Chapter 15
Eilidh might be a dreamer, but she wasn’t an idiot.
She knew that if she met Ciaran alone at night in her own chambers, it was likely that…
things would occur between them. It might just be more kissing, but she doubted it.
Neither of them had proven particularly adept at avoiding the other’s charms.
And, aye, the dreamer in Eilidh thrilled at this idea of having Ciaran become hers in a way that was irrevocable. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t know it was possibly a bad idea. That didn’t mean that she wasn’t nervous.
Therefore, she considered it perfectly reasonable that she kept looking to Ciaran at supper, hoping for a bit of reassurance.
But she got none.
He was little more than a shadow in the corner of the Great Hall, silent and grim, staring off into the distance without so much as touching his food.
Eilidh tried to catch his eye until she felt stupid doing so—and then tried a little bit more, finding that she couldn’t resist—but he never once looked her way.
Perhaps he is being circumspect, she told herself. God knows one of us should be.
Perhaps he’s nervous, too, she thought. Men are permitted to have qualms about… matters of the heart, too.
And finally, when he slipped from the hall before she could rise, before she could speak so much as a word to him, her inner voice began to ring with a faint note of hysteria.
Maybe he wants to throw everyone off the scent, she pleaded with her racing heart to believe.
She clung to this idea as she returned to her bedchamber and waited. He would come. He would.
Her conviction wore thin as the hours ticked away, the keep growing quieter and quieter around her.
Eventually, the silence prickled at the anxious energy that filled Eilidh’s body, and she began pacing.
She would rather not leave the room in case he appeared after all—it wasn’t unreasonable, she reminded herself, that something might have delayed him—but she couldn’t sit still any longer.
It was on one of the countless passes between her bed and the window overlooking the courtyard—seven paces in one direction, then seven back again—that she caught a glimpse of something out the window that made her pause and look more closely.
There was a lone figure moving toward the stables. The moonlight glinted off the burnished strands in his hair, making his identity clear—not that she could have mistaken him, not when her whole being had felt attuned to him from the first.
Ciaran.
She didn’t even pause to think. She raced from her rooms, her feet slapping the stone floor of the keep too noisily as she raced after him. Nobody stopped her.
Thank ye, Christ, she thought feverishly as she hurried.
When she reached the stables, Ciaran was securing the last few straps on Shadowbane’s saddle.
A sharp flash of betrayal went through her as he turned in her direction, a stricken look on his face.
“Ye were going to leave?” she asked, her words coming out in gasps. Mere moments later and she might have missed him. “Without a word? Without even a goodbye?”
His fingers tightened on Shadowbane’s reins, but then he turned back to continue his work, checking straps and buckles.
“It’s better this way,” he said curtly.
Mayhap a different woman would have been put off by this sudden iciness. Eilidh suspected that she was meant to be put off by it.
But it only made her quite properly furious.
“Nay,” she said, stamping her foot in the hay that littered the stable floor. Perhaps it was a bit childish, but so was running away in the night, damn it all! “Nay, ye cannae just leave. Ye owe me an explanation, at least.”
His hands paused in his work, and Eilidh could see where old scars on his knuckles stood out in relief against his tanned skin.
“Just let me go, Eilidh,” he said. “I’m no hero; I’m nae even a good man.”
“You saved my life!” she insisted, the words shrill enough that Shadowbane let out a nervous huff, and, off in his stable, Grian stomped a hoof. “Ye cannae convince me that that isnae heroic.”
“I put ye in danger!” he shouted, finally rounding to face her. His eyes were wide, wild and desperate in the dim lighting. “I was the one who took ye out there in the first place; I was the one who put ye at risk. And ye will always be at risk so long as I am near ye.”
His voice cracked as though something inside him, something he’d held onto for a long time, finally broke.
She took a step closer to him, slowly, like he was a startled horse that might bolt. The setting was appropriate for it, after all.
“Ciaran,” she said gently, laying a hand on his arm. “Tell me what’s going on.”
He sighed, the breath shuddering out of him.
“After the rebellion,” he said, looking at the ground, a flop of his bronze hair falling over his brow and casting his face in shadow.
“The Gunns were forbidden from distilling, under punishment by the King. But we didnae stop. We just waited until his back was turned. It was the only thing that kept our clan alive, ye ken.”
Eilidh paused, taking this in. Even if she didn’t remember much of it herself, she knew that the time after the rebellion had been particularly hard in the Highlands, as the English had swept through the countryside, carrying vengeance in their wake.
“Ye were trying to protect your people,” she said softly.
His head jerked up.
“I put my people in danger,” he said. “I was a young, ambitious fool who clung to my family’s pride, who knowingly broke the law—even though I knew that such a secret was destined to fall apart, was destined to bring doom to our doorstep.
And now…” He shook his head sharply. “Now, I have brought it to ye as well. I cannot abide it.”
He looked so devastated that it broke her heart.
“Mayhap it was a mistake,” she allowed. “But ye can fix it—we can fix it together. The Buchanans are still permitted to distill; perhaps there is a way to forge ahead together—“
“Nay.” He cut her off. “Nay, Eilidh. The best thing I can do is leave ye behind to protect ye all from this mess that I’ve brought down upon ye.”
There was a tight fist around her heart that squeezed mercilessly at the thought of never seeing him again. It would have brought her to her knees, if not for the fact that she didn’t have time to collapse, not when she needed to fix this before he mounted his horse and rode out of her life.
“But what do ye want, Ciaran?” she asked, letting her fingers curl covetously around his arm. “What do ye desire?”
His eyes squeezed closed.
“Dinnae ask me that, Eilidh,” he commanded in a harsh whisper.
But she couldn’t relent, her voice firmer than it’d ever been.
“Tell me, Ciaran Gunn—do ye want me?”
There were shadows in his gaze as he lifted his eyes to hers, and for a terrible moment, Eilidh worried that it hadn’t been enough—that she hadn’t been enough—and that he was still going to leave.
And then something shattered inside him. She saw it in the fraction of a second before he hauled her against him, his mouth crashing to hers.
The taste of him was becoming familiar now, and that was as thrilling as the novelty of kissing him had been the first time.
There was a new fever to their embrace as Ciaran pressed her back against the rough-hewn wall of the stable, his knee coming between her legs to pin her in place as his hands and mouth explored.
On instinct, Eilidh moved against that knee, and felt sparks light up behind her eyelids at the sensation it provoked.
She moaned into his mouth.
His fingers came up to card through her curls, cradling the side of her head as he pulled back just enough to look at her.
“I shouldnae be doing this,” he said. “But I cannae resist ye.”
Eilidh reached up and grabbed his hair in turn, then used her grip to pull his lips back down on her.
She kissed every part of him that she could reach, her body thrumming with eagerness to feel every part of him.
He, in turn, kissed his way across her cheek, down to her throat, leaving a trail of fire behind as he went.
When he sucked a hard mark against the place where her pulse throbbed, she moaned, her hips jolting on instinct.
The friction against his leg—and the place where she thrilled to realize she could feel him growing hard—tore another moan from her lips.
“Ciaran,” she said again, as if to remind herself that this was not merely one of her fancies—this was real and they were here.
And maybe her words reminded him, too, that this was happening, ill-advised or not, because he put one arm beneath her behind, guiding her legs around his waist, and the other went around her back.
And then, as if she weighed no more than a feather, he carried her across the stable to where a large pile of hay lay waiting to feed the horses.
Eilidh might have been caught up in the romance of the moment, but even so, she didn’t relish the idea of making love with a piece of straw poking her in the arse.
She was pleased with Ciaran’s foresight when he grabbed a saddle blanket and laid it out over the pile before depositing her gently atop it.
The blanket smelled faintly of horse, but not unpleasantly so, and it was soft from years of being used, washed, and used some more.
Besides, she’d only been lying there a moment before Ciaran knelt down at her side, bending over to kiss her some more—and then she wasn’t thinking about the blanket any longer.
“I can scarcely believe I’m truly here with ye,” he murmured as he looked down at where she was laid out for him. “It’s as though I am dreaming, except no dream could ever be this good.”
And Eilidh, a lifelong dreamer, couldn’t help but agree.
“We can make it better,” she whispered, even though there was nobody around but the horses to overhear them. “Please, Ciaran, give me more of ye.”