lands by day. She wore no ring or sign of engagement to the man she had agreed to marry, nor did the soldiers behave any differently around her because Lachlan had not spoken of their arrangement amongst them. On the surface, all was just as it had been before she had known the touch of a man.
It was the details that had changed so monumentally. Now, instead of the linen floor of the tent, Aoide slept in Lachlan's bed. Despite the thin frame of the cot and Lachlan's size, the two of them fit into one another's arms every night and slept beside the other. When marching towards the north, Aoide no longer walked alongside Lachlan's horse. Nor did she ride upon it while he abandoned her to lead the men along a path they needed no guidance for. Instead, Lachlan had lifted her to Merlin's saddle the next morning and then mounted the animal behind her. Nestled against his chest, she was cradled by his arms and given the warmth of his body against the roaring winds of the open road. When it came to meals and roasted campfire sustenance, Lachlan always ensured that she was given the freshest pieces of meat and was the first served with a plate. He only ever took his second.
For almost every hour of the day, Lachlan behaved like the perfect intended. He behaved as he might as her future husband and caused only joy and warmth to flood her body. Every moment in which Aoide worried that she had made an impulsive and stupid decision in agreeing to marry him, she was instantly soothed by the touch of his hand or the care he took over her well-being.
She had never thought herself likely to marry. The daughter of a witch, a homeless thief...she was not exactly the sort of person that one might wish to turn into an honest woman.
Yet, Lachlan had never seemed offended by her background, even when it had stared him in the face at their first meeting. He was kind. He was warm. He was a stoic block of granite if she was to ask his soldiers, and yet he showed her a personage beneath that mask, a sweetness that she liked to think was only for her.
How could a girl not be charmed into accepting the hand of a man that revealed their heart in such a way?
An actual roof over her head was also a nice bonus to the idea of marriage.
For those hours of the day in which Lachlan was the perfect betrothed, Aoide had attempted to be the perfect future wife. She had mulled over her future as his companion, what their home might be like, if they might have children. She had permitted herself the sinful luxury of imagining a future beyond her next meal or next night's sleep.
Her idle thoughts of a peaceful, joyful life were only shaken in that single moment every day when Lachlan's devotion seemed doubtful.
Despite sharing his bed with every passing night, it had been two weeks since she had agreed to marry Lachlan and their sheets had yet to have been blessed twice by such physical love. Every evening, Lachlan worked late at his little desk until Aoide was barely able to keep her eyes open. He had then disrobed to his skin, joined her in the cot, held her in a manner that was more affectionate than it was lustful, and then fallen asleep.
And so had been the pattern every night.
Reasons for his detachment had changed and grown over the first week. Initially, Aoide had wondered if Lachlan had been playing the gentleman, if he were allowing her body to adjust to their first time together. She had felt her heart swell at his consideration and made no argument, luxuriating in his touch and kindness.
As the days had passed, she had begun to fear that perhaps he simply feared a repeat of intimacy with her. Had she not satisfied him? Had she not pleased him? She had seemed to at the time, but she had also been lost in her own sensations. Perhaps she had missed something that had seen him uninterested in repeating the experience?
Yet, if that had been the case, why would he propose to her and tie himself to an oath of fidelity to only her for the rest of his life?
As they had passed into the second week of travel, Aoide had begun to assess her own ignorance. Perhaps men were not required to seek congress so often? Perhaps Lachlan only wished for such satisfaction every so often? This seemed out of sorts with the rumor and gossip she had heard from all walks of life, but perhaps the man she had chosen to love was more complex than most?
By the time the convoy marched beyond a particular mile marker that dictated the boundary into Mackenzie lands, Aoide was lost for an explanation. If she wasn't so fearful of breaking the rarest and most precious thing to happen to her since her mother's death, she might have challenged Lachlan or sought him more boldly with her body and her own needs.
She had been too much a coward to do either.
Apparently love made you timid. It reduced all the worth in your world, boiled it down to a single figure, and made your heart beat only for them. The terror of losing Lachlan was now more powerful than the fears that only needled her whenever they went to bed together. She could hold out a little longer. She would not ask. She could not risk the fear of breaking things, of upsetting him and seeing their engagement revoked.
It took them only one more day to reach the main encampment that housed the remainder of Lachlan's soldiers. Aoide had learned that the dozen or so that had accompanied him to Scone, while large in number to her, was but a sliver of the men he actually commanded on a daily basis. Unable to read and only able to count the basic numbers, Aoide was lost when Lachlan told her that he commanded several hundred men. The scale of such a number was impossible for her to fathom.
So, as the group rode over the final ridge that would take them down into the mainlands of the Mackenzie militia and display before her the reality of her new world, Aoide gasped in shock.
Silenced into a stupor of wide-eyed surprise, Aoide stared out across the meadows of tents and wooden huts. There were so many, as far as the eye could see!
Feeling lightheaded with the realization of just what Lachlan's life looked like when he wasn't guarding tax deliveries, Aoide swallowed back a heavy dose of insecurity. The man at her back, the man who held her between arms that took Merlin's reins with skill and precision, was in charge of all of this. He commanded the hundreds of souls before her with all the authority that he wielded over the animal beneath them. He was their guiding light, their shield, and their sword.
And to add to such an impressive role in life, he was respected too.
It was clear from the way that the men looked up and offered salutes to their leader that Lachlan was held in high esteem, if not liked on a friendly level. None of his men smiled or rushed to welcome him home as they did the other soldiers. None of them called him by name or cheered that he had safely returned. They gave him careful looks, proud stares, and dignified bows.
This was a man they all followed with their hearts as much as their duties.
Aoide felt her heart hammer in her chest. She had always known that Lachlan was more than she was, a man of substance and power. She had known it from the second she had looked up from his feet and witnessed the towering figure that he commanded with ease. But this was different. This was evidence, painted upon the walls, that everyone else knew it too, which meant that everyone would see the sort of woman that Lachlan deserved at his side—a woman that was hardly likely to be a thieving nobody that had only been given a comb in recent weeks.
Aoide was given no real time to wallow in her own doubts.
The camp provided too much distraction.
Men were working metal and fixing weapons, boys seeing to the horses, tents being di
smantled or constructed. She even saw several soldiers, bare to the waist, brawling in an open space with spectators declaring its boundaries. They moved around each other, careful in every strike, and then paused, reenacted the movement, and found means to avoid it. It wasn't a fight; it was a lesson.
"Lachlan!"
Given that it was the first time Aoide had ever heard Lachlan's name said by anyone besides the two of them, her head whipped around with all the speed of a comet. She felt her hair swish across Lachlan's chest, no doubt getting in his mouth and nose, but her focus was riveted on the slim young man that was jogging towards them.
As he grew closer, Aoide had to reassess her judgment of him as slim. While the man was certainly slender and built on longer, lankier lines that Lachlan, his bare arms and legs were clearly well defined. There were even little ridges in the back of his neck where his strength had broken out beneath his skin. This man was tightly compacted, but he was far from weak. He was a coiled cobra ready to strike.
Not that attack seemed to be on his mind currently. A smile as wide as the Airen Loch was painted on his face, causing slashed dimples on either side of his grin. His eyes were a bright green, and his hair jet-black.
Without hesitation, Lachlan dismounted. His warmth disappeared from Aoide's back, and he was hopping to the ground before reaching to take the man in an embrace.
Lachlan wasn't smiling, for he rarely did, but there was an ease in his shoulders and an openness to his body that spoke volumes. This was a man that he cared for.
"You were supposed to be back days ago!" the man accused Lachlan as soon as they pulled apart. To Aoide's shock, he swung back and punched Lachlan in the arm. It even caused him to stagger for a second. "I was about to rouse a search party."
"You weren't," Lachlan denied.
The other man's grin turned cocky.
"No, you're right, I wasn't. But only because my big brother bid me to 'not waste resources and see only to the unit's necessities.’" The man adjusted his voice as he quoted the instructions sounding so much like Lachlan's deep gravel that Aoide pieced together their relationship.
