Chapter 32
“The moon and the stars?”
“All of them,” Donall vowed, pulling Isolde into his arms. “I swear it to you.”
“Every one?” She looked at him, the flickering glow from her night candle playing across her face.
“So I said.” He stroked her breasts as he spoke, circled his thumbs around their vermilion-tipped crests. “And when the day breaks, I shall fetch you the sun as well.”
She leaned into him. “And you? What about your pleasure?”
“My reward is in the giving.” He returned his attention to her rose-scented breasts. Hoping to lose himself in passion before guilt stabbed him for what he was about to do: indulge his fierce need for her, then leave.
And go he would.
He’d take the key she’d so bravely relinquished, and escape at first opportunity, following not his pleasure, his heart, but his duty. His pressing need to return to Baldoon before Iain’s temper unleashed such chaos the bards would need centuries to tell the tale.
“You are troubled.” She slipped her fingers over his hand, staying his caresses. “The key is only to give you and your friend more comfort,” she added, her words piercing the haze of his lust.
He glanced sharply at her.
Sakes, she was as great an all-seer as Gavin.
Equally damning, something hurtful shimmered in her eyes. “Nothing has changed. You and Gavin MacFie may move about your cell unhindered, neither of you chained to the wall as before. But the door shall remain barred.”
“You tell me this now?”
“I saw your expression change, how your gaze went to the key.”
He glanced there again, to where he’d placed it on her bedside table, next to the night candle. Releasing a long breath, he cursed himself for looking anywhere near the damned key.
He didn’t want to remind her of his captive status – or her suspicions of Iain.
“You are not finished.” Her chin came up, showing her spirit. “Say what you intended.”
“Ah, well.” He caught her hand and brought it to his lips, hoping to gentle his words with a soft kiss to the backs of her knuckles. “Sweet lass, you should look into your heart when seeking truths.”
“Is that so?”
“It is there you’ll find answers,” he said, releasing her hand. “Not out windows or inside flagons of odd potions.”
Her face colored at that, and she glanced away, looking straight toward the row of tall, unshuttered windows lining the far wall.
Donall cupped her chin and turned her face back to his. “Fair lady, you amaze me.” He touched a fingertip to the lone freckle on her cheek. “How can you dab whore’s paint on your breasts without batting an eye, yet one mention of that fool potion and you blush?”
“I am not blushing.”
“You are. So tell me, lass, what is the brew? Speak true, for I will no’ believe it is what you claimed.” He let his gaze study her from the top of her head to where her gown and chemise still bunched around her hips, and he saw nothing but purest, unblemished skin.
“You have but a single freckle,” he said, kissing the spot again. “I would regret its demise.”
“There were others. I banished them all with the-” she broke off when he shook his head.
“It cannae be that bad. What is the potion?”
She looked down and for one gut-wrenching moment, he feared she’d cry, but then a worse thought seized him.
“Are you ill?”
“I am.” She lifted her gaze. “And there is no cure. The potion was given to me as a preventative measure. Sadly, it has proven worthless.”
“What was the brew meant to protect you from?”
“From you.”
“Me?”
She nodded.
Donall fought the urge to laugh. “Sakes, lass, I am no’ the one who set out to seduce.
” He skimmed his fingers across the top swells of her breasts – something he shouldn’t have done, because touching her again sent heated desire spearing straight to his groin.
“Why would you wish to protect yourself from a man you sought so determinedly?”
She glanced at the windows again, her face coloring anew.
“Sought and won,” he added when she didn’t answer.
He touched her cheek, turning her face back to him. “You wanted us to lie together – to mate. Why ward me off?”
“That wasn’t my intent. I drank the potion to protect me from myself.”
Donall stared at her. “From yourself?”
She nodded. “Devorgilla gave me the anti-attraction potion to shield me from your charm,” she said, bold as day. “Things like your bonnie chest and that slow, wicked smile you’re ever turning on me. Your kisses, too, if you’d know the truth.”
She held his gaze, daring him to laugh. “Much is said about your ways with women. I only wanted an alliance. It was never my wish to fall for your legendary appeal. I was assured the potion would spare me such a fate.”
“Appealing, am I?” Donall couldn’t stop his smile.
“So all the ladies say.”
“What do you say?”
“I have not yet decided.”
“Why do I no’ believe you?” He leaned in to nuzzle her neck, then nipped her ear. “Nae bother. Just tell me this. Do you still want only a bairn? Or would you now have the father as well?”
He kissed her cheek. “Have you fallen for me, my lady?”
Silence answered him.
Also a telltale set to her jaw. Seeing it, Donall’s heart soared. His MacLean pride wanted to shout with triumph. She’d said she wanted an alliance. What she didn’t say, and the look on her face, said more.
Whatever made her desire a child to seal her pact, she wanted him now.
He was sure of it.
Joy swept him as he gripped her by the waist, flashed his best smile. “You say the potion is worthless?”
She struggled against a smile of her own. “Perhaps I should say it is faulty?”
“How so?”
“I believe you know.” This time she did smile.
She also placed her hand on his chest and smoothing her fingers over his muscles, even grazing her nails ever-so-lightly over his chest hair. Donall’s smile slid away, banished by the darker need stirring inside him.
She eased her hand over his heart and stilled her fingers, tensing them as if listening with their nerve endings for the thudding beneath his skin.
The pounding of a conquered heart.
A slow smile flittered across her face as if her fingers heard what they’d sought. She looked up at him then, but kept her hand where it was.
“This is why I wanted protection,” she said. “Exactly this.”
“The beating of my heart?”
“Nae, what that slow, hard beat means.” Showing the steel he loved in her, she captured his hand and pressed it to her own heart. “The same thing this means,” she said, and he was lost.
Totally, and irrevocably.
As he looked at her, he felt a tremor ripple through her. A sign as sure and true as the thumping in his chest.
She cared for him, and mightily.
He slipped his hand from her grasp so he could caress her cheek. “I would hear the words, lass.”
She shook her head, and the refusal struck hard. But then she circled her arms around him, and the hurt vanished.
“I cannot say the words, but I will show you.”
She leaned into him, angling her head and so offering him her lips. Donall crushed her to him, slanting his mouth over hers in a rough and deep kiss. A fierce claiming of her lips, her tongue, her very breath.
Her soul.
When he eased the kiss to an end, he felt a powerful bond with her.
One crafted of his feelings, and hers, for there could be no doubt she harbored them.
They shone in her amber-flecked eyes. He saw the love and desire in her, regardless of how much anti-attraction potion she’d swallowed to ward them off.
An unexpected sensation surged through him. Happiness? Love? He wasn’t sure – he only knew it was wild, unrestrained, and glorious. Exultant. He could call it nothing else, and the power of it threatened to bring him to his knees.
“We really are going to do this, aren’t we?” Isolde stood tall, but her heart thundered. Her belly quivered a bit, but she didn’t care to admit that. Instead, she peered up at the devastatingly attractive man before her and hoped to the gods her voice wouldn’t crack. “You are about to lie with me.”
“Nae.” He regarded her with a look so dark and intense, nerves made her ease out of her soft leather slippers and dig her toes into the floor rushes.
“I am going to make you mine,” he said. “There is a difference.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say.
She was too aware of the stiff coolness of the rushes pricking her now-bare feet. They made a welcome contrast to the heat of his gaze and the warmth pooling so low in her belly.
“Are you so eager to be naked?” he teased, glancing at her feet before he swept back the bed curtains. He whipped down the coverlets, his swift movements revealing his own readiness.
“You have nothing to fear.” He touched her face. “To start, I will stroke your breasts again,” he said, placing his hands on them as he spoke. “Thereafter, I will love you until you cry out with your release.”
“Will you kiss me?”
“Again and again,” he promised, lowering his head to do so now.
Isolde dug her hands into the thick silk of his hair, gasped at her wonder. She’d never dreamed anything could feel so good, so spellbinding, as his kisses. She didn’t want him to stop. So she clung to him, fearing she’d fall if she didn’t, so overwhelming was her pleasure.
Breaking their kiss, he turned his attention back to her breasts. He caressed them, swirling his tongue around and over her nipples until not a trace of the blush of rose remained.
“Would that I had a potion to save me from you,” he said, so low she almost didn’t hear him. But she felt his breath, warm and soft, against her skin.
Straightening, he glanced at the clothes still tangled about her hips. “I would kiss all of you. Push down your gown and the chemise so I can.”
“All of me?” The maid in her froze. But her earthy side knew what he meant and thrilled to anticipate such kisses.
“Come now.” His smile turned wicked. “I need you wholly bare.” He leaned toward her, in that moment surely the most dangerous man in all Scotland. “Naked, and willing to open your knees.”
“So you can sire a child on me?”
“Aye, eventually. First I will prepare you for that pleasure.”