Chapter 6 #2
He laid his palm against her cheek and turned her face into the sunlight.
“I do not take my actions lightly,” he said.
“Some would go to war over what Lord Hereford has done to my family. A month ago, before my return, I was one of those men. But in the end, my brother would still be dead.” He lowered his hand.
“I wish things could be different but they are not.”
She did not pull away from his gaze as he had expected, and instead he was the one who broke contact as he bent to return her plate to the top of the knapsack.
He did not want to see Rose as anything more than political currency.
He was a pragmatist, a man at ease with his duty with no qualms doing what was necessary to secure his brother.
He’d never had much of a conscience when it came to life’s ambiguous moral choices.
So he did not understand his feelings now.
“I fear I am far braver dealing with another’s ailment than my own,” she said, returning his attention to the task at hand.
She had lifted part of the bandage and was studying the injury on her thigh.
She wrapped her hand around the whisky flask as if considering its contents, then offered it back.
“I know this is sacrilegious for me to say to a Scotsman, but whisky is nauseating. If I must get myself drunk to endure sutures, I prefer wine as my anesthetic of choice. I . . . I can do this without intoxicating myself.” She squeezed her eyes shut and said bravely. “I am ready.”
Ruark edged the flask back to her. “Drink, Rose. A sip. You might be ready, but I am not. I can knock you out and you’ll feel nothing or you can drink . . . or both.”
And strangely, the fact that Ruark Kerr, the infamous Black Dragon, did not seem bent on intentional cruelty toward her seemed to soften her eyes as if his actions somehow gave her hope that in the end he would find a way to free his brother without sacrificing her.
She was wrong. More than she could possibly know.
“My apologies, Rose.”
He could endure his own pain more than he could suffer hers. Before she could respond, he clipped her head with his fist, and darkness mercifully claimed her.
Rose dreamed in a landscape barren of color and light, gliding on wings of shadow.
Pain came and went with the darkness that weighted her like lead in water and she struggled to rise from the depths consuming her.
She could not breathe. She fought to loosen the ties that bound her before she drowned.
Cold, wet, and shuddering, Rose was not remembering the river’s rage that had nearly taken her over the falls.
She was remembering the storm that would take her mother out to sea.
She heard the seagulls screaming and wheeling above her head and the strain of battened-down canvas in the rush of wind.
People standing in the rain on the docks.
The scent of lilac, faint in the fine mist of dawn.
The warmth as someone carried her and held her, and Rose knew it was her mother.
“Roselyn . . .”
With a gasp, she opened her eyes and sat up.
Arms had come around her almost at once, gently pulling her back into a protective embrace, promising she would be safe.
In the somber shadows, she recognized nothing.
Rain fell in the darkness beyond and she was cold.
Roxburghe’s voice came to her. He lay between her and the way out of the shelter.
As if to guard her . . . or protect her.
She had not realized how close in meaning the two actions were.
There was a narrow divide between being imprisoned and safekeeping. Tonight she felt safe.
“You are dreaming, Rose.”
She splayed her fingers over his chest if only to test that he was real and not a figment of a dream, knowing she should never test boundaries.
His heartbeat was steady against her palm, like the sound of rain outside their shelter. The heat from his body warmed hers. “I . . . I am sorry,” she whispered.
His arm tightened around her, and at once, the dream of moments ago began to fade back into the darkness. “Why?”
Blinking moisture from her eyes, Rose drew in a breath. “She died alone in an angry sea. She died because of me, my lord. I want to know why.”
He pushed up on his elbow and she felt his hand go to her forehead. But she could have told him she had no fever. Even the throb in her thigh had faded to the background of her thoughts.
She could feel his gaze on her face, a palpable touch. “Who died, Rose?”
But she was emerging from her dream world now as if she had stepped from the icy mist that would drown her and into Roxburghe’s arms.
She had awakened once earlier in the day and he had given her supper and told her the weather had worsened. But in the darkness, the rain and the rest of the world faded with the dream. In the darkness, her senses hummed. Only in the darkness did she truly feel free.
He didn’t kiss her, but still she could feel his lips as he spoke so near her own, and she was suddenly remembering the way he touched her mouth at the abbey, imprinting himself on her memory like a brand.
She felt the strangest urge to be touched again. “Shh, love,” he said as if reading her thoughts.
The pads of his thumbs stroked her lower lip, his touch feathering across her face. “Bòidheach.” His head lowered and his lips brushed hers. “You are beautiful, Rose.”
She held her hands to his chest as if to push him away. Muscles constricted. A pulse beat against the heart of her hand. Hers. His. Did it matter?
His pause was infinitesimal but she could feel every sinuous detail of his conflict. She denied the urge to venture beyond, and yet . . .
He hadn’t moved from her. His hand tightened in the thick fall of her damp hair. His breath touched her lips. And as the silence lengthened between them, she resisted the impulse to turn away from him. She didn’t understand what was happening to her.
Something seemed to burn the air between them. She tried to be bold in the wake of this sensual incursion against her soul. But she found she could not, and lost herself in the swirling contradiction of her emotions.
In a measure to catch the race of her confusion and desire that suddenly spun about her like a child’s top, she raised her palms to cup his face as if to slow it instead. Understand it by its shape. His face was rough, his lips warm and his breath moist against her thumbs.
He dipped his dark head, taking her mouth in a slow kiss that melted the final remnants of her dream world and became reality.
His muscles were tense, rippling as he trailed his mouth down the column of her neck.
She lay absorbing the sensation. Her head tilted back and his lips suckled the pulse beating wildly at her throat.
With an oath, he touched his forehead to hers, pulling air into his lungs as if he’d been in a brawl.
She pulled back only to have him close his palm around her nape.
He cupped her face and lifted it to his, his breath a sultry caress on her lips.
A subtle change in his touch where his tongue had quested. “Open your mouth for me, Rose. Let me inside, love.”
The words were like drinking a heady glass of wine but his kiss was like the burn of scotch whisky as he joined his mouth seamlessly to hers. His tongue now invading as he dragged her into a long deep kiss, no longer gentle as raw, hot sensations washed over her.
And she kissed him because suddenly she could not help herself and wanting him was like wanting to breathe.
And as he lowered his weight and pressed her to the soft ground beneath her, she inhaled against the shock of his body against hers, restless as he cupped her breast and awakened her passion, as if she drew some portion of him up into herself with every breath they shared.
As if the darkness had conjured him from the shadows and given him wings to glide.
The kiss went on and on. He tasted alive. Life-giving. Like the rain that drummed in a restless cadence on the canopy of branches above their heads.
It was too late to reconcile the woman she was with what she was doing now. Too late . . .
Not even the ache on her thigh could vanquish the sweet fire of sensations.
She had never felt anything so sweet touch all of her senses at once.
Her palm grazed his upper arm and shoulder and discovered where braided muscles tightened beneath flesh.
His hand traced the curve of her waist and he pulled her against him so that her breasts flattened against his chest. The quiver that vibrated through her body sent a corresponding response through his.
She could feel the beat of his pulse as if it were her own.
His fingers splayed the round curve of her bottom and brought her more fully against his arousal.
Little separated them from full contact but the leather of his breeches.
Her fingers tangled in his thick course hair.
He smelled of earth and rain and sweat, an utterly male essence foreign to her.
’Twas not at all unpleasant. Her breathing had slowed as she followed his lead. Where his hands and mouth went on her body, hers followed on his.
In the darkness, nothing mattered but that he made her feel alive and free.
She was safe in the darkness.
His presence surrounded her.
Sliding her palms over his shoulders and down the slope of his back, she melted against him and met the plunder of his tongue. His clothes were damp, the linen of his shirt rasping against her more tender flesh, but she did not care.