Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
When Ailsa heard footsteps making their way up the stairs and towards the study, she sprang to her feet.
She felt like she had been waiting a lifetime for Tavish to make his return, and now that he was close, her whole system spun with panic. She didn’t know what she was going to say to him, but she had rehearsed it a hundred times in her mind, at least what she could start with.
Tavish, I know that something is happening with the MacCairn, and as your wife, I think it’s only right that…
But all of that flew from her mind at once the moment she saw him standing in the doorway. His face was streaked with dried blood, dirt smeared along the side of his jaw, the scent of smoke clung to his hair.
His eyes were dark, and his face was written with fury. She could only imagine what must have happened to leave him so angry even after he had ridden so far to get here, and whatever certainty she’d been clinging to faltered in an instant.
“Tavish,” she gasped as she rushed over to him. “What happened? Are ye… are ye alright?”
“I’m fine,” he muttered, brushing her off as he made his way to his desk to pour himself a large cup of whiskey.
He didn’t say a word as he took a long sip, not even bothering to ask her what she was doing there, though it must have seemed odd to him that she had decided to appear out of nowhere like this after he had been gone all day.
For a moment, she just stood there in the doorway.
She didn’t know what to say to him if he would have taken anything from her in that moment.
All this time, he had been so insistent that he was capable of dealing with whatever was thrown in his direction, but he seemed so…
so vulnerable now, even in the midst of all his fury.
If she had been sensible, she would have left this conversation for another time.
She would have allowed him to sit there and stew in his anger until he had calmed enough for her to have a real conversation with him, but she could not bring herself to leave him, not so soon. Not after what Emma had told her.
If there was anything to the rumors that the MacCairns were causing such trouble to the clan, then it was her duty as his wife to make sure she stood by him and supported him in any way she was able.
She approached his desk slowly, like she might startle him if she approached too quickly. He made no move to pull back, hardly even seeming to notice her.
Now that she was closer to him, she could see him better, lit by the spill of light from the hearth; he looked as though he was barely keeping himself upright, not physical exertion but mental toil having left its mark on him.
He filled his cup once more and tossed back another gulp, like it was antivenom to whatever poison was pulsing through him in that instant.
She moved to the hearth, where a clean cloth had been left; one of the maids had come by while she was in there to take care of the place, and Ailsa had insisted she was capable of handling it herself, even if all she really wanted was to be alone.
She turned to him again, and this time, his distant eyes seemed to land on her once more.
“Go, lass,” he told her, voice gruff. “Ye’ve no reason to be here. I’m fine.”
“Ye’re nothing of the sort,” she replied as she reached his side, sinking down to her knees and reaching up so she could cup his face in her hand.
His eyes met hers, and she noticed dark rings beneath them that seemed etched out of stone. She was sure she had not seen him look so exhausted in all the time she had known him, and it made her chest ache to see him struggling as badly as he was.
She reached up to clean the blood and dirt from his face, moving gently. None of it, at least, seemed to have come from wounds on his own body, but that didn’t mean that he was entirely unharmed.
Whatever he had seen out there, the weight of it still lay heavy on his shoulders.
He watched as she worked to clean him, her hands moving from his face to his neck, brushing the cloth along his jaw almost tenderly.
It was a far cry from how they had come together in the forest before, when their lips had crashed together with a passion that felt more like a battle than an embrace.
But he didn’t need her fighting him, not now.
He needed someone on his side. And, as his wife, that was exactly where she belonged.
Her silence unnerved him, she could tell. He was used to having her come at him with all manner of accusations and demands, but as she sat and tended to him, that quiet seemed harder for him to bear than anything he had so far.
She brushed the cloth over his lips, tugging on them slightly, and he drew his gaze away from her, fixing it on the window outside.
He had been gone long enough that the moon was now out, casting the bluish light through the arrow slit, and it struck her that he must have not eaten all day, too focused on what his people needed of him for anything as basic as his own needs.
“I wish Callum were here,” he admitted, finally.
His words were rough and hoarse, rising from some place deep inside of him that he hadn’t exposed to her till now.
She sat back on her heels, gazing at him, silently imploring him to keep going.
“He… he knew how to talk to people,” he continued, shaking his head. “How to charm them. But it was never false, not when it came fae him. They loved him. They would have followed him to the grave if he had asked them to because they knew he’d never have asked for something so selfish. But me…”
He shook his head, his jaw tightening.
“They follow me, but they dinnae trust me,” he admitted. “They know that I can fight, but that’s all I can do. And I dinnae ken if I’ll ever deserve that trust. They look at me as if I am made of stone, and I… Sometimes, it feels as though I am. As though I’ve had to be. “
He didn’t look at her as he said it, as if meeting her gaze might let her see a part of him that he was not ready for her to lay eyes on.
She knew that she could have pressed for more, but he had already given her as much as he was willing to. Whatever it was, whatever pain still lived inside of him, he could not spill it in a single night.
He needed her to show him that she was not going anywhere, that she was willing to care for him as more than just a matter of course, but because she wanted to.
Because she needed to.
She reached up to brush her fingers through his hair, guiding a few dark strands back from his face so she could look at him properly. To her, for so long, he had looked like he had been carved from marble, so cold and so hard that reaching anything beneath the surface seemed impossible.
Even now, she could still sense it in him, but she could tell that he wanted to lay himself open for her, even if it hurt, even if it went against every inch of his good sense in the process.
She moved to his lap, wrapping her arms around him.
“Ye dinnae have to be of stone with me,” she murmured. In the flicker of the firelight, something glinted in his eyes.
“I’ll hurt ye,” he warned.
His instinct, it seemed, was still to try and push her away in any way he could. But she was done with that. Done with the way he tried to play with her, the front he put up to try to convince her that there was not a greater man who lived beneath the surface.
“Ye’ve already done that,” she murmured, tracing her fingertip over his cheek. “Now, do something with that hurt, Tavish.”
And, before she could say another word, at last, he seemed to realize what it was she wanted from him.
His lips found hers, caressing along her mouth gently, as though they were starting to speak a whole new language to each other.
And, as she deepened the kiss, proving to him that she would not pull back nor deny him, he rose to his feet, gathering her into his arms, and making his way out of the study and along the hall to where his quarters waited for them.
He did not break their kiss for an instant, the sweetness of it coursing through every inch of her till she felt like she might overflow.
And when he laid her down on the bed and looked upon her, there were none of the games that he had played before; none of the back and forth that had seen both of them trying to take command of the situation.
No, at last, it felt like she had seen part of him that was real, part of him that he was not trying to shape or hide or give her reason to second-guess. And all she wanted was to lose herself to it, once and for all. To give herself to her husband as she had wanted to on her wedding night.
“I must taste every inch of ye, lass,” he growled to her, his voice laced with such a hunger it almost scared her.
He moved on top of her on the bed, his hands running along the length of her arms, their mouths not breaking from their impassioned kiss for even a second.
It felt like they were speaking a whole new language to one another, a language that only the two of them could come close to understanding, breathing words into each other’s mouths that were meant only for each other.
She could feel his hardness stirring against her hip, insistent, but he hardly paid attention to it, letting his hands pin hers to the bed above them.
She lifted her hips to move against him, some deep instinct getting the better of her, guiding her body in all the ways that she needed in this first time.
“Say it, then,” he commanded her. “Say what ye want fae me.”
“What ye did on our wedding night,” she breathed. “Whatever ye did, I need it, I need more, I need… I need…”
The pleasure was already starting to pool between her thighs, just as it had done when he had first touched her, but this time, she knew there would be no end to it. Their lips crashed together again, and there was no need to put it into words any longer.