Chapter Nine #8
Of the little I knew about such things—I had been given somewhat explicit descriptions by Maisie, especially, and also Bonnie, after all—I knew that the final satisfaction in regards to this encounter had been one-sided.
Namely: mine. And after learning that Maisie had most likely propositioned my husband—unsuccessfully, if he was to be believed—I felt inspired to rise to the challenge.
I was still reeling from the intensity of my throbbing climax, which echoed with a gentle pulse even now.
Greedily, I wanted more of my husband’s expertise.
His lovemaking was akin to a spiritual experience.
Aye, I was beginning to understand. I was already addicted.
With this man, the reticence that had been conditioned into my character seemed a long-forgotten memory.
I had some idea about how to offer him such a thing, but, in fact I was entirely inexperienced. I thought of Maisie’s advice to me, before I’d left her this morning. Tease him. Use your body.
Clearly, the lack of resolution on his part had implanted a layer of tension into Kade’s manner. He climbed off me and reached for the weapons he had discarded. I couldn’t help noticing the swollen bulge of his immense, roaring arousal as he hastily refastened his belts.
Show yourself. Men simply cannot resist once they see you.
“Husband,” I said, sitting up, and making no move to close the sides of my gown.
The women of my family had been blessed, as it were, with abundant curves.
And I was no exception, despite my slightly slimmer figure.
My full breasts still felt ripe and swollen from the play of his mouth and his hands.
I touched myself, as he had done, fingering my nipples, teasing them once again into tight buds.
Kade regarded me warily, but his guardedness was undermined by a glazed hunger that he was visibly attempting to control.
“Holy mother of God, lass,” he said, turning his eyes away with a quick jerk of his head.
“I’ve a vow to keep to you. Cover yourself or you’ll find me breaking my word for the very first time in my life.
And if that happens, there’s no telling what kind of debauchery you’re in for. ”
Instead of instilling fear, as his words might have only days ago, they emboldened me by his obvious—and quite rampant—desire. “I thought I might do something for you,” I said.
“Nay,” he replied gruffly. “’Tis not about me. When the time is right, you can have your way with me. As it is, we’ve work to attend to. You’re coming with me. Make yourself presentable.”
A man likes it when a woman takes control.
It was with a sense of competitive spirit that I made my decision; I didn’t want Kade to be tempted by my sister’s advances, even if he said he wasn’t, when I should be the one tempting him.
I moved closer to him, which he seemed not to notice, so embroiled he was with his own irritability and the task of refitting all his many weapons into their correct placements.
I reached for one of his hands with both of mine.
At my touch, he froze. As I moved closer, my beaded nipple brushed against the flat metallic plane of one of his knives, causing me to shiver with a light sigh.
If I was afraid that he might try to ward me off or reject me altogether, it was a fleeting concern.
The fabric of my dress had fallen off my shoulders.
My breasts were pushed up lightly against him.
Without intention, I licked my parted lips in a silent invitation, and his eyes watched the movement with a stricken, beguiled glint.
Use your hands. And your mouth.
“’Tis not fair, husband.”
“What’s not fair?” he said shortly, as though trying to hold off the question and annoyed that curiosity had got the better of him.
I held his hand and gently pulled it to me, placing his palm on my bare breast. He allowed this, but his look had turned stormy.
I felt doubly vulnerable half-naked before him, offering myself to his force and his fury.
Yet his refusal and the reasons behind it lit something within me, giving me a new resolve.
I kissed a line along his bristled jaw toward his mouth, but he turned his face away.
He exhaled in a long, tortured breath. His hand curved around the rounded shape of my breast, and I held it there.
He exhaled in a light groan.
“That you inspired in me such a...rush,” I replied, “And took nothing for yourself.”
“Trust me, wife,” he said. “You pleasure me more than you know. Just seeing you is enough. Nothing could equal you. Just...tasting you—” The admission seemed to jolt some inner sanctum within him. Abruptly, he curled his hand around mine, removing his touch from my skin.
Undeterred, I placed my unoccupied palm on the solid surface of his upper thigh, resting it on the hard leather of his trews. “I wouldn’t have thought you to be such a sweet talker upon our first acquaintance,” I said.
He stopped the exploration of my fingers, taking my hand in his own much larger one and removing it from his leg.
“Nay, that was obvious by the look on your face. Which is precisely why I made the oath—which I can assure you I’m beginning to severely regret.
I told you, one month. Cease this now. I’m a man of discipline and control, but I’m not a saint.
Don’t start something you can’t finish.”
“I can finish it,” I said softly. The effects of my husband’s reverence and desire were inspiring every brazen inclination I might ever have possessed.
I hardly recognized myself as I said to him, “Taste more of me, husband. You promised you would.” The sultry memory of our first kiss in the night garden and his whispered farewell only fortified my resolve. My fantasy had become my reality: him.
His voice was quiet and husky. “I have never wanted anything as much as I want to spend the next week locked away in this turret with my flawless, spirited wife, tasting every inch of your perfection, again and again. And I am reaching the limits of my restraint.”
I touched my mouth to his, teasing him with tiny licks and bites, testing the very restraint he spoke of.
Kade groaned again, a low, savage sound, and I could sense the brimming surge of his surrender was close at hand.
He fought it, allowing me to kiss him while remaining entirely motionless, save the willing parting of his lips.
I didn’t know how far he would allow me to take him, or what limits he had set upon himself with his promises to ease my fear, but I intended to find out.
But before I could, a commotion shattered our privacy.
A cacophony of heavy footsteps could be heard in the chambers below us.
Soldiers’ footsteps, I guessed, and many of them.
The hostile voice of my father yelled, “Where is she?” Behind the familiar flare of fear, I felt a fleeting flash of anger at the interruption.
Didn’t my father and his soldiers have anything better to do than keep endless tabs on me and my wayward whereabouts?
Kade grabbed all of his weapons, slinging them into place. And I hurriedly buttoned up the front of my gown. My husband gave me an intense, brusque command: “Stay behind me.”
With all the poise of a seasoned, confident warrior who had every faith in his own ability, he strapped his sword belt around his waist, securing it.
Then he motioned for me to follow him. We descended the small stone spiral staircase to find my father, Aleck, Hugh and two other officers whose names I knew to be Callum and Rupert.
Four against one. My father and I hardly constituted threats to anyone, but I couldn’t help cataloging the size, the strength and the combined arsenal of my father’s four guards and compare them with my husband’s. Kade was legendary for his war skills, aye, but could he outmatch all four of them?
“To what do we owe this honor, Laird Morrison?” my husband said pleasantly, but his question was underlaid with a contempt I hoped only I could detect; Kade, clearly, had little respect for the man whose leadership he was now in line to inherit.
“We were just surveying our new chambers. Is there something you require of us?”
“This room is not available,” my father said gruffly. Then, with the barest edge of emotion, he said, “’Tis the chambers of my late wife and is not to be disturbed.” He turned to me. “You know this, yet you insist on going out of your way to soil her memory with your disobedience. Yet again.”
Always before, in my youth and at my most vulnerable, my father’s words had sounded like wisdom that shone a light on all my inadequacies.
Now I could see it for the madness it was.
“I am not soiling her memory, Father. I’m honoring it.
Eighteen years have passed since her death.
We will use this room, and restore it to its finest.”
“How dare you defy me!” my father bellowed, swaying slightly with the effort. “Men, bring her with us. She will receive her penalty belowstairs, and this time, do it properly, lest she once again forgets her place.”
Out of habit, I froze, my blood turning to ice in my veins. It was a familiar feeling and one that renewed all the angst my husband had somehow managed to displace.
But Kade was with me now, standing in all his radiance, between me and my aggressors.
In a slow, deliberate challenge, he slid his largest sword from its scabbard and held it up.
“At the risk of gaining even more of your disapproval, laird, you must be even further down the road to madness than it appears if you think there is any chance whatsoever of you and your thugs laying so much as a finger on my wife.”
“Your wife,” countered my father, “is my daughter and my charge. As laird of this keep, I will carry out her punishment as I see fit. Now stand aside, Mackenzie, before you live to regret your defiance.”