Chapter 11
The hunting lodge was a two-story, ivy-covered Tudor cottage in the woods with a yard overrun by bramble and bracken.
Inside, the dusty floorboards creaked with each step.
A forest of horns gleamed back at Rose from amid a variety of weaponry on the walls.
They had barely made it to the cottage before the second storm hit them.
Rain slashed at the windows and made a drip-drip sound in the fireplace.
Ruark knelt in front of the huge stone hearth, large enough to roast a spitted boar.
Yet, somehow, he managed to build a roaring fire.
A lightning flash illuminated the room. With the heavy rain, she saw nothing but rivulets sliding down the thick lead glass.
Her teeth chattering, she moved nearer to the hearth. To Ruark.
He turned to look up at her from his position closer to the floor. He’d slicked his rain-black hair to his nape and it remained tied back. The silver ring in his ear caught a flash of light.
“It looks as if no one has been here for years,” she said.
Crouched on one knee in front of the hearth, he looked around the room. Much of the furniture remained: a long wooden trestle table and chairs, an oak breakfront stacked with a plethora of porcelain ware, none of which looked to have been touched in years. “I used to come here when I was a lad.”
Her clothes were soaked through and he dragged two heavy chairs nearer to the hearth for her to lay out her attire to dry.
He pulled blankets out of a cabinet set atop the breakfront.
Standing in front of the hearth with one hand outstretched to the warming flames, she continued to watch the fire burn.
She was neither coy nor demonstrative about her desire, but the newness of it all caused her to hesitate.
She felt shy and nervous and did not know how one behaved in such circumstances.
He’d seen her before undressed by the pond, but stripping out of her clothes now had a different connotation. She knew it. He knew it.
She could see it in his eyes as he stopped beside her to give her a blanket. Thunder grumbled against the eaves of the house. He looked up at the ceiling as a burst of lightning illuminated the room. “I need to see to Loki,” he said. “There is a stable behind this lodge.”
They had left the horse tied near the front of the house. After the fire began to warm the room, he left her to secure Loki in a stall. She remained in the silence, her eyes closed, her senses opened to the pungent woodsy smells and sounds of the night surrounding her.
Then she set aside the blanket and struggled with the hooks and strings on her bodice and skirt.
But her hands were freezing and it took her longer to remove her bodice, stays and petticoats.
She laid her stockings over the back of the chair nearest to the hearth.
Ruark still had not returned from the stable, so she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and went in search of something to drink.
Ruark did not return until sometime later. Wrapped in the woolen blanket, she had waited for what seemed an eternity. She had found a flint box and lit a candle, then discovered dusty bottles of wine in the other room. Inside the breakfront were serving dishes. She set out two glasses for the wine.
She stood at the end of the table, next to the tall carved oak master’s chair, watching nervously as Ruark stomped the mud from his boots and cursed the rain and the bloody chill.
The rain had plastered his shirt against his arms and shoulders.
“The storm looks like it might be here a few hours.” His voice partially muffled against his sleeve as he wiped his face with his arm.
When he saw what she had prepared, he paused in his remonstrations. His gaze fell first on the pallet of blankets she had made in front of the hearth, then on the table. But as he dropped his arm to his side and approached, he had eyes only for her.
She clasped the blanket tightly to her bosom. “I found bottles of wine and brandy in the back room.” Her chin lifted and her tongue seemed to move faster. “I do not think I misinterpreted your purpose for bringing me here.”
He stopped near enough to her to touch. “Nay, you have not,” he said quietly, reaching out to tilt the wine bottle into the light as if to check its contents.
She laughed, but he heard the tremble in her voice.
“I have not had anything to drink, if that concerns you. I thought . . . so that we are both clear on the matter at hand, anything I offered you this day should be done with a sober bearing. I wanted you to know my mind ’tis sound as it ever will be. ”
He looked down at the pallet she had made in front of the hearth. “Is your mind sound?”
“Are you calling me a lunatic then?”
His low laughter sounded from deep within his chest, and he reached out to smooth the hair from her face. “Maybe.”
She might be of sound mind, but she remained uncertain. The lines of his lips softened as he spanned his fingers over her cheek. “It was not my intent when I brought you here to ask why you agreed to come.”
“Should it matter?”
“Aye, I did not think it would.”
Just then, there was a patter of windblown rain against the sheaves and glass, yet neither of them looked away from the other. “I have discovered that I possess a certain honesty when around you, Ruark Kerr. ’Tis simple.”
She eased the blanket off her shoulders, bearing pale shoulders in the firelight. Then she lowered her arms and let the blanket fall to the floor.
She stood before him wearing nothing at all but the golden glow of firelight.
His eyes swept over her. She had never seen herself fully naked as she stood now before him.
She had never seen herself in another’s eyes as she saw herself now in his.
Tonight it was as if she stood on the edge of the cliffs that bordered the falls, with all the rush and wild fury of the water churning at her feet and through her veins.
Only one small step brought his body against hers.
His skin smelt of rain and sweet-scented soap, his hair smelt of cloves.
The fire blazed hot on her back and on his arms where she raised her palms to the powerful cord and muscle that delineated his shoulders.
Rivulets of water trickled from his hair to his chest.
He lowered his head. He traced the shape of her mouth with his tongue, parting her lips. “Lord, Rose . . .” His breath pushed hot against hers. “I am not myself around you. I need to slow down. Or I will hurt you.”
She clung to his arms, her fingers digging into the rigid flesh. He was thick and hard against her stomach, and as the storm outside raged, another more powerful one churned inside her.
He tangled his fingers in her hair and dragged her head back, and still she had not breathed. The silver earring caught some of the firelight and it shimmered like a star. “What is it you want, Rose?”
She wanted never to be responsible for another person’s pain again. She wanted this night with him. She wanted someone to want her!
“Open your eyes to me, Rose. Look at me.”
She played no coy game of seduction and, with a blinding honesty she was not used to feeling, she knew that neither did he. He wanted her.
The pads of his thumbs stroked her lower lip, his touch feathered across her face. His warm mouth moved downward until it closed over the turgid hardness of her nipple. A shiver passed over her.
She melted against him and her head tilted back as his lips suckled the pulse beating wildly at her throat.
She felt something primal claw at him. Something that made him seek to narrow the space between them and do more than simply possess her body as he grasped the backs of her thighs and lifted her to the table, stepping between her legs.
She caught herself against her palms. The wine chalice on the table tipped, spilling wine over her fingers. He bent his head and kissed her nipple, rolling it between his lips, swirling the fiery lash of his tongue around the sensitive ruched flesh. Her breath caught and held.
“Ruark . . .”
His voice touched her senses. “Shh.” His strength surrounded her, consumed her, sweeping her into a sea of desire. He kissed the underside of each breast.
His want explicit, he reached between her legs with his hand and parted her, the melting friction of his finger sliding inside her turning her to jelly. On a gasp, she broke from the kiss.
His hair askew and half falling from the thong that held it, a lock brushed his cheek. Her breath came in little pants. And she seemed to hang suspended with him.
He stepped back, his hooded eyes surveying her nakedness while he worked to free his shirt from his breeches.
She half sat motionless, unable to take her eyes off his hands.
As he pulled his shirt over his head, she smoothed her hand over the hardened planes of his stomach, the intense pleasure of watching him undress heating her.
He tossed the shirt behind him, his expression remaining impassive, and she watched him remove the rest of his clothing and carelessly drop all aside. She remembered the way he had looked by the pond, taut of waist and narrow of hip, his thighs exuding strength.
But now she could see all of him. His member extended thick and long from a nest of black curls. The pattern of his man’s hair tapered upward in a narrow line that arrowed up his abdomen and sprinkled his chest.
His fingers closed on her shoulders as he eased her back never breaking the intimacy of his touch. He moved his palms between her thighs and with the gentlest of pressure nudged her legs apart.
“Bend your knees,” he whispered.
She did as he bid. Then his lips took hers again. His kiss was thorough. Sliding one hand around her bottom, he lifted her, spreading her legs wider. And somewhere in that touch, he pushed inside her heated body.