Chapter Eighteen
The sun was setting by the time they made it back to Nettlestone Hall. Aidan made his excuses and vanished to his chamber.
Sorcha ate most of a cheese-and-vegetable pie for dinner, sitting with Aesop and Simon.
Her grandmother appeared once to freeze the milk jug so it wouldn’t spoil before the morning baking.
Also to criticize Sorcha’s tangled hair and still-pale cheeks.
Sorcha did not mention the Nightmare. She only shivered and ate another portion of pie.
Chamomile tea helped calm her nerves, but she knew she would not be sleeping for some time.
She tried to read a book, to mend a shawl she had caught on a hazel branch and torn.
She pulled a ribbon down the hall for the kittens to chase.
She folded more paper birds but hesitated to bewitch them.
The nightmare still tickled at the back of her mind.
Aesop sat in a chair in every room she wandered into and read his book.
She had the sneaking suspicion that Aidan had set him to guard her.
She tidied the flour bins, and the spice box, and counted the candlesticks because they were running out.
She built a fire in the drawing room hearth. She helped Aesop knead dough.
She ate a baked potato.
But she did not sleep.
And still Aidan did not leave his room.
Not until the moon was just rising over the hills, silvering the standing stones and shadowing the valleys.
The moonlight was the only reason she even knew Aidan was no longer upstairs.
She had been considering a second potato and a fourth cup of calming tea when one of the pigeons roosting on the roof was awakened by the large Scotsman creeping about.
The pigeon sent her a cross flash of images that frustrated a bird: loud noises at night, a wind too strong to fly with.
Wire covering cabbages and berry bushes.
Sorcha went to the window and spotted Aidan, thanks only to the pigeon and the bright moonlight. For such a large man, he was remarkably stealthy. He must have used one of the side doors. Or climbed out his window and over the balcony. Why? Because he did not want to be followed?
Sorcha was, naturally, immediately determined to follow him. It would be just like him to sneak away to deal with the Collector or some other piece of dangerous Cauldron business without her.
“You can’t go out there alone,” Aesop said when she went to the glass doors leading to the flagstone verandah. “It’s not safe.”
“I won’t be alone,” Sorcha said firmly. “I’ll be with Aidan.” Whether he liked it or not.
She liked to think she was fairly competent at sneaking about, even without the use of her red cloak. She had had some practice, after all.
She managed to follow Aidan to the back courtyard, which he vaulted over with enviable ease. She used an overturned bucket and still managed to scratch up her arms, gripping the ivy vines and praying they would hold her weight.
She spotted him at the edge of the copse behind the Hall. He ducked away from the moonlight as if it might hurt him.
Curious.
It was tricky to convince the crows and the owl hiding in the rowan tree not to join her. Even the fireflies had to be convinced to stay back, as they would give her away. The wasps could not be convinced, but then, they never could.
Aidan’s footfalls were soft, the moonlight barely finding him.
His tousled hair touched the nape of his neck, where his shirt was lacking a cravat.
Sorcha decided she quite liked the wolves’ disdain for cravats when not moving about in Society.
And the lack of frock coat made it much easier to enjoy his strong thighs.
Ogling a wolf might not be good manners, but neither was leaving her behind.
He paused.
Sorcha darted behind a poplar tree and held her breath. The wind snaked through the woods. The owl called from up high with a haunting melody.
Aidan began to walk again.
Sorcha waited for a moment before following.
And crashing headfirst into Aidan’s not-inconsiderable chest.
He grasped her shoulders, keeping her from toppling over. She scowled up at him. “How long have you known I was following you?”
“I’ve told you, Sorcha,” he said quietly, his breath ruffling the curls at her temple. “You can’t hide from me.”
She was reasonably certain he did not keep saying things that heated her down to her core and kindled inappropriate tingles on purpose.
“Sorcha.”
She scowled harder, tingles or no tingles. “Aidan.”
“This is not for you. It’s not safe.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, thank you very much.”
“I think we have adequately proven that you are a terrible judge of your own danger.”
“That is not—” She choked on the rest of her denial because the Earl of Coventry reached down, scooped her up, and gently placed her over his shoulder. Gently—but firmly. Inexorably. As if it were a perfectly easy and normal thing to do. “Aidan!”
“Yes, Sorcha?” he said calmly while she dangled there.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” She smacked him on the backside because it was all she could reach, and barely at that. She couldn’t turn in his grasp, not nearly enough to poke him in the eye.
“I don’t have time to argue with you right now.
” He continued to stalk through the woods, leaving the path for a copse of hidden oaks and wild roses.
Elderberry, the traitor, appeared to be chortling as he dipped and wheeled around them.
“And if you mean to stalk a wolf, make sure he is not downwind from you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind next time,” she gritted out. His hand was on the back of her thighs and it was…distracting. “Now put me down.”
He shifted her weight and then slid her down his body. Slowly.
“I thought you didn’t have time to argue.”
“I wasn’t planning on arguing.” He kissed her, slow and deep, dominating every one of her senses. Was that a wolf trick? Or an Aidan trick? He crowded her, lowering her onto a soft bed of bluebell leaves, under a sprawling oak tree where not even the moon could find them. “Were you?”
He dug his fingers into the soft skin on the inside of her knees and pressed them open. Patiently, slowly. Deliberately. Everything inside her turned to liquid heat. She had to bite her lip on a whimper.
“Sorcha.”
“Wh-what?”
“Are you arguing?”
“No,” she gasped. She was not arguing this turn of events. She was barely able to form a coherent thought, never mind an argument.
“Good,” he breathed against the inside of her thighs before using his shoulders to push them wider apart. “I was so hoping you’d say that.”
She wasn’t saying anything at all. She was only able to moan as he dragged his mouth over her folds, a teasing whisper of a touch. She arched closer, and his big hands gripped her hips and kept her still, the oak tree at her back doing the rest.
The brush of lips turned to a long, hungry lick. And another. And another.
“I knew you’d taste like this,” he said. “Perfect.” She dug her fingers into his thick hair, and he groaned. “Use me, Sorcha,” he demanded. “Show me what you like.”
No one had ever asked that of her before.
She found she liked it. A lot.
He licked and sucked at her as if she were a feast made just for him.
He used his tongue and his teeth, lightly.
A swirl around her bud with the flat of his tongue, a flick with the stiffened peak.
Another lick, deep and hungry, when she tightened her fingers on his hair.
Smaller sips, deeper draughts. She clung to him as he created a pattern and rubbed against his mouth, trying to swallow her whimpers, her moans.
She might as well have tried to swim to Scotland.
The forest was hers now. She claimed it with every cry and gasp, every writhing of her hips, every moan. Her release built quickly, coiling heat in her quim and her thighs, cresting until they met somewhere under his tongue and she came apart.
“Again,” Aidan demanded.
“I can’t.”
He stilled, looking up at her, eyes molten. “Are you arguing?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never… Twice?”
“Twice,” he said with smug satisfaction. “And next time, if you let me, three and then four. As many times as you can handle. Until the only thing you can say is my name.”
She would have said his name right then, but he pushed a finger deep into her warmth and curled it, rubbing that little, elusive spot.
Not elusive to Aidan Carnahan, apparently.
He added another finger and she writhed against him, whimpering.
Her second release was even more intense, until her legs were shaking and her heels dug into the earth.
Even the oak tree trembled above. He grinned and wiped his chin on his sleeve, before helping her to her feet.
She felt dazed, sated. In the best possible way.
“My turn,” she said.
But when she looked back up at Aidan, he was gone.
Without letting her touch him.
Again.
The rat bastard.