The Harlot (22 page)

Yet his senses were full of her, and around them the night itself seemed to hum with her radiance, as if the very air they breathed had been affected by her. He could not deny what he saw and felt, and all of it was because of her and what she was. He sensed her heat spreading outward through the undergrowth, and it was as if she was in tune with the wild things that lived there. Her eyes glowed. Her hair was flung back against the ground, and before his eyes strands of it seemed to plunge into the earth like roots of a tree. Her fingers, too,
melded with the earth beneath her, digging into the dirt in time with his thrusts.

He lifted up onto his arms, probing deeper into that burning spot of hers. If this was his end, he welcomed it. Her legs had locked around his hips, her heels bouncing on his arse when he drew back. The position gave him deeper access, and his cock arched inside her. Her cunt clamped hard on him. The pull on his sac was too good, and his ballocks were poised to spill.

“You do not fear me when we are like this, do you?” She asked the question, but there was certainty in her voice, as if she already knew the answer.

This was no ordinary woman, and he was all but enslaved to her. Even if he had not known it before, he knew it now.
How did this happen?

“Aye, I do fear it,” he blurted, as his body drove on, seeking more of her, seeking the ultimate pleasure in their mutual release. “But you are on fire, as if I dipped my wick into the most heavenly place that exists on this earth.”

His words seemed to delight her. Her back arched and the fire that welled in her eyes coursed over her entire body and then lit the ground around them.

Her cunt clasped at his length and her head rolled from side to side and she whispered his name. The sound of it coming from her lips urged him on. With a flick of his head, he tossed off a bead of sweat that ran down his forehead.

She reached up and pushed his hair back, her thumb stroking him in between his brows. The gesture lit something in her eyes, and her cunt rippled around his length.

The dam had been breached. “Ah, sweet Jessie, you are magnificent.”

She responded, but the words were garbled and he barely recognized them as Gaelic in origin. Her entire body
trembled, her cunt milking him as if a warm, slippery fist held his cock.

Incandescent, she glowed as if the moonlight itself was captured in her release. As his seed poured into her and her warm thighs closed around his hips, he wanted nothing else than to be there, to savor that moment, and to see her so magically radiant and glorious at the very peak of their coupling.

SATED AND SOMEWHAT STUNNED, GREGOR
rolled onto his back. A moment later he felt Jessie move against him, and when he put his arm around her, she wormed closer against his chest. With her ensconced that way—the way they had lain together on those nights back at the Drover's Inn—he found he was able to ignore the strange reality of this situation for a few moments and just hold her. He kissed the top of her head, and she gave a contented sigh.

Staring at the sky, he noticed that the moon overhead was huge, filling his vision. Was it always this way? He shut his eyes, unable to wrestle with the tide of meaning any longer.

Then the warm huff of her breath on his collarbone helped to anchor him, and the immensity of what had gone before hit him afresh, bringing with it a new honesty. Swallowing hard, he rubbed her back. He was not altogether eager to press forward and gain a better understanding of this situation, but he knew he could not avoid it any longer. He stroked her, embracing the woman he thought he knew, while inviting the woman who was new to him to reveal herself more fully.

Eventually she lifted her head. Silently, she studied him. “I am stronger now,” she said.

It was not something he expected her to say, but he saw her meaning reflected in her expression. Was it truly as she suggested, that some power had been granted her, brought about by what had passed between them? “Is that the way of it?”

She lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “I heard some talk of it when I was young, but I've been separated from my kind since then. I know very little of the craft, but I am learning.”

She spoke cautiously, as if not sure how much more to reveal to him. Then she lifted her head and looked back at Balfour Hall. There was determination in the set of her mouth.

Gregor tightened his grip on her, hit by the sudden fear of what they would do to her if they discovered her nature. “Can you protect yourself through magic?”

She nodded. “In all honesty that is the only thing I have used it for, for myself. I have helped a few others, but I have been too afraid, because of what I saw them do to my mother.”

There was a request for understanding in her eyes. There was also sorrow, and he recognized it was there whenever she remembered her mother's demise. He could not fault her for that, for it was how he felt about his own father's untimely death. “What is it that you wish to do with this talent of yours?”

She flashed him a glance, as if she knew he was not easily led. “Our magic is meant to be used for good, for healing and nurturing. Through it we embrace the seasons and call upon nature to enhance our time here on this bonny earth. Those who do not understand this tell lies about us and persecute us. When I was a child I did not use my magic for many years, and when I ran away I had to, to protect myself. In the work I
do, I am lucky to have this gift, and I know that.” She sighed. “I have kept myself clean and I have kept myself barren, but even these things make the other women wonder why my fate is so different to theirs. That is why they saw the truth about me, because the whispers were already being passed about that I was not like them.”

Gregor nodded. He could see the narrow path she had to walk. To use magic to protect herself brought its own danger. Thankfully, she'd been able to keep herself safe. He stroked his hand down between her breasts and across the soft curve of her belly, where she was still naked and warm from their lovemaking. With one finger he caressed her, and her skin shivered under his touch. He covered her belly with his splayed palm. “You can deny a man's seed, here?”

She nodded. “I have been doing that particular enchantment for so long that I think maybe now I cannot ever change it back, and…” Turning her face away, she left her statement incomplete.

He sensed pain in her, as well as fear and loss. Something inside him yearned for that to be gone. He had thought her mercenary and tough, but beneath it all she was soft and womanly and craved the things she was made for—desire, affection, safety, a warm bed and a better life than she had been granted thus far.

“Hush now. Better things lie ahead. Believe in that.”

“Yes, we must, for that is what keeps us alive.” A moment later she drew his hand away from her belly and meshed her fingers with his. It was an attempt to divert him from where the conversation had led him.

“Terrible things happen to whores and their children.” Her voice had changed, the vulnerability had gone, and yet he felt it still, for he would not forget that wishful, yearning note in her voice. “I have seen the bairns dying of starvation, and I
have seen the women beaten and left for dead in the gutter. Or worse still, the pox.” Jessie's pretty mouth tightened and she shook her head, as if unwilling to say more.

Gregor's thoughts clarified. He sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. He pushed his fingers through his hair. “You will not have to return to that. I will double what I promised to pay you. You will be comfortable and you can start a new life in the Highlands.”

Jessie sat up alongside him and covered one of his hands with hers. Mercifully, she held her tongue and nodded in agreement.

“The sooner you locate the information we need, the sooner you will be safe and my task will be done.” He steeled himself. “Mister Grant, the excise man—do you remember him?”

She nodded.

“I spoke with him last night, and he informed me there will be a sale of land and cattle soon, and it is definitely Wallace who is selling. All I need you to do is to find out which land will be offered to the auctioneer, and I can bid on both it and the cattle.”

Her mouth lifted at one corner and mischief flitted through her expression. “Which land would you like it to be, Gregor?”

He was about to respond and then paused, gazing at her, his ability to comprehend her talents sorely stretched. Could it be true? “You think you can hold sway over such a thing?”

“I believe so.”

If she could influence the choice of land, all the better. Marveling at her, he simply stared, dumbfounded.

She shivered and reached for her nightdress and pulled it on. “You wish to reclaim your father's homestead, Strathbahn?”

The question pulled him out of his daze.

“Aye, I do.” His heart was, however, heavy on that matter.
“I cannot go back to Strathbahn, that much I know. But I would like to see a tenant happy there, making good use of the land. Bringing it back to what it was.”

“Put your faith in me.” She clutched his hand and lifted it to her lips, where she planted a kiss upon his palm. She closed his fingers over it, and he felt both heat and a deep sense of reassurance in the strange token. That she was not quite of this world he now knew for sure.

“I will put my faith in you, if you promise to protect your self, first and foremost.”

When she smiled, it made him want to keep her by his side. However, the knowledge that she could call upon magic calmed his reckless thoughts about forbidding her return to the hall. It was getting more difficult by the moment to imagine sending her back there, but if she could use her secret talent to protect herself and to influence what land would go on sale, that would hasten matters.

As they rose to their feet he held on to her with one hand around her waist. “Meet me at the same time tomorrow night.”

“Yes, but wait for me close to the stables.” She gestured to the opposite side of the hall, where stables and outhouses sprawled beyond the tall hedges. “There is less chance of me being seen from the windows if I stay close to the building. Be cautious in your approach.”

She stepped away, her fingers still in his. As she peered up at him she broke into a soft laugh. “Why, Mister Ramsay, you look so serious. Be happy. We are within reach of your goal.”

Her eyes flashed in the moonlight and then she flitted away, a fast-moving white streak in the darkness that held his attention until she vanished from sight, and long after.

 

Jessie raced along the wall toward the servants' entrance, then paused and rested her back against the cold, rough surface, catching her breath. It was the heady rush of their meeting as much as the run that had left her this way.

When she'd left this spot to meet Gregor earlier that night, she had expected him to be stern and cold, as he had been the last time she'd seen him. Instead he'd looked distraught, and he'd held her close. He had missed her. A fist clenched in her chest, then loosed and blossomed when he kissed and held her.

She could still see him now, his face and shirt visible as he stood among the trees, observing her return to Balfour Hall. Longing whispered across the space between them. Her breath huffed out in a soft laugh. It had to be her essence that made it so. She had marked him like a wild thing claiming its territory. The strange connection was fading even while she stared over at him, but it touched her deeply all the same.

Their lovemaking had been so poignant and so powerful that her magic had swelled and rippled all around them. Now she knew that it truly was Gregor who made her gift more rich and powerful. It was her union with him that had brought it about.

The fact that he had not turned away from her, that he had observed and accepted her in her most natural form, made her release the most overwhelming she had ever experienced. For the first time since she had been split from her kin, she did not feel alone. Never before had she been accepted, and never before had it mattered so much that she would be. At first there had been wariness in his expression, but he had thought on it, she could tell, and when he'd opened to her, oh, the release she felt!

I will treasure this for the rest of my days, however many they shall
be.
An image of her dead mother flashed through her mind, as it often did when she thought beyond the next moment. With one hand resting on her chest, Jessie stilled her breathing, and then forced herself to turn away and lift the latch on the door.

As she closed the door behind her and clicked the latch into place, a shiver ran over her. She pulled her shawl closer, but her senses warned her it was not cold that touched her now, but the presence of another.

The sound of her own breathing filled her ears. She barely dared turn around, and when she did, her heart sank.

In the darkness, a figure loomed.

Silently, Jessie willed Gregor to be gone, to hurry away from the grounds. If he lingered, discovery was a possibility. She would do everything she could to protect him from that.

“Well now,” the man said from the shadows, “what would the new serving girl be doing outside at this time of night?”

Cautiously, Jessie stepped closer, blocking the way to the door. She knew the voice, and she steeled herself to engage with him lest he look outside instead. “I was after a breath of air, Mister Cormac, sire.”

As she moved, he did, too, stepping into the fall of the moonlight from the window. It was indeed Cormac, and he was stripped to the waist, his naked chest gleaming pale in the dim light. His breeches were half-undone, and he held a glass in his hand. Not a servant's cup, no; it was one from the master's own shelf. When he closed on her, the smell of fine wine was heavy on his breath.

Drunk. Was it a blessing or a curse?

“A wild one, you are, Jessie. I knew it as soon as I saw you.” He threw back the dregs in the glass and set it on a nearby table. Quick as lightning his hands moved to her neck, where
he snatched up a skein of her hair and wrapped it around his fist, tugging on it.

It was a blessing, because Gregor would be safely gone by the time Cormac was done with her.

Pausing, he examined her expression. She knew what he sought there. She had met men like him before and knew that he wanted to witness her fear, to see her submission brought about for the sake of survival. Tugging hard, he jerked her head back. Her scalp stung, but the pain only strengthened her will. With his free hand he stroked her throat, then groped her through her nightgown, pulling it open so that he could view the dip between her breasts.

An enchantment leaped into her mind. Something that would distract him, a chair tipping over, or the bottle he had set down spilling.
I cannot risk it, not yet.
But his fingers on her breast made her stomach churn. Her lips moved, the words forming.

Then a voice from the corridor interrupted.

“Cormac?” It was a soft feminine inquiry. “Are you there?”

He had another woman warmed for the night already. Hope kindled in Jessie. He grunted, then threw an answer over his shoulder in the direction of the hallway. “Hasten back to my bed.”

However, his gaze still raked Jessie as he spoke, and it lingered in the dip between her breasts, exposed by her nightgown.

Roughly, he bared her breasts. “Make ready for me,” he called, even while he tore Jessie's nightgown fully open to examine her more closely.

Damnation. He would have her and then return to the woman who awaited.

“You will bring that wine you promised me?” The woman apparently had conditions.

Cormac cursed and let Jessie loose.

She staggered, clutching at her nightdress to cover herself.

He smirked and then reached for the bottle and the glass. “Later, Jessie,” he promised, as he left.

Not if I have anything to do with it,
she vowed.

In the shadows, she stayed quiet until his footsteps receded. While she waited, it occurred to her that Gregor's masterful touch had spoiled her, and it would be hard to warm to another lover after him. That was a major fault for a woman who made her living by opening her legs to men who paid for the favor. She sighed. A moment later, when all was quiet in the hallway beyond, she made her way to her own quarters, and as she did she was begging good fortune to light her way and keep Cormac at bay until she had what she needed of this place. Once her purse was full she could indeed move on from the trade, just as Gregor had promised.