She blinked up at him like an upended turtle as he prowled over her on hands and knees until they were nose to nose, their lips only a breath away from meeting. “I can assure you, lass, that Brigid was more than willing to satisfy my ‘baser needs.’ But I didn’t take her up on her offer. If I had, I’d be down there right now doing all the things to her that I so desperately want to do to you.”
Chapter Seventeen
JAMIE’S SMOKY GROWL MADE Emma shiver deep inside, in some dark secret place no man had ever touched.
She struggled to catch her breath, imprisoned by the seductive softness of the mattress beneath her and the muscular heat of the man above her.
He wanted her. Now that she’d driven him into confessing it, there was nowhere for either of them to hide from the truth. Not behind fruitless denials and petty bickering. Not behind his contempt for the earl and her loyalty to him. And certainly not within the cozy confines of Muira’s bed.
Sharing the cold, hard ground with Jamie Sinclair was one thing. Sharing a bed with him was another matter entirely. With his weight poised so precariously above her, it was only too easy to understand just how seven strapping sons could have been sired in that bed, or how a man and a woman might best spend the bitterly cold Highland nights when the hours between sunset and dawn seemed as dark and endless as the winter.
Emma licked lips that had gone suddenly dry. “You’re dripping on me.”
Jamie waited until another drop of bath water splashed like a tear against her cheek, then leaned back on his heels. With his knees still straddling her hips, he peeled his soaked shirt off over his head and tossed it aside, revealing an alarming expanse of bare skin. The sculpted muscles of his chest glowed like bronze satin in the firelight. He used both hands to slick his wet hair back from his face. His unshaven jawline only served to emphasize the striking symmetry of his features.
He was a beautiful man. And a dangerous one.
His sodden breeches were clinging to his lean hips and powerful thighs like a second skin, giving Emma even less reason to doubt his words. She jerked her wide-eyed gaze back to his face, half afraid he was about to divest himself of the breeches as well.
“I’m doing it again, aren’t I, lass? Looking at you as if you were a trifle made from fresh strawberries…” His hungry gaze caressed the vulnerable pout of her trembling lips, then rode slowly downward, taking in the pulse beating madly at the side of her throat, the uneven rise and fall of her breasts, the provocative way the damp fabric of the nightdress was clinging to the mound between her thighs. His burr deepened on a hoarse note. “And cream.” His gaze drifted back up to her lips. “I suppose next I’ll be trying to find another ridiculous excuse to kiss you.”
“Such as?” she whispered, knowing even as she did so that her foolish challenge would not go unanswered.
He leaned down and touched his mouth lightly to her ear, his whisper a low-pitched vibration that made her shudder with desire. “Because I’m bluidy tired of bread and water.”
Before her chest could hitch with another uneven breath, Jamie’s mouth was on hers, devouring her lips with such delectable tenderness it was impossible to resist inviting him to partake even more deeply. Her arms went around his neck as his tongue parted the ripe softness of her lips, urging her to join the feast. Her tongue danced over the smoky velvet of his with a wanton hunger that shocked even her. This wasn’t just a tantalizing taste of pleasure. It was a banquet for her starving senses.
His kiss made her crave delights she could not name. She yearned for something sweeter than honey and infinitely more filling than ambrosia. As she stroked her fingers through his damp hair, sweeping it into a veil of silk around their faces, he groaned deep in his throat.
If his mouth on hers had been pure bliss, there were no words to describe the moist heat of it gliding over the sensitive satin of her throat, nibbling at the tender swath of skin behind her ear, giving her earlobe a sharp nip, then turning her startled squeak into a gasp of raw pleasure by gently suckling the place he had nipped.
His mouth captured that gasp with another ravenous kiss, warning her that his appetites could never be satisfied by pressing his lips to a lady’s wrist or stealing a chaste peck in some ballroom alcove.
Jamie Sinclair was no gentleman. He was a man.
Despite the ferocity of his kiss, his hand was irresistibly gentle as it closed over her breast through the damp fabric of the nightdress. He fit her softness to his broad palm as if she had been fashioned by God just for him. Any fears that he might find her lacking in comparison to the buxom Brigid were laid to rest by the reverent sigh he breathed into her mouth.
Emma had never dreamed such strong hands could be so gentle—or so nimble. Jamie tenderly brushed the callused pad of his thumb over the rigid bud of her nipple again and again, creating a friction so exquisite it was almost painful. She moaned and clenched her thighs together against a delicious little throb, his deft caress making her feel as if he was stroking her everywhere at once.
Taking her moan as one of invitation, Jamie lowered his weight, covering her fully. Although the snow continued to cascade past the bedchamber’s darkened windowpane, it was impossible to believe she had ever been cold or that she ever would be again. Not with Jamie’s arms to warm her, his tongue to kindle a scorching spark of desire in the depths of her mouth and his clever hands to stroke that spark into a living flame. That flame soared to dangerous heights when he used one knee to nudge her thighs apart and settled his hips between them.
He groaned into her mouth, warning her that if it wasn’t for the rumpled folds of the nightdress and the wet buckskin of his breeches, he wouldn’t just be on top of her; he would be inside her.
Lacing his fingers through hers, he gently imprisoned her hands on either side of her head. Bracing the weight of his upper body against their intertwined hands, he rocked between her legs in a rhythm new to her but as ancient as the mountains surrounding them. Waves of pleasure began to fan out from the tender cleft where his body sought to join with hers. She arched her hips, straining toward him instead of away.
As Emma trembled on the very precipice of something both terrifying and wondrous, she realized she was doing it again—bringing herself and her family to the brink of destruction just to satisfy her own selfish desires. Perhaps she really was one of those women her mother had spoken of with such contempt: a woman willing to sacrifice everything that was noble and proper and court ruin for nothing more than a few stolen moments of pleasure beneath a man’s hand… a man’s body. Yet even in that moment, she couldn’t bring herself to feel ashamed. She was too breathless with longing to feel anything but exultation. Oddly enough it was that lack of shame, that overwhelming sense of rightness she felt in Jamie’s arms, that shocked her into turning her face away from his kiss.
He immediately stilled, lifting his head to gaze down at her.
Although all she wanted to do was weep with frustration, she forced herself to meet his wary gaze. “Please. This isn’t what I want.”
Even as she whispered the words, she knew he possessed the power to prove her a liar with nothing more than a nudge from his lean hips.
The grim set of his jaw couldn’t hide the unspoken entreaty in his eyes. “There are things I could do to you, lass. Things I could do for you. Pleasures I could give you without compromising your innocence. He would never know. No one would ever know.”
Despite that innocence, Emma understood what he was offering. But she also understood just how much it would cost them both.
“He might not know,” she said softly, unable to keep the note of despair from creeping into her voice. “But I would.”
Jamie continued to gaze down at her as if weighing her words. With his fingers laced through hers and her thighs splayed open in wanton abandon, she was his prisoner in every sense of the word. She could still feel every inch of his manhood—hot, hard and heavy—pressed against her throbbing flesh. Mercy was his to grant… or deny.
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He rolled off her and to his feet in one abrupt motion, as if to linger would make such a feat impossible.
Emma had been wrong. She could be cold again. It was almost as if the snow drifting past the window was falling inside the room, casting a chill no fire could dispel.
Without looking at her, Jamie retrieved his wet shirt and shrugged it on over his broad shoulders. The cut of his breeches made it impossible for him to hide his unabated arousal.
As he strode to the door and swung it open, Emma scrambled to her knees in the middle of the bed. “Are you going to her?”
He stopped dead in the doorway but did not turn around. “No, Miss Marlowe,” he finally said. “I’m going to finish my bath.”
Although Emma sensed he would have liked nothing more than to slam the door hard enough to rattle the rafters, he pulled it shut behind him with painstaking care.
As his clipped footsteps faded, she flopped to her back among the rumpled bedclothes and gazed up at the ceiling, knowing she’d had no right to ask that question.
And even less right to be relieved by his answer.
EMMA EMERGED FROM THE cottage the next morning to discover the spell that had so enchanted her upon their arrival had been broken. Sometime during the night, the rain had returned, washing away any lingering trace of snow or magic. It was no longer raining but clouds still hung low over the glen, casting a brooding shadow over the clearing.
She had expected to spend half the night tossing and turning after sending Jamie away, but she’d been seduced into sleep by exhaustion, the lingering effects of the whisky and the irresistible warmth of the patchwork quilts heaped high upon the bed. She had awakened to find a plain but serviceable merino gown and a pair of thick plaid stockings draped over the foot of the bed. Hoping rather spitefully that they didn’t belong to Brigid, she had donned the garments and tugged on Bon’s boots before making her way downstairs. When she found no one to greet her but the grizzled old hound, she had sliced a warm slab of bread from the freshly baked loaf sitting on the table, slathered it with creamy yellow butter and wandered outside, nibbling on her pilfered prize.
Although several of Jamie’s men were already leading their mounts into the muddy yard, readying them for departure, their leader was nowhere in sight. She could not help but wonder if Jamie had come to regret his rash pledge to her. If he was even now still dozing in some cozy hayloft with a naked Brigid curled up in his arms.
Or not dozing, she thought, her appetite suddenly deserting her.
At that moment Angus—or it might have been Malcolm—came staggering into the yard with Malcolm—unless it was Angus—nearly trodding on his heels. Neither one of the twins looked as if they’d slept a wink. Angus was yawning and Malcolm’s heavy-lidded eyes were at half-mast. Emma winced as Malcolm stumbled right into the back of another man’s horse, earning himself a sound cursing from the man and narrowly avoiding a nervous kick from the horse.
The mystery of their lingering exhaustion was solved when Brigid came sashaying into the yard a few seconds later, a feline smile curving her lips and pieces of hay poking out of her tangled nest of curls. Her ample breasts were in even more danger of tumbling out of her half-unlaced bodice than they’d been the night before. Emma wolfed down the rest of the bread, her appetite miraculously restored.
The other men looked on in open amusement as Brigid wiggled her fingers at the twins. “Farewell, me sweet lads,” she sang out. “I do hope ye can come again.”
One of the men let out a bawdy hoot while the others burst into laughter. As she preened before her appreciative audience, Brigid’s gloating gaze combed the yard. When she failed to find what—or whom—she was searching for, her gloating smile turned into a pout.
She sauntered over to where Bon was slipping a bridle over the head of his sorrel. “Ye can give yer cousin a message for me,” she said, her voice loud enough to carry all the way down the mountain. “Tell him Angus and Malcolm are twice the mon he’ll ever be.”
Giving her curls a saucy toss, she continued on to the cottage, plainly aware that every mans’ gaze in that clearing was glued to the exaggerated roll of her shapely hips.
“Or one might argue it took two men to replace Jamie in the lass’…er… affections,” Bon pointed out when she was gone, earning a fresh round of laughter from his companions.
Emma gingerly picked her way through the mud to Bon’s side. Giving his sorrel’s sleek russet throat a shy stroke, she asked, “Have you seen Mr. Sinclair this morning?”
Returning his attention to his task, Bon jerked his head toward the mouth of a narrow path that wound away from the clearing and deeper into the forest. Emma frowned. Bon wasn’t like the other men. It wasn’t like him to avoid her eyes.
She was turning to follow the path when he muttered, “Mind yer step, lass. It can be treacherous out there.”
Unsettled by his warning, she followed the winding path through the forest. The rain had banished the snow and now the wind was rapidly whisking away all traces of the rain. She had never known a place with such mercurial weather, but she supposed it suited the rugged character of the men who called this mountain their mistress.
After traveling a short distance, she swept aside the gnarled branch of a rowan and emerged from the thinning trees to find herself standing on a broad bluff. The windswept glen below might have looked barren and ugly were it not for the gauzy mist of purple just beginning to creep across its rock-strewn face. The breathtaking sight gave Emma a sharp pang in her heart, almost making her regret she wouldn’t be around to see the heather in full bloom from that particular vantage point.
Jamie was perched on the edge of a large rock that bore a fanciful resemblance to the head of a sleeping lion, his sable hair blowing in the wind. His jaw was clean-shaven, making him look both younger and somehow less approachable.
He glanced up as she neared, the pen in his hand poised above the scrap of foolscap resting on a smaller rock he appeared to be using as a makeshift desk.
Emma’s steps faltered. After watching Brigid return from her torrid tryst in the hayloft, she was only too keenly aware that if she hadn’t banished Jamie from her bed last night, it could have been her curls in such wild disarray, her lips flushed and swollen from his kisses, her eyes misty with memories of the forbidden delights they had shared.
Given how they had parted, she wasn’t expecting the warmest of welcomes, but Jamie’s expression was even more guarded than Bon’s had been. “Who told you where to find me?”
“Your cousin.”
“I should have known,” he muttered, dipping the nib of his pen into the bottle of ink resting beside his knee. “He’s been meddling in my affairs since he was auld enough to crawl. He used to drop bugs into my cradle just to hear me yell.”
“Did you decide it wasn’t too late to write an ode to the gentleness of my temperament?” she ventured, nodding toward the paper.
He scrawled another line on the cheap paper. “You’re probably surprised an uncivilized Scot can write at all. Or read.”
“I assumed you wouldn’t have been accepted at St. Andrews without passing some sort of proficiency exam.”
“My grandfather taught me how to read and write English and Gaelic.” He slanted her a mocking glance. “I taught myself Latin and French.” He dipped his pen in the ink again, using it to make a bold stroke across the foolscap.
“And just where did you get all the books?”
“Oh, we didn’t just steal gold, silver and cows. Whenever my grandfather got word that the Hepburn was expecting a new shipment of books for his library…” He trailed off, his devilish smile making it only too easy for her to imagine the rest.
“Well, at least you’re putting the skills your grandfather taught you to good use.”
His smile faded. “He wouldn’t be very happy with me at the moment if he knew I was using them to pen a ransom demand.”
Emma suddenly felt as if he’d plunged the sharpened nib of the q
uill into her heart.
But she had no right to feel betrayed. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known this moment would come. If anything, she should feel relieved. He was just fulfilling his vow to her, was he not? Once the earl delivered his ransom, Jamie would set her free. She would be free to return to the loving bosom of her family, free to resume her role as dutiful daughter and be the bride of a man she neither loved nor desired.
She could hardly reproach Jamie for looking at her when she talked instead of looking through her as her family tended to do. She couldn’t scold him for making it clear he’d like to choke both her former fiancé and Lysander instead of blaming her for their shortcomings. She couldn’t chide him for making her feel safe in his arms when he was the greatest threat her heart had ever known.
And she certainly couldn’t hate him for making her believe—if only for one giddy, glorious moment while she had shared both his bed and his kiss—that she might be worth more to a man than silver or gold.
“So just how much am I worth to you?”
Jamie’s pen stilled over the foolscap. A single drop of ink welled up from the nib of the pen, falling to spatter like a drop of fresh blood against the face of the paper.
Emma struggled to inject a note of false cheer into her voice. “Five hundred pounds? A thousand? My own father sold me for five thousand pounds so I’d urge you not to settle for anything less. I’m sure the earl would be willing to pay a very dear price indeed for the womb destined to bear his future sons.”
Jamie’s grip on the pen was so tight she was surprised it didn’t snap in two. If not for the solitary muscle twitching steadily in his cheek, his profile could have been carved from the stony crags of the mountain towering above them.
When he finally turned to look at her, his piercing gaze cut straight to the quick of her heart. “You set far too low a price on yourself, Emmaline Marlowe.”