by Terry Spear
He scooped her up and carried her to the bed, the navy curtains already pulled aside.
Red rose petals had been strewn all over the white sheets, and she smiled as he set her down on the soft, fragrant petals.
“Who did this?” she asked, not believing any of the men would have done such a thing.
“Calla and some of the other ladies snuck away and decorated the bed.”
“You all were in collusion.”
He smiled.
She couldn’t believe the women had been so sneaky. And here she thought they’d just returned to the castle to brush their teeth and the like.
He stripped before she could offer to remove his kilt. And then he joined her on the mattress and closed the bed curtains.
His eyes were like pools of midnight, fathomless, desirous, drinking every bit of her in as he ran his hands over her skin. She’d seen him naked so many times already—marveling at his gorgeous form every time. She didn’t feel shy about observing him like this. But it was his exploration of her naked body that made her want to pull up the covers.
He held himself so still, except for his fingers trailing down her breast, her waist, sweeping down her thigh. His touch, though gentle, ignited a flame deep inside her. She felt the all-too-familiar wet heat forming between her legs, the sign her body wanted him—was ready for him. Again.
As if he had finished taking his fill of her, he pushed her legs apart and separated her folds with his fingers, bringing her to life as he stroked her feminine nub, at the same time kissing her mouth. Slowly at first. And then matching her wildly passionate response. Their frantic heartbeats and rapid breathing were in sync. Their kisses verged on desperate as he rubbed his engorged cock against her hip.
She felt the flame roaring inside her, the need rising, and reached down and cupped him. He groaned out loud, and she smiled. But when she stroked his cock, his fingers stole into her wet sheath, and she wanted so much more. Him. Inside her. Now.
She was so close to coming. So very near the edge. She rolled her thumb over the top of his erection, and he groaned her name this time. He cupped her face, lined his body up with hers, and drove his cock between her legs. Deep, penetrating, hungry. Then he tongued her mouth as if he were the pirate pillaging her.
Primed, she came, shuddering with release.
Grant continued to drive into her, following her over the edge. She felt sexy and well loved, tired and satiated. She wanted to stay here with him the rest of the night, but she felt guilty, too, as he sank against her, just as blissfully sated.
She sighed. “Don’t you think I should return to the garden room and stay with the other ladies, since that’s the reason I’m here?” she said, curling up against Grant’s hot body. He smelled delectable—of the woods, whisky, and all male wolf. She didn’t make a move to leave him or the bed, despite what she’d said.
“Hmm,” he said, closing his eyes and pulling the covers over them. His arms wrapped around her in mated bliss.
“I should,” she insisted, her voice sleepy, and she closed her eyes. She luxuriated in the feel of him. The way his warm breath fanned the top of her head, the sound of his heartbeat settling down, his muscles hard and warm beneath her body, the smell of him—all earthy sex, male, spicy, and delicious.
“Hmm.”
“You’re ignoring me,” she said softly.
“You try to leave the bed, lass,” Grant said in a husky, satisfied voice, “and”—he kissed the top of her head—“you will not be successful.”
Hearing the smile and a hint of a challenge in his voice, she chuckled. She loved her alpha mate. And loved that he did not want her to leave the bed. As tired as she was, he’d have to carry her anyway.
“Wait until you fall asleep,” she said, smiling.
“Hmm,” he said and tightened his hold on her.
***
When they awoke much later that day to a knocking on the door, Colleen shook her head. Though she had planned to slip away to prove to him that he wasn’t in charge of her, she hadn’t wanted to be anywhere but with Grant last night. Then again, waking him later to insist he make love to her probably had proved she would have her way—at least in that regard.
Grant let out a tired sigh when the person knocked again at the door.
“Anyone still alive in there?” Julia called out cheerfully.
Colleen smiled.
“Aye, negotiations were tough but somehow we managed to work through them,” Grant said, smiling down at Colleen.
She kissed his mouth, glad she hadn’t gone anywhere this morning.
“Breakfast—late breakfast—is being served. Or would you rather take it in your chamber?” Julia asked.
“Downstairs,” Colleen said, afraid they’d never leave the bed at this rate, especially if they had breakfast in bed.
Grant ran his hand over Colleen’s breast, making the nipple rise to his touch. She softly groaned. “We’ll be down in a few minutes,” Grant said.
An hour and a half later—amusing Julia and everyone else—they finally made their appearance.
Chapter 21
After packing up around midday, Colleen and Grant returned to Farraige Castle. This time they also took Calla with them so that she could stay there until the wedding and reception were over. They hadn’t believed Baird would run them off the road in an effort to get Calla back on the way to Farraige Castle, but taking extra precautions, Ian had some of his men follow them there.
Grant had every intention of making a really early night of it so he and Colleen could get some sleep as well as some private time. He couldn’t help that every time he thought about her wearing that saucy pirate-wench costume, or without, he’d get hard and want her all over again.
Colleen was in the study trying to sort out all the stuff about the wedding with Calla when Enrick and Lachlan cornered Grant in his chamber. His chamber. He smiled. He never imagined he’d mate the lass and be able to return to his chamber because of that.
Enrick stood with his arms folded, the smile in his eyes saying he was highly amused. “You never mentioned that this was your plan to get your room back.”
Grant chuckled.
“Or that you’d worked out a way to counter Archibald’s moves,” Lachlan said. “Fast work. We thought you’d ask our opinion about what steps you could take to woo the lady.”
“As if I’d ever need your advice in that regard,” Grant said cheerfully.
“We really didn’t expect you to return as mated wolves and now have a wedding plan in progress,” Enrick said. “We are both curious as the devil to know what happened between the two of you. Duncan called us and said you were staying because the lass was involved in some woman’s party. But he wouldn’t say what was going on. Just said you and she were negotiating terms in the wine cellar at the moment. We figured for certain the two of you were still at odds.”
“Aye, but it appears you did well with the negotiations,” Lachlan said.
“We should have followed you there,” Enrick said. “Hearing all the laughter in the background, I’d say it sounded like the lot of you were having a grand time.”
“I told Ian the next time the ladies gather for such a party, you’ll have to come, too,” Grant said.
“What about Archibald?” Enrick asked.
“I’ve sent men to carry the word to all the places we know Archibald frequents that Grant MacQuarrie is now mated to Colleen Playfair and that the wedding shall soon follow. That should put a stop to him trying to see her.” Grant explained that the bastard had approached the woods surrounding Argent Castle in an attempt to see Colleen.
“Not good,” Enrick said. “Though maybe now he’ll give up.”
“We can hope,” Grant said, having every intention of ensuring Colleen’s safety.
“Archibald is sure to want to strike back at yo
u, so we’ll need to take precautions,” Lachlan said. “Now that you’ve mated Colleen, I take it you want me to cancel the reservations at the B and B in the village that you’d made for the lass.”
Grant had forgotten all about mentioning the situation to his brothers. When Lily heard Colleen’s name and started to tell her that she had a reservation there, he’d quickly let the B and B owner know that wasn’t happening. “Canceled,” Grant said. “Lily met Colleen. She knows the story.”
“What about the lass borrowing your car?” Enrick asked. “We don’t want to give your keys to her again if it means having a mad chase on the roads trying to hunt her down.”
Grant rubbed his whiskered chin. “If she asks for my keys, let me know, pronto.”
Smiling, Enrick shook his head.
“Oh, and these are yours.” Grant pulled Enrick’s underwear out of Colleen’s bag and tossed them to him.
Enrick frowned and breathed in the scents on them. “I didn’t want to mention that Colleen had been in my underwear drawer. I asked Lachlan if she’d been in his, but he said no. We discovered she’d been in yours. So we were just a little apprehensive about bringing it up—especially when we learned you’d mated her.” He took another whiff of them. “But I smell Heather’s scent on them, too. What’s up?”
“Apparently, Heather had asked Julia if she would encourage Colleen to capture a pair of your trunks to add to the pirate’s pole.”
“Pirate’s pole?”
“Aye. The lasses had several of ours dangling from the pole. Which we promptly replaced with their bras.”
His brothers laughed. Lachlan said, “Don’t leave us out of the next bash you’re involved in. Sounds like too much fun.”
Enrick said, “Heather claimed mine?” He sounded like he was still mulling that over.
“Aye. Want to tell us anything about that, Brother?” Grant asked, amused.
“Nothing to tell. This is news to me.”
To Grant also.
“I would say you have all the luck,” Lachlan said, “but Heather is nothing but trouble. So I’d say I had all the luck.” Lachlan shoved his hands in his pockets and grinned.
***
Colleen was so inundated with choices, starting with the wedding gown—MacQuarrie plaid or an off-white affair since she’d been mated twice before, even though she’d never had a wedding ceremony. Calla told her she could wear anything her heart desired. Colleen had asked Grant, and he said the same—whatever she wanted. He would love her in it. He had been absolutely no help at all.
They had to discuss the color of flowers and the kind of food to serve at the reception. Then they had to consider the particulars of the bachelorette party, which meant a ladies’ day and night all over again. Different theme, but Colleen thought that the pirate ladies’ theme had appeal. Calla had suggested they do something else, though, just for the bachelorette party.
Colleen was curious what the bachelor party would consist of. Maybe she and the ladies could crash it.
Enrick had contacted all the women of their pack to return home early for the wedding. And to his surprise and Grant’s, they had demanded that they get to extend their holiday by that many days. He had created a monster, and it served him right.
Enrick and Lachlan had escorted Calla to a birthday party she was hosting late that afternoon for a ten-year-old in another town, so they were serving as her bodyguards. They didn’t mind watching over her, but both had vehemently opposed dressing like clowns. Even so, they did it out of a sense of obligation.
Happy to not have to consider anything wedding-related for the whole afternoon, Colleen immersed herself in the finances of the pack and found discrepancies centuries earlier and again last year. Neither was related because the time that had elapsed between them was more than several hundred years.
But still, she was curious about the first—mostly because Grant’s grandfather had not been managing the estates as the MacQuarries had claimed. Archibald had been right, though prior to him mentioning it, she’d never heard of anyone else administering them. As she went through the old documents that had been scanned into the computer, she realized Uilleam Borthwick had been the administrator of the estates at their inception but continued for only a few weeks. Which was probably why future generations didn’t know about it.
John MacQuarrie had been the scribe. Then Uilleam was no longer manager, and John had been elevated to administer the estates. She let out her breath. She had to tell Grant that she’d found proof for Archibald’s allegations.
She imagined that when Robert and then Grant himself took over the estates, they would have been more concerned with the current and future state of affairs, not something that had occurred much earlier.
The more recent discrepancies had to do with the misappropriation of money for food and had steadily increased for four months until they abruptly stopped. So it wasn’t a case of a major feast the pack had, which she hadn’t any problem with. She pulled out her phone and called Grant, who said he was overseeing the patching up of the old chapel to use for the wedding.
“Aye, lass? Up to my armpits in mud, so anything you want to do about the wedding is fine with me.”
“We wish to have you serve as our male stripper for the hen night, or as we Americans would call it, the bachelorette party,” she teased.
Silence.
She smiled. Not often did she render him speechless. She sighed. “I was going over the accounts and found a couple of discrepancies.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“No rush,” she said, meaning it. She hadn’t realized he was quite so busy, and she certainly didn’t want to pull him away from the job. Unless he just wanted a break from working on the chapel.
“Nay, I’ll be there. Just let me wash up a bit.”
She sighed as he hung up on her. She hadn’t wanted him to think it was anything that was current and had to be taken care of right this minute. But she wondered if Uilleam had doctored the accounts, Neda had caught him at it, and he was fired. What if John MacQuarrie had been the one to let the cat out of the bag? Then he got Uilleam’s job and Uilleam sought revenge. Not just because he wanted to be manager, but because he had been the manager. And John had discovered the theft and told on him. And then he became the manager.
Not long after she and Grant ended the call, he arrived, no shirt, clean trousers, his skin freshly washed, his face a little flushed from rushing to get there.
She rose from the desk chair and gave him a hug. “Hmm, you smell like spices and the sea, and wolf, of course. You didn’t have to hurry. I just found something I thought you might want to know if you didn’t already.”
“The discrepancies in the foodstuffs. Aye. I took care of it. The man who had been working the books had been in league with the head cook. Maynard now holds the head cook’s position.”
She chewed on her bottom lip and considered Grant, not saying a word. Was this what Archibald meant when he said discrepancies existed in the accounts? Why hadn’t Grant told her?
“This is what you’ve been worried about? Maynard was concerned. Everyone has known about this but me?” she asked, annoyed.
Grant frowned. “The man was made to pay for the theft. The accounts were set right. As you can see, we had more money in the accounts for several months as the man paid the clan—well, you—back.”
“Yes, but why didn’t you tell me?”
“I took care of it.”
“Yes, but…I understand that part, Grant. But you should have told me.” She let out her breath. “Is there anything else?”
“Nay, I went through the accounts for a couple of years back, but saw nothing else that would indicate he or anyone else had been pilfering money.”
“Did you ever look at the historical figures?”
Grant considered her as if he wasn’t sure what w
as going on in her head.
“Okay, no, then. Did you know that Uilleam was Farraige’s first administrator?”
Grant’s jaw hardened. “Aye, Calla said she had heard it was so. She told me when she was getting the wedding books from her car. But we didn’t know if it was all a lie. You found evidence to corroborate the story?”
His voice was dark and growly, and Colleen realized the notion that his grandfather was the very first administrator had been an honor for his clan and his pack. She felt bad that anyone had to spoil that for him. But maybe it explained why Uilleam had killed Grant’s grandfather.
She showed Grant the documents, explained what she thought had happened, then said, “Did Neda keep journals?”
“Aye,” he said slowly. “They were stored when she died. We didn’t think anything of it, but we didn’t want your father to destroy them if he had a mind to.”
“Understandable and good thinking. Can I see them?”
“Aye.” Grant started to leave the study, and she followed him. “I can have them brought here to the study,” he said.
“How about having them delivered to Neda’s chamber? I want to spread them out there, organize them, see what I can see. I don’t want to make a mess of the study, and no one is using her chamber right now.”
“I’ll help you.” He called someone on his cell and said, “Get a couple of men to grab Neda’s boxes of journals and bring them to her chamber. Thanks.”
Colleen looked up at him as they strode toward the women’s corridor. “You were building a wall, nice manly work.” She reached over and ran her hand over his muscled chest.
He gave her a wicked smile. “You’re sure you still want to read Neda’s journals?”
She laughed. “Yes. I have a one-track mind myself. I want to learn what Neda had to say about this.”
“Calla said Archibald told Baird that Uilleam was courting Neda.”
Colleen’s jaw dropped. “No. Really?”
“Aye, that’s what she said.” Grant put his arm around Colleen’s shoulders and continued down the hallway to Neda’s chambers while Colleen considered that news.
