Moon Dreams (21 page)

Just the sight of his shirt plastered against his back caused
strange sensations through her center. He was not an overly tall man, but she
knew the strength of those muscles rippling beneath that thin fabric. His tight
breeches revealed even more, accenting the hard lines of his legs and other
places she was not bold enough to admit noticing. Her need to know more of the
man beneath the clothing would certainly be her undoing.

It was with relief that Alyson greeted the object of Rory’s
exertions—a placid blue lagoon shimmering in the shadows and sunlight of
overhanging trees. Crowded undergrowth prevented easy access from three sides,
and a ragged cliff of gray rock blocked the fourth. Their privacy would be
protected here.

Rory waited until Alyson was beside him, his Eve in pirate’s
clothing in the Garden of Eden. He still could not quite believe his good
fortune, and instincts warred with upbringing. He had never bedded or
dishonored a lady before, had never even thought of doing so until Alyson entered
his life. As a gentleman, he should not even be considering it. As a man, he
could do nothing else. He bowed and gestured toward the lovely lagoon.

“Your bath, madam. The water is not deep, and it is all
yours.” He produced a sliver of soap from his pocket and shrugged. “As a valet,
I fear I am sadly lacking. I didn’t think to bring a towel.”

Alyson glanced at him nervously, but he made no move toward
her other than producing the soap.

“You will not go far?”

“I will be right here should you need me. If you go over by
those rocks, I think you can lay your clothes there without being seen.” He
offered this in the interest of his own sanity. Rory wasn’t certain he had the
willpower to close his eyes while she undressed. He could almost guarantee that
he wouldn’t just watch once he had her nakedness in view. He had no propensity
for voyeurism.

Accepting his gentlemanly behavior at face value, Alyson
nodded and trotted off in the direction indicated.

Rory heard her splashing a little later and groaned at the
image leaping to mind. Since his fifteenth year he had been driven by one goal,
to restore his father’s name and lands, and in doing so, have revenge against
the man who had stolen them—who had killed his brother at Culloden. There had
been no time for daydreams or selfish pursuits.

To fall victim to selfishness now was disturbing, but he
could not set aside the image of Alyson with long hair streaming across full,
up-tilted breasts. He could see her tiny waist, nearly feel the flare of her
hips beneath his hands, and he longed to see the expression in those
mist-haunted eyes when he held her beneath him and claimed her as his.

Standing idle only encouraged such thoughts, and, cursing,
Rory stripped off his stiff clothing. With one swift leap he dived into the
glassy water, wishing it were a Highland stream in order to cool his overheated
ardor. Swimming relieved some of the tension, and he deliberately stroked in
the opposite direction from Alyson.

After a vigorous swim, he floated on his back, listening to
her splashing, judging at what point she would climb out on the rocks to dry
off. He pictured her sitting there like a mermaid, combing her long tresses. He
went down spluttering and came up determined.

He couldn’t see her as he swam back toward his clothing. She
was somewhere on the rocky ledges, hidden from sight, as he had told her. He
found the sliver of soap she’d left for him and scrubbed, then climbed dripping
from the water to don his breeches.

***

Using Rory’s silk vest to sit on and his shirt as a towel,
Alyson dried herself on the rock, attempting to untangle her snarled hair. The
sun felt delicious against her skin, and she wantonly basked in its rays. Rory
had made her aware of these physical sensations, and she felt delightfully
wicked tilting her face to the sky, letting the heat of the sun scorch her
breasts.

Knowing she would burn if she lingered too long, Alyson
turned on her stomach, allowing the breeze to dry her hair it. Something
brushed her bare arm, and she lifted one eyelid sleepily, seeing nothing. She
closed her eye, only to feel another petal-soft brush against her buttocks.
Worrying about insects, she glanced over her shoulder, but she saw only the
brilliant arched bract of a bougainvillea fluttering away. Smiling at the vivid
sight, she glanced around, looking for the vine that pelted her with its lovely
foliage.

More petals drifted downward, clinging to her hair, gliding
along her skin. Like a colorful snowfall, they formed drifts on the ledge she
lay on. A sudden suspicion made her look upward.

Rory’s tanned figure crouched on the ledge above, shredding
a spiny vine as he grinned down at her.

“Maclean!” Indignant, Alyson hastily sat up and grabbed for
the discarded shirt. How long had he been up there without announcing his
presence? Gentleman, indeed!

Rory scrambled down the rocks in a few strides, swinging his
shirt in one hand, wearing only his white breeches. His flesh gleamed golden,
and Alyson could scarcely catch her breath at the sheer physical beauty of him.
He swept the shirt from her hands and sat down beside her before she could
protest.

“Too much sun and you’ll not be fit for anything tonight.”
He surveyed her shamelessly, caressing a tiny brown freckle nearly hidden
beneath the curve of her right breast.

Alyson sucked in her breath, but he was apparently too
engrossed in his explorations to take advantage.

Rory flattened his hand to travel from the tiny freckle to
the valley of her waist, down over her stomach to test the curls below. Alyson
did not flinch, but seized this moment to learn more of this man and his
strange moods. His proprietary touch tingled her flesh and knotted her stomach,
but the sight of his bare flesh caused even stronger sensations.

She desperately wanted to explore him as he did her, but the
tense twitch of his jaw warned her that his restraint had a price. So she
contented herself with gazing on sun-tinted shoulders and chest, tracing with
her eyes the way the muscles flowed and flexed beneath his hair-roughened skin.
The soft curls on his chest were darker than the rich auburn of his hair, and
she wondered how they would feel against her palm.

When his fingers found the thatch of curls at the base of
her belly, Alyson met Rory’s eyes with some alarm. They smoldered with the
hidden fire she knew from her dreams, and the knot in her stomach tightened,
but still she did not move. She held his gaze, mesmerized by the flickering
fires she found in his normally stoic features. It wasn’t relief she felt when
he drew his hand away. She did not lower her gaze as he slid his palm to the puckered
crest of her breast, then withdrew it completely.

“Do you have any understanding at all of what it means to
share a bed with a man?” he asked in an odd, taut voice.

“I think I am learning,” she answered carefully. “Will it
hurt?”

“They say it does the first time,” he said with regret. He
pulled her shirt over her head, concealing what he’d just touched. “Why me?” he
asked, the rougher burr of his voice catching Alyson by surprise.

Squirming into the long shirt and wishing it to Hades,
Alyson conquered folds of material and lengths of tangled hair to meet Rory’s
gaze again. “Why you?” she questioned, searching for some clue to his meaning.

He had been so gentle with her, making her feel as if she
really had something to offer him that he desired above all else. She had felt
proud when he admired her. His tone of voice now worried her.

“Why me and not Tremaine?” he clarified. “Or Cranville? Or
any of the other men who would gladly have you? I can offer you nothing. Why
would you let me be the one to teach you?”

Comprehension came slowly, and as it did, she stared over
his shoulder to a fluffy cloud gliding along the horizon. How could she explain
the feelings Rory gave to her? Didn’t he have these same feelings? Perhaps not.
That was disappointing, but she had learned to expect disappointment. Alan
certainly hadn’t returned her feelings, and Cranville never made any pretense
at having any. She had always known she was different; she had just assumed
that Rory was different too.

Shrugging her shoulders, she brushed aside the question. “Why
not? You offered me a choice, and I chose the one I found most acceptable. Are
you saying you are regretting giving me a choice?”

Tangling her ebony hair between his fingers, Rory drew her
closer, then circled her waist and pulled her into his lap. His quick move had
pulled up her shirt, and she could feel his thighs against her bare buttocks.
It took immense concentration to follow his reply.

“I regret nothing, lass, but I am going into this with my
eyes wide open, and you are not. You are trusting me, when I am the last man on
earth to be trusted. Why?”

Now she understood, and Alyson smiled, leaning against his
sun-warmed chest and exploring the soft curls there. She liked the way his
large hands held her so competently, and she liked the feel of his shoulder
beneath her head. She liked a number of other things about this position too,
but she wasn’t certain how to enumerate them.

“You won’t hurt me on purpose,” she answered. She knew he
might one day hurt her, but in the meantime, he would protect her and be gentle
and like her just the way she was. Other than her grandfather, she had known no
other man so considerate and understanding.

On the face of it, Rory knew her reply was mad. He was
deliberately going to take her virtue and then leave her to her own affairs
when they reached London. Perhaps she was so naive as to believe that wouldn’t
hurt, but Rory doubted it. She was innocent but not a fool. If anything, he was
the fool.

Let’s live for the
moment
sang a siren song in his head.

He cupped her breast and pressed a kiss to her cheek. He
couldn’t seduce her here on the hard rocks. She deserved better than that, but
it was growing damned hard to remember that.

“If you’re looking into the future for that silliness, the
Sight lies, lass. I am more likely to hurt you than any other.”

Alyson smiled and shifted her position to run her bare leg
down his. He wore no stockings and his breeches were unbuttoned at the knee.
Naked flesh caressed naked flesh. Rory tightened his hold on her waist, and she
leaned against his shoulder.

“Why will you not marry me?” she asked lazily.

“Because I can only bring you hurt.” He couldn’t be angry
with her. He knew in her innocence she did not know the pain she caused him. He
just wondered where her thoughts had taken her now.

“Why did you come back for me? If it is only responsibility
you feel, you could have arranged for me to take some other ship.”

That was a question he preferred not to consider too
closely. It was much easier to play the part of older brother acting out of
concern, but he was about to put the lie to that act. Abruptly Rory set her
down on the ledge so he could rise. “Because I am a fool, no doubt, and meant
to honor my promise. When do you mean to answer my question?”

Alyson gazed up at him with that angelic expression that
made his soul groan in protest. “I did, didn’t I? If marrying me will cause me
pain, and leaving me behind would be unkind, then you are trying not to hurt
me. If what I choose to do now will cause me pain later, then that is my choice
and not yours. No one else has ever given me that choice.”

Rory stared down at her in blind amazement, not seeing the
half-dressed mermaid, but something else, something so long denied that he
could not recognize it for what it was. He only knew that she filled him with
inexplicable joy instead of shame, that for the first time in years he felt an
emotion above and beyond the calculated needs of day-to-day living. He daren’t
put too fine a face on it, but it could not all be attributed to lust. He
wanted her, no doubt, but what she had done to him since that very first day he
laid eyes on her had little to do with lust. He was quite probably bewitched.

“You are a naive simpleton, my jo, if ye think I’ve given ye
any choice a’tall, but if it pleasures ye to think that, I’ll not be arguin’.”
Rory stepped down beside her and caught her by the waist. “There’s more to see.
Do ye wish it?”

She held his bare arm to her waist and leaned back against
him. “Tell me your story, Maclean, and I will go with you where you wish.”

The story Rory related in taciturn monosyllables wasn’t
much by any standards, but Alyson listened with her heart.

“I was fourteen and still in school when my older brother
James began speechifying about the Jacobites. The fat German king in England meant
little to me, and I hardly saw James enough to be better informed. My father
spent his time and money on research in Edinburgh, leaving James to administer
the estates in the Highlands belonging to our grandmother.”

Rory ran his hand through his drying hair and glared at the
lagoon. “James and his cohorts threw in with the royal cause of Bonnie Prince
Charlie. When we heard of the troops gathering, we rushed to stop James. Da
went to Stagshead, but I took foot to the fields of Culloden. I arrived only to
see a generation of Highlanders slaughtered by the bloody butcher, the king’s
son, the Duke of Cumberland.”

In the magnificent golden sun of this southern island, with
hibiscus and bougainvillea swaying in the balmy breeze around them, the snows
of Scottish mountains and the tale he told seemed unreal.

“James died?” Alyson asked quietly.

“Aye, he was murdered,” Rory said angrily. “Whether at the
hands of our English cousin Drummond or another of the duke’s troops I canna
know for certain, but what I do know is that I saw Drummond standing over my
brother’s bloody body. He would have killed James if he had not been dead.”