Highland Heat 2 - All The King's Men (4 page)

“It is in my interest, and in the interest of the crown, to root out corruption in my fellow officers. It is in your interest, and the interest of your Highlanders, to remove a wolf who may be preying upon the sheep. We can be allies in this, Sorcha, without betraying anything or anyone. Do you see?”

Well, I
did
see. Not that I wanted to. But I couldn’t deny the appeal of his proposition. I’d told myself that I’d become his lover precisely
because
I’d wanted to help my loved ones. To help my countrymen. If I turned down a genuine opportunity to do that, then wasn’t I every bit the contemptible whore that Mistress Cleary believed me to be? “How can I help you? You want me to search these men’s rooms?”

“No Sorcha. I want you to be the distraction…”

~~~

I was silent well into the evening after he told me his plan. Silent, and sullen, and feeling something like hurt. Even though I should’ve been impervious to being hurt by this man, I felt it, nonetheless. “Well,” he finally said. “Why don’t you tell me why this idea troubles you so much.”

I gasped that he could even ask. “That you could buy me this heart-shaped locket, and tell me that you
cherish
me, and then wish to give me away to other men—”

“Not give away. Merely
loan
for the space of a few orgasms.”

“Oh, well, then! Isn’t that a sweet enough sentiment to make the heart go aflutter?”

The major had been undressing for the evening, but now he stood at the end of the bed with his arms folded. “You think my feelings for you are incompatible with the idea of letting you have sex with another man?”

“Or many of them! If you
truly
cared for me, you would be violently jealous at the mere
thought
of another man’s hands on me.”

He rubbed a bit at the back of his neck, and then shook his head. “Why?”

“What do you mean,
why
?” I asked, wondering if he had been raised by some sort of barnyard animal that he should not understand such a thing.

With a sigh, he said, “Jealousy is based in
fear
. Fear of losing something. Or—perhaps—the more petty emotion of wanting something that no one else can have, for status and validation. I feel jealousy like any man. I do. When it’s warranted. But what you’re speaking of is an
unreasoned
jealousy, because I’m in no danger of losing you to these men, and they can never have from you what I have.”

My temper flared at that. That he could be so smug. That he could be so sure of me. Especially when I had never promised him my heart or anything else close to it. “Are you so sure of that?”

“Am I sure that you could never forge any kind of relationship with the jocular Captain Boyd, the loutish Major Wolfe, or the humorless Lieutenant-Colonel Fawcett? Yes. I’m
entirely
sure of it. I think them capable of giving you a pleasurable evening, and a number of climaxes—but that is as much owing to your own nature than to any particular skill. And even if they were particularly skilled, you are carrying
my
child.”

We couldn’t, either of us, be sure that I was carrying any child at all. But he believed it. He also believed it meant that I belonged to him. Which made me want to thrash against the imagined confinements. “You’re wrong if you think you can’t lose me.”
 

I wanted to startle him with that. I wanted to shake him.
 

But he didn’t move a muscle. He merely offered, quietly, “I never said that I couldn’t lose you. I said that it wasn’t rational to fear losing you to
these
men. I reserve my jealousy and fear of losing you to Ewan MacPherson.”

The name landed upon me with a crushing weight. A weight that actually hurt, as if it pressed down upon me with an intent to flatten me. Which is why I was desperate to reveal nothing. “Who?”

He stared at me, hard, his blue eyes widening a bit, and with none of their usual genial charm. “Oh,
very
good, Sorcha. You’re learning. You’ll be a very dangerous woman, someday soon. You managed to say his name with the utmost indifference. As if he were not your sweetheart. As if he meant nothing to you at all. Even
I
might have been fooled were it not for the fact that no girl who grew up near Cluny Castle wouldn’t know the name of Laird MacPherson’s rebellious son.”

Laird MacPherson’s rebellious son
had
been my sweetheart. I loved the brawny Highland warrior deeply. Or at least I
had
loved him. I had
wanted
him, anyway. Wanted to be clasped forever in those strong sword-trained arms. Wanted to touch his powerful thighs beneath his plaid, and stroke his manhood, too. But I had insisted that if Ewan was to take my virtue, he must also take me for a wife. And at the first moment he realized that neither of our fathers were likely to agree, he’d left me behind, taken up the Jacobite cause and broken my heart.
 

But I still harbored love for him, a thing that most everyone in my village must have known, and now I realized that Major Anderson did too. Having been caught entirely by surprise, it simply wasn’t in me to dissemble further. “How long have you known about Ewan?”

“I’ve known about your rebel Highlander from the start.”

Like a key within a lock, those words turned inside my heart and opened a door to a world of pain.
 

He had known from the start. Which meant…

“It wasn’t happenstance you asked me to be your mistress. You chose me, thinking you could
what
? Use me against Ewan in some way?”

“He’s very elusive, your Ewan,” the major said, nodding. “It’s no easy thing to arrest the son of a laird who is loyal to our cause. Not without proof of his guilt. I wanted news of our affair to unsteady your sweetheart. I wanted to taunt him. To draw him out.”

The sense of betrayal I felt was truly astounding. Enough to knock me to my knees. So I sank down quickly onto the edge of the bed before I fell. All the while, waves of nausea rolled over me.
My God
, I’d been not only a strumpet but a complete fool.
 

Tears brimming in my eyes, I whispered, “You lied to me. All of this an utter lie!”

“No,” the major said, swiftly coming to my side. “Not at all. I didn’t tell you
everything
, but every word I’ve said to you about my feelings for you and my intentions are true in every respect. Did I seek you out hoping to use you as leverage against a man I believe is leading us all to war? Yes. But I was charmed by you from the first moment I caught you spying in my room.”

I pushed his arms away when he tried to embrace me. “Why should I believe anything you say?”

“Because I didn’t have to tell you this, Sorcha. We could have gone on without your ever knowing I was laying a trap for Ewan MacPherson. But it pained me so deeply to have you question my feelings for you…pained me to see the hurt in your eyes at the thought I was man who would feel no jealousy or possession over you. For love of you, I chose to reveal myself. I am revealing myself now.”

“I don’t care,” I said, slapping his hands away again, offended that he should use the word
love
at this moment. “You aren’t revealing yourself. You have ruined me and yet I know nothing about you. Not even your name!”

“James,” he said, with a scowl. “I cannot tell you my family name, but James is my true given name.”

“Again, I don’t care. I don’t even believe you!”

“If I was lying, wouldn’t I make up a new name entirely? I’m not lying to you about anything. Especially not about Ewan MacPherson. The love you bear this lad—the way you protect him even at risk to your own life—is a knife in my heart, Sorcha. Do you understand that? For your sake, I have learned to
hate
this plaid-bedecked lad. I hate him so much that when he comes for you, and when we finally capture him, I will have to give him over to another officer for fear of what I might do to him. Or worse, for fear of the resentment I will see in your eyes if he comes to harm. That is a sorry state for a spymaster to find himself in, I assure you. So if you feel ruined by our affair, Sorcha, you are not the only one.”

“Then
you
are the
fool
,” I said, smearing the tears upon my cheeks with the backs of my hand. “Because Ewan MacPherson will never come for me. You will never catch him. And you
will
feel jealousy when I whore myself out to your fellow officers as you’ve asked—because I intend take them with more enthusiasm than I will ever take you again. I hope my every moan is a new knife to your heart knowing that from this day forward, I will give myself more eagerly to your contemptible colleagues than I will ever give myself to you.”

“Sorcha—”

“No,” I said, turning my back to him. “Don’t trouble yourself with an apology or an explanation or a threat. I won’t hear it. I intend to do as you’ve asked. Just be sure to find the evidence on the man who is guilty so that this exercise will have been worth
something
to you. Because duty is all either of us are going to get from each other now.”

~~~

The plan wasn’t terribly inventive.
 

There would be a card game with the men suspected. James would wager me. Lose me. And when sex with me became particularly involving for the men, he would slip away to search their rooms undetected.
 

Still, I doubted it would work as easily as he seemed to believe it would. I suppose I underestimated his shrewd understanding of his fellow man. I also underestimated how aroused it would make me feel to ready myself for sex with three strangers.
 

It wouldn’t be the first time that I engaged in carnal sin with strangers, but the first time had been unexpected. Beyond my control. Arranged and brought about before I could protest. This time, I knew…

And the knowing made me resentful. But it also set me on fire with anticipation. If I ever harbored any illusions that deep down, I was a good respectable lass, forced into a bad situation…those illusions shattered the moment my lover drew me upon his knee during the card game, and my nipples hardened at the men’s scarcely disguised lustful gazes.

They wanted me and I liked feeling wanted.

I also liked thinking I would fuck them out of spite. There was something terribly appealing to me about that, which probably speaks to my innate wickedness. I liked knowing, too, what they did not. That they were going to have me. That just as they were surreptitiously undressing me with their eyes while they sipped at claret, I was mentally undressing them, too.
 

I don’t think I’d have been attracted to any of them individually. But because I intended to have them all together, I allowed my breath to quicken at the sight of Wolfe’s strong hands, Boyd’s full lips, and Fawcett’s lean, elegant figure.

James had been right when he said he had nothing to fear from any of these men individually. But all together? Oh, I hoped they would be able to please me better than he could. I hoped they would make me scream with orgasms he could never hope to give me by himself—and I hoped that the major choked on it.

These were the thoughts buzzing in my oversexed brain while my lover proceeded to get deeper and deeper into debt at the card table, laughing a bit with the men, plying them with wine. A great deal of wine. Manipulating them expertly with peeks at my breasts as he leaned me forward. With increasingly bawdy talk of the services I rendered him.

I began to squirm in his lap, an ache growing inside that yearned to be filled. My skin was already fevered even
before
he told them that he’d fucked me on a shopkeeper’s counter. It wasn’t precisely true and I noticed that he changed some of the details, but it was true enough to make me blush. True enough to make me hate him for sharing what had seemed like an emotionally intimate moment.
 

But if there’s anything I’d learned, it was that Major James Anderson—or whatever his bloody name truly was—used sex and emotions as fluidly as one used money. He used and he used and he was not done using me. “Well, lads, I seem to be without anything else to bid…unless you’re willing to take my lady in trade.”

I gasped as if I never imagined he could suggest such a thing, knowing how my reluctance was likely to stoke desire. “But—but—”

“Now, now, my dear. You wouldn’t want me to have to leave the game without any chance of earning back what I’ve lost!”

We were both playacting. And in spite of myself, I felt was a strange thrill in manipulating the other men at the table, even if they were terribly drunk. Even if it was with him. He said he wanted to train me in the art of spy craft. Well, it seemed as if I took to it quite well…

I whimpered, he bullied. I bit my lower lip and jiggled a bit to prevent the other men from trying to defend my dubious honor. It was all ridiculously easy. And after a bit of cajoling, the major said, “She’ll go down on her knees for you, Wolfe, if you win this round. Won’t you, my lovely?”

I bobbed my head, agreeably, and batted my lashes like a brainless coquette. The act was obviously convincing. And I confess I was annoyed when Wolfe was unable to win the next round.

 
It took another game before I knelt between Wolfe’s legs while he undid his breeches. His cock wasn’t very long, but it was thick and fully engorged. I didn’t know, before that moment, that it was possible for a man’s member to be plump, but his was. A plump penis, I thought, clenching my thighs together while his big clumsy hands fumbled it into my hot open mouth.

I took him willingly against my wet tongue. Truly, I did, because I already felt myself spiraling down into that place of wicked abandon, where I felt almost bewitched by my own shamelessness. I was so slick between my thighs already. My whole body tingled in anticipation. And I groaned at the scent of Wolfe which was clean, but his taste muskier than I had anticipated. No matter. I took him as far back into my throat as I could while the other men called out encouragements and teased that he could not possibly continue to play cards while I administered to him beneath the table.