Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Elspeth went rigid against him. Colin felt the scream die beneath his palm.
For several seconds, he had not moved. He ought to have done. A better man would have spared her at once. A more indifferent man would have turned away and left her ignorance to burn itself out. Colin, unfortunately, was neither better nor indifferent where she was concerned.
He watched her face, not the couple in the room.
Them he scarcely noted beyond the fact of their impropriety.
But Elspeth… Elspeth stood in the thin spill of lamplight, with her lips parted, her throat working, and her whole proud, troublesome body held in a stillness that was not fear alone.
Her eyes were wide, scandalized, and bright with something she did not yet know how to name.
With his hand over her mouth, he bent nearer until his breath touched the shell of her ear. “It is me.”
Her struggle faltered.
He loosened his grip only by a fraction. “Nod if ye understand.”
After one furious heartbeat, she nodded.
“Good lass.”
That had been a mistake. He knew it the moment the words left him, for she made a small sound beneath his palm and the tremor of it passed through his hand into his blood.
Colin turned her swiftly, keeping her close against him, and guided her down the corridor.
She went because she had no wish to alert the two lovebirds in the linen room, but every stiff line of her promised retribution.
He opened the door to his study, drew her inside, and shut it behind them with care.
The room was dark except for the faint glow of banked embers in the hearth and the moonlight lying pale upon the desk.
Here, at least, no servant would wander in without knocking, and no gossiping maid would see the laird’s wife standing barefoot, flushed, and trembling outside a door that ought never to have caught her interest.
Colin released her. Elspeth spun on him at once, all wild hair, wounded dignity, and dangerous color.
“How dare ye seize me in a corridor like some common brigand?”
His gaze dropped, not deliberately enough to be rude, but not politely enough to be innocent. Her wrap had loosened. One shoulder of her shift had slipped, baring the pale line of her collarbone. Her breath came too quickly.
“I could ask,” he said, “what ye were daeing in that corridor.”
“I was walking.”
“And looking through keyholes.”
Her chin rose. “It wasnae a keyhole.”
“Nay. Ye are right.” He took one slow step toward her. “It was the crack of a door. Much more respectable.”
Even in the low light, he saw the rush of color up her throat.
“I heard voices,” she retorted.
“Aye?”
“And laughter.”
“Terribly suspicious things, voices and laughter.”
“I thought someone might require assistance.”
“In a linen room?”
Her eyes flashed. “Perhaps they were trapped.”
“I imagine they were.”
She stared at him for the space of one breath. Then the meaning struck, and her lips parted in such mortified fury that Colin nearly forgot every reason he had ever had for self-control.
“Ye are vile.”
“I have been called worse by better liars.”
That silenced her. He moved closer. She did not retreat, though he saw the thought pass through her. Pride nailed her to the floor more securely than any command could have done. Her hands twisted once in the folds of her shawl before she forced them still.
Colin knew he should stop. He knew the honorable course: send her back to bed, tell her the servants’ follies were none of her concern and pretend he had not seen the way she had looked through that door.
But the sight of her standing before him, unsettled not by him but by herself, reached some ruthless tenderness in him.
“What did ye see, Elspeth?”
“Naething.”
He laughed softly.
Her hands tightened. “I saw two servants behaving in a manner that would have them both dismissed if this castle possessed any moral discipline.”
“It possesses a laird who kens better than tae search linen rooms at midnight.”
“Then he ought tae nae prowl corridors like a wolf.”
“I wasnae the one prowling.” He took another step, and this time she did move back, only an inch, but enough that he saw it. “Nor was I the one watching.”
Her breath caught. There it was, not guilt and not merely shame, but arousal, raw and bewildering, betraying her through the pulse at her throat and the softness of her mouth.
Colin’s voice lowered. “Did it frighten ye?”
She looked away. “Nay.”
“Did it disgust ye?”
A longer silence.
“I thought it should,” she whispered.
The answer struck deeper than he expected.
All his teasing gentled, though his body did not.
It remained painfully aware of every inch of her, the scent of sleep-warmed skin beneath lavender, the loosened fall of her hair, and the fact that she had come to the corridor innocent and returned changed.
“Look at me.”
“I would rather nae.”
“I ken.”
Her eyes flew back to his, affronted. He lifted his hand slowly, giving her time to object, and touched two fingers beneath her chin. She went still at once. He tipped her face upward.
“What did ye feel?”
Her lashes trembled. “I dinnae ken.”
“Ye dae.”
“I dinnae.”
“Elspeth.”
His voice made her shiver. He felt it beneath his fingers.
“It was…” She swallowed. “Strange.”
“Aye?”
“Warm.”
His thumb brushed the edge of her jaw. “Where?”
Her eyes widened with such scandal that he couldn’t help but smile.
“I willnae answer that.”
“Ye already have.”
“I have done nay such thing.”
“Yer body did.”
Her lips parted. No retort came. She hated that. He could see it. His sharp-tongued wife, robbed of words by the truth of her own blood.
Colin leaned nearer, not touching her elsewhere, though it cost him. “Were ye wet?”
She inhaled sharply. “Dinnae ask me such things.”
“I asked because ye need tae ken it isnae wicked.”
“It feels wicked.”
“Aye,” he murmured. “The best things often dae, at first.”
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. His control thinned to a single dark thread.
He could have kissed her then. He wanted to.
He wanted her mouth angry beneath his, then yielding, then not yielding at all but answering with that fierce, ungoverned honesty she gave to everything except desire.
But this was not about taking what he wanted.
His hand slid from her chin to the side of her neck, his thumb resting over the frantic beat of her pulse.
“The lass in that room,” he murmured, “wasnae being harmed.”
Elspeth closed her eyes briefly. “I ken.”
“And that unsettled ye more than if she had been.”
A breath left her. “Aye.”
“Because yer maither told ye different.”
The flinch was small, but he felt it. Anger moved through him, old and black, not at Morven Fraser, who had given the only knowledge she possessed, but at every man who had made fear sound like wisdom in a woman’s mouth.
Colin bent until his lips brushed the place beneath Elspeth’s ear.
“Pleasure isnae a thing men keep fer themselves.”
Her fingers caught his sleeve. “Colin.”
His name in her mouth was a wound and a blessing.
He drew back enough to see her face. “Say stop, and I will.”
She stared at him, breathing too fast, pride and longing warring so fiercely in her expression that he thought it a wonder she remained standing.
“I should go,” she whispered.
“Aye.”
“I should sleep.”
“Aye.”
“I should forget what I saw.”
He said nothing. Her fingers tightened on his sleeve. Then, in a voice so low it scarcely crossed the space between them, she asked. “Could ye… show me?”
Every part of him went still.
Elspeth’s eyes widened, as if she had shocked herself more deeply than she had shocked him. “I didnae mean—”
“Aye,” he nodded, his voice roughened past courtesy. “Ye did.”
Her blush rose fierce and bright. “Only because I dinnae understand.”
“Then understand this first.” He cupped her face in both hands, forcing himself to be still when his blood was anything but. “I will touch ye only while ye want me tae. If ye tell me nae, I stop. If ye push me away, I stop. If ye grow frightened, I stop whether ye ask or nae.”
Her eyes searched his. “And if I dinnae?”
His thumb brushed her lower lip. “Then, wife, I am going tae put me mouth on ye until ye forget every foolish fear anyone ever taught ye.”
She trembled. Colin waited.
At last, Elspeth whispered. “Show me.”
He kissed her then, but he kept it slow. He tasted the surprise on her lips, the uncertain hunger, the little catch in her breath when his tongue touched hers. She opened to him with such sweet inexperience that his hand tightened in her hair.
He walked her backward until her hips met the edge of his desk.
Her fingers slid uncertainly up his chest, then gripped the fabric of his shirt when he kissed her throat.
The small sound she made nearly undid him.
He gathered her shawl and let it slip from her shoulders. It fell around her feet in a soft hush.
Moonlight laid her bare in suggestion, not in full, but enough for him to see her pebbled nipples. The shift was thin linen, modest by daylight and treacherous by fire-glow. He could see the shape of her breathing, the curve of her shoulders, the tremble she tried to master.
He kissed the place where her shoulder met her neck.
Her head tipped despite herself. He smiled against her skin.
His palm moved slowly over her side, down the curve of her hip, then back again, teaching her that touch need not hurry to be ruinous.
She watched him as if he were both tutor and threat.
When his fingers found the hem of her shift, he paused.
“Tell me.”
She knew what he asked. It cost her. He saw that. But she lifted her chin, though her eyes were dark with embarrassment and want.
“Dinnae stop.”
Colin sank to his knees.
Her hand flew to his shoulder. “What are ye daeing?”
“Showing ye.”
“Like—”
“Aye.” He kissed the inside of her knee through the linen. “But better.”
“That is a very arrogant claim.”
“I mean tae prove it.”
Her laugh broke into a gasp when his hands slid beneath the shift and parted her knees with careful pressure.
He could feel how rigid she was, how frightened by wanting and determined not to confess it.
So he took his time. He kissed her thigh, her hip, the tender skin above the place she tried instinctively to hide from him.
“Sweet, stubborn lass. So wet from watching, and still ye would stand there arguing with me as if I couldnae see how badly ye wanted tae ken.”
“Colin,” she gasped, scandalized.
“Aye. Say me name. Ye may scold me with it later.”
Then his mouth found her. Elspeth’s whole body jerked. He held her steady, one hand spread firm over her hip, and the other at her thigh. She made a broken sound and opened her knees even more, granting him access to her most intimate flesh.
He licked her with his tongue again and felt the moment pleasure overcame shock. Her hand slid from his shoulder into his hair, holding him there. The knowledge burned through him.
He used his fingers carefully, giving her only what she could take, watching every response as if his life depended on reading it rightly. Her hips moved once. He praised her for it, low and wicked, and she shook beneath his mouth.
“That is it. Let me feel ye want it, Elspeth.”
She whispered something that might have been a plea or a prayer. Colin did not stop. He learned her quickly: the pressure that made her gasp, the rhythm that stole her speech, the soft circling touch that made her grip his hair hard enough to sting.
He welcomed the pain. He deserved worse and wanted more.
Her breathing changed. He felt the gathering tension in her thighs, the helpless arch of her body, the trembling that began deep and spread until she was nothing but sensation held upright by his hands.
“Colin,” she cried too loudly.
He rose just enough to cover her mouth with his free hand, his eyes lifting to hers in the dimness. “Quiet, wife.”
Her eyes were wild above his hand. He pressed one last kiss where she was most sensitive, sucking in her swollen bud, touching her again with tongue and fingers together.
At that exact moment, she shattered. The cry broke against his palm.
Her body bowed, then trembled violently, pleasure taking her in waves she did not know how to resist. Colin held her through it, gentling his touch only when the tension softened and she sagged against the desk, breathless and astonished.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Elspeth looked down at him. Her face was flushed. Her hair had fallen loose about her shoulders. Her lips were parted, and in her eyes lay shock, wonder, and a new, dangerous knowledge.
Colin rose slowly. He should have stepped away.
Instead, he kissed her, letting her taste herself on his mouth.
She made a small sound that went through him like a blade.
Then her hands moved down his chest, uncertain but eager, reaching for the fastening of his belt with instinct rather than understanding.
He caught her wrists at once. She froze.
His body protested with such violence that his voice came out rough. “Nay.”
Hurt flickered across her face before confusion overtook it. “Did I dae something wrong?”
The question nearly killed him. Colin lifted her hands and kissed her knuckles, one after the other, until the uncertainty in her eyes eased.
“Nay, Elspeth. Ye did naething wrong.” He forced a smile that felt more like restraint than humor. “That is the trouble.”
Her gaze dropped, and he knew by the widening of her eyes that she understood at least part of what he denied himself.
“Then why stop?”
Because if he let her touch him now, he would forget every noble intention he dragged out of the wreck of himself, because she asked for knowledge, not possession and because he wanted the first time she took him in her hands to be free of shock, fear, confusion, and midnight discoveries in linen rooms.
He cupped her cheek. “Because that will be fer another time.”
Her breath caught. “Another time?”
“Aye.” His thumb stroked her heated cheek. “When ye ask because ye want me, nae because ye dinnae ken what tae dae with yer hands after pleasure has made a wreck of ye.”
Her mouth opened, then closed. For once, Lady Elspeth MacKenzie had no answer.
Colin bent and picked up her shawl from the floor. He set it gently about her shoulders, though every instinct in him rebelled against covering what he had just been permitted to worship. Then, he stepped back before the last thread of his honor snapped.
Elspeth clutched the wrap closed, still breathing unevenly. At the door, distant footsteps passed down the corridor and faded. Her eyes flew to his.
Colin smiled faintly. “Now, lass, unless ye wish tae explain tae me household why their laird’s wife is in his study at midnight looking as if she has just survived a sermon on sin and found it lacking, I suggest ye let me return ye tae bed.”
Her blush came swiftly. But this time, she did not look away.