Highland Warrior (The Campbell Brothers #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter one

ELSPIT

He was coming.

She could hear the scrape of his boots on the stone outside her window, the rattle of tiny pieces falling far down below. Her heart beat faster and she went to open the shutters, peering down.

Ewen stared up from his precarious hold on the tower wall, handsome, strong, and despite his youth every bit the warrior.

And then he grinned and she melted. Golden hair hung loose about his face and his blue eyes were fierce beneath straight dark brows.

His white linen shirt was untied at the throat, giving her a keyhole view of his strong chest, and one knee was pressed hard into a niche in the stonework, his kilt barely covering his firm thigh.

Her breathing picked up and her fingers clenched on the sill, knuckles white, as she pictured him falling.

In the eleven months he had been climbing the wall of the tower he had always reached her safely, but that did not mean tonight would not be different.

And to lose Ewen Campbell was unthinkable.

And yet he made the climb seem easy. Another step upwards and he reached out, fingers hooking over the grey stone of the sill where she stood, and began to haul himself in.

His muscular legs kicked as he came over, his kilt flew up, and she had a glimpse of firm strong buttocks, then he was through the window and into her chamber.

He promptly rolled over onto his back, his chest rising and falling from the effort, and looked up. He was still grinning, and his blue eyes shone with laughter.

“One day,” Elspit warned him, her voice trembling, her heart still racing.

He tangled his fingers in the hem of her nightgown, giving it a little tug. “Come here,” he said, his voice deep and warm. He might only be eighteen, but Ewen Campbell was a man in every way.

And he was her man.

She knelt down beside him and the light in his eyes changed to a blaze. His hands closed over her waist as she swung her leg over his hips, straddling him, with her palms flat on his chest. Then she bent down and pressed her mouth to his.

Instantly he pulled her down so his lips could work hers, his tongue slipping into her mouth, and she whimpered. He tasted of his father’s whiskey and of potent male, while Elspit suspected she tasted of the sweet honey in the syllabub she had for supper ... and infatuated girl.

He groaned. His hands closed over the globes of her bottom, squeezing, and he arched his hips against her. The hard line of his cock rubbed against her and suddenly she was aching, wet, wanting him so much she felt as if she was dying.

She had known Ewen Campbell for three years, from the time his father and brothers arrived in her father’s lands, and for the last eleven months they had been playing these games.

Teasing, tantalizing, pushing themselves to the limit and then stopping.

It was torture. Elspit had begged him more than once to take her, but he wouldn’t.

His self-restraint was admirable and frustrating at the same time, and nothing she said could sway him.

And the reason he would not make her his entirely and completely? Ewen wanted to marry her and he wanted their wedding bed to be the place where they consummated their love.

In her heart she knew he was right. The Laird of Tighe’s daughter was a prize. Ewen was determined to stand beside her as her legal husband, but Elspit’s father had different ideas.

“My father does not believe in love and happy ever afters,” she had warned him again and again.

“We will win him around,” Ewen had promised, those brilliant blue eyes gazing down into hers, the rough skin of his palm against her cheek as he held her gently.

For such a big man, who was already on his way to being the Laird’s champion, he was always tender with Elspit.

“Lass, I will win your hand and overpower his objections.”

She hoped it was true, but her father was a greedy and violent man, and although Ewen might be a valuable asset to him, he was also the son of a landless clan chief.

When his father and three brothers had come to Castle Tighe, it was because a clan battle had scattered their kin far and wide.

The laird had taken them in, begrudgingly, and they had proved loyal.

They were also painfully honest when it came to commenting upon her father’s actions, something that did not go down well.

Ewen’s father and his brothers were determined to regain their lands and rebuild their fortune but it was not something that could happen in a moment.

They had petitioned their powerful relative, the Duke of Arran, but it seemed that currently he had better things to do, although his authority was such that even the laird was wary of it.

Meanwhile they must wait and suffer Laird Tighe’s insufferable behaviour, and Elspit was worried a tipping point was fast approaching.

One thing Elspit hadn’t told Ewen was that her father had been pressing her to marry their neighbour, Donald Grant.

The man was old and dried out, and she thought he was at least seventy.

He had worked his way through several wives and children who had predeceased him.

He was on the lookout for a new wife, one young enough to finally give him an heir.

On the other hand, marriage to Elspit would bring the Grant estates to Tighe and that was what her father craved. He could never have enough land.

Ewen’s hands tightened on her rounded flesh, his fingers squeezing. It felt good. Everything he did felt so good. Her body hummed and heated, desperate for his, and she shifted again, finding the hard length of him beneath his kilt, and ground down.

Some relief, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

“Elspit,” he groaned her name into her mouth, his hands tightening to slow her movements. He tipped her to the side, so that they lay adjacent, and then he gazed into her eyes.

“I burn for you,” he growled.

“Then take me.”

His eyes closed and it was like the sun blinking out, and then they opened again and her world had colour. “You know I will not,” he said. “Not until we are wed.”

“Ewen ...”

“But we can do other things,” he went on, wickedly.

She smiled at that, and he touched his nose with the tip of hers.

Reaching down to the hem of his kilt, Elspit began to inch it up, disclosing his muscular thighs and then the thick, hard length of his cock.

It was a magnificent thing—not that she had seen many, only sometimes when the boys were bathing naked in the loch, and none of them had looked like this.

Eagerly she wrapped her small hand around what felt like an iron rod with the softest covering of velvet, or as much of it as she could manage.

Ewen’s eyes burned at her touch, and then he was kissing her again, finding the weight of her breast beneath her nightgown, his thumb sliding back and forth across her hard nipple.

It was bliss. She arched into him, but he was already lifting her thin nightgown, his hand finding naked flesh, fingers easing between her thighs.

She was wet, eager, and she opened willingly as he slid his hand between the plump folds, finding all the places they had discovered gave her delight. These past months had not been wasted when it came to their pursuit of pleasure.

“Ewen,” she sighed, her hand moving on his cock in the way she knew he craved.

His hips thrust against her and she might have crawled down over him to take him in her mouth, but that would mean he would have to stop pleasuring her and she was so close.

A rub of his thumb, the friction of his fingers, stroking against her.

“Elspit,” he groaned, his mouth finding hers again, hot and desperate as he pushed her toward her peak.

They were so completely preoccupied that they did not notice the door open.

The first hint that they were discovered was a big hand clutching hold of Ewen’s jacket and dragging him upwards and away. The next thing was her father’s red and furious face staring down accusingly, his dark eyes glittering through the folds of fat enclosing them.

“You young cur!” he roared. “I have you now!”

Ewen was as shocked as Elspit. He struggled, trying to free himself, but the laird was still strong, despite his advancing years and increasing bulk. Behind him were some of his most trusted men, leering down at her. Quickly she put her nightgown to rights, hands shaking with fear.

Because this was not good. Not good at all.

“I want to marry your daughter!” Ewen declared in a loud, ringing voice. Everyone in the room held their breath.

And then her father and his henchmen burst out laughing.

Ewen’s face flamed with fury and hurt pride, but they did not give him time to say more.

They dragged him out of the chamber and down the curl of the narrow stone stairs, right down into the heart of the castle.

Just before he disappeared from sight he turned his head and found Elspit.

Just one look, but she read the longing and worry in his eyes.

Then her father slammed the door. He stood before her, taking up a great deal of space.

She knew her face was white and her lungs were struggling to take in enough air.

“You are a fool, daughter! Why give up your maidenhead to a man with no lands and no money?” he sneered. “A romantic fool, just like your dead mother.”

There was nothing to say to that, except that it was true.

She was a romantic like her mother, and that character flaw had never made the laird’s dead wife happy.

Was Elspit about to suffer the same fate?

She raised her chin and stared back at him, trying to be strong.

Because Ewen was in grave danger and she would do anything to save him.

“Ewen Campbell deserves to be flogged,” he said, every word dropping like lead shot at her feet. “And then he deserves to hang.”