To Desire a Highlander (34 page)

“Even so, I am making it my business.” Roag stepped around before her, blocking her path, when she sought to scoot past him. “Speak true, sweet, and I will be gone.”

“I know fine you are leaving.” Her chin came up, her eyes suddenly blazing. “You have made no secret about your wish to depart, or to be rid of me.”

“You dinnae want to know what I wish.”
I want only to rip thon toweling from you and scoop you into my arms, kissing and then ravishing you properly.

“What I want, sirrah, is—”

“You want to stay here—in these isles.” Roag gripped her arms, looked down at her, locking his gaze on hers. “I mean to see that desire granted.”

It is all I can give you.

She pressed her lips together, her eyes snapping like emerald fire. But then she released her breath in a rush and broke free of his grasp to begin pacing, the linen wrapping clutched tightly about her. Clearly furious, she sailed to the window embrasure where he’d stood and then whirled to face him.

“As you will not give me any peace until I tell you, it is
my stepmother, Lady Lorna, who keeps me from returning home,” she declared, high color staining her cheeks. “It is not just that I fear for Skog.” She glanced to where the old dog slept curled on his plaid pallet before the brazier. “She is no lover of animals and can be careless in her treatment of them.”

Anger swelled in Roag’s chest. “She would hurt a bony old dog?”

He couldn’t believe it, though he should know that all manner of folk walked the earth.

In his Fenris dealings, he’d seen the worst of men, and women.

“I have already told you some of this,” she said, coming a few steps back toward him, her lavender scent swirling out before her, enticing and irritating him. “I do not think she would willfully hurt Skog or any pet. But she forgets to think of them. When a dog is old and frail, he depends on the people around him to make sure his world is safe, free of obstacles and possible dangers.

“My stepmother has other interests.” She lifted a hand, pushed her skein of damp and gleaming hair over her shoulder. “She is careless, that is all.”

“I am sorry. I didnae ken—”

“She is also unkind to my father,” she added, “though I have no proof of my suspicions.”

“She is unfaithful?” Roag guessed.

She nodded. “I have seen the way she looks at my father when she thinks no one is watching. Her eyes hold disdain, not love. Yet she stays abed with him for hours on end, sometimes even days, and I know that they…” She broke off, her cheeks brightening. “I know that they are coupling properly because I have heard the sounds when
passing their door,” she finished in a rush. “Her gasps and cries are lusty, easily heard in the passage and even down in the hall. My brothers would say you the same.”

“I see.” Roag scratched his neck, thinking.

More than one daughter had been known to resent a stepmother, especially if the father was well-loved. Whoever Lady Lorna was, whatever sort of woman she might be, she would not be the first wife of such tender years to feign passion for a much older husband. There were many such unions at court. And he wasn’t the only man who’d taken advantage.

Unhappy, poorly satisfied wives made excellent lovers.

Such women were willing and eager to air their skirts. And they made uninhibited and lascivious bedmates.

They also posed no threats to a man’s freedom, asking only discretion.

“There are worse things than a young wife pretending to desire an older husband.” Roag spoke as he saw it, not surprised when she scowled.

“It is more than that.” She grabbed her night-robe off the bed and swirled it around her shoulders, letting the damp drying linen fall to the floor. “You have not seen—”

“I ken what you mean, lass. You believe she seeks pleasure elsewhere.”

“She has a lover who visits her when my father and brothers are away at sea.” She began pacing again, another pleasing waft of lavender trailing after her. “I am sure of it, for I have seen her setting a signal lamp in her window. I caught her at it and she denied it, but not before I saw the galley that was beating toward Sway. It flashed round and sped away the moment she doused the lamp.”

“Did you no’ tell your father?” Roag was sure she hadn’t.

“I couldn’t,” she confirmed. “How could I? He is besotted with her. It would break his heart if he knew.”

“If what you say is true, he would be better off without her.” He closed the distance between them, took her hand in both of his. “You should no’ let such a woman keep you from your home.”

“She doesn’t.” She met his gaze, her voice firm. “It is for my father that I wish to stay away. It was becoming difficult to stay silent, to keep my suspicions to myself. My father is charmed, now. But he is also not a fool. The day will come when he sees through her. It is best that he does so himself. You do not know him. He is a proud man and will stand taller for handling the matter on his own. That he shall, I’ve no doubt. When that day comes, I will go home.”

She slipped her hand from his grasp, stepping away as if his nearness upset her as much as her stepmother. “Until then, I’d hoped to stay in Glasgow. It is a good distance from Sway and—”

“So is this isle.” Roag tamped down the disappointment that she didn’t wish to be here, a prospect that suddenly struck him as something he wanted above all else.

Until recently, he’d been sure he only lusted after her.

Then…

He drew a great breath, pulled a hand down over his face—almost as if he could wipe away any trace of his feelings that might show there. His ridiculous belief that Laddie’s Isle and its terrible tower needed her. That, as much he’d damned her intrusion, he now couldn’t imagine
her not being here. Her smiles and laughter in the hall of an e’en, their shared hours up on the bluff each day, the quiet trek back down in the soft light of gloaming.

The wonder she saw in the turn of the tides, the crashing of waves, or the roar of the wind. Her steadfast trust in the fey and the ways of the ancients, how she smiled each time he touched his Thor’s hammer amulet.

Her ever-amusing-to-him love of cold and rain.

How many times a day he just wanted to grab and kiss her.

He was sure all that stood on his face and for just as many reasons, he didn’t want her to see.

“You still do not understand, do you?” She came close again, going toe to toe with him. “I have nothing at all against staying here. Truth is, I have come to love this isle.

“The problem is you, not Laddie’s Isle.” She looked up at him, the firelight glinting on her hair, her lavender scent rising up between them, bewitching him yet again. “I would stay here, and gladly. For all time, even. But I have no wish to remain where I am not wanted.”

“Och, I want you fine, lassie.” It was her scent that pushed him over the edge, making him blurt the truth he’d fought so hard to hide. The blaze in her eyes, a flame he burned to see switched over into the fire of passion. “If you’d know the way of it, I have ne’er wanted a woman more.”

He started to touch her cheek, but instead he cupped the back of her neck, thrusting his fingers into her hair. “If I were a fine and courtly noble, I’d no’ be so plainspoken,” he admitted, aware of the roughness of his voice and making no attempt to hide it. “But I am my own lowborn self and I’ll no’ lie to you.

“I want you badly, lass.” He whipped his arm around her, pulling her hard against him. “So much that I’m ready to cast aside everything that’s aye mattered to me.

“Everything, that is”—he lowered his head, kissing her hungrily—“except you.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

O
h, dear…” Gillian’s heart thundered and she clutched his shoulders as she leaned into him. The desperation of his kiss stunned her, making her pulse race and blurring everything around them. Even the room seemed to tilt and spin so that she was aware of nothing except him crushing her to him, his warmth and strength, the wildness of his kiss as he plundered her lips.

He wanted her, burned for her with a force that stole her breath.

It was a revelation that startled her, need, want, and love rushing through her until her knees weakened. She was sure that if he let go of her, she’d fall to the floor. She hadn’t expected him to return her feelings, hadn’t believed he even liked her.

But there could be no denying the heat of his kiss.

The arousal that nudged her through their clothes—hindrances she wanted done with, eager as she was to feel his naked skin next to hers. The thought shocked
her, but she could no sooner banish it than tell the sea to stop crashing against the rocks below. A madness had seized her and she didn’t even care if they weren’t truly wed. They were handfasted, even if he’d accepted the bond under a different name. He was the same man and he’d sipped from her clan’s Horn of Bliss, sealing the union in a way that, to her, and anyone of her kin, was a joining more sacred than any other.

“Sweet lass, I would have you.” He spoke the words against her cheek, between kisses.

“Then do.” She decided to be bold.

In truth, how could she do anything but acquiesce when he was nuzzling her neck, skimming his lips and tongue along her skin. He murmured Gaelic love words and praise, lit soft kisses to the hollow at the base of her throat. Delicious shivers rippled through her, warm, golden flutters of need that pooled deep in her belly and low by her thighs. Each kiss he dropped on her skin, every touch, all his softly spoken words, stirred and roused her as only true love could affect a woman.

And love him she did, as she’d suspected for long.

So there was no reason not to desire him.

Far from it, she had a fervent need to claim all of him that she could. To brand herself with his touch so that she’d have something to remember him by in the long, cold nights after he’d left her. For that reason, and so many more, including that she simply wanted him, she slid her hands up between them and undid the laces of her bed-robe, letting it fall open.

“You shouldnae have done that, lassie.” He drew back to look down at her. He swept one of his hands over her bared flesh, splaying his fingers over the fullness of her
breasts as he plumped and weighed them, rolled her nipples between his thumb and forefinger.

Gillian placed her hands on his chest and then smoothed them upward, gripping his shoulders. She closed her eyes and took a long, shaky breath. She was trembling, but didn’t care. Wicked sensations raced through her, a spill of tingles that danced across her most intimate flesh, warming and exciting her. She was melting with pure need. Never would she have believed passion could be so crystalline and yet so maddeningly dizzying. Her knees had gone so weak that she could hardly stand, and the more he rubbed her breasts, his thumbs now circling round and over their thrusting crests, the closer she came to screaming out for more. She ached for a desperate, urgent something that whirled tightly inside her, threatening to consume her if not soon released.

“We can stop here, sweet,” he said, even as he lowered his head, his tongue now flicking at her breasts—his thumb still working its terrifying magic.

“I’ll no’ be wanting to end this, for sure.” He dropped kisses across her bared skin, his tongue like silken fire. “But I’ll no’ do aught you dinnae desire. You must tell me, lass. Shall we stop now?”

“No.” She spoke her mind, seeing no shame in her feelings. “I would have at least one night of passion, true carnal bliss, with you. More, if the gods are kind.”

He lifted his head, his gaze fierce. “Gillian, I would lie with you until all the world’s tomorrows, again and again if it pleased you…” Again, he said her name without her title, that intimacy—and his words—spearing straight to her heart, and elsewhere.

“Would it?” he asked, touching her face, his smile
flashing again and in a way she knew she would never forget. Lifting her hand, he pressed his lips to her palm. “I would have your answer, lass.”

“I will not keep it from you.” She met his gaze, gathered all her strength to answer true.

If she were to spend her life without him, she’d rather have heated memories than cold virtue to wrap around her when she was old and alone.

Feeling most daring, she raised her hand to his cheek, lit her fingertips across his bearded jaw, his mouth. She looked deep into his eyes as she did so, her heart knocking wildly against her ribs.

“There is much that would please me.”
A marriage in truth with the man I’ve come to love and desire, the chance to make a home of this tower, to know the isle is smiling again, if ever it did, and to raise our children here, teaching them to love and care for this world I can’t bear to leave.

Unless it were to be at your side in another place you love more.

“I am not a shy lass,” she said, leaving her heart’s cries unspoken. “There can be no wrong in a handfasted pair mating. Though, in truth, I would see no shame anyway. Viking blood runs in the veins of Hebrideans. We are strong and proud, a lusty race.”

Proving it, she cradled his face and kissed him deeply, letting her robe slip to the floor as she did so. Stepping out of it, she kicked it aside to stand unclothed before him, desiring no more than to feel his hot naked flesh pressed tight to hers. “I’ve been waiting for this for so long.”