Teresa Medeiros (25 page)

“Aye, that I will.” Ranald leered. “With pleasure.”

Casting him an apologetic look, End ducked beneath Ranald’s outstretched arm and threw her arms around Sabrina. “I won’t let you take her.”

Morgan rolled his eyes skyward and locked his hands at the small of his back. His tone was almost painfully reasonable. “Miss Belmont, I have been very patient with your interference in my marriage, even choosin’ to forgive what I suspect was your rather clumsy attempt to murder me.” Enid blanched. His gaze shifted to Sabrina, afire with an unholy light. She clung to Enid, feeling her frozen knees melt beneath its heat. “But no one, not you, nor a regiment of Camerons, nor the devil himself is going to stop me from
takin’
my wife tonight.”

With those words, Morgan bent and neatly hefted Enid over his shoulder. Ranald staggered as Morgan handed her off. Dodging Pookah’s snapping teeth, he
heaved Enid headfirst over the horse’s back. Enid pulled a handkerchief from her cloak and gave Sabrina a forlorn little wave as Ranald led the horse away. They melted into the trees, leaving her alone with her husband.

“You’re not …?” she said, backing away.

“I am.”

He did.

Sabrina bounced along over his shoulder, hands fisted as if she could somehow deny the indignity of being carted off like a sack of turnips. But when his long strides nearly upended her into a snowdrift, he took it upon himself to anchor her rump to his shoulder. The possessive heat of his hands molded the wet pelisse to her vulnerable curves.

“Your plan impressed me, lass.”

“It did?”

“Aye, but there was one thing you overlooked.”

“Aside from the fact that we were never more than thirty feet from the castle?”

He nodded. “Aside from that. If you’d have succeeded in reachin’ Cameron, I’d have been forced to declare war on your father.”

She tried to twist around to see his face, but his grip prevented her. “Over me? You’d have risked your clan over me?”

His shrug almost dislodged her. “I couldn’t have the Camerons sayin’ a MacDonnell couldn’t hold on to his wife, could I? ’Tis a matter of pride, lass.”

Everything was a matter of pride to Morgan, Sabrina thought bitterly. His reputation. His clan. His marriage. She just prayed she’d have enough pride of her own to resist him. A fat feather of snow drifted down to tickle her nose. She irritably brushed it away. They should have reached the castle long ago. Perhaps he was going to toss her off the icy cliffs to punish her for running away. A quick death would be preferable to a slow, lingering one beneath the blunt artistry of his hands.

They emerged in a clearing. Sabrina peered under Morgan’s arm to find a darkened stone cottage
thatched with snow. “How quaint,” she murmured. “And to think I expected a cave.”

He gave her rump an infuriating squeeze. “Ah, but even we savages enjoy our creature comforts.”

The door thumped open to a cozy blast of warmth. The world righted itself as Morgan lowered her gently to her feet. She barely noticed when he shut the door, unfastened her damp pelisse, and plucked off her frivolous slippers. Nor did she see his hungry gaze rake her, noting with obvious pleasure that above her thick stockings she wore only the tattered gown she had worn in the hall.

She was too busy staring. The cottage wasn’t dark after all. Luxuriant furs had been pounded over the windows, imprisoning them in a gauzy web of firelight and warmth. The air danced with the scattered light of tall, familiar tapers. A heather tick had been dressed with crisp sheets and laid beside the stone hearth. Dried rose petals simmered in a pot over the fire. Their heady fragrance wafted to Sabrina’s nose, making her feel reckless and drunk. She was in far more peril than she had realized. This was no scene of rape, but of seduction.

Morgan’s possessive gaze caressed her.

“Why, you scoundrel! You had this planned all along.” She spun around for the door.

His hands reached it first, splaying on either side of her. “You’ve left me little choice, lass. I can’t risk you sneakin’ off to get an annulment every time we quarrel.”

She swung around to face him, half afraid he could hear the wild beating of her heart. “What are you going to do to me?”

His expression was resolute but not cruel. “What I should have done the night we were wed.”

Sabrina was unprepared for the shock of his big hand coming down to frame her abdomen. Its unexpected gentleness was somehow more intimate than his earlier caresses. Ribbons of heat unfurled from his fingertips like the tender sprouts of a new bloom.

“I’m goin’ to put my child in you, Sabrina
Cameron. ’Tis our duty to preserve the peace between our clans by givin’ your da a MacDonnell bairn for a grandson.” He nudged her chin up with his knuckle. “Don’t look so crestfallen, lass. If I’m willin’ to suffer through it, so should you be.” Their breath mingled as his lips lowered. “Remember the sacrifices your brave Odysseus made for his clansmen.”

Panicked not so much by what he intended as how he intended to accomplish it, Sabrina ducked beneath his arm. All the warnings she’d never heeded about him flashed through her mind. She knew he was accustomed to being savage in his own needs, heedless of his mate’s pleasure. He had the power to tear her apart without meaning to, to break both her body and her heart. For a moment she feared she was going to swoon like the terrified virgin she was. How could she have ever thought herself woman enough to handle a man like him?

He took a measured step toward her.

She took a step back. “I’ll scream.”

A roguish grin curved his lips. He drew the bodkin from his plaid. “Aye, lass. That you will before this night is done.”

A rush of longing mingled with her fear. Morgan tossed a fold of the plaid over his shoulder, revealing an alluring expanse of golden skin. “No need to be afraid. I’m a patient teacher. Ask any lad who’s trained on sword or ax beneath me.”

The potent masculinity of his swagger sent her backing against the warm stones of the hearth. “What of the many women who’ve trained beneath you? Did they find you patient as well?”

His reproachful gaze failed to shame her. Another fold of the plaid unraveled, exposing the sun-gilded planes of his chest and abdomen. As if beset by sudden modesty, he left the plaid hanging low on his hips, anchored by his fist. Sabrina knew it would take only a tug to make it fall. She tried to swallow, but her throat had gone bone dry. Once again Morgan MacDonnell wasn’t playing fair. She found herself with no refuge but the past.

“Damn you!”

Morgan ducked as a lit candle went sailing toward his head. Melted wax spattered the wall behind him. His eyes widened. “Was it somethin’ I said?”

Sabrina turned her profile to him. “It was some-something you did. Something mean and spiteful and unforgivable. Do you remember Isabella?”

He frowned, obviously at a loss.

“She wasn’t one of the Cameron maids you dallied with. She was my kitten.”

A dim memory stirred in Morgan. Scraggly, paint-spattered fur. A comic, wobbly gait. “Isabella! The wee tiger who used to nibble my toes.”

“So you do remember! Papa told me she ran away, but I saw you talking to the traveling peddler on the morning she disappeared.” To her horror, Sabrina felt long-forgotten tears clog her throat. Her hands curled into fists. “I know you sold her to that awful man. But I kept my vow. I never told Papa. I never said a word.”

Without giving Sabrina a chance to resist, Morgan gathered her against him, rubbing his cheek against her hair. “I’m sorry, lass.” One of her tears slid down to tickle his abdomen. “But, Sabrina?”

Her palms flattened against his chest, making his heart leap. “I’ve nothing more to say to you.”

“I’ve somethin’ to say to you. I didn’t sell your kitten. She choked on a bug and your da thought it’d be easier if you thought she’d run away. I bought a nice cheroot box from the peddler and helped Brian and Alex bury her in your mother’s garden.”

For a lingering moment Morgan felt nothing but the stunned whisper of her breath against his skin. A faint shudder raked her, then another. Her shoulders convulsed beneath his hand and he realized she was laughing. “All these years … I thought it was the worst thing you ever did … why, I almost hated you!”

Morgan was unprepared for the rewards of being absolved of a sin he had never committed. A wild shiver danced across his skin as her hands stroked and explored the rigid definition of muscle in his chest.
Even more jarring was the rush of tender emotion that seized him as she flowered her soft lips against his breastbone, over his pounding heart, across the turgid bud of his nipple. A groan escaped him.

He had never known how tender a woman’s touch could be. The women he had known had all wanted to be subdued, conquered, dominated beneath the punishing weight of his body. Not one of them had ever dared to make love to him with their hands, their mouths, the luminous eyes Sabrina lifted to his face. The pure emotion he saw restrained in their depths devastated him.

Growling deep in his throat, he plunged both of his hands into the sable mass of her hair and tipped her head back. “I may not have sold your kitten, Sabrina, but I’ve wronged you in many a way. I’m no gentleman.”

“I never asked you to be.”

His effort to seize control failed dismally as her lips melted beneath his, letting his tongue have its way with her in all its rapacious greed. The wet, yielding silk of her mouth tempted him, tormented him, made him ache to wrap every honeyed inch of her around him.

Sabrina felt the downy wool of Morgan’s plaid slide down to cover her feet. She took a startled step backward.

Another man might have appeared vulnerable, diminished by his nakedness, but not Morgan. Nothing her mother had told her could have prepared her for the sight of his sleek warrior’s body honed by blades of firelight.

“Sabrina?” His husky plea let her know just how close he was to begging a Cameron for her favors.

She stretched out a trembling hand in invitation. Morgan knew how much that simple gesture cost her, knew how many times he’d rebuffed the hand she’d offered him. He bridged the distance between them in one stride, tugging greedily at her clothes until she stood before him as naked and graceful as the flames that crowned the candles.

His eyes devoured her, drinking in the tumbled
fall of her hair, the elegant flare of her hips, the ripe shade of rose that tipped her breasts and stained her cheeks beneath his hungry perusal, the ebony curls nestled at the juncture of her milky thighs.

“I don’t deserve this,” he muttered, pressing a kiss to the hollow of her throat.

Her cheek dimpled in a shaky smile. “I know.”

Sabrina hadn’t expected a man like Morgan to waste precious time on kisses or caresses, so when his hand pierced the shelter of those nether curls, the shock was doubled. She clung to his shoulders, fighting to remain on her feet. No one had ever touched her there before, and to have his big, blunt fingers stroking forth that liquid fire was almost more than she could bear. She writhed, maddened by the flood of pleasure and the coaxing Gaelic words he muttered against her lips.

When Morgan felt her satiny flesh glove his longest finger, sending tiny ripples of shock through her entire body, he did something he thought he would never do. He dropped to his knees at the feet of a Cameron. He pressed his mouth to her damp curls, never dreaming surrender could be so sweet, so utterly delectable.

Determined that his surrender would become her own, he curved his hands beneath her buttocks and lifted her, laying her back on the heather tick. Leaning back on his knees, he braced her thighs over his shoulders until she was completely vulnerable to the tender attack of his lips and tongue.

Sabrina squeaked, jolted into mortified shyness by the tickle of his hair across her belly. “Morgan, you can’t do that! It isn’t seemly!”

He lifted his head. His wolfish grin sent a shiver of reaction through her. “Do you remember all those horrible tales your brothers used to tell you about the MacDonnells?”

She fought a swoon as he stroked one finger in and out of her with paralyzing gentleness. Her words came in breathless gasps, punctuated by tiny whimpers. “They said you had great tufts of hair on your feet and that you”—her voice broke on a groan as he pushed
deeper, measuring, filling, laving her taut flesh for the pleasures to come. The words spilled out of her in a rush—“that you ate up black-haired little girls like me for breakfast.”

“ ’Twas a vicious lie, princess. I’ve just a scatterin’ of hair on my feet and I eat up wee black-haired lassies like you only for dessert.”

His teeth came down, nipping her most sensitive flesh with exquisite care. Sabrina cried out, twisting in his grasp as his tongue, his fingers, his lips, wove their own dark dance of delight over her flesh. She’d lost her heart to the boy he had been, but she was afraid she might lose her very soul to the tender, relentless mastery of the man he had become. Even as she tried to writhe away from him, his big, warm hands cupped her buttocks, arching, lifting, spreading, refusing to let her escape the maddening pleasure he would give her.

She hung, suspended on the tenterhooks of his sweet torture until his tongue took mercy on her and set her free. Then she was falling, her body convulsing, raked by shudders of pure ecstasy.

Morgan lowered her, covered her trembling body with the heat of his own. His lips touched her throat, luring her eyes open. She was surprised to feel the wetness of fresh tears on her cheeks.

“You’re still a bully, Morgan MacDonnell,” she whispered.

He captured a tear on the tip of his tongue. “Aye, that I am. And you broke your vow, lass. That’s three times tonight you’ve cried for me.”

She sniffed. “I don’t intend to make a habit of it. I’ve just never …” A latent shudder rocked her.

“Neither have I.”

Her eyes widened in misty shock. “Never? Not even with Alwyn … or any of the others?”

He shook his head, his gaze oddly intense. “I never even wanted to. Until you.”

For a man of his experience, he couldn’t have given her a more precious gift. Sabrina wanted to give him something in return. She locked her arms around his neck and pulled his lips down to hers, reveling in
the fierce sweetness of his mouth, flavored with both the salt of her tears and the balm of her fulfillment. A deep-throated growl escaped him.