To Tempt Highland Fate (The Mac Coinnach Brothers) (46 page)

             
When Drust made no move to comply, Willa took him by the shoulders and pushed him gently back so that he fell against the pillows with a grunt. 
Headstrong arse
. 

             
She felt the hard flex of his muscles under her fingertips, and she knew that if wasn’t so weakened by fever and loss of blood, she would never have managed to budge him.  Even after a week of no more than water and broth, his body still rippled with taught muscle, and his skin still glowed a sun-kissed bronze under the pallor.  If he was so breathtakingly handsome now, Willa thought, imagine what he must look like at his best!  But as it was now, he went down easily, and she wasted no time lifting one of his long legs and then the other onto the bed so that he lay flat on his back.  He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, but she did not think it was pain alone that made him do so.  He was proud, and angry, and not used to having someone care for him.  This she understood.  Suddenly a wave of tenderness washed over her and she wanted to soothe and coddle him, in the gentle way only a woman can.  For a moment she felt deeply compelled to lean over and kiss him, and her heart began to race.  But surely he wouldn’t welcome her kiss, or her coddling, at least not in his present mood.  He was a bit feral, this warrior.  She would need to tame and coax him to her.  Still, she couldn’t resist smoothing his hair back from his face and then trailing her hand down the bold line of his jaw.  He closed his eyes at her touch, turning his face slightly into her palm.  God, but the stubborn man craved tenderness, even as he fought so hard against it.  Perhaps she should have kissed him when he lay unconscious, then her curiosity might have been satisfied with him never the wiser.  His lips looked so tempting…

             
“Let me heal you”, she implored softly, trying a different approach. “Please let me do this.  I want to.”

             
Drust opened his eyes and looked up at her with an expression of distrust and doubt.  “Why?”

             
The question held a subtle undercurrent of need that Willa easily heard in his voice.  Empathy was her greatest strength, and she understood that it was not only physical healing that this man needed of her.  There was a darkness in his heart that kept him from being whole, a pain that kept him from feeling joy.  And she wanted to be the one to fix it.  Perhaps her desire to heal him was only a temporary refuge from her own problems, but even so, it was a welcome one.  She would much rather turn her energies outward to help others than wallow in self pity for things she could do nothing about at the moment. 

             
“Because I want to.  You see, sometimes I fancy that I can make a small difference in the world, and I only ask that you indulge me for a while.”

             
Drust finally released some of the tension in his shoulders and relaxed slowly back into the pillows, watching her all the while.  It wasn’t quite that he didn’t trust her.  He felt instinctively that she really did want to help him.  He sensed no darkness about her; in fact she seemed to emanate a kind of quiet peace that contrasted sharply and seductively with the way her mere presence made his body come alive.  It was just that he didn’t really want or deserve her care. 
Anyone’s care
.  He wanted to be alone with the familiar darkness that had enveloped him for so long, that he had accepted and made a part of his world.  Alone to recover and to decide what to do with a life he had thought was forfeit.  He would return home just as soon as he was strong enough, aye.  His brothers had to know that he lived.  But he didn’t feel as happy about returning as he thought he should.  Something was different; he had changed somehow.  He suddenly wanted…
something more
.  But he didn’t know what, exactly, only that the course of his life had to change from what it was before he had almost died.  He had held no wish for death, exactly.  But the prospect of sacrificing himself for a greater cause had given him a kind of peace he hadn’t felt in a long time.  A knowledge at last of his place… of the meaning of his existence.  Now… now that peace was gone, replaced by a restlessness of body and spirit that was confounding in its intensity. And in his present condition he could not fight.  He could not train hard to work off the edge, which made it all the worse.  He was going to go crazy before all of this was done.

             
He looked at Willa, preparing fresh bandages for his wound.  A great deal of his restlessness seemed to be translating itself into lust, and he could not be certain if it was because lust was the only real outlet for his energy at the moment.  Whatever the reason, it had plagued him almost since he had woken up. It made it difficult to think of anything else but having his hands on Willa’s sweet curves, and how good it would feel to press himself deep inside her, rutting like some wild beast until he exploded…

 
                  Willa’s hands slipped under the hem of his shirt and tugged it up past the bandages wrapped around his chest.  His wandering thoughts stopped abruptly as every sense heightened and a tingling jolt of awareness ran through his body, to the very tips of his fingers .  The feel of her hands sliding lightly over his bare skin was almost more than he could bear.  He struggled to keep his breathing even, eventually holding his breath to keep from sighing with pleasure.  He
wanted
her hands on him.  Damn, but it felt so good!  Pleasure raced through his body, and soon he only wanted more.  His cock was rock hard, throbbing, aching, and he suddenly craved her more than his next breath.  It was all he could do to keep his arms at his sides and not reach for her and pull her down for a very deep, very carnal kiss, even knowing he was in no shape for such things at the moment.  And so he clenched his hands into fists and shut his eyes, fighting for control, knowing his breaths were coming too fast and his heart was pounding loudly enough that surely she could hear it.  He found himself again wondering dimly if she had perhaps placed some sort of spell on him, that he would react so strongly to a simple touch.  After all, the lass was only changing a bandage, he chided himself.  He had had plenty of bandages tended by pretty lasses in the past without feeling the pressing need to spend himself inside them.

             
“Are you all right?” Willa asked, looking at him with concern.  “Am I hurting you?”

             
“No”, he ground out.  “Just be done with it and leave me alone.”  Because her touch on his skin was akin to torture.  A very sweet torture that in truth he liked far too much.  Images flashed through his mind of how she had tied him to the bed before he awoke from the fever… ah God, that was far too dangerous a thought…

             
Och, shite, I’m losing my god dammed mind!

              Shooting him a look of pure exasperation, Willa finished applying fresh bandages and then heaved a sigh. It certainly looked to her like the man was in pain.  He was breathing rapidly and a sheen of sweat had broken out on his forehead.  His eyes were shut tight and his lips pressed together.  Strange, because the wound seemed to be healing well now that the fever had passed. But Maura had said it went clear to the bone.  Of course it would be terribly painful still.

             
“The worst is over, I think.  It’s healing well.”  She pulled the blanket over him and gathered the old bandages.  Then she happened to look down, and the bulge beneath the thin blanket was unmistakable.  Poor man!  He
was
in pain.  Quite a bit, by the looks of it. 

             
“Drust… I…”

             
His eyes flew open and he glared at her.  “Please just leave.  I’m tired and I want to sleep.”

             
She wanted to argue.  No… what she really wanted was to be the one who relieved him of that ache, which was obviously making him irritable.  Or more so than usual, anyway.  Just the thought of it sent a warmth flooding between her legs, and she instinctively clenched her thighs together to ease it. 

             
“Fine.  I’ll look in on you later, and you had better be here in this bed”, she said firmly. “Because I will not have you getting worse or dying on my watch.”

             
Drust managed to shoot her a slightly bemused look. She was giving him orders again.  He took orders from his older brother, and no one else.  Until now, apparently.  “Trust me, I willna move from this spot.”  Because, quite honestly, he didn’t think he could.

Chapter 8

             
Willa put another log on the kitchen fire and sank down into a chair in front of the dancing flames, if only to prevent herself from going back into the bedroom without a good excuse, like she wanted to.  It wasn’t as if Drust was the kind of man to appreciate idle chatter or even casual conversation.  Besides, he needed to rest. 

             
But God, if the man had made her come alive when he was unconscious, she was now absolutely humming with energy and excitement.  And her body… it no longer seemed to be her own.  Although she had always had a healthy feminine appreciation for the masculine form, never before had she had an almost uncontrollable urge to experience it firsthand.  She didn’t even know this man, yet she could say with certainly that he was the first and only one she wanted, without a doubt, in her bed.  And ironically, he
was
in her bed.  How she wished Maura was home so she could talk to her about this, but she knew what the other woman’s sage advice would be: to reach out and take what life is handing you.  Surely such a strong and sudden attraction to a man she didn’t even know had to be more than coincidence; and besides, she was tired of wondering what true passion with a man was like.  She was more than ready to find out for herself.  But was Drust attracted to her as well?  She had seen a tell-tale bulge under the bed clothes on more than one occasion, including earlier when she had changed his bandages.  She may not be as worldly as she’d like to be, but she was fairly certain the answer was yes.  And by all that was holy, if she didn’t want him too!  Badly.  He was already doing things to her body that she had never even imagined… and he hadn’t even touched her. 

              Drust had slept all evening, a deep healing sleep that she didn’t want to wake him from, so she crawled into Maura’s bed for the night.  By the time she looked in on him the next morning, he was already awake, so she made him some porridge and brought it to him on a small tray, along with strong, hot tea from her stash she had brought from home.  Looking back at her planned escape from her disastrous betrothal, perhaps bringing tea had been a little impractical, but she was glad to have it now to give to Drust.  She was certain he would like it.  She brought in her own cup and sat down on a chair near the bed.  Holding it in both hands, she let the fragrant steam rise up and breathed it in.  He watched her, then picked up his own cup.

              Drust stared at the cup for a long moment.  It smelled like tea.  It couldn’t be.  Tea had to be brought from a faraway land to the east, and very few people in all of Scotland or England even knew it existed, though a seer had once mentioned to him that one day it would be so popular, wars would be fought over it.  His eyes shot to Willa. 

             
“This is tea”, he said accusingly.

             
She could not hide the look of surprise on her face.  “You know what tea is?”

             
“Aye.  And I ken how hard it is to come by.  Where did ye get it?”

             
She raised an eyebrow and gave him a mysterious little smile.  “Does it matter where I got it?  Just drink it, and eat the porridge too.  If you do all right with that, tonight I’ll cook you a proper meal.”

             
He let the matter go, for now, but added it to all of the other inconsistencies surrounding Willa.  This lass was not at all what she seemed.