Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (28 page)

“Shall I help you, lady?” Janet pushed her way through the throng, her face discreetly averted from Magnus’s nakedness, the flush on her cheeks as red and glowing as Amicia’s own.

“Nay, ’tis good, but . . . I thank you,” Amicia said, even as she lifted her hands to unfasten the side lacings of her gown.

She must’ve loosened them earlier, for a few quick jerks with nimble fingers were all that was needed for the bodice to fall open. With serene determination, she eased her arms from the gown’s sleeves and pushed down the wide-gaping bodice until her breasts were fully exposed, her nipples already drawing tight in the cold night air—or mayhap with the searing heat of her husband’s gaze.

His, and every other lecherous blackguard crowding the chamber.

His jaw set so tight his teeth hurt, Magnus made a quick flicking gesture at the gown, still bunched in charming disarray about her waist.

“Have done,” he jerked, the words a choked rasp. “Now.”

“Och, aye, to be sure and I will,” Amicia gave back, her boldness firing his blood.

Her dark gaze locked on his, she thrust her hands into the folds of deep blue linen until she found and unclasped the gold-embroidered girdle fastened low on her hips. She tossed the belt aside and raised her chin, her bared breasts all shadow and light, their curves and swells, the dark-tipped and thrusting peaks, an irresistible invitation.

For a few precious moments, no one stood in the softly-lit chamber but the two of them and the sizzling anticipation snapping between them. A keen sense of deepest intimacy so thick on the cold, rain-tinged air, Magnus would’ve sworn he could have cut it with his dirk.

But his were not the only eyes fastened to the heavy folds of rich blue linen yet shielding his lady’s sweetest charms.

Countless others stared, too. Some in a most annoyingly penetrating manner.

His hands clenching, he tossed a quelling glance at the circle of waiting kinsmen. “Come you, lass, have off with the gown,” he urged his bride. “The whole of it.”

And she complied—her rich brown eyes sparking, the look in them flooding him with sensual heat as she let the gown slide the rest of the way down her naked body to form a billowing pool at her feet.

“Saints a mercy!” a deep voice groaned—one Magnus recognized too late as his own. At once, his shaft swelled and lengthened to full-stretch, and at a speed that astounded him.

Garbed in naught but candle glow and her own MacLean steel, his lady stood full naked in all her glory, the gleaming white opulence of her breasts stealing his breath, the wealth of glossy black curls at the vee of her thighs
unmanning
him.

Not that anyone would dare call the raging hardness riding hot and proud against his belly . . . man-less.

Swallowing, he tossed a glance at his brothers—Hugh, e’er the sensitive soul, with his back to the proceedings, and Dugan already coming long-strided toward him.

“Say-the-words,” Magnus snarled at Dugan, half-afraid he’d lose his seed any moment—and equally afeared he’d ram his fist into his brother’s nose if the blackguard dared cast a glance at the tangle of raven curls springing at the top of his wife’s shapely thighs!

“The words!”
Magnus growled when Dugan’s gaze indeed began to waver.

Flushing bright red, Dugan snapped his attention back to Magnus’s dark-frowning face. “Sir Magnus!” Dugan began, if with a somewhat over-thick voice. “Are you satisfied with the lady’s . . . good health?”

“I am more than satisfied,” Magnus rapped out, his own voice rough. “I am well-content.”

He knew even greater contentment when, the words spoken, Colin moved with all haste to swirl Magnus’s plaid around Amicia’s nakedness.

“And you, Lady Amicia?” Dugan turned to her. “Is Sir Magnus to your . . . pleasure?”

Clutching the plaid tight about her shoulders, she slid the briefest of glances over Magnus’s jutting phallus.

“He is more than pleasing to me. I would want no other,” she said, lifting her gaze, her voice strong, almost defiant.

Then Colin was thrusting his own plaid into Magnus’s hands, thus ending an ordeal Magnus didn’t ever care to repeat. His emotions high, he slung the plaid around his nakedness and opened his mouth to thank Colin, but the other man spoke first.

“I trust you will honor your word?” he wanted to know, not quite able to keep an I-knew-it gleam from twinkling in his dark eyes.

“My word?”
Magnus held fast to the borrowed plaid, his fingers having proved too clumsy to knot the fool thing.

Stepping back a bit so the clansmen streaming from the chamber had unhindered access to the door, he shook his head.

“I’ve no idea what you mean, my friend,” he said, truly puzzled.

“The boon,” Colin supplied. He gave an imperceptible nod in Amicia’s direction. “Your promise to bed her—you will keep it?”

At once, memory returned.

And Magnus’s pride—even if its roar held all the ferocity of a newly born wolf cub not yet able to open its eyes or even stand on its feet.

“Well?” Colin persisted.

“Well, indeed,” Magnus answered, letting a decidedly
wolfish
grin spread across his face. “It would seem you have bested me yet again.”

“How so?” Colin angled his head, waited.

“Simply . . .” Magnus began, planting a firm hand to his friend’s lower back and propelling him toward the door, “. . . that I intend to bed her very, very well—unless I’ve lost the art, that is.”

Colin paused on the threshold, shook his dark head. “And I vow, in the tasting of yon lass’s bounteous charms, you will
discover
the art, my friend,” he predicted, his face lit with mirth.

Mirth that Magnus did not share.

Not a shred of it.

He only knew he wanted his bride.

And in ways that would shake every heathery hill in the land.

Chapter Thirteen

“A
GOD’S NAME,
but they dragged their feet about leaving us!” Magnus stood on the threshold, fingers clenched around the door latch, Colin’s plaid still clutched about his middle. Truly, he was willing his kinsmen’s ankles to sprout wings as they made their bumbling way down the shadow-hung corridor.

If such faltering progress could be called movement.

Hot irritation and another,
deeper
heat made his pulse pound. He breathed a silent prayer of relief that the louts were heading away from the bedchamber and toward the winding turnpike stair that would lead them back down to the great hall.

“Ne’er has anyone been plagued by such slow-moving buffoons, I vow it!” He frowned after them, the beginnings of a tic just beneath his left eye fueling his annoyance.

Enough was enough.

By the Mass, the corridor’s odor alone would have had him striding along with the greatest of speed. The stone-vaulted passage smelled of damp cold and torch-smoke on the best of nights. Damp cold, torch-smoke, and mold on the worst of nights.

This night, it reeked of all those things
plus
the miasmic cloud of ale fumes trailing in his kinsmen’s unsteady wake.

But at last, even the stragglers vanished into the yawning dark of the stair-head, the lingering echo of their bawdy ditties and trudging footfalls all that remained to mark their passage.

Their departure left him feeling more naked than naked—his last excuse for not turning to face the hot-driving lust charging the air behind him. He knew she’d see his need stamped all over him the instant he faced her.

Faced her, and delivered up his soul.

“Do you not want to shut the door?”

Her voice came from just behind him—and said so much more than the simple words.

Magnus froze, his barriers smashed, but his pride still digging sharp claws into his limbs, holding fast in one last bitter battle before defeat.

“I thought you wanted them to go?”

“Och, but I did, lass,” he said, surrendering, his final defenses clearing the field. “I wished to be alone with you more than you would guess.”

“Truly?” The hope in her voice grabbed hold of him, a victor seizing the spoils. “More than I would guess?”

“Much more.”

“And will you tell me the ways?”

She’d stepped closer, clearly testing her win, and the soft whisper of her breath feathered across the bared skin of his back. Its sweetness sent waves of sensual heat surging into his groin until he’d run so hot and tight the intense, pulsing pleasure proved almost painful.

The kind of pain that made the heavens sing.

He turned, accepting the deep, searing need. No longer able to hide or deny its strength. “I will
show
you,” he promised, tremors of anticipation rippling across every inch of him—in especial his hardest inches.

She glowed with her triumph. She looked down for a moment to adjust the plaid still wound tight around her lush-curved form, and a strange flicker of doubt flitted across her beautiful face.

“Then you are wholly consigned to what we must do here?” She slid a look at the waiting bed, left the question hanging between them.

The fool kind of query
he
would have made—were she of a less bold-eyed and daring nature.

“Consigned?”
He blinked, coloring like a squire, he was sure, but, saints, ne’er could anything be farther from the truth.

Not that his fool tongue could string together what
was
the truth. Not just now. Not with her scent sneaking beneath his shattered guard and stealing his wits.

Clean and heathery, the scent floated around him, seducing his senses. It was every bit as intoxicating as the most potent heather ale.

A thousand times headier.

“The door . . . ?” She touched a hand to his arm. “Do you not want—”

“I want—” he broke off, the warmth of her fingers on the bare flesh of his arm making him ragingly conscious of his state of undress—and hers.

Most especially hers.

Saints, his wants were lodged so fast in his throat he could scarce draw breath around them! But he knew what she meant—in his besottedness, he’d forgotten to close the door. So he yanked it tight and slid home the drawbar, locking out any wretch who’d dare seek to return.

Cheeky, long-nosed wretches in particular, but also any regrets or hesitations that might dare try to discolor the bliss he’d determined to give her this night.

The joy he meant to allow himself.

“You want . . . ?” She was peering at him, the softest of smiles curving her lips. “I am thinking I would like to hear what it is that you desire. Aye, I wish to hear the words.”

Magnus swallowed, his tongue suddenly as clumsy as his clansmen’s stomping feet.

Jesu, he could still hear their awkward progress—
boom, boom, boom,
came the echo of many pairs of shuffling, stumbling feet.

Just a faint echo, but persistent enough to drift back along the darkened passage and . . . disturb him.

Bedevil him.

For the echoing footfalls had some vague
something
dancing along the periphery of his memory, and he couldn’t quite grasp its significance.

He only knew it unsettled him.

“Shall I tell you what
I
want?” his minx of a wife suggested, taking bold advantage of his momentary confusion by letting Colin’s borrowed plaid dip low enough for the merest top slivers of her areolae to peek from above the edge of the tartan cloth. “What I have always wanted?
Desired?
”

Magnus swallowed, swirling heat squeezing his innards, snaking round the hard length of him. “Sweeting, I’ll grant you my best sword that we share the same wants this night,” he vowed, careful to keep one hand fisted in his own plaid lest it fall and expose his readiness too soon.

This was to be a night of slowest pleasures, each moment stretched and savored to the fullest.

“Aye, the very same wants and desires, to be sure. Merely to different purposes.”

“Say you?” She let the plaid’s edge slip down a bit more—only on one side this time, but enough for the hardened peak of one fine-thrusting nipple to pop free and wink at him.

She glanced down at the exposed nipple, then looked back up to stare him full in the eye as she slowly—very slowly—readjusted the plaid until he could see no more. Not even the sweet-puckered rims of those tantalizingly large areolae.

Magnus frowned, the hard length of him throbbing with almost blinding urgency.

She
smiled.

Moving to the table, she began pulling the pins from her coiled braids. A dangerous move, for the table stood not far from the peat fire and in its reddish-gold glow, the creamy top swells of her breasts and her bared shoulders shone like finest mother-of-pearl.

A feast for a man’s eyes, and one that made him burn to see the rest of her luscious body’s curves and hollows gilded and limned by the soft, flickering firelight.

Her face glowed, too, and a rapid pulsing beat in the dip between her collarbones. It was a clear hint that her flush had more to do with excitement or agitation than the cozy warmth spooling out from the hearth fire.

“And what are those cross-purposes you mentioned?” she wanted to know, the slight strain in her voice knocking out the possibility of
excitement.

She’d gone very still, not moving at all except to nudge her toes at the furred skins spread upon the chamber floor.

“Aye, I think I should like to hear them,” she said into the uncomfortable silence. “What purposes do you mean? Save the obvious? That we must—couple—so a bloodied bedsheet can be carried about the hall on the morrow?”

“That is part of it, aye, the bedsheet. . . .” Magnus spoke true, and regretted the words the moment they left his mouth.

In especial, when
her
mouth tightened upon hearing them.

She gave him a vexed look. “You are duty-bound to make me your wife in truth, yet you do not find the task . . . displeasing.” She flicked a telling gaze at the tent-like protuberance beneath his plaid. “Nay, sir, even a less enlightened lass would ken without doubt that you do not find the task at hand in any way onerous.”

Magnus cleared his throat, tried to swallow the tightness threatening to strangle him. “Rest assured I view our conjugal union as neither a burden nor a task,” he said, casting a significant glance of his own at his arousal. “As you have well noted, my lady.”