Teresa Medeiros (13 page)

Morgan’s gaze bore into the back of her neck. A curtain of curls sheltered her burning cheeks as she awaited the bite of his blade. She opened her mouth to plead for his mercy but found the words would not come. She had bitten them back too many times before.

“I knew you hated me. But never this much,” Morgan whispered. He sank against the door as if her unspoken confession had robbed him of the last of his strength.

The sword clattered to the floor. He slid to a sitting position, his long legs sprawled around her own.

Sabrina gathered the skirt of her nightdress to rise, thankful for any excuse to escape his bleak gaze. “I shall summon my father’s physician.”

His hand shot out to grasp her wrist. “No! I’ll not give those Cameron butchers the chance to finish me off.” His fingers tightened as another spasm of pain racked his features. “Just tell me one thing. Am I going to die?”

Remembering the time Brian had inadvertently fed Alex a similar mash of toadstools, she grimaced. “No. But you may wish you had.”

He groaned. “I already do.” His face had gone from gray to green. Sweat beaded his brow. “Oh, God.” He tottered to his feet, holding the wall for support. Panic touched his gaze. When he swayed forward and would have fallen, Sabrina threw herself against him, bracing her shoulder against his chest.

He staggered away from her. “Get out!” he bellowed. “Leave me be!”

She hesitated.

He took a menacing step toward her. “I’m warnin’ you, lass. I’ll not give you the satisfaction of gloatin’ over your handiwork!” His threat was spoiled as he tripped over the claymore and crashed headlong to the floor. His big hand curled into a helpless fist. “Please,” he whispered. “Go.”

Torn by the sight of the fallen giant, Sabrina slipped out and shut the door behind her. She leaned against it, flinching as another deep groan rended the silence. Pugsley’s tongue snaked out to lick her toes. She crouched down, burying her fingers in the dog’s brindle coat.

Once she might have laughed at Morgan’s predicament. Now she ached with misery that he believed her cruel enough to poison him.

The tortured sounds finally stopped. Sabrina touched the doorknob with hesitant fingers. She knew her father too well to believe in the privacy he had afforded them. It would not do for Alex or Brian to wander past and find her cowering outside her own wedding chamber. A more terrible thought entered her mind. What if the hapless Enid had fed Morgan a fatal dose of toadstools? Perhaps even now he lay stiffening upon the cold floor, his lush green eyes fixed forever in an accusing glare.

She threw open the door. Morgan lay slumped in the floor where she had left him, his wheaten hair dampened with sweat. She knelt beside him, daring to part the folds of his plaid and flatten her palm against the smooth, sculpted muscles of his chest. Its shallow rise and fall wrung a ragged sigh from her. She dropped her cheek to the rigid warmth of his breastbone, trembling with relief.

“Get off me.”

Sabrina lifted her head, paralyzed by the contempt in his hoarse command.

“I have a wee bit of pride left. Even we MacDonnells
aren’t lecherous enough to want a wench who’d rather murder than bed us.”

His body was coiled with tension, but he made no move to shove her away. What would he do if she chose to practice her mother’s lessons now? Would it soften his temper if she dared to nibble the generous satin of his lower lip? Would it melt his anger to feel the teasing swirl of her tongue against his throat? Or would he consider it a mockery? An affront to that dangerous pride he held between them like a shield.

“What do you want from me?” she whispered, her question more heartfelt than he would ever know.

“The sword.”

His blunt words snapped her back to reality. To Morgan, this was a battle and she was the enemy. Hoping she wouldn’t lose her head for her obedience, she dragged the weapon over to him, not realizing until she’d folded his fingers around the hilt that it was her father’s ceremonial claymore.

His voice, musing and bitter, mirrored her thoughts. “Not my sword. Nor my betrothal ring. Not even my bloody wife.”

Grunting with the effort, he scooted his back against the door.

“You can’t spend the night on the cold floor,” Sabrina protested. “You’ve been ill. You should be in bed.”

“With you?” His bark of laughter rendered the very suggestion profane. “No, thank you. I’d rather live to see the dawn.” He arranged the massive blade across his knees.

Sabrina didn’t know if he intended the claymore to defend him from ambush or from her. After several tense minutes during which he showed no sign of relaxing his vigil, she curled into a miserable knot on the edge of the bed, blinking back tears. She’d sworn never to cry for him, and she wasn’t about to start now. Her last image before drifting into restless slumber was of Morgan glaring at her from beneath his thunderous
brows. A dark mutter that would be forgotten by the morrow pierced her troubled dreams.

“If I can’t have you, princess, then, by God, neither can they.”

The next morning found Morgan gazing down at the sweet assassin curled on the bed. He was reluctant to believe that her father had no hand in his poisoning. Robbed of the leadership of their chieftain, the MacDonnells would have quickly dispersed, leaving the Camerons, Grants, and Chisholms free to tear apart the mountain like a flock of hungry vultures. But why would Dougal have gone through with the pretense of a wedding, when he could have murdered him outright or left him to rot in the Cameron dungeon?

Morgan sighed, forced to accept that Sabrina had probably acted alone. He had believed himself well armored against Cameron betrayal, but the realization grated like salt over the fresh wound of his father’s death. He could only imagine what might have happened had she dared such a betrayal while surrounded by his clansmen. They might have killed her while he was still too weak to protect her. It pained him to imagine the roses in her cheeks fading to ashen gray.

Her dark hair swirled across the pillow in striking contrast to the cream and pink of her skin. She’d slept with no blankets, and a dawn chill had permeated the fireless chamber. His gaze drifted downward. The bodice of the nightdress clung to the puckered tips of her breasts. Her skirts had ridden up to her thighs. It was only too easy for Morgan to envision one of his callused fingers stroking her pert nipple, another slipping into the warm, inviting cleft between her legs.

He swung away from the bed, swallowing an oath. She was his wife, yet like his ring, his claymore, and his very life, she belonged to him only by the grace of Dougal Cameron. And no MacDonnell
had ever settled for charity. Especially not the charity of his enemy.

But he had a more immediate problem than the wild and needy throb of his groin. Did he dare give Sabrina the chance to tell them all that their marriage had not been consummated? Was casting aspersions on his manhood yet another of her and her papa’s clever ploys? One of a chieftain’s most important duties was providing an heir for his clan. His face darkened as he imagined her glibly blurting out the shameful details of their wedding night.

He could see them tearing her from his arms, casting him back down into the dank hole beneath the tower, or, worse yet, tossing him out on his ear to face the scorn of his clansmen.

Morgan swung back around, his hands clenched into fists. She was his bride. He must deflower her. ’Twas more than his right; ’twas his duty. Once he’d consummated their marriage, not Dougal Cameron, the king of England, or almighty God himself would dare take her away from him. The peaceful future of his clan would be assured.

Sabrina stirred, curling her fist against her parted lips. She looked so small, so helpless and trusting in sleep. He knew he could have his hand over her mouth and her thighs spread to accommodate him before she could draw breath to scream. But unlike some of his clansmen, Morgan had little stomach for rape.

His eyes narrowed. He mustn’t think of it as rape. He must think of it as duty. He would remain cool and detached, as if he were simply carrying out a painful but necessary procedure as he’d done for his clansmen hundreds of times. Like cauterizing a wound or digging a pistol ball from a festering shoulder.

Or ravishing his wife’s tender, unsuspecting body, driving himself deep into her silky sheath until she writhed and moaned beneath him.

His mouth went dry and his shaking hands felt less than detached as he sank down on the bed beside her. He stroked his fingers across the silken temptation of her hair, weaving it around his hands as he’d
dreamed of doing all those chill, lonely nights in the dungeon.

Morgan might have recovered from Sabrina’s eyes fluttering open to catch him at his folly. But he stiffened as if from a mortal wound at the shattering tenderness of the smile that followed in the wake of their discovery.

Sabrina awoke to find herself trapped in a web forged between her hair and Morgan’s fists. There was no violence in his grip, only gentle determination, pinioning her to the pillow and preventing an escape she wasn’t sure she desired. His hearty tan had returned, washing away all traces of illness. Only the lingering red rimming his eyes betrayed his sleepless night. His plaid was draped around him in neat folds, and his breath smelled spicy, like cinnamon and cloves.

She smiled in genuine pleasure to see him looking so fit. But her smile faltered beneath the somber weight of his gaze. She sensed she was teetering on the razor-sharp edge of a dangerous brink.

“Sorry to disappoint you, lass. I fear you’re not a widow yet.”

“Not did I intend to be.”

“Then your cookin’ leaves much to be desired.” He wound her hair a coil tighter, still not pulling, just
letting her know he was there. “Just what did you intend?”

His drowsy gaze held her captive. Mere inches separated their lips. A stammered near-truth was all she could manage. “I—I—I was afraid to be alone with you.”

He frowned. “Do you believe me such a monster?”

His unexpected sincerity only increased the breathless cadence of her voice. “Have you ever given me reason to believe otherwise?”

He tilted his head. “Perhaps ’tis far past time I did.”

His lips descended on hers, their firm, silken contours molding her mouth beneath his. His fingertips stroked her cheeks, coaxing her to open for him, to answer the swirl of his tongue with a teasing stroke of her own. The crisp scent of him filled her senses; his tongue plunged deep into her mouth.

From the corridor outside the door came a stealthy footfall and canine whine of welcome, quickly muffled. Morgan’s head snapped up; his eyes hardened. His palm replaced his mouth over her lips, stifling a questioning cry.

Morgan knew his time had run out. He stared into the tremulous blue eyes above his hand, knowing he had only seconds to make a choice that could win him his wife’s everlasting hatred. She might have eventually forgiven him for dipping her braid in the ink bottle or using her first corset as a slingshot, but he suspected raping her within earshot of one of her brothers would be a sin not so easily absolved.

He lifted his hand from her mouth. “Moan,” he whispered.

“Have you lost your—?”

“Dammit, woman, moan!” he snapped.

Sabrina emitted a faint sound, more squeak than moan.

He dropped his head in disgust. “I was makin’ the lasses squeal louder than that when I was twelve years old.”

It was the wrong thing to say, and Morgan knew it the instant he saw anger flash in her eyes. Her lips tightened to an intractable line as if she might never again part them to utter a sound.

He hesitated. The corridor was quiet. Too quiet. The listening silence was palpable.

Shaking his head, he said, “Verra well, lass. You leave me no choice.”

With those words of rueful warning, Morgan determined to use every trick he knew to wring a convincing cry of passion from Sabrina’s stubborn throat. Lacing his fingers through hers, he pinned her arms above her head and rocked between her legs, mimicking the motions of lovemaking until the bed creaked wildly with it and her moans were coming in earnest.

The down mattress provided Sabrina no escape from Morgan’s provocative assault. She felt as if she were drowning beneath his big, hard frame. The consequences of his rash actions manifested themselves with devastating swiftness. A breathless whimper escaped her as the rigid evidence of his own need rubbed against the tender mound between her thighs, nudging and stroking until neither plaid nor nightdress could stop the waves of pleasure fanning out from her lower body to ravish her brain.

“Say you want me, Sabrina.” Morgan’s hoarse voice flooded her ear, scraping her livid senses.

She shook her head in mute denial, fighting to hold the tatters of her will intact.

“Say it!”

He plundered her ear with his wet, rough tongue, and the words spilled out of her, her cry cresting on a broken note.

Morgan went still. Tears trembled on Sabrina’s lashes but did not fall as she waited for him to gloat over his mastery, to finish the wicked seduction that would leave her more battered and debased than an outright beating. He did neither. After listening for the pad of Pugsley’s paws in the corridor, he simply rolled off her dazed body and pulled a tiny dagger from the folds of his plaid. Her eyes widened.

She sat up on her elbows in horrified fascination as he clenched his hand into a fist and drew the blade across the inside of his forearm, slicing the flesh without so much as a wince. He held his arm up, spattering droplets of blood over the pristine sheets.

His gaze met hers. “Evidence of your virginity. I’ll give them no excuse to take you back. If bein’ wed to a princess is the price of peace, I’ve no choice but to pay it. Even if I have to shed every last drop of my blood.” He staunched the bleeding with the hem of the sheet, then caught her chin between his fingers. “If you dare to contradict me in front of your father or any of my clansmen, I’ll drag you to the nearest private corner and make it true. Then there’ll be no doubt in anyone’s mind, includin’ your own, that you belong to Morgan MacDonnell.”