Song of the Highlands: The Cambels (The Medieval Highlanders) (28 page)

She surprised him by raising her head up off
the pillow and touching her lips to his. His tarse grew heavy,
lengthened. This, he would ne’er try to halt. When she drew him
down to her, he opened her mouth with his tongue and tasted the
sweet nectar within. After a moment, she pressed him to his back
and crawled on top of him.

As he cupped her full breasts in his hands,
he asked low, “Do you sleep? Do you dream?”

She raised up and looked at him with mirth
dancing in her eyes and shook her head, then leaned down again and
began kissing him in earnest. As he rolled her nipples between each
of his forefingers and thumbs, making them pucker, he felt her hand
trail down his torso until it found his eager cock. His hips lifted
and immediately he wanted to fuck, but this was so new. A side of
Morgana he’d not seen, yet was thoroughly enchanted by. If he could
be patient, if he could wait, then there might be more surprises
from her to come.

The thought had barely made it across the
transom before she rose up on her knees, then came down again,
drawing his tarse all the way inside her in one long, swift glide.
He arched, cried out.

And there it was, the next surprise. She was
as ready to fuck him as he was her. So he settled his hands on her
hips with the intent of helping her find the rhythm, but she
gripped his wrists, shaking her head, and lifted them o’er his
head.

“ ‘Tis like that is it?” he ground out in
some amusement between panting breaths.

She nodded and began to move, and a shudder
ran through him.

“All right,” he croaked. “Do to me what you
will, my wanton wife.”

All Robert’s attention, all his strength,
was centered on the delightful tug and slide of her tight, warm
canal o’er his cock. His ballocks drew up so tight they ached.
“Please. Faster, love. Deeper,” he begged. The urge to find
fulfillment clawed at his groin, and he gritted his teeth against
it. Not until she’d found hers first.

Her breasts bounced to the same tempo as her
fucking, and he took a chance and brought his arms down from above
his head and molded the ripe mounds in his palms. She leaned
forward, settling her hands on his chest and leveraged her weight
on her palms. He pinched her nipples and she threw her head back,
squeezing her eyes shut, and started to move in earnest.

“Ah, God! Aye, like that,” he growled, and
this time, when he put his hands on her hips to help her retain the
rhythm, she allowed it.

Her breath came in small puffs, and when he
lifted his hips high at the same time he brought her down on to
him, her mouth came open on a silent scream. In the next moment,
the walls of her canal gripped him tight and didn’t release him for
a sustained moment. It made it difficult to thrust into her, but it
also made the pleasure so pure, ‘twas near to unbearable.

As she continued to come, a rare, prolonged
moan fell from her lips. He rammed her down hard on him and, on a
prolonged moan of his own, shot his load deep inside her.

Morgana bent forward and dropped one final
sweaty, carnal kiss on his mouth, then collapsed onto her back,
lungs blowing.

“That was magnificent.
You
were
magnificent,” he said.

When she only lay there, still as a stone,
he realized she’d fallen back to sleep, and he chuckled. He could
use some more sleep as well. Yet he lay there awake for a while.
Enjoying the pleasant glow of utter fulfillment—and
contentment.

A time later, tho’ his head still spun, he
managed to rise and bathe himself, then bring the cloth to his
wife, and bathe her as well. Afterward, he settled again beside her
and wrapped himself around her before falling back into the
blissful sleep he’d come to enjoy since their first night
together.

* * *

The next morn at the table, as Morgana and
her husband were quietly, and companionably, breaking their fast,
Robert, with some concern in his tone, abruptly said, “Do you
remember tossing me to my back last night, and riding me like I was
prime horse flesh?”

Morgana’s cheeks flamed. She dipped her head
and gave him a shy nod.

“Good. I’d wondered….” He leaned close,
caressing the shell of her ear with is lips, with his warm breath,
and rumbled low, “Do it again later.”

She shuddered, felt her nipples pucker, but
forced herself to glance up and give him another nod.

He planted a quick kiss on her lips, and
said brusquely, “Good. Finish eating,” and he crammed another bite
of bread into his mouth and began to chew. It didn’t pass Morgana’s
notice that she’d managed to gain a shadow of a smile from him, and
had also sparked a twinkle in his grey eyes.

She swallowed a sigh, then bit into her own
crust of bread as well.

* * *

Later that same morn, Robert went to Vika’s
chamber with the decided purpose of learning her original plan
regarding their babe she carried, as well as learning a bit more of
the events that led up to her fall down the stairs two days
past.

He was more than a little worried, however,
when he arrived and found that Vika was still suffering from an
ache in her head. ‘Twas clearer and clearer that the fall she had
taken, and the injuries she had suffered were even more serious
than he’d originally believed. Even if Morgana had demanded her
banishment, he would not have been able to fulfill her wishes in
that regard, for Vika was not, nor would she be for some time to
come, in any condition to travel.

Because of the distress he found her in, he
took a much more gentle tack with her than he’d originally planned,
taking up a stool and bringing it to her bedside, then resting his
hand o’er the one she had limply lying at her side. “Were you able
to rest at all during the night?”

She lifted a lid and one amber eye peeked
out at him. “Nay, not a whit.”

“ ‘Tis not good for the babe.”

Vika rolled her head away from him and
focused on some distant object, he knew not what. “Aye, and we
mustn’t have that,” she said with the familiar sarcasm he was used
to hearing from her, “but if ‘twere only me, then you’d not care a
tittle.” It made him hopeful that she was not as ill as he’d
feared.

“I’d care.”

She shifted her gaze to his and lifted an
eyebrow, along with one side of her mouth. “Truly?” she said in a
low, disbelieving tone, and again the sarcasm dripped in it as
well.

He sat back on the stool and crossed his
arms over his chest. “I’d care because Morgana cares.” He sat
forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Now, since you are
clearly well enough to jab and poke at me this morn, I’ve a few
questions for you. The first of which is this: What exactly was
your plan regarding this babe you carry before Wife Deirdre
discovered your secret?”

* * *

Vika’s heart leapt in her chest.
Oh,
Lord. What to say? What to say?
She cleared her throat. Then
she made a long production of sitting up and fluffing the pillow
behind her
just right
. After that, she straightened and
untwisted her gown before tugging the sleeves down further o’er her
arms until they covered the upper portion of her hands.

“Viii-Kaa...” Robert growled at her.

She refused to be intimidated (even tho’ she
was, just a little). She fluttered her lashes at him. “Aye?”

His eyes narrowed and once again he sat back
with his arms crossed over his chest in that imposing posture he
had an affinity for taking much too often in her presence.

It didn’t take as long as Vika had striven
for under his silent, hard glare, for her will to crumble, and her
tongue to begin forming words. “All right. I’ll tell you.”
When
I figure out what to say.

She dropped her gaze and fingered the hem on
her sleeve, the cogs in her battered, aching brain turning, as
first one idea then another struck then was swiftly discarded. And
her tormentor, bless his domineering soul, just sat there, like a
king on his throne waiting for the trumps to finish sounding, in
order to give some final decree. Mayhap a
bit
of the truth
would not hurt?

“I
had
planned to tell you of the
babe when I first arrived.”

He dipped his head in an imperious nod, as
if to say, ‘As is right,’ then said, “But you did not.”

Vexing, vexing man!
She lifted her
gaze to his. “Nay, I did not.” See? She could give short responses,
too!

Except, that glare bore holes in her will
again.

“ ‘Twas only after learning that Morgana
carried your bairn, and seeing how joyous the two of you were, that
I decided against telling you of my own childing state.” There!
She’d managed to give him the truth, yet not lie again about his
fathering the babe.

Yet again, she was met with only silence,
and the crushing pressure of those unrelenting steel-grey eyes upon
her.

Then, her long lost friend, inspiration,
struck. “ ‘Tis truth, I had not had time before the fall I took to
conceive a new plan, once my original had been discarded.”

She knew by the way her interrogator’s
shoulders relaxed and he dropped his hands to his knees, that he
believed her.
Thanks be to heaven.

“Well, ‘tis all settled now. Tell me how you
managed to take that tumble down the stairs.”

At the word
tumble
, a brief, and
confusing, spike of terror arced through her, but was swiftly
followed by a renewed wash of relief when she realized Robert would
not be forcing her to speak of his and Morgana’s plan for her and
her babe, and she answered gladly, “I remember not. I—” A vague,
uneasy feeling settled in her stomach, as if there were something
quite important, something bad, that happened just before her fall,
but try as she might, she could not recall it.

“Aye?” Robert sat forward and placed his
hand on hers. “You’ve grown pale. Do you need a tisane for your
head?”

The throbbing
had
grown more acute in
these past minutes, and she closed her eyes, saying weakly, “Aye,
my thanks.”

* * *

Robert silently shut the door to Vika’s
chamber not long later and made his way down to the great hall.
He’d sworn to her that they would keep the fact of her childing
hidden until ‘twas necessary to reveal it, as only they, the
healer, and Modrun knew of it, and he’d already gained the oath of
the last two that they would keep their silence, and curb any
chatter that might arise, by giving forth a different tale of
events. That would afford Vika a bit more time to heal without
worry of the tidings reaching her father. His brows drew together.
As to the other, tho’ he was much relieved at learning that Vika
had not always intended to keep his babe with her a secret, her
strange reaction to what e’er recollection she’d had regarding her
fall now made him question further and, aye, worry as well.
Had
it been an accident she’d suffered? Or, as he was
beginning to suspect, had there been a fouler reason for her fall?
He’d ne’er completely put aside the notion that the dark figure his
wife had seen upon the
Bealltainn
mound was not phantasm
but, in fact, corporeal.

But who? Who among them would commit such an
act? And for what purpose?

It bore investigating. And if he wanted to
find the culprit, ‘twas plain that the suspicion should be kept to
himself, so that the ferreting out of the coward would be much
easier. And, in the meantime, he’d keep a closer watch on both
Vika, and his wife.

* * *

Over the next three days, Robert
surreptitiously looked for clues, made casual inquiries, and
questioned Vika further about all that she recalled of her fall,
and the events that led up to it. Thus far, he had found little
proof of evil-doing or foul intent. The only piece of information
he’d managed to glean that struck him as odd, and therefore, put
his suspicions on alert, was the tale he’d got from his master
mason only moments past that one of the man’s apprentices had
slacked in his duty, had wandered away for a time on the same day
as Vika’s fall. Of course, the mason only told him of this as part
of his report on the work they were now doing, and as an assurance
that he’d taken the man in hand and dealt with his behavior, so
that Robert should feel confident that the mason had things well
under control.

But, the question remained, if this man did
push Vika down those stairs and leave her for dead, why? There
seemed no credible reason, other than pure madness, for a man of
such low means, and whose livelihood depended so much on Robert’s
good will, to attack a guest at this holding.

Unless.

Unless he was not what he seemed?

But why Vika?

* * *

The apprentice narrowed his eyes as he
watched the husband walk through the entry to the bailey where they
were nearing completion of the furbishing there. He’d seen the
master mason deep in conversation with the man only moments prior,
and knew he’d relayed to him the fact that one of his men had been
reproved due to slacking in his work.

He’d truly thought he’d not been missed.
What faulty fortune!
‘Twas not clear as yet whether the
husband suspected any crooked deed behind the lady’s fall, but he
knew now he must confess his radical and unsanctioned actions to
his partner in their scheme, for he had from him, at least, some
chance of aid, whereas, if he scurried off now, there was every
reason to believe he’d hurry his own end even further.

One of the other apprentices called him,
jerking him from his dark thoughts, and beckoned him over to help
him move some debris. With a mental sigh, and a last calculation of
how many hours more ‘twould be until he could meet his partner on
the heath, he tugged on his glove and strode over to the man.

* * *

Robert was still pondering the puzzle of
Vika’s fall as he walked across the courtyard when he heard his
gatekeeper call to him, “Laird, there’s a knight by the name of
Grímr Thorfinnsson begging entrance.”