Bride of the Beast (35 page)

"Those are the dragons I
want
you to slay," she spoke at last, parting her thighs without encouragement in a silent plea for him to keep touching her.

Assuring he did by capturing his hand and pressing his fingers to her ache. There, where she burned to be touched He obliged at once. Stroking, plucking,
rubbing
her in ways that sent her spiraling toward exquisite, shattering bliss.

Excruciatingly pleasurable, his fingers lighted over her pulsing flesh, tugged playfully on her intimate hair, the magic of his touch intoxicating her.

Boldly, she spread her thighs a bit wider... welcoming, encouraging his caress. "You stir me greatly," she breathed, her voice thick with banking passion, her eyes going a deeper shade of blue.

She looked at him, her lids half-lowered and heavy with arousal. "I have never known such abandon, such pure visceral bliss.
This
dragon you have already slain, my lord," she said, arching her hips into his touch. "I wish to continue exploring these pleasures with you... for so long as you remain with us."

Her last words sliced clean through his roused state. Somewhere deep inside him, a tiny shard of uneasiness splintered away from the tight, spinning joy he'd taken in touching her so intimately.

At giving her these first tastes of carnal passion, and at her free and willing behest.

He started to object, to warn her he would leave very soon... and her with him, but she'd begun sliding her hands over his chest and abdomen, and before he could form a protest, she plunged her fingers lower. Thrusting them straight into the thick nest of his own nether hair, the backs of her burrowing fingers brushing repeatedly against the hot ridge of his aroused shaft.

Lightning quick touches, mayhap unintentional, but rousing enough to send a less-controlled man shooting off the bed.

He sat bolt upright, his heart pounding near as fiercely as his throbbing tarse. He circled her wrist and eased her fingers from the thicket of dark hair at his groin to the safer zone of his stomach. He flattened her palm over his taut flesh, pushing down, against his skin, with gentle, staying pressure before he released her.

A silent warning not to let her hand wander lower again.

Not this moment.

That greater intimacy would come later—when he was certain she'd welcome all of him and not just his well-skilled fingers.

Her fingers slipped boldly over the slabbed muscles of his abdomen, examining each tightly tensed ridge, and pushing him closer and closer to the edge of his endurance.

He looked down at his belly, followed her caresses. "Do you truly think I will leave without you, Caterine? I am not a halfling whose affections—and passion—can be trifled with. I am a man—a man who loves you, and it is too late. . . ."

Trailing off, he stared at her hand, the nakedness of one particular finger sluicing icy water all over his hopes, his belief, she'd come to care for him.

Chilling the fire in his blood in a thorough dousing.

He seized her hand, staring at her bare ring finger, cold bands of doubt sliding round his heart, and throwing open its gates so his demons could march right back in.

Did you truly think she wanted you for more than a diddle, you blighted beast?
they taunted.

'Tis the size of your tarse and your skill in pleasuring she desires, not your fool heart... or your ring!
they shouted with glee, laughing even harder as their jeering deflated his

ardor.

Closing his ears to them, Marmaduke tugged the bedcovers more securely over the evidence of his dismay, schooled his features into his best mask of casual indifference, then met her guileless blue gaze full on.

"I knew the ring would not fit," he said, his rougher, more agitated than he would have wished.

Secretly hoping the heirloom's large size was indeed the reason she'd removed it

"I've brought you a fine gold chain so you can wear the ring around your neck until we return to Balkenzie," he rushed on, not giving her a chance to deny his explanation. Silently praying she wouldn't. "Once we are home, I will have the ring altered for you, I meant to give you the chain after the second wedding feast... but I shall fetch it now."

She grabbed his wrist when he made to stand, the regret on her lovely face, unsettling him as little else could.

"I do not want a gold chain," she said, and his heart almost stopped. "I removed the ring because I do not wish to wear it." Her honesty dropped a heavier weight on his crushed hope with each word she spoke.

"I honor you greatly, sir," she declared, her straightforwardness prancing hot foot all over his soul. "But my own honor will not allow me to wear your ring. Not on my finger, not on a chain around my neck."

Marmaduke swallowed past his dignity. "And why not?" he managed in a voice scarce his own. He had to know.

"Because I care too much about you to do so," she replied, a whole troupe of demons leering at him over her shoulder.

Without a word, Marmaduke stood. Heedless of his nakedness, and fully uncaring that, even now, his shaft still raged half-roused against his groin.

Uncaring if she and all the sons of Beelzebub laughed at his weakness. He looked down at her, saw her eyes widen when she glimpsed his pitiful condition.

"You care for me too much to wear my ring?" He forced himself to push her, the gruffness in his voice a paltry shield for his vulnerability. "Fair lady, I fear I do not comprehend your logic."

"Upon my word, sir, I do care. Far too much." She, pushed to her feet as well... flush naked before him, her lush thatch of golden curls, so lusciously thick, still mussed from his own fool explorations.

He caught a faint whiff of her arousal, and his shaft filled anew, jerked and leapt with its own lewd agenda.

"Well?" he snapped, his valor sorely dented, his shame now complete... his tone dark enough to rival Duncan MacKenzie at the very best of his bellowing.

Amazingly unruffled, she slipped past him, trailing her beguiling scent and more carnal promise than a man in his state should have to bear. She stopped before an iron-bound strongbox at the foot of her bed.

"Your ring rests here," she said, indicating the large chest. "I put it there because I will not do you the injustice of claiming it so long as I cannot give you my heart as freely as I'd share my body with you."

Lifting her chin, she stared right at him. Not from coyly lowered lids as a more coquettish maid would have done, but with the level-eyed look of a woman who never lied.

"You are too worthy a man for anything less," she said... or so Marmaduke thought.

He could barely hear her for the hoots and howling of his demons. They'd returned en masse and from the racket they made, it sounded like they' d brought a whole regiment of reinforcements with them.

**

Too worthy a man for anything less.

The words sat heavy in his heart as, a good while later, Marmaduke stood high on Dunlaidir's ramparts. Gripped by freezing winds, he gazed out across the open sea. Slate-gray and cold, its endless expanse stared back at him.

Uncaring of his woes, or those of any man, its ceaseless roar muffled by pale, low-hanging clouds ... and the first snowfall of the winter.

Too worthy, she'd said.

Too blighted,
his own doubts amended, for they, too, had ridden roughshod back to torment him.

Clenching his jaw against the biting wind, and the bitter irony of his life, Sir Marmaduke Strongbow, once the sought-after ladies' man, dashingly handsome, his mere kisses coveted, suffered the injustice of having hands skilled enough to make an angel sigh, passion that never failed to please, yet a face too marred to win a woman's heart

To win his own lady wife's heart.

Turning into the gusty wind, he let the swirling whiteness cool the frustration searing his cheeks. His left cheek—the blighted one—still sticky with Linnet MacKenzie's ragwort salve.

Her
beauty treatment.

A fool's delusion, he'd recently discovered.

He hadn't even known he'd smeared on as much as he had until Ross had commented on it, blessedly mistaking its yellow coloring for a smudge of grime.

His lips twisted in a bitter smile.

The only smudge on his face was anything but grime, and couldn't be removed as easily.

Couldn't be removed at all.

Drawing his fur-lined cloak tighter about him, he peered down at the little golden-brown dog that, for a reason he couldn't fathom, had tagged along with him to the ramparts. The wee creature, pressed its small body firmly against his boots, and met his stare with round, unblinking eyes.

Eyes as frank and assessing as his mistress's.

"Well?" Marmaduke spoke above the whipping wind. "There is nary a spot of beauty in this ravaged face is there, my little friend?"

To his amazement, Leo cocked his head to one side and he would've sworn the dog's brown eyes held a wealth of understanding.

No, not understanding.

Pity.

"That is not the answer I'd hoped for," Marmaduke said, bending to scoop the dog into his arms.

He nestled the shivering creature inside the warmth of his cloak, taking some small comfort when the animal stretched up to lick his chin. "Not bothered by my scar, little man?" he pushed past the burning tightness in his throat. He didn't want pity. Nor canine adoration.

Though the latter proved decidedly more palatable than the dog's usual fare of snaps, growls, and piddles.

Squirming in his arms, Leo wiggled himself ever deeper into the folds of Marmaduke's fur-lined great cloak, his little-dog-groan of satisfaction once he settled himself, a clear indication of the true reason for his sudden show of affection.

The wee beastie was merely cold and sought Marmaduke's warmth.

His mantle's protection from the swirling, wind-driven snow.

Much as his lady sought comfort from him as well, albeit comfort of an entirely different nature.

A dark scowl settling round his heart, and his wife's clever pet clutched tight in his arms, Marmaduke turned away from the sea to face toward Kintail and Eilean Creag.

Toward home ... Balkenzie.

Too distant to be seen even by fair weather, but there nonetheless. And tugging on his heart more fiercely in this moment than in all the long weeks since his departure.

Waiting for him, and his bride ... whether she chose to go or not.

He would make her love him.

Accept him.

Even if he had to employ every sensual trick, every artful touch and kiss, he'd ever learned. Secrets taught him by court harlots at an early age. Base acts performed on, and by him, with the light-skirts he'd tumbled in recent years.

Dark and lascivious measures, to be sure, but bold and rousing enough to melt any woman's bones and to break the strongest resistance.

For the first time since he'd left her bed, a tiny spark of hope glimmered in Marmaduke's breast, for in his lady's quest to explore desire, she'd innocently given him the means to seize that which she meant to keep from him.

An ignoble path to a lady's affections, but the only course she'd left him.

And she'd need never know that, with each sweet, carnal sigh he wrested from her, each tumultuous release, he'd be stealing back a piece of her heart.

**

Several nights later, the brightly burning flames of countless resinous pine torches lit Dunlaidir's crowded great hall. Their flickering light cast a cheery glow over the wedding feast revelers, though several discreet alcoves and corners remained murky enough for those desirous of more amorous entertainments than gorging, guzzling, and the singing of bawdy songs.

The rich smells of wood-smoke, heavily spiced wine, and roasting meats lent a festive air to a hall long filled with naught but shadows and the too-familiar reek of braised seaware, roasted gannet.

Amidst this tumult and din, Caterine sat ramrod straight at the high table. She hoped the throng of celebrants, all in high good humor and sating themselves on fine Keith beef and rivers of cool, frothy ale, found themselves too occupied to pay heed to her flaming cheeks.

Or if they did notice, she hoped they'd credit her flush to the overcrowded hall's smoky warmth and wouldn't peer close enough at her—or her husband—to glean the real reason for her discomfiture, for the heat searing her cheeks couldn't compare to the raging burn spinning low in her belly.

A fire put there by her husband's stroking fingers ... a casual toying with her beneath the fall of the table linens, through the folds of her skirts, and executed with such expertise only sheer force of will kept her from squirming all over her chair.

But, while hidden from general view,
he
knew of her edginess, and its reason... and clearly reveled in tormenting her.

Tremors of exquisite sensation, highly inappropriate for the moment, spooled through her over and over again. She slanted a sidelong look at him. An agitated look that left him wholly unfazed.