There were unpleasant sensations, too: sleeping on the hard, cold floor whilst she curled cozily in the overstuffed bed with the beastie. The tension of watching the lass’s ankles and calves as she sauntered about. The sickness he felt in his stomach when he gazed upon the soft rise of her breasts in her gown.
He’d seen much more than that, yestreen, when the audacious wench had tugged a heavy tub before the fire and proceeded to fill it with pails of steaming water and sprinkle it with herbs.
He’d not comprehended what she was doing until she’d been as naked and rosy-bottomed as when she’d arrived at the castle a fortnight past, and then he’d been too stunned to move.
Feeling strangely nauseous, he’d finally gathered his wits and fled the hall, chased by the lass’s soft derisive snort. He’d warred with himself on the newly laid terrace, only to return a quarter hour hence and watch her from the shadows of the doorway where she couldn’t see him. Swallowing hard, endeavoring to slow his breathing, to stop the thundering of his blood in his veins, he’d watched her soap and rinse every inch of her body.
When his hands were trembling and his body aching in odd places, he’d closed his eyes, but the images had been burned into his brain. Thirteen more days, he told himself. Less than a fortnight remained until he could return to his king.
But with each day that passed, his curiosity about her grew. What did she ponder when she sat before the hearth staring into the flames? Why had she no man when the other village women did? Why did she watch him with that expression on her face? Why did she labor so over her letters? Why did she want him to touch her? What would come of it, were he to comply?
And the most pressing question of late, as his thoughts turned less often to his king and more often to that puzzling pain between his legs or the hollow ache behind his breastbone:
How long would he be able to resist finding out?
Nine
“WHAT ARE YOU WRITING?” AEDAN ASKED CASUALLY, HIS tone implying that he cared not what she replied, or even if she did.
Although her heart leaped, Jane pretended to ignore him. They sat in chairs at catty-corner angles near the hearth in the great hall; she curled near a table and three bright oil globes, he practically inside the hearth atop the blaze. He’d been surreptitiously watching her across the space of half a dozen feet for over an hour, and his question was the first direct one he’d asked of her since her arrival at Dun Haakon that didn’t concern castle matters. Concealing a smile, she continued writing as if she hadn’t heard him:
He rose from the chair so abruptly that it toppled over, crashing to the floor. His aquamarine eyes glittering with desire, he ripped the sheaf of papers from her hands and threw them aside. He towered over her, his intense gaze seeming to delve into her very soul. “Forget these papers. Forget my question. I want you, Jane,” he said roughly. “I need you. Now.” He began to strip, unlacing his linen shirt, tugging it over his head. He pressed a finger to her lips when she began to speak. “Hush, lass. Doona deny me. ’Tis no use. I will have you this night. You are mine, and only mine, for all of ever, then yet another day.”
“Why another day?” she whispered against his finger, her heart hammering with nervousness and anticipation. She’d never been with a man before, only dreamed of it. And the dark Highlander standing before her was every inch a dream come to life.
He flashed her a seductive grin as he unknotted his plaid and let it slip down over his taut buttocks lean, muscular hips. Bracing his hands on the arms of her chair, he lowered his head toward hers. “Because not even forever with you will be enough to satisfy me, sweet Jane. I’m a greedy, demanding man.”
“I said what are you writing?” His voice was tight.
His hard body glistened bronze in the shimmering light of dozens of oil globes. “I can’t resist you, lass. God knows I’ve tried,” he groaned, his voice low and taut with need. “I think about you day and night, I can’t sleep for wanting you. ’Tis a madness I fear will never abate.”
Jane swallowed a dreamy sigh and paused, quill poised above the paper. She arched a brow at him, outwardly calm while inwardly melting. His eyes flashing in his dark face, he coiled tensely in his chair, as if he might leap up at any moment. And pounce. Oh, if only!
“Why do you care?” she said with a shrug, trying to sound nonchalant. She was sick of being patient. She knew that the presence of the villagers, the laboring with his hands on what had once been his home, and his nocturnal spying upon her in the bath were beginning to take a toll. She’d been wise to take a passive role for the past two weeks, but it was time to be more proactive. She had twelve days, and she was not going to lose him.
“You do nothing without purpose,” he said stiffly. “I merely wish to know your purpose in practicing your letters so faithfully each eve.”
Jane pressed her quill to parchment again:
He tugged her up from the chair, crushing her body against the hard length of his own. Gazing into her eyes, he deliberately rocked his hips forward so she could feel his huge cock need. Hard and hot, his impressive erection he throbbed, pressing through the thin silk of her gown …
Jane blew out a breath of pure sexual frustration—writing love scenes sure could be sheer torture for a girl with no man of her own—and placed the quill aside. Sexpot promptly jumped onto the small side table and attacked the feather, shaking it violently. Rescuing the quill before the kitten shredded yet another one, she hesitated before answering. She knew that one inadvertent misstep might drive him back into his rigid shell. He’d made it clear he would never permit her to touch him. She had to find a way to coax him to touch her.
“I’m not practicing my letters. I write stories.”
“What kind of stories?”
Jane stared at him hungrily. He was so damned sexy sitting there. Only yesterday he’d taken to wearing a plaid for the first time since his arrival, saying it was cooler to work in. There he sat looking just like her Aedan, clad in crimson and black and no shirt. His upper body glistened with a faint sheen of sweat as he perched as close to the fire as he could get.
“You wouldn’t understand any of it,” she said coolly.
“Understand what?” he said angrily. “I understand many things.”
“You wouldn’t understand what I write about,” she goaded. “I write about human things, things you couldn’t possibly understand. Remember, you’re not human,” she pressed. “By the way,” she added sweetly, “have you figured out yet what you actually are?” There, she thought smugly, he looked incensed. Her Aedan was a proud man and didn’t like to be belittled. Over the past week he’d begun to display resentment toward anything resembling a direct order, which pleased her and made her suspect that he would defy her outright, were she to issue a firm command.
Anger and confusion warred behind his eyes. “I have been laboring with other humans. You doona know what I can and can’t understand.”
“Never read my stories,” she said sternly. “They are private. It’s none of your business, Aedan.”
“So long as I am laird of this castle, everything is my—” He broke off with a stricken expression.
“Laird of this castle?” she echoed, searching his gaze. He hadn’t even bothered to chastise her for calling him “Aedan.”
He stared into her eyes a long moment, then said stiffly, “I meant that the villagers think I am, so if you’re to live here, in what they think is my castle, you should abide by that perception, too. Or find another place to live, lass. That’s all I meant,” he snapped, then pushed himself angrily up from his chair. But at the doorway, he cast a glance over his shoulder so full of frustrated longing, so rife with desire, that it sent a shiver up her spine. It was plain to see that he was beginning to feel all the things he’d once felt, but couldn’t understand them.
Much later, Jane scooped up her papers in one arm and Sexpot in the other. She knew exactly which scene of the manuscript she was working on to inadvertently leave lying about tomo
rrow.
Ten
The first time he kissed her slowly, brushing his lips lightly back and forth, creating a delicious sensual friction, until hers parted, yielding utterly. The second, deeper, even more intimately, and the third so possessively that it made her dizzy. His silky tongue tangled with hers. He fitted his mouth so completely over hers that she could scarcely breathe. If a kiss could speak, his was purring, “You are mine forever.”
Subsequent kisses blended, wet and hot and intoxicating, one into another until her head was reeling. She trembled, burning with the scorching heat of desire.
She whimpered when he traced the curve of her jaw, down her neck to the top of her breast. His touch evoked a blend of lassitude and adrenaline that made her feel strong and weak at the same time. Soft and supple, yet close to aggression. Hot and needy and achy.
His aquamarine eyes promised lovemaking that would strip bare far more than her body. Gently slipping the sleeves of her gown from her shoulders, he bared her breasts to his hungry gaze. The chilly air coupled with the molten promise in his eyes made her breasts feel tight and achy. When he lowered his dark head and captured a pouty nipple in his mouth, she whimpered with pleasure. When he buried his face between her breasts, slipping her gown down over her hips, she pressed her honeyed womanhood against him, clinging.
His lips seared her sensitive skin. He scattered light kisses across her tummy, nipping and nibbling, then dropping to his knees before her.
She could barely stand, her knees so weak with desire, and when his hot tongue pressed to her hotter flesh, lapping sweetly at her passion juices most private heat, she nearly screamed with the exquisiteness of it.
Jane stood in the doorway of the great hall, a smile curving her lips, watching Aedan. Fifteen minutes ago, she’d informed him that she was going to take a quick nap before beginning preparations for their evening meal. She’d headed for the bedchamber, conveniently leaving a few pages of her manuscript lying beside the hearth, as if forgotten.
He’d nodded nonchalantly, but his gaze had betrayed him by drifting to the parchment. Shortly after retiring to the bedchamber, she’d crept back to the hall. He was standing by the fire, reading so intently that he didn’t even notice her standing in the shadows of the stone doorway, watching as his eyes narrowed and his grip tightened on the parchment. After a few minutes, he wet his lips and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“I feel quite rested now,” she announced, striding briskly into the hall. “Hey!” she exclaimed, feigning outrage that he was snooping. “Those are my papers! I told you not to read them!”
His head shot up. His eyes were dark, his pupils dilated, his chest rising and falling as if he’d run a marathon.
He shook the parchments at her. “What are these … these … scribblings?” Vengeance demanded in a voice that should have been firm but came out sounding hoarse. His chest felt tight, that heavy part of him betwixt his legs … och, Christ, it hurt! Instinctively, he palmed it through the fabric of his kilt to soothe it, hoping the pain would diminish, but touching it only seemed to make it worse. Appalled, he removed his hand and glared at her. She seemed to find the gesture quite fascinating.
Jane cornered him and tried to grab the papers from his hand, but he held them above his head.
“Just give them back,” she snapped.
“I doona think so,” he growled. He stood looking at her, her jaw, her neck. Her breasts. “This man you write of,” he said tensely, “he has dark hair and eyes of my hue.”
“So?” she said, doing her best to sound defensive.
“ ’Tis me you write about,” he accused. When she made no move to deny it, he scowled. “ ’Tis in no fashion a proper woman might write—” He broke off, wondering what he knew of proper women when he knew naught of female humans but what he’d learned from her. He studied her, trying to think, which was immensely difficult with parts of his body behaving so strangely. His breath was too short and shallow, his mouth parched, his heart pounding. He felt intensely alive, all his senses stirring … demanding. Starving for touch. “This pressing of the lips of yours makes one feel as if one is”—he glanced back at the papers—“burning with the scorching heat of desire?” He, who’d long been cold, ached to feel such heat.
“Yes—if a man’s any good at it,” she said archly. “But you’re not a man, remember? It probably wouldn’t work for you,” she added sweetly.
“You doona know that,” he snapped.
“Trust me,” she provoked. “I doubt you have the right stuff.”
“I doona know what this right stuff of yours is, but I know that I am formed like a man,” he said indignantly. “I look as all the villagers do.” He thought hard for a moment. “Verily, I believe I am more well formed than the lot of them,” he added defensively. “My legs more powerful,” he said, moving his plaid to display a thigh for her. “See? And my shoulders are wider. I am greater of height and girth, with no excess fatty parts.” He preened for her, and it was everything she could do not to drool. More well formed? Sheesh! The man could drive the sales of Playgirl right through the roof!
“Whatever,” Jane said, purloining one of her teenage niece Jessica’s most irritating responses, guaranteed to provoke, issued in tones that implied nothing he could say or do might interest her.
“You would do well not to dismiss me so lightly,” he growled.
They stared at each other for a long tense moment, then he glanced back at the parchment. “Regardless of whether I’m human or no, ’tis plain from your writings that you wish me to do such things to you.” His tone challenged her to deny it.
Jane swallowed hard. Should she pretend to order him not to? Should she concede? She was on tricky terrain, uncertain what would push his buttons just a teeny bit further. He was so close to falling on her like a ravening beast—and God, how she wanted him to! As fate would have it, her very indecision provoked him correctly. As she hesitated, nibbling on her lower lip, a thing she did often while thinking hard, his gaze fixed there. His eyes narrowed.
“You do wish me to,” he accused. “Else you would have denied it outright.”
She nodded.
“Why?” he asked hoarsely.
“It will … er, make me happy?” she managed lamely, twirling a strand of hair around her finger.
He nodded, as if that were a fine excuse. After a moment’s hesitation he croaked, “You wish this now? At this very moment? Here?” He fisted his hands, half crumpling the parchment. His blasted voice had risen and dropped again like a green lad’s. He felt incomparably foolish. Yet … also as if he faced a moment of ineluctable destiny.
Jane’s throat constricted with longing as she gazed at him. She wanted him every bit as much as she needed to breathe and eat. He was necessary to the care and feeding of her soul. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Vengeance stood motionless, his mind racing. His king had ordered that he not permit a human female to touch him. But he’d said nothing about Vengeance touching a human female. There was this thing inside him, this great gnawing curiosity. He wondered if there was such a thing as “burning with the scorching heat of desire,” and if so, just how it might feel. “If I do this, you may not touch me,” he warned.
“I can’t touch you?” she echoed. “That’s so ridiculous! Don’t you wonder why your king made up that idiotic rule?”
“You will do as I demand. I will do this thing as you have written, only if you vow not to touch me.”
“Fine,” she snapped. Anything to get his hands on her. She’d cheerfully acquiesce to being tied to the bed, if she must. Hmmm … intriguing thought, that.
When he stepped forward, she tipped her head back and gazed up at him.
He glanced swiftly at the parchment, as if committing it to memory. “First, I am to brush my lips lightly across yours. You are to slightly part yours,” he directed.
“I think we can play it by ear,” she said, leaning minutely
nearer, praying fervently that he wouldn’t change his mind. She felt she might combust the moment he touched her, so long had she ached to feel his hands on her body.
He glanced back at the parchment with a look of alarm and confusion. “You mentioned naught of ears in your writing. Am I to do something with your ears, too?”
Jane nearly whimpered with frustration. Snatching the parchment from his hands, she said, “It’s a figure of speech, Aedan. It means we’ll figure it out as we go along. Just begin. You’ll do fine, I promise.”
“I’m merely trying to ascertain we both know our proper positions,” he said stiffly.
The hell with proper, Jane thought, moistening her lips with her tongue and gazing up at him longingly. The last thing she wanted from him was proper. “Touch me,” she encouraged.
Warily, he leaned closer.
Jane swayed forward, drawn like a magnet to steel. She wouldn’t be satisfied until she was clinging to him like Saran Wrap. Although she was forbidden to out and out touch him, once he touched her, she certainly could press against him.
But still, he didn’t move.
“Would you please just start already?”
“I am not quite certain I know what your ‘most private heat’ is,” he admitted reluctantly. What was happening to him? he wondered. Complying with his demand, she was not touching him, but the tips of her breasts nearly brushed his chest, he could feel the heat of her body, and an alarming urgency flooding his.
“I’ll help you find it,” she assured him fervently.