Highland Enchantment (Highland Brides) (8 page)

He forced the thought of Shona in his mind. Shona, Rachel's cousin. Shona would never forgive him if he took advantage of this moment. She trusted him, maybe even loved him.

He calmed his breathing with an effort and tightened his hands into fists.

Rachel reached around him, her cheek nearly touching his crotch as she unwrapped the great length of his sodden plaid.

Liam held his breath, waiting and trying to pretend he was a eunuch. It didn't work. Because eunuchs didn't get erections. Erections that ached and throbbed and longed for the one haughty, witchy woman who had tormented him for— Sara! Rachel's other cousin. He loved Sara like a sister. She was as sweet as a lambkin, as gentle as a kitten, and she'd never, never understand if he lost his battle to lust and...

Rachel tugged again. The last layer of plaid slipped downward. His penis, thick and eager and turgid, sprang upward like a floating log.

For a moment, he felt her pause, but he dared not glance down. An eternity inched along, and finally he felt her move again. He tried to remember to breathe, and managed to step out when he felt his plaid brush his feet.

Silence filled the cave. Liam stared straight forward, his jaw set, his will as hard as other parts.

The fire crackled. Eternity stretched before them. He felt her hands on his thigh near his wound.

Her touch sparked off a million deadly desires, making his desire tighten so that it moved of its own accord.

He tried to think, to hold steady, to pretend she was old and ugly, or at least fat and crotchety.

Gripping his hands harder at his sides, he sent off a prayer to a God who must surely be surprised at this correspondence at such a late date.

Liam cleared his throat, clenched his jaw, and tried for normalcy. She was a healer, a healer, nothing more. "How does it look?" he asked, his tone raspy.

Silence filled the cave. Moments slipped away, then, "It... it looks good," she murmured.

"Well, it hurts like hell!" Liam blurted.

It hurt? Rachel stared at it. True, she was a healer, and therefore, no stranger to the human body.

But
his
body! Despite the imaginings of her youth, she'd never thought Liam would be so... Well, to be frank, he reminded her of Aunt Flanna's prized stallions. The thought made her face burn, and yet she found she lacked the decency to turn away. In fact, she longed to touch it, to skim her finger along the length of it, to feel it dance beneath her fingers. What made it move so and why did it hurt?

"I hit it on a rock in the river." His tone was tense. "Will it have to be stitched?"

"Stitched?" she murmured, horrified. "Oh!" Reality dawned on her in a rush of embarrassment.

"Your leg!"

He jerked his gaze down just as she lifted hers up.

"What the devil did you think I was talking about?"

"Your..." What were the chances that the floor, would swallow her up? Probably not good.

Dear God! "Your leg," she said, but her tone was too high-pitched. She cleared her throat. "Of course."

"God's balls!" he murmured through clenched teeth.

"I was not!" She snapped to her feet as fluttery as a nesting wren. "They are not, I wasn't staring, it won't need to be stitched," she sputtered, her words jumbled.

They gaped at each other. She snapped her mouth shut and twisted her hands together. "I..."

What? Lusted after him despite everything? Had for over a decade, like some hare-brained wench who refused to learn. "I have no needle."

"Oh." He breathed out the word, but he didn't seem to be thinking about his wounded leg at all.

His eyes were intense. His hair had come loose of its queue and spread dark as midnight across his shoulders. They were the shoulders of a juggler, sculpted, strong, with muscles that danced just beneath the tan satin surface of his skin.

"It should heal well on its own," she managed.

"Oh."

"If I had my potions, I'd rub some on it so..."—she blinked, cleared her mind of a thousand suffocating thoughts and tried again—"twould reduce the swelling."

"I have my doubts."

"What?"

He squeezed his eyes closed. She watched a muscle dance in his jaw. "I'll get you back to your guards. You'll replenish your supplies."

The fire crackled.

"That's not what you said," she murmured.

"Forget what I said. Don't listen to what I say." He popped his eyes open. "Why do you still have your clothes on?"

"I—" She clutched her bodice together, though in truth it was quite late to act modest. After all, she'd just been staring at the more outstanding parts of his anatomy from quite close proximity.

Certain details were, in fact, indelibly etched in her memory. Hot blood flushed her face. "I'm warm now."

His laugh could definitely be called maniacal. "Take your damn clothes off!" he growled.

"Really, I—"

"Take them off," he ordered, and stepped forward.

"Very well." She retreated at a rapid pace. He was right, of course. She was on a mission. She couldn't afford the luxury of modesty. "Just... turn your back."

He raised his brows. The corners of his satyr's mouth twitched slightly. "I think not."

She scowled. Funny little tongues of flame were licking her insides, sending tingling tendrils of heat curling down from the pit of her stomach to places best left unstimulated. "Fine then," she said and twisting her arms behind her, unfastened the tiny wooden buttons that held her tattered gown in place. He was just a man, she told herself. She'd seen a hundred just like him, had healed a hundred just like him. So what if she had lusted after him since girlhood. Lust was a simple thing, easily thwarted.

The slick wooden buttons gave way slowly. She slipped the gown off her shoulders and lowered by cautious degrees. Dragonheart felt heavy and warm between her breasts, and though she tried, she couldn't quite take her gaze from Liam's.

His eyes shone dark as fire-lit ebony in the dancing light of the flame, and not for a moment did they waver.

She slipped the dress lower. Her nipples, puckered, hard, and aching, scraped out of bondage.

Liam muttered something indistinguishable. But before she could ask what he'd said, he'd jerked away. She stared befuddled at his back, the solid, bunched muscles of his arms, the mounded hillocks of his buttocks, the sculpted strength of his thighs. He was a marvel, really, tightly packed muscle, dusky skin, magic fingers. With some effort, she remembered to breathe.

Muttering again.

"What?" she asked, yanking her gaze upward.

"Are you staring at me?" he asked, not turning toward her.

"Nay!" Too squeaky. "Nay." And for some reason unknown to her, she giggled.

He swung jerkily about. "What are you laughing at?"

"Laughing? I wasn't... I didn't..." Truly, she wasn't the giggling type. Normally. But she felt as if her insides had been possessed by a demon. A funny little demon with a fiendish sense of humor.

"This is not amusing," he said, every lean muscle tight as a drum and sparks flying from his eyes.

She tried not to grin, but...

"This is
not
amusing!" he repeated and strode toward her.

She shook her head and tried to retreat, but he was already upon her, curling his hand behind her neck and jerking her to him. His lips crashed against hers, his kiss as fierce as the storm outside.

Rachel's fingers managed to hold on to her gown for a fraction of a second, and then they gave way. Her clothing fell in a wet heap. Her arms wound about him of their own accord, and she answered his passion with a flaring, long-suppressed heat of her own, pressing up against him with all her might.

His tongue probed her lips, and she opened for him. His palm pressed down her back. She moaned and arched closer as he squeezed her buttocks.

Against her belly, his erection pulsed with turgid life. She pressed against it, feeling its heat, its intensity, with longing.

His kisses burned lower, searing her throat, her shoulder, the upper portions of her breasts, and suddenly they were on the ground. He was between her thighs and pulsing with passion. And it all felt right, like a feast too long delayed.

She arched against him, living a hundred steamy dreams all at once, feeling the straining muscles of his back against her palm, the hard slope of his chest against her nipples. "Liam," she whispered.

But suddenly he went still.

She opened her eyes. Their gazes met only inches apart, his eyes dark and wild.

"Rachel!" he rasped. His tone registered surprise, as if he were shocked that it was she. As if
mortified
that it was she.

And then he was scrambling raggedly to his feet.

"Rachel! I..." He was breathing hard, as was she. She raised herself to her elbows and stared at him. "I'm sorry," he rasped.

"Are you?"

"Aye. Aye." His hand was shaking when he dragged it through his wet hair. "Tis the beast in me."

She lowered her gaze for a fraction of a second. The beast was pulsing against the rippled expanse of his abdomen. "Is that what you call it?"

"Rachel!" His jaw dropped. He stood absolutely still, scandalized to immobility.

She tried to be ashamed, but found she couldn't quite manage it, for it had felt right. As if she had seen it all in a dream. And indeed, in a way she had, for only hours before, standing at the river's edge, she had seen this very cave in her mind, had seen them naked in the firelight, their bodies fused and their minds melded.

"What has come over you?" he asked.

She rose slowly to her feet, not shifting her gaze from his. "Mayhap tis the beastie in
me."

He shook his head, his eyes wild, his body tense. "There is no beast in you. There is none."

"How would you know what is in me, Liam?" she asked. Trying to understand his tortured tone, she reached for him.

"What would your father say? What would—" He sputtered to a halt and stepped back out of her reach. She noticed, although with some embarrassment, that his penis, hard and erect and surprisingly large, was pressed up tight against his belly. "What are you thinking?"

"What are
you
thinking?" she murmured, mesmerized.

"Me? Me! I'm a—a bastard!" he sputtered. "Born in the underbelly of Firthport with a sire who..." he stopped abruptly, still breathing hard."But still I..." He stared at her, seeming to realize suddenly that her gaze was trained considerably below his eye level. He gasped, and ripped his cape from the ground to cover his nudity.

She managed to raise her gaze to his. "Why did you kiss me, Liam?" she asked softly.

"Me?" He glanced about as if hoping to see someone else languidly residing there, someone to take the blame for his errant display of passion. "I..." He licked his lips then glared at her as if the answer were oh so obvious. "I was but trying to warm you up."

"Truly?"

"Aye." He gave her a short nod. "Your parents have been kind to me. I've no wish to see you..."

He motioned roughly toward her then groaned. "Christ!" He seemed to find it hard to breathe for a moment. "I've no wish to see you die of the ague."

"So..." She took a slim step nearer as she held his gaze with her own.

He retreated, the cape wrapped sloppily about his waist. The slanted gap in the side revealed one lean hip and a length of leg honed hard by years of travel and performances. "I didn't expect you to—to... Good Christmas! Had I known you were so desperate for a man, I would have warned your father long ago to see you married off."

Rachel stopped her advance. Her body cooled. Anger settled into her mind. This was the Liam she had known for so long, the Liam she had vowed to forget. "So you kissed me for naught but my own good?" she asked, pleased that despite everything she could sound quite normal, calm even.

"Aye. Aye, I did," he said.

"Oh." She took one more step forward. Then, heart pounding, she touched his chest. Beneath her fingertips, his muscles jumped to attention. Twas that simple movement that sent shivers of emotion up her arm and into her body. She withstood the sensation. Indeed, she did her best to ignore it, concentrating instead on him, on how his eyelids dropped closed for an instant, how his jaw tightened, making a small knot of muscle dance near his ear. "How very selfless of you, Liam. How wonderfully kind of you to forego your own wants, your own desires for naught but my welfare."

"Aye." The single word was little more than a growl.

"And here I thought..." Reversing her hand, she slid the pads of her nails up the undulated expanse of his abdomen. "I thought mayhap twas your undying devotion for me that made you do it."

His eyes snapped open. "What?"

She smiled at him in cold, aching fury. "Just before the ferry broke apart, you admitted your love for me."

He jerked back a pace. "I did no such thing."

"Oh, aye. You did."

"Twas the roar of the water that confused you."

"I assure you..." She stepped close to him again. "I heard you quite clearly." In fact, it had seemed that his heart had spoken directly to hers and hadn't involved her ears at all, as if the emotion had hummed straight into her soul. But that was when she was certain she was about to die. Minutes later, when the terror dulled, she knew she'd imagined the words. How pathetic that even during such a horrific situation she had been so needy. Would she never learn?

But just now it didn't matter. For she had found a way to torment him.

"So all of these years you have loved me from afar," she said on a breathy whisper. "All these years you have kept yourself from the Highlands because you knew you could not bear to be near me and not have me."

"You're..."—a muscle clenched in his jaw again—"daft. Twas you who acted the randy hound.

Mayhap tis you who is enamored with
me."

She smiled—the pitying expression of the generous noblewoman—she hoped. "Tis so romantic.

So chivalrous. The poor wandering performer loving a lady from afar." She sighed. Her gut clenched with anger. "When I marry this shall make the perfect ballad. Bards shall—"