CHAPTER 15 #2
He leaped to his feet. After sweeping her hair to the side, he slowly unfastened the first hook.
Who knew the nape of her neck could be so irresistible?
He had to fight the urge to press his lips there.
As he slid his fingers along her skin from hook to hook down her back, her breathing grew shallow, and he smiled.
He was not alone in being affected by their closeness.
“With all your experience,” she said, “I thought you’d be quicker at this.”
“Some things are better savored,” he breathed in her ear.
She shivered beneath his fingers as he slid the gown off her shoulders, and he thought perhaps she would let him wash her after all…
But, alas, she turned around holding the loosened bodice over her breasts and said, “I can do the rest myself.”
He heaved a loud sigh and stretched out on the bed again—facing the wall.
The next half-hour was pure torture as his imagination filled in what he could not see.
He heard the rustle of her gown as she slipped it down her body and the soft whoosh as it hit the floor.
His pulse raced as he envisioned how the candlelight would reveal her silhouette beneath the thin fabric of her shift.
What would she do next? Probably sit on the stool and remove her stockings with one long leg crossed over the other.
He was already breathing hard when he heard her step into the tub.
His heart nearly stopped at the sound of another soft whoosh and he envisioned her pulling her shift over her head and tossing it on the stool.
She paused then, making him wonder if the water was too hot.
Things were certainly too hot where he was.
In his mind’s eye, he saw her standing in the tub with the steam rising up her long, slender legs.
Knowing how modest she was, Margaret would be holding one hand over the juncture between her legs and her other arm across her breasts, which only had the effect of adding to the allure of the image.
Before he could continue his mental journey over her naked form, she sank into the water with a deep sigh.
He hoped to make her sigh like that many times before this night was over.
Mesmerized by the light trickle hitting the tub of water, he imagined her squeezing the sponge.
She would run it down her arms and then along her throat, causing beads of water to stream down the valley between her breasts with their tips rosy from the heat.
The next time, she would let him bathe her, and he would kiss those rosy tips…
run the sponge down the length of her leg…
suck on her wet toes…pleasure her with his hand and watch her come.
Aye, it had to happen. He was sweating and lightheaded from all the blood rushing to his cock when her voice interrupted his daydream.
“Oh my, that was lovely.”
She had no idea.
“’Tis your turn,” she said. “The servants left another bucket of hot water. I’ll pour it into warm the bath up for ye.”
What he needed was a dip in an icy loch. Nay, he needed her with him in the tub. Or on the bed. Or on the floor. Or against the wall.
When he turned around and saw her, his heart did a flip in his chest. She had donned the simple night shift the servants had brought for her. Though it revealed nothing but her pretty bare feet and ankles, just knowing she was naked beneath it nearly killed him. And she smelled like heaven.
Jesu, he was not strong enough to survive this.
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“I don’t mind if ye wish to watch me bathe.” With that devilish glint in his eye, Finn unfastened his belt, let it fall to the floor, and started to pull his tunic and shirt over his head.
Margaret whirled around before she caught an eyeful of brawny, naked Highlander. Though she was tempted to watch him bathe, Finn would take it as encouragement that she would do what she absolutely could not allow herself to do tonight.
Still, she could not help but wonder if he was as beautiful without his clothes as he was with them. If she turned her head to look out the window and happened to catch a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye, that would not be the same as actually watching him…
“You’re peeking,” he said.
“I’m not,” she said, and fixed her gaze straight ahead again. “I was concerned ye might be flooding the floor.”
For a man who could sneak into a cottage without making a sound, he seemed intent on making certain she was aware of his every motion by splashing in the tub.
“I’m out,” he said after a while. “’Tis safe to look now.”
She turned around and swallowed hard. Nay, it most certainly was not safe to look.
Drops of water glistened on his sooty eyelashes and fell from his black hair in tantalizing rivulets down his muscular shoulders and broad chest. More drops glistened on the hair on his abdomen above the drying cloth he’d slung low around his hips.
“Shall I take this off so ye can have a better look?” he asked, giving the drying cloth a slight tug.
Her cheeks burned hot and her gaze flew to his face. He wore a wide grin.
“If you’re done staring,” he said, “ye can hand me that clean léine my aunt sent up.”
“I wasn’t staring,” she said. “I merely wondered why ye did such a poor job of drying yourself.”
“Do ye have any notion what a poor liar ye are?” he asked with a laugh.
She held the shirt out to him and turned her head as he dropped the drying cloth.
When she looked again, he had donned the léine, the loose linen shirt Highlanders wore, which hung to his mid-thighs, clung to his damp skin, and exposed an expanse of his chest through the gap down the front.
“Sit on the stool and let me comb your hair for ye,” he said.
Finn’s offer seemed harmless—and she would not have to struggle to keep her eyes off him while he stood behind her—so she sat down and handed him the comb.
Harmless? Heavens, no. Margaret could not help the occasional sigh as Finn took his time, combing with smooth, rhythmic strokes that he drew out and lengthened.
She was surprised by how intimate it felt to have Finn do this for her.
In five years of marriage, William never had.
It never would have occurred to him. She was the one who was always expected to cater to him.
“Your hair is the color of moonlight shimmering across a loch on a clear night,” Finn said as he paused to let strands of her hair slide through his fingers.
When Finn began massaging her temples, her eyes fluttered closed.
Don’t stop, she silently pleaded, because it felt so good.
She felt the whisper of his breath on the side of her neck, followed by his lips, a soft touch that caused a tantalizing thrill and made her nipples tighten.
She tensed with delicious anticipation as he continued down her throat toward her breasts…
Good heavens! She opened her eyes with a start as she suddenly recalled how quickly she lost her head the first time they kissed—and ended up with her skirts around her waist and her back against a tree. She sprang to her feet and spun around to face him.
“Are ye ready to go to bed, leannain?” he asked, and ran his hands down her arms, a gesture that made it difficult for her to breathe.
“Aye, ’tis getting late,” she said, her voice coming out unnaturally high.
She opened her mouth to ask which side of the bed he preferred, but the words died on her lips when he cupped her face between his large hands and leaned down to kiss her. Her will to resist him slipped away and her body bent toward his.
Instead of hot and demanding like the last time, these were slow, sensuous kisses that made her feel drugged, bewitched.
Her head fell back, and her mind could focus on nothing but the journey of his lips and tongue as they traveled along her jaw, below her ear, and down the side of her throat.
He lifted her onto the bed and enfolded her in his arms, then his mouth was on hers in another smoldering kiss that left her head spinning.
He paused to lean over her, his deep blue eyes dark with desire, and brushed a stray strand of hair from her forehead with his fingers.
“I’m beginning to think,” he said in a hoarse voice, “that telling everyone we are handfasted was a verra good idea after all.”
She wanted to pull him down into another mindless kiss, to not think of risks and consequences.
She’d never been kissed like that before, where time seemed to stop, and it felt as if he wanted to kiss her forever.
But time did not stop. She knew where Finn expected these kisses to lead—where they would inevitably take them—and she could not let herself go there.
“We can’t do this,” she forced herself to say, and pressed her palms against his chest.
His brows shot up. “Why not?”
“Because we’re not truly wed,” she said, though that was not the reason that stopped her.
“If we must act as if we are,” he said, “we ought to have the one benefit of this pretense of a marriage.”
“But it is only a pretense,” she said.
“M' eudail,” my treasure, he said, giving her a wicked smile that made her stomach flip, “ye cannot truly believe the two of us can share this chamber—this bed—and not enjoy ourselves in it.”
“Of course I can,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because I think ye want me, and God knows I want you.” His expression grew serious. “I have since the first time I saw ye looking like a faery princess in a sparkling gown at Holyrood Palace. And I’ve wanted ye more every day since.”
Oh my. She ran her tongue over her dry lips. “But ye said I wasn’t your sort of woman.”
“You’re the wrong sort of lass in every way,” he said, brushing his thumb across her cheek. “But I cannot help myself.”
With his black hair falling over one eye, Finn was dangerously appealing, and she was all too aware of his hard-muscled body against hers through her thin night shift.
If his kisses were a hint, and she suspected they were, then making love with Finn would be nothing like having William grunt over her. She was sorely tempted to find out…
“There’s no reason to deny ourselves when everyone here thinks we’re wed,” he said. “And there’s nothing to fear since ye cannot bear a child.”
Ye cannot bear a child. Finn had hit upon the open wound in her heart and the true reason she could not say aye to him. Though she longed for his touch, his kisses, and more, she could not risk another pregnancy and miscarriage. She just could not face that heartache again.
“This will not happen.” She rolled away from him and lay against the wall, taking up as little space as possible.
He deserved an explanation. But she was not ready to tell him about her deepest sorrow, her failed pregnancies. She might never be. The wound was too deep, her failure too painful to share.
The room was so quiet she could hear his every breath.
She was overly aware of her own breathing as well, even her pulse.
It would take so little for the tension between them to ignite into something she could not control that she was afraid to move.
Finn was right to question how long they could share this bed without giving in.
Staying here with him was dangerous. It was not Finn she feared, but her weakness for him. No other man could tempt her this way. Despite her efforts to resist, he had breached her defenses.
It would be unfair to ask Finn to take her halfway across Scotland to her sister Sybil so soon after they arrived and when so much was at stake for him. His aunt’s warning still rang in her ears.
It will be no easy task to win your place here…no running off again!
She had no money or jewels to pay someone else to take her. Even if she did, she would not know whom to trust to take her. It was a great distance, and she had a young child to consider.
In truth, she would not trust anyone but Finn. He could have abandoned them when Moray no longer wanted her kidnapped. Instead, he had brought them to this place, far from her brothers’ reach. For as long as she and Ella needed to stay here, they would be safe.
Until she was able to leave, she would just have to manage this…situation with Finn. She had navigated the perils of her marriage for years—catering to William’s demanding nature, soothing his erratic moods, and suffering his relentless criticism.
After that, she should have no trouble containing what was nothing but a simple attraction between her and Finn.